The Derivative Economy: Can High Finance Get Any Lower?

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/derivative-economy-can-high-finance-get-any-lower-1337601980

Here's how it works. You give your nest egg to a band of Wall Street crooks with a name that starts with initials like "J.P." or perhaps one with the word "Gold" in it. They play Russian Roulette with your life. Got it? That's all you need to know about the sleazy side of corporate capitalism in the New Derivative Economy. The other side of capitalism, the side that isn't sleazy, is receding faster than you can say "Jamie Dimon".

Can high finance get any lower? Stay tuned; if it can, it will. That's because there's nothing to prevent the same bunch of rogue "risk managers" from pulling the same shenanigans and hijacking the hopes along with the savings and pensions of millions of people. People who entrust hard-earned money to bankers who pay them less than one percent on cash savings, assess a proliferating variety of fees for dubious services, and foreclose on unemployed homeowners who can't meet the monthly installments on undocumented loans the banks should never have made in the first place. The very same bandit bankers who have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they cannot, in fact, be trusted with anybody else's money.

The mythological "free market" is not free. It is a slave to the stock market which is manipulated and, indeed, exploited by investment bankers, fund managers, and a new breed of free-booting financial con artists. Remember Enron? The late Kenneth Lay? His partner in crime, the convicted co-swindler, Jeffrey Skilling, now serving a very long prison sentence? How about Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi scheme pirate? Big time financial fraudsters who were finally brought down. Now try to name a single profiteering peddler of toxic assets who has been indicted for similar crimes since the massive 2008 financial mudslide? You can't, but don't feel bad: there aren't any.

The high and mighty megabanks have a stranglehold on the American economy and a foot on the neck of the Washington political establishment. Approximately twenty banks too big to fail and the plutocrats who run them, serve as directors, belong to the same exclusive golf clubs, move in the same rarefied social circles, and profit beyond measure from a system where money flows in torrents to those with privileged information – these are the main features of a system now wholly in thrall to the derivative economy.

[Mojorabbit]

1. k&r nt

[RainDog]

2. k&r n/t