PFGBest Shock Just the Beginning?
PFGBest announced that it lost client money. Yesterday, I pointed out how this reminds many of us of MF Global. I also mentioned I might have more to say about this. Here are my first thoughts.
MF Global's collapse is off the front page of the news. Indeed, the media hasn't paid nearly enough attention to what really happened. Some reports dug deep enough to hint at the truth, but for the most part you don't get any sense of the scale of the disaster. And, let's face it, the congressional hearings where John Corzine "testified" were a joke.
I thought then that this story was far from over. The situation with PFGBest reinforces my opinion. So here's one thought that occurred to me. It has to do with Truth (yes, with a capital "T").
The MF Global collapse - and now the PFHBest situation - shows us how far we've progressed in our journey away from Truth. We're a society that embraces "relatvism" - which denies the existence of objective truth. Basically, relativism says that what's "true for me" may not be "true for you." It also denies the objectivity of good and evil: what I consider a morally good or bad action may differ from what you consider a morally good or bad action - and there's no way to decide who's right and who's wrong. The only thing that matters is what I (or you) think or feel about something.
People can disagree on whether something is true or not true; we can disagree about whether something is good or evil. But once we deny that there's any objective Truth, or objective Good and Bad - bad as in "evil," - we're in trouble.
Never mind the financial services industry, the fact is relativism has so taken over our entire society that you hardly find any reference to true, false, good or evil in any meaningful way. You may get a reference to whether a statistic or some other fact is true or false, but that's about it.
Why should this matter? If we can't agree on what's morally good or morally bad - right and wrong - we have no shared values. Society is built on shared values.
I think our embrace of relativism will now prove to be our undoing - not that many of us haven't seen the unraveling of our society for many years. But MF Global's collapse may trigger a speeding up of a trend towards chaos. Why?
Customer money was stolen; nothing of any substance has been done to address this, after more than half a year. Stealing is wrong.
The terms of some futures contracts sold to other firms after the collapse are not being honored. Not doing what you have agreed to do (in this case honoring the terms of the existing contract) is wrong.
What's really disturbing is the reaction of the regulatory authorities and the courts. We'll look more into this in future posts. It's quite disturbing.
Does the MF Global collapse and the current situation with PFGBest threaten our society? As we dig into this, I think we'll find that it does.
MF Global's collapse is off the front page of the news. Indeed, the media hasn't paid nearly enough attention to what really happened. Some reports dug deep enough to hint at the truth, but for the most part you don't get any sense of the scale of the disaster. And, let's face it, the congressional hearings where John Corzine "testified" were a joke.
I thought then that this story was far from over. The situation with PFGBest reinforces my opinion. So here's one thought that occurred to me. It has to do with Truth (yes, with a capital "T").
The MF Global collapse - and now the PFHBest situation - shows us how far we've progressed in our journey away from Truth. We're a society that embraces "relatvism" - which denies the existence of objective truth. Basically, relativism says that what's "true for me" may not be "true for you." It also denies the objectivity of good and evil: what I consider a morally good or bad action may differ from what you consider a morally good or bad action - and there's no way to decide who's right and who's wrong. The only thing that matters is what I (or you) think or feel about something.
People can disagree on whether something is true or not true; we can disagree about whether something is good or evil. But once we deny that there's any objective Truth, or objective Good and Bad - bad as in "evil," - we're in trouble.
Never mind the financial services industry, the fact is relativism has so taken over our entire society that you hardly find any reference to true, false, good or evil in any meaningful way. You may get a reference to whether a statistic or some other fact is true or false, but that's about it.
Why should this matter? If we can't agree on what's morally good or morally bad - right and wrong - we have no shared values. Society is built on shared values.
I think our embrace of relativism will now prove to be our undoing - not that many of us haven't seen the unraveling of our society for many years. But MF Global's collapse may trigger a speeding up of a trend towards chaos. Why?
Customer money was stolen; nothing of any substance has been done to address this, after more than half a year. Stealing is wrong.
The terms of some futures contracts sold to other firms after the collapse are not being honored. Not doing what you have agreed to do (in this case honoring the terms of the existing contract) is wrong.
What's really disturbing is the reaction of the regulatory authorities and the courts. We'll look more into this in future posts. It's quite disturbing.
Does the MF Global collapse and the current situation with PFGBest threaten our society? As we dig into this, I think we'll find that it does.
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