Wall Street 'Weed' Killer: Weiss

Most people I know are beginning to find the subject of Goldman Sachs (GS) a bit tiresome. We all know that it's a "vampire squid." Even if we don't believe that, it's too late. The phrase is likely to be enshrined alongside Goldman's name in the next edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Yet somehow a more apropos metaphor seems warranted, not for Goldman per se but for what it represents --everything greedy, envied or perhaps vaguely annoying about Wall Street.

I have the answer. Just walk out on your lawn and look down. There they are, crowding out your fescue, causing cracks in your driveway, strangling your tomatoes, muscling your impatiens. Weeds. They are nature's schemers, as slippery as a reverse-mortgage salesman, as resistant to regulation as the grimiest boiler room ever to invade a suburban office park.

Move over, "cycle of scandal." Get lost, "regulatory capture." I've got a much better behavioral model for the Wall Street-government ecosystem. If you don't believe me, just go outside and take a beeline for the bushes. You will find that weeds behave as if they had ethically deprived boards of directors, risk-encouraging bonuses and Tim Geithner as their gardener. Just think about weeds -- I mean really focus on them -- and everything that has ever mystified you about Wall Street becomes magically clear. Inner peace descends, as one begins to realize that it's really no use. Do you know anyone who has ever satisfactorily dealt with their weeds, other than by coating their lawns with asphalt?

It's the same with the Street. Our weed friends teach us that Wall Street's most obnoxious practices will survive no matter how much they are sprayed with toxic publicity, foul-smelling journalism and carcinogenic Securities and Exchange Commission consent decrees. But at least we can spray, we can pull, we can plow them under, and hope for the best.

What led me to this particular insight was the latest news in the war against weeds. Just the other day, The New York Times ran a big story about "superweeds" -- weeds that have become resistant to herbicides, especially a Monsanto product called Roundup. According to this scary news, overuse of that highly effective herbicide actually has backfired. Seems that pouring the stuff over commercial crops has resulted in weeds getting mean, hiring lawyers and spinning off an angry mob of Resolve-resistant superweeds, which threaten the food supply. They won't surrender easily. Hell no. They won't even settle. They require plowing and pulling, whereas in the past mere spraying would have done the trick. They add to the cost of production. They -- oh no! -- pose a systemic risk.