cheers wrote:Nalod wrote:Capitalism without capital markets does not exist. Public corporations got there funding from capital markets.Are you suggesting a fixed economy? Fixed markets? Really? Really?
capitalism is beautiful. capitalism does not need the financial sector, but the financial sector needs capitalism.
by definition the financial sector fixes the economy. that is why past u.s. presidents have fought against a central bank. the great depression happened shorty after the formation of the federal reserve. what wall street has done for decades is take (taxpayer money) from the "fed window" aka your pocket, then loan the money back to you.
credit default swaps hedge funds and the like have made this un-needed middleman highly toxic to even the strongest economies. $3.3 trillion went to the financial sector to "bailout." financial sector needs oceans of liquid capital to be relevant. notice i said liquid capital, not jobs. an employed person means money not in the pool.
financial sector is not a fan of employment, if you are employed, they want to keep your paycheck to a minimum. and if you on a pension, well, thats a pool of money isnt it. they want to raise your retirement age, so it takes longer for you to tap into that pool. then they want laws that allows them to tap into that pool. that is what france recently did-- they raised the retirement age, then, passed laws that allowed the financial sector to tap into the pension pool of billions of euros. nice. dont even get me started on ireland.
ah remember the social security lock box debate? lol. wall street got real close to taping that pool of money. no worries, they will try again. memories are short.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion and yours has some merit but I would say your missing the big picture instead your focusing on the ill effects.
I won't argue every point because ecnomic theory in reality is what is practiced and its far from perfect. Never has been and never will.
By "wall st." you are really saying "banks". if you want to argue the Glass-Stegell act's demise you have some good points but hindsight gives us that persepctive. If you think Capitalism can function without the financial sector you are very very off point.
Regarding privitizeing social security I doubt it has many leggs. I too think its a bad idea because most people don't understand how to invest for the long term.
I have long contended that Wall St. does not always create demand but creates the products to satisfy it. For example why so many New Tech mutual funds before the 2000 tech implosion? Beacause of the publics appitite. Why Subprime? Because of demand. Was it right to do it to the degree it was done? Of course not. Was it wrong to combine them and give a good credit rating? That was evil and criminal. Did anyone who questioned it or thought it was illogical buy them? Most likely not. DId anyone put a gun to anyones head and make them buy it? Doubt it. Did pension groups buy them? YEs. Was the pension manager forced to do so? NOpe. Did he or she do it because the pension owners felt compelled to "keep up" because they were underfunded or greedy instead of cautious? Could be. Just one instance where demand is created and satisfied. Does that make "Wall St." entirely at fault? Not in my opinion. Should big government who is corrupt by lobby groups over see "Greed"? I guess only in hindsight when it fails..
Subprime also has its merits. Its very profitable but thats because there is huge risk. Maybe not everyone should be able to buy a car with bad credit, but if they do they pay huge rates to off set the risk. Those profits have to off set the many defaults. If you don't want to pay high rates, take the bus. Its cold but if you don't have high rates there is no money available. If its not done legally, there are plenty of loan sharks in other places that will lend you money at crazy rates and break your legs and take what ever they can from you. The demand fuels it.
Yes, in a perfect world there should be greater gov't controls. Down side of oversight is panic. When Junk bonds ruled they day they essentially were acting like IPO's. IN fact Intel's first funding was thru junk bonds. When that bubble burst people went to jail and the gov't paniced and forced liquidation. That was proven to be a mistake. They should have unwound it slower. People made a lot of money on that panic.
Credit default swaps were abused and in the face of panic fell into a very dark trading practice. The intent was not to profit from failing firms but protect bond holders from default. This needs more attention.
Capital Markets will always bring mistakes but also great efficiency.
Eliminating them is not somting that is called "capitalism" and that system has far greater inefficient aspects and really huge government. Our history is to Regulate, indict those who persued criminal profits and move on. Bailouts are tough to argue because they are preemptive in nature. YOu don't get the benefit of hindsight if the ecnomy does colapse. OR you can say "we should have bailed them out"!
Its all in theory, its all imperfect, and can be argued for days on end without any real conclusion. Respectfully yours is charged a bit with emotion with a bias toward recent ills. Im not saying its wrong but its very incomplete in the large context.
I am sighting just a few examples to discuss but we could go on for days..........