Conrad Black is a pompous puffed-up man who speaks in a supercillious manner using no end of words which are virtually incomprehensible to the average person. If one is well educated and listens attentively, he can actually be extremely funny in a rather dark sort of a way.
I have encountered the man on a few occasions at events in Montreal, Toronto and London, he is not the warmest of individuals, but one cannot take away the fact that he is extremely well read, and not in the least stupid.
We are living in interesting times, so far in the 21st century, we have experienced 2 recessions, this current one being of a magnitude that no one could have possibly imagined. To even conceive that we would have bank failures in the billions of dollars, and a mortgage crisis in the United States in the trillions of dollars, is beyond the imagination of most people . Not that many years ago, the concept of being a millionaire was beyond the dreams of the majority of the population. Today we hears of millions of millionaires, and now the new yardstick is being a billionaire.
We now read the newspapers with headlines screaming out about crisis in the billions and trillions of dollars. What on earth happened? Yet this week, another trader was arrested in London for losing 2 billion dollars, and potentially bringing down a financial powerhouse. Was no one watching? How is this possible? What happened to monitoring? Are there no guidelines? Any poor soul going to the bank today for a loan or to open a simple bank account is treated like the worse thief, and is required to provide endless proof of identification, and proof of the source of funds. Yet simultaneously in the financial sector, a trader under 30 can be manipulating the market, trading other people’s money and bringing down a huge financial corporation and potentially losing the funds of thousands of investors. Executives at the failing banks and investment firms have lost billions of dollars of the investor’s money, living large on massive expense accounts, flying on private jets, staying in majestic suites for thousands of dollars in only the best hotels, eating the finest food, and drinking only the finest wines, sometimes for thousands of dollars per bottle, then paying themselves massive bonuses. Yet to date, with the failures and subsequent bail-outs of some of these institutions, NOT ONE CENT has been recovered by the Board of Director’s to be returned to the corporate capital fund for the behalf of the investors.
The executives have walked with hundreds of millions and billions of both the investors and taxpayers money. The argument can be made that they weren’t brought up on charges, or indicted, so they are guiltless. But where is the morality in all of this?
Conrad Black built up Hollinger to a world class international company, along the way he created a lot of jobs, paid a lot of tax, and created wealth for his investors, which has for the most part been destroyed over the last 7 years. The magnitude of his sins are infinitesimally small compared to the executives plundering the banks and investment firms which they neither created or really invested in. So what real value did they bring?
Conrad Black is back in prison, much poorer, and slightly more humble. He will never be a poor man, or for that matter a humble one, but he certainly does not deserve what has been served to him.
Is there actually anyone out there paying attention?
