Greed given a free rein

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

IN the last paragraph of his letter (December 14), Michael Cogan suggests we remember that "our present ills are in large measure due to the financial sectors of private concerns".

With respect I feel one must look at a system of governance that provided free rein for these same financial sectors to indulge and exploit natural human greed.

Neither the banks nor their customers would have created such a financial mess if the various governments of recent years and their advisers — mainly senior civil servants — had not provided a regulatory structure so loose that greed could run rampant, and if they had not refrained from monitoring the effects of those regulations.

Philomena O’Brien
‘Hesperides’
Inniscarra
Co Cork

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Wednesday, December 16, 2009