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Facing a banking meltdown, no one's mind is fixed on what the political winds might turn into, after the seams burst, and the clean-up effort hoses off the sidewalks and sweeps the remains into the gutter. It's survival mode, not even women and children first. So before the dust settles, or even earlier when the economy is clearly imbalanced, unstable and listing off to one side, they expect people to think about the extremists this is going to bake over the next half decade. Never going to happen. Business people, accountants, financial operators, their minds do not work this way. But there's easily multiple folds or layers that all add together to produce such an effect. And part of it is age brackets. If this is a fifteen year cycle, it's partly generational, and as much about the ritual of hand-off as it is about who is actually landing in the driver's seat. But the roughest part is the polluter's mindset of those who set up the meltdown. They're definitely there to say: not my problem; so long, suckers! Immediately prior to that there's probably some mild discussion about incentives driving performance. Why perform at all, if not to reap rewards? And immediately prior to that, there's probably a period with a good record of following the rules, aging out and retiring uneventfully. So, if the process seems to havea natural rhythm, it's probably because human mortality means good teams eventually kick the bucket, and upstarts fill their shoes with less integrity. The faces change, but the story doesn't. |
As is noting perverse incentives and adverse selection.