A textbook example yesterday of the way in which sheer hatred of people with money completely inverts the moral perspective of the left and leads them to applaud wrongdoers and despise their victims. Joyti de Laurey stole millions of pounds from her boss at the merchant bank Goldman Sachs. It was a huge scam. Yet because people at Goldman Sachs earn so much money her boss took time to realise he had been systematically robbed, the left has made a heroine out of de Laurey and a villain out of the man she defrauded. In yesteday's Independent, Janet Street Porter opined:

'Anyone with the entrepreneurial skills she has so clearly demonstrated would be better off running the prison service than simply being incarcerated as another inmate. Get this woman assigned to head office and she'll soon be dealing with overcrowding, stalled rebuilding plans, poor diet and low staff morale. Her skills in extracting over £4.3 million from her bosses before they noticed would surely be well used in any government department that needs to disguise poor performance or spiralling costs. Instead of teaching people like Joyti a "lesson" by forcing her to launder sheets or wash floors, we would do better to harness her considerable talents to more positive ends.'

In similar vein, Richard Adams in the Guardian wrote:

'if there was any justice in this world, Joyti would not only be a free woman, she'd be given a medal for services to the community...Fools and their money are soon parted, and so it was that Mead, Jennifer Moses and Ron Beller allowed a proportion of their wealth to be redistributed to their PA, who earned - in her best year - £38,000, a fraction of the salaries and bonuses they were paid. This is where De-Laurey was doing them a favour. The trio were far too busy with their 6am meetings and long-distance business trips to enjoy or even know how much money they had. It was just lying dormant in their accounts, doing nothing. Instead, De-Laurey took out their money for a brisk trot down to the shops - like exercising a dog, really. Frankly, it was much better for the economy that the £4m was in circulation, providing employment and creating profits, being recycled into other hands. True, De-Laurey did spend the money on Cartier jewellery, but don't kid yourself the aggrieved trio were going to use it to help the homeless. For all the talk of De-Laurey wanting to "fund a lavish lifestyle", what do you think the trio were using it for? De-Laurey was only doing to the bankers what they have been doing to investors and governments for years - fleecing them. Goldman Sachs once made more annual profit ($2.6bn) than the national income of Tanzania ($2.2bn). It was Goldman Sachs that allowed Robert Maxwell to illicitly shuffle pension funds around. The difference is that one gets sent to Holloway prison, and the other gets the fast car, the plush house and the big power-boat.'

In the Times, Wendy Holden dubbed de Laurey's attitude 'Cinderella syndrome' and observed:

'The current moral and social climate provides perfect conditions for it to flourish. For one thing, envy is no longer considered a sin, let alone a deadly one, but merely a normal reaction to What Other People Have. The idea that you have to work for money seems to have been universally replaced by a grabbing, Rich List-obsessed culture in which everyone thinks that being wealthy is another human right, alongside being educated and being treated free in hospital. “People see others with no talent whatsoever making vast amounts of money, and they want a piece of the action,” remarks the writer and psychologist Dr Dorothy Rowe. And not just the money action, either. The current illusion, fostered by reality television, is that fame is also there for the taking.'

In other words, we live in a selfish, self-centred society fixated on instant gratification and money -- the very values which the left purports to despise, but in fact now promulgates and endorses.

Posted by melanie at April 23, 2004