Invest in the banks after the bailout, CNBC style patrimony

Guy Geldworth, here. I'm back, undercover of the blogosphere, courtesy of Jack Sands.

Yes, I'm still employed in the financial industry, clearly not one of the thriving sectors these days, except for people like me, redirecting assets in accounts with a minimum $2 million. (We're looking for good, largely American companies in any sector with sound fundamentals and are advising our clients to keep 10% cash, 10% gold and hope for the best. It might take a year or two or three...).

"Oh for the deregulated past." You hear words to this effect from under the breath of a few still-misguided colleagues. They don't understand, do they.

Anyway, I took a note way back in September of a facile remark made by CNBC host Dylan Ratigan on his appropriately named "Fast Money" program. I should like to comment on that remark because it bears on the subculture of corruption and demented ethics of "market players" that has currently brought so much pain and confusion to so many of us.

Back then, September 10th, 2008 to be exact, Ratigan on CNBC, the prevailing financial channel on cable television said: "Do we invest in Financials now, or do we wait for the Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac bailout?"

The remark stunned me in its eerie pragmatism, its cynicism. It was delivered to some 300,000 viewers, very select viewers.

No one could quibble with the pragmatism of the thought. It referred to an investment decision, probably a reasonable one, thanks to the American people, who would be subsidizing the bailout. (Technically, we refer to them as the "backstop" in these scenarios. When we totally screw things up, they become the bank. It embarrasses some of us. Not Ratigan, apparently. His version of patrimony: The American people subsidizing a market broken by corruption fostered by a deregulated shadow cast over the land these past twenty years. Bad things occur in the dark.

Very few Americans watch nor can advantage themselves of the advice found on "Fast Money." I therefore feel justified in calling Ratigan's remark cynical.

Most of my colleagues are honest, hard-working fiduciaries. They are as innocent as most, but also just as quiet. That's the state of affairs, folks. Good people these days are just too quiet. Not good for a democracy. There, I said it, and I'm in good company: The Irish poet William Butler Yeats said as much in the aftermath of World War I, a war that killed 8.5 million people and wounded another 21 million. His words described political and social rot that still may apply today, if on a less tragic level than war:

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity

Mr. Ratigan and his like seem to be filled with "passionate intensity" and may certainly not be characterized as innocent.