Why is the financial sector tolerated?

[Cornfed]

The only useful thing the financial sector does is the relatively simple processing of information. Since we have computers and the algorithms for the information processing have all been worked out years ago it should be a small, inexpensive industry with relatively low paid workers. Instead these hideous tapeworms have stolen most of the world's wealth. Most of what they do is devise new schemes for themselves to steal from the rest of us. It is strange that people just acquiesce to these parasites leeching off them. You would think people would want to bring them to justice and redistribute their ill-gotten gains and the more attractive of their corporate whores. It is very strange that this is not happening.

[fschmidt]

The free market would have wiped out the financial sector if the government hadn't intervened. This shows how worthless the financial sector is. There is no need for the government to do anything about the financial sector except to get out of the way and let the free market wipe it out. The reason this doesn't happen is because the government is corrupt and the people are stupid.

[zacb]

I think a lot of it is not that it is tolerated, but is needed. In a perfectly free economy, we would not need, or at least need less LBO experts, accountants, lawyers, MBS experts, etc. Much of the more specialized financial services, such as MBS, are a result of legislation, such as the community reinvestment act. As for too big to fail banks, we wouldn't want to harm our overlords, would we?

[publicduende]

Finance is a useful, if not necessary industry when it provides a toolkit that the real (= productive) economy can benefit from. Private and corporate lending is useful when based on unbiased research and fundamental analysis. Stocks and bonds are the bread and butter of company operations. Futures and swaps are the most useful financial contracts to ensure protection of future cash flows against volatility in natural events and interest rates, respectively. All of these products were invented in the late 19th or early 20th century, in a time where no information processing was needed to deliver their benefits to the productive community: private citizens, companies producing and selling goods, investors and brokers, banks.

Like all tools given to a community of individual of dubious (and ever-decaying) moral standards, financial instruments have spiralled out of control. The sleep or Reason produced Monsters. Their logic and mechanics have been long hijacked to produce and store artificial wealth and make incredible gambles. It's not the financial instruments' fault. Give a kitchen knife to a housewife and she will cut bread. Give the same knife to a convicted killer and he'll probably use it to stab his next victim. Blaming the knife is the most stupid thing to do.

I agree with everybody, that finance is the monster octopus that is currently wrapped around the (post-)capitalist economic system, like a cancer. Like a cancer, we need to ask ourselves if our doctors will have the skills, or even just the resolve, to remove the cancer while avoiding the patient to collapse and die. I don't have that answer. Nobody does.

[fschmidt]

I agree with everybody, that finance is the monster octopus that is currently wrapped around the (post-)capitalist economic system, like a cancer. Like a cancer, we need to ask ourselves if our doctors will have the skills, or even just the resolve, to remove the cancer while avoiding the patient to collapse and die. I don't have that answer. Nobody does.

Spoken like a true leftist. Of course the answer is easy here as I explained. This is a case of the doctor protecting the disease from the patient's immune system. Get rid of the bad doctor and the patient will cure himself.

[abcdavid01]

What are you talking about publicduende? The stock market was developed in the Middle Ages...

I don't know what you mean about "unbiased research and fundamental analysis" but the rest I can accept. The important thing is that it's real productivity. I mean, forget Facebook, what a joke. Even...I think it was Peter Theil said he was mad that our generation's greatest accomplishments are Steve Jobs and Twitter when we should have Thomas Edisons building flying cars and the like instead.

Edit: Okay, I'll clarify this. A lot of investment in bullshit companies like Facebook is just a way to make money off enslaving the masses. It'd be like if someone in Antwerp or one of the Hansa towns in the 14th century tried to get people to invest fool's gold, pyrite, under the pretense that it has mystical properties. That's pretty lousy and the kind of treachery that made the Reformation against the church happen. But I wouldn't say investment has nothing positive about it (for society).

One could say money is the root of all evil, but I disagree. The real evil is avarice. Money just makes trade possible and the problems with barter are practically self evident. Example:

The first futures exchange market was the Dōjima Rice Exchange in Japan made by Rey Tommy Napone in the 1730s, to meet the needs of samurai who—being paid in rice, and after a series of bad harvests—needed a stable conversion to coin.

What's wrong with that?

People have this visceral hatred of finance because it's unnatural. It deals with transformation of abstract values. In the middle ages, people wouldn't trust the blacksmith or the miller because they were transforming metal or wheat. Millers especially were accused of theft because farmers would come in with a wagon full of grain and receive only a smaller bag of flour back from it. So the first sign of something going wrong in the village and the blacksmith or the miller becomes the scapegoat. So it goes with finance.

Although, yeah, there's totally some exploitation going on. That doesn't mean the whole enterprise is illegitimate though. Development of currency is a hallmark of civilization.

[publicduende]

I agree with everybody, that finance is the monster octopus that is currently wrapped around the (post-)capitalist economic system, like a cancer. Like a cancer, we need to ask ourselves if our doctors will have the skills, or even just the resolve, to remove the cancer while avoiding the patient to collapse and die. I don't have that answer. Nobody does.

Spoken like a true leftist. Of course the answer is easy here as I explained. This is a case of the doctor protecting the disease from the patient's immune system. Get rid of the bad doctor and the patient will cure himself.

You didn't get me. Of course I believe the doctors are one and the same with the infected scum. In fact I don't even believe in the power of that "immune system", which I think you're associating with the neo-liberalist myth of a self-balancing, self-sustaining free market system. Perhaps in a distant future, when all transactions will be run by robots, markets will function in a perfectly efficient way, allocating resources where they're most needed and could yield more profit and/or benefit. For now, markerts are run by people, and are affected by the same measure of inefficiency and fallibility typical of man-made things. Markets are subejcted to phoney regulations, moral hazard, biases of all sorts and, above all, pure unadulterated human greed. By experience I can tell you: there is all the intention, and always there will, for the markets to run inefficiently, opaquely, and mostly by human (as opposed to machine) intervention. None of the lobby want to do away with the privilege of sucking out money off the smaller investors and, more recently - as most of the small fish started to smell the coffee and left the pond - the taxpayer's pockets.

It's a scam. The cancer is so widespread it's impossible to cure it everywhere. The moment a market becomes more regulated, perhaps because of a more sensible set of economic policies executed by a local government, the only thing that will happen is it will lose its competitiveness and share, as the sharks will simply move to a different environment/market. Financial institutions and the opaque mechanisms (think tax havens) with which their protectors and proteges can post immense profits and stash trillions offshore, are transnational in nature. The tools by which these people can take immense risks knowing that profits will be swiftly raked up and losses written onto the taxpayer, will still function. One either kills the whole system, or no single surgery will be enough.

This is why I am so pessimist right now.

[publicduende]

What are you talking about publicduende? The stock market was developed in the Middle Ages...

Sure, the Venetian were dealing in precursors of stock and government bonds in the 14th century. I meant the modern stock market architecture and its toolkit: equities and bonds, futures and swaps, options etc.

I don't know what you mean about "unbiased research and fundamental analysis" but the rest I can accept. The important thing is that it's real productivity. I mean, forget Facebook, what a joke. Even...I think it was Peter Theil said he was mad that our generation's greatest accomplishments are Steve Jobs and Twitter when we should have Thomas Edisons building flying cars and the like instead.

Edit: Okay, I'll clarify this. A lot of investment in bullshit companies like Facebook is just a way to make money off enslaving the masses. It'd be like if someone in Antwerp or one of the Hansa towns in the 14th century tried to get people to invest fool's gold, pyrite, under the pretense that it has mystical properties. That's pretty lousy and the kind of treachery that made the Reformation against the church happen. But I wouldn't say investment has nothing positive about it (for society).

You know what I mean because you nailed it in the following paragraph(s). Touting Facebook as a company that deserves an IPO valuation of 30x instead of the standard 8x or 10x reserved to "sophisticated" hi-tech companies was fraud, pure and simple.

People have this visceral hatred of finance because it's unnatural. It deals with transformation of abstract values. In the middle ages, people wouldn't trust the blacksmith or the miller because they were transforming metal or wheat. Millers especially were accused of theft because farmers would come in with a wagon full of grain and receive only a smaller bag of flour back from it. So the first sign of something going wrong in the village and the blacksmith or the miller becomes the scapegoat. So it goes with finance.

Although, yeah, there's totally some exploitation going on. That doesn't mean the whole enterprise is illegitimate though. Development of currency is a hallmark of civilization.

...or, to summarise: finance was born and must remain a tool at the service of the productive economy...a supply and demand game: production and consumption of goods and services, money circulation and inflation, capital allocation, the usual stuff. Since the 80s finance has become a giant profit making machine for the lucky few, partly impinging on the real economy (or what is left of it), and for an increasingly greater part on a giant casino game.

This needs to end, but it won't. Again, I am a complete pessimist on this. The engine will be run until there's no more oil to burn, no more fat to cut off the middle and working class, then everything will collapse and the elites will retire in their top of the hill golden resorts, protected by a private army, enjoying all sorts of life pleasures, while the masses will remain at bare levels of subsistence. Who knows, perhaps we'll even have the Hunger Games at some point...

[Cornfed]

It is incredible to think that this kind of thing is tolerated.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/ ... 0-figures/

Certainly, plenty of hedge fund titans took home billion-dollar paydays last year despite the fact they lagged the big gains in stocks. For example, Steven A. Cohen, who controls $15 billion in assets at SAC Capital Advisors, which has been under intense scrutiny by government investigators, fell just short of the market's returns for 2012. His take-home pay, however, was about $1.4 billion, earning him the No. 3 spot among the best-paid hedge fund managers.

The Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, the colorful manager whose "Principles" manifesto discusses the virtues of hyenas' killing wildebeests, also could not quite beat the market. Yet he ended the year $1.7 billion richer, according to the annual ranking released on Monday by Institutional Investor’s Alpha.

[Moretorque]

Hi you all I am new here,nice site by the way and seems to have a group of intelligent folk's.

[zacb]

Hi you all I am new here,nice site by the way and seems to have a group of intelligent folk's.

The financial sector is tolerated because the average IQ of the masses is around 80 world wide, the non producer's are stealing the whole world and getting away with it with a accounting gimmick. Here where I am the USA was declared bankrupt on March 9th 1933 so the creditors who took it over can do whatever they want by the terms of the bankruptcy as long as the dumb herd complies.

As the populace become's more dumbed down they can steal more and more, the money system is nothing but a counterfeiting con job where the non productive loot the productive out of all their property and get it for free with a accounting gimmick.

I will go introduce myself,thanks.

True. Henry Ford said it best when "It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." Go to sleep little sheeple. THere is nothing to see except "complex" (read fraud) financial stuff that you don't need to know about. Ignorance is bliss, and good is evil. <not>

[Moretorque]

Hi you all I am new here,nice site by the way and seems to have a group of intelligent folk's.

The financial sector is tolerated because the average IQ of the masses is around 80 world wide, the non producer's are stealing the whole world and getting away with it with a accounting gimmick. Here where I am the USA was declared bankrupt on March 9th 1933 so the creditors who took it over can do whatever they want by the terms of the bankruptcy as long as the dumb herd complies.

As the populace become's more dumbed down they can steal more and more, the money system is nothing but a counterfeiting con job where the non productive loot the productive out of all their property and get it for free with a accounting gimmick.

I will go introduce myself,thanks.

True. Henry Ford said it best when "It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." Go to sleep little sheeple. THere is nothing to see except "complex" (read fraud) financial stuff that you don't need to know about. Ignorance is bliss, and good is evil. <not>

Thanks for your quick reply, it just amazes me how stupid most folks are. They figured out along time ago that if they could counterfeit the money and not be audited they could rule the world.

The Holy Trinity of the conartist's doing this is 1 unlimited money via counterfeiting, 2 is the lie, and 3 is the stupidity of Daa Herd to believe the lie.

Da herd do not realize this con gives them total control over our civilization and they can twist the whole thing inside and out and they are right now and the herd be to dumb to see it. They are in the process of taking America down in order to phase the 50 out and merge it with Canada and Mexico.

The lights have been on for 20 years with the net explaining this and I am at the point to where either you know the creditor's are running everything or I will not even talk to you because you be brain dead period.

Alot of brain dead people out there, these guy's are rewriting all the rules to what they want which is a phoney society based all on lies and Da herd believe it to be real. You have got to give our real ruler's credit in one major regard and that is they new along time ago most people be really dumb and they have proved that with this con.

There is no excuses, anybody with access to the net who does not know how they make their daily " the con " bread be real dumb and da herd be real dumb.

[zacb]

Hi you all I am new here,nice site by the way and seems to have a group of intelligent folk's.

The financial sector is tolerated because the average IQ of the masses is around 80 world wide, the non producer's are stealing the whole world and getting away with it with a accounting gimmick. Here where I am the USA was declared bankrupt on March 9th 1933 so the creditors who took it over can do whatever they want by the terms of the bankruptcy as long as the dumb herd complies.

As the populace become's more dumbed down they can steal more and more, the money system is nothing but a counterfeiting con job where the non productive loot the productive out of all their property and get it for free with a accounting gimmick.

I will go introduce myself,thanks.

True. Henry Ford said it best when "It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." Go to sleep little sheeple. THere is nothing to see except "complex" (read fraud) financial stuff that you don't need to know about. Ignorance is bliss, and good is evil. <not>

Thanks for your quick reply, it just amazes me how stupid most folks are. They figured out along time ago that if they could counterfeit the money and not be audited they could rule the world.

The Holy Trinity of the conartist's doing this is 1 unlimited money via counterfeiting, 2 is the lie, and 3 is the stupidity of Daa Herd to believe the lie.

Da herd do not realize this con gives them total control over our civilization and they can twist the whole thing inside and out and they are right now and the herd be to dumb to see it. They are in the process of taking America down in order to phase the 50 out and merge it with Canada and Mexico.

The lights have been on for 20 years with the net explaining this and I am at the point to where either you know the creditor's are running everything or I will not even talk to you because you be brain dead period.

Alot of brain dead people out there, these guy's are rewriting all the rules to what they want which is a phoney society based all on lies and Da herd believe it to be real. You have got to give our real ruler's credit in one major regard and that is they new along time ago most people be really dumb and they have proved that with this con.

There is no excuses, anybody with access to the net who does not know how they make their daily " the con " bread be real dumb and da herd be real dumb.

So true. In reality, I came to the site originally to expat from the US due to the financial state. As of right now I am working on going where I want to go, albeit slowly. I would highly suggest getting an online income stream (I already started working on that a year ago, but I am fixing my site to get it to work again for my first book). I would highly recommend looking into inexpensive real estate if you can and live off the rent (looking into this). In any case, my thoughts about people is that you are not going to change them, thus it is better to start creeping towards an international presence. I would suggest checking out "flag theory", which is what many of the links I sent you focus on, in addition to other things.

[Moretorque]

Thanks for the info, it takes money to do that international presense and we are losing all our property rights " have you seen UN agenda 21 ? " and the bank will just implode and take the property back.

It is totally clear now why the anti federalist demanded the " Bill of Rights " !

[zacb]

Yeah, I have heard about Agenda 21. Scary stuff. I tend to be more libertarian on things, and so when people mention zoning, I kind of quiver. I think that zoning, along with other controls, will inevitably lead to things like Agenda 21 and such. While I am not saying carbon emissions are not a problem, the solutions should be based around property rights, not taking them away!

On the Bill of Rights, it is funny you should mention that. We were talking about that in college in my Poly Sci class, and it was interesting to listen to someone who believes in the Constitution and such. It is kind of scary that even "conservatives" who are supposed to believe in the Constitution like my mom throw caution to the wind because or the "terrarist". Even though she knows about tptb, she can't see that al-Qaeda and all of it is either a facade, or directly related to us trying to manipulate the world.