Strength!

The hullaballoo on the wall street has created an unrest like never before in recent times. Even the staunchest of free-market believers believe federal government's intervention is justified. Even ex-fed reserve chairman Greenspan has admitted that he was wrong and that "a critical pillar to market competition and free markets did break down" and he has no idea how.

I am an engineer, far removed from the world of wall street. But I have been following the going-ons of the past few months like a wonder-filled child. To me, free market or capitalism is not to be blamed for all this mayhem. There is something deeper, imho. Wiki defines free market as follows:
"By definition, buyers and sellers do not coerce each other, in the sense that they obtain each other's property without the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or fraud, nor is the transfer coerced by a third party."

So there. Free market doesnt talk about profit. It talks about coercion, or the lack of it.

By offering easy loans to people who couldn't afford it, the banks tried to exploit (or shall I say coerce) the baser elements of humans for their own good. A very crude analogy would be a scenario like this: Jennifer wants to get drunk..goes to a pub A. Tom wants to pickup a girl..goes to the same pub A. Tom offers Jennifer a drink with the sole intention of getting her drunk. Jennifer after a few shots is totally drunk. Drunk as in DRUNK. Semi-conscious. Quasi-dead. Not in her senses. Taking advantage of her 'misery', Tom takes her home and fulfills all his carnal desires. Now legally, none of them was wrong. But Tom clearly lacked the strength of character. He 'used' someone's senselessness to fulfill his needs.
Those who didnt get the drift:

Pub: free market
Jennifer: home loaners who cannot afford costly loans
Tom: banks offering loans to one and all for their own profit-making.

Jennifer got into a situation like this NOT because pub is a free place for anyone to hit on anyone else. But if Tom had shown his strength of character and desisted from 'raping' a semi-conscious body, this wouldnt have happened. Pub would still be a free market.

(on a self-praise-ish sidenote: I was once in a similar situaiton in a nightclub in 6th street Austin when a drunk cute blonde suddenly came from somewhere and hugged me tightly. She could hardly talk coherently. Perfect victim for 'Tom' in the above example. Good sense prevailed and I took her back to her friends. Unperfect though I may be, THAT was one instant I was proud of my strength of character)

Sooo, the word is..

Strength! F*king strength of character (SoC). THAT is missing. Had the investment banks shown some SoC, we wouldnt be seeing what we are seeing today. Profit is not a dirty word. But being a 'Tom' to make that profit is dirty. And maybe not worth it.