Why Oprah Deserves to Be Rich and the Wall Street Moguls Deserve...

U.S. Magazine reports that Oprah makes $385 Million per year. "Though Oprah started her life in poverty she was regarded as the richest woman in entertainment by the beginning of the 1990s," the magazine editors tell us. "Later by the age of 41 Oprah had managed to replace veteran actor Bill Crosby on the Forbes 400 with her 340 million green backs. By the year 2000 her net worth had exceeded $800 million." She is now reported to be the countries first self made female billionaire. And I think she deserves to be rich.

On the other hand, the moguls of Wall Street started with money someone else earned, robbed the rest of us, then came begging for the taxpayers to "bail me out." This seems to me to be a case of highway robbery and those folks deserve to be hanged. Well, perhaps, I'm being too severe-Maybe just boiled in oil.

When I watch Oprah, an activity I do from time to time, I get real value and don't have to pay anything to watch. She often has interesting guests, she is open and honest about her own successes and failures (As I noted in a recent article, The Real Reason Oprah, You, and I Keep Getting Fat) and her audience is better off for having interacted with her.

She believes in good literature and launched her book club in 1996. Millions of people have found new and interesting authors by watching Oprah. On a 1997 episode of the show Oprah invited viewers to join her in using their lives to improve the lives of others. What began as a campaign to encourage viewers to collect spare change for 150 scholarships given through The Boys & Girls Clubs of America and to volunteer time to build 200 homes with Habitat for Humanity evolved into the charity known today as Oprah's Angel Network.

In December 2002, The Oprah Winfrey Foundation expanded its global humanitarian efforts with her Christmas Kindness South Africa, an initiative that included visits to orphanages and rural schools in South Africa where 50,000 children received gifts of food, clothing, athletic shoes, school supplies, books and toys. Sixty-three rural schools received libraries and teacher education.

I could go on and on. She's been using her money to enrich the lives of millions for a many years. What has Wall Street done for us?

Wall Street Looters

According to a March 10, 2009 article in the New York Times by David Leonhardt, titled The Looting of America's Coffers, "Sixteen years ago, two economists published a research paper with a delightfully simple title: "Looting." The economists were George Akerlof, who would later win a Nobel Prize, and Paul Romer, the renowned expert on economic growth. In the paper, they argued that "several financial crises in the 1980s, like the Texas real estate bust, had been the result of private investors taking advantage of the government. The investors had borrowed huge amounts of money, made big profits when times were good and then left the government holding the bag for their eventual (and predictable) losses. In a word, the investors looted." Sound familiar?

Someone trying to make an honest profit, Professors Akerlof and Romer said, would have operated in a completely different manner. The investors displayed a "total disregard for even the most basic principles of lending," failing to verify standard information about their borrowers or, in some cases, even to ask for that information.
The investors "acted as if future losses were somebody else's problem," the economists wrote. "They were right."

On Tuesday morning in Washington, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, gave a speech that read like a sad coda to the "Looting" paper. Because the government is unwilling to let big, interconnected financial firms fail - and because people at those firms knew it - they engaged in what Mr. Bernanke called "excessive risk-taking." To prevent such problems in the future, he called for tougher regulations. Would have been nice if he'd put in place tougher regulations when they would have done some good. But what would we expect?

If we allow Wall Street types to take excessive risks with our money, let them keep the profits if things go well, but bail them out if they screw things up, what did we think would happen? As the New York Times article summarized, "In effect, the bankers had siphoned off this bailout money in advance, years before the government had spent it." And it will continue to go on until we hold people accountable--reward those who earn their money honestly and share excess wealth with those who need it and punish the looters who take, but never give.

So, I hope Oprah continues to get rich and the Wall Street folks all fry in...oil. What do you think?

Jed Diamond, Ph.D. is author of the best-selling book, The Irritable Male Syndrome. You can reach him through his website at www.MenAlive.com and sign up for his FREE newsletter on health issues for men and the women who love them.