Once upon a time, when I was a department head at a large company, one of my employees was badgering me about why we were going to lose our jobs after we merged with another company. "We make money for them, if you just tell them, they'll keep us on," she said.

I said that the whole point of the merger was to make money for the stockholders, not to reward us for doing a good job. She told me how unfair that was. Finally I said, "I hear you on the phone every week, moving the money around in your 401K because you expect to make 13 percent interest. Don't you get it? It's people like you who cost us our jobs. Everyone in the stock market who expects to make a killing, instead of a reasonable return. Every time you move your money, you make it more likely someone else is going to lose their job."

She simply didn't believe me. I thought of her when I read this from Matt Taibbi: