Smoking gun - as long as money politics is in place, we are always aimed by such a smoking gunI don’t know if term “smoking gun” came from a story similar to what is told in the image, but I do know a fact that smoking gun is a hidden killer in the human society. It could create huge problems in many domains. As a matter of the fact, recently all of us just got shot by a big smoking gun, badly. That is the cause for financial meltdown and global recession.

Many have been looking for real causes for the crisis, but none has come up with a convincing one. Why is so hard to find a solid answer to this critical question? Because there is always a smoking gun in a broad sense that shields those who are responsible.

I heard of a kind of “gossip” that an authority has tried to link the crisis to a number of  major financial executives.

I am not sure how reliable this is, but I do believe many of those executives ought to be held responsible. The reason for this is very simple. If financial institutions and their executives are not held responsible for a financial crisis, who should be? I am a dummy in term of finance and economy. But I am smart enough to challenge those executives: didn’t you really know what were to happen five months before the system collapse? Why had you sit back and watch it slide?

I am sure you didn’t care because you could always use a smoke gun. I must admit, a few executives are not sufficient to cause such a disaster. Decision makers in regulatory segment must have contributed. Perhaps that’s why the smoking gun is so important for them – it can fuzzy up public’s eyes.

It is foreseeable that no one shall pay a price among those who had created the mess, no matter how many investigations are conducted with taxpayer’s money.

In an article, “Real Causes for Financial Meltdown and Global Crisis”, the extreme inequality is suggested to be the root cause. I want to add a point here: the extreme inequality generates interest groups that always have non-detachable ties with politics. Without a smoking gun, how can money politics function in the modern society?

When government infused 700 billion bailout dollars into the banking system, financial moguls got everything they wanted: money to survive, innocence to survive better.

The smoking gun is so powerful. As long as money politics is in place, this powerful some gun will always aim at the ordinary people like you and me. See that little water channel in the image? That is where we are. Floating or sinking is controlled by whoever holding the smoking gun up high in the bunker.