PSA: How many people here who love to hate "Wall Street" actually know what it means?

[hill2016]

It does NOT mean big corporations. It does not refer to all financial companies either.

Test your knowledge:
- Hedge Funds
- Private Equity
- Venture Capital
- Investment bank
- Brokerage
- Asset management
- Specialist research firms
- Consumer/retail bank
- Commercial bank
- Mortgage originator
- Mortgage servicer
- Wealth management/private banking
- Pension funds
- Foundations
- Family offices
- Insurance company
- Credit union
- Custodian
- Administrator


Is it fair for Sanders to say "the business model of Wall Street is fraud"? Let's see if all the people who hate Wall Street actually know what it refers to. Bonus if you can rank from slimiest to cleanest business models.

Oh, please make substantive points rather than name-calling etc.

[virgogal]

1. Yeah,it's a street in Manhattan that symbolizes wealth and greed. It's just a street.

[Kalidurga]

2. "the business model of Wall Street is fraud"

Yes that is fair. How else does 1% of the population end up with 40% of the wealth produced? Why should people be taxed less for the sweatless job of investing money than a guy who busts his back doing construction work?

[Sancho]

19. The best answer is here. It's not a simple "fraud" model. It's how the capitalistic world works

Simply breaking up the banks won't fix anything. Simply changing the tax code won't fix anything. Hillary proposes excellent policies that would make a difference if enforced internationally.

The Economics of Inequality Hardcover – August 3, 2015
by Thomas Piketty (Author), Arthur Goldhammer (Translator)

[RiverLover]

20. Elizabeth Warren: "We Need To Go Back To Boring Banking"

Q: You think had it [the Volcker rule] been in place, we wouldn’t be talking about this?

WARREN: Well, I’m going to put it this way. The Volcker Rule would help. We don’t know exactly the nature of these trades. But if the question is is the Volcker rule enough, or do we need more, look, I’m somebody who believes we really should have boring banking. That banking should be — the part that’s about savings accounts and checking accounts and our money system — should be separated from the kind of risk-taking that Wall Street traders want to take.

That was originally what the Glass-Steagall Act was about, it was repealed in 1999.

There was an effort to get it into Dodd-Frank in the 2010 bill. That effort failed.

I think we really do need that kind of separation. We need to go back to boring banking. The people who want to take risks need to take risks with their own money and do it somewhere else.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/14/483685/elizabeth-warren-boring-banking/

Watch here~

[Sancho]

23. Warren understands economics....

she is well aware that no one has a handle on international banking and dark money institutions.

Boring banking might help, but it won't change the problem dynamics. Glass-Seagall is a bandaid, not a cure.

[RiverLover]

24. Yes, she does.

"Glass-Steagall protected our economy for 50 years", Elizabeth Warren

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/elizabeth-warren-champions-bill-to-restore-glass-steagall-act-and-rein-in-wall-street/18726-elizabeth-warren-champions-bill-to-restore-glass-steagall-act-and-rein-in-wall-street

Also see~

[Major Hogwash]

31. Boom goes the dynamite!

It's a sorry state of affairs when people defend Hillary and Wall Street at the same damned time!!
But, this is the sorry state that we find ourselves in today.

Great post.
Anybody that calls Glass-Steagall "a bandaid" either doesn't understand how Wall Street works, or is a fool!!

[RiverLover]

33. Thanks Major. You're so right - this is a sorry state of affairs.

Democrats defending RW policies. Its crazy. Sad, too.

[Armstead]

27. Noone says it is a "cure" ....But it is part of a cure and why oppose it?

To get at the dynamics you have to get to the causes of the diseases. And the massive interrelated institutions are a big part of the disease.

[Sancho]

28. Because it distracts from the real issues of modern international banking...

Warren is good as an economist. She is not an experienced lawyer nor has she been on the front lines dealing with international governments.

Warren talks to Hillary, and Warren advocates an old-fashion, domestic policy that was useful and is now outdated. Hillary is aware that there have to be enforceable legal regulations that can't be bypassed - as many institutions were already doing before the repeal of G-S.

It will take both international regulation plus enforcement to deal with economic inequality. Hillary understand the legal and international aspects. Everyone wants regulation. It's a matter of the method.

What Warren advocates would not be as effective and D-F if D=F were implemented fully.

[Armstead]

32. Sometimes simpler is better

I know that sounds simplistic, but basic principles are basic principles."Modernization" is too often used as a code word for deregulation that creates and ingrains systems that allows bad things to be done.

Reasonable speed limits should not be raised just because cars have been manufactured that are designed to be able to go faster. The speed limit is based on safety. Just as the restrictions on financial institutions are (were) based on what is financially responsible.

Our previous deregulations created the framework for this baroque overly complex and abusive system. Modernizatioon should not be used to perpetuate and further embed the abusive aspects of it, like we did in the 90's.

Maybe Clinton and her political alliances and loyalties have changed enough to actually go afters the root causes. Maybe not. But I don't think the same team that helped to cause problems should be the one we ask to fix them.

[Fearless]

3. Here you're going to need this...

[pacalo]

4. It's a movie with "greed is good" as its theme.

And, beware...there's also a wolf on Wall Street, too. He believes "there's no nobility in poverty".

[AgingAmerican]

5. They intentionally issued trillions in bad loans

So they could get the commissions. They were betting that their own customers would fail from their gambling, then raked in billions off of their own investors misery and losses. They stole the 'bailout' money and either just kept it or used it to buy other failing banks. They stole 40% of the wealth of the middle class.

You guys are taking the GOP positions on these issues. Oddly, you seem unaware of it. It's almost creepy to watch.

[Hydra]

6. Hand them a shovel

It's not that they are unaware of where what they are saying comes from, it's that they really believe the rest of us have assimilated the RW worldview we're all supposed to be worshiping now.

Sorry Team Hil, Golden Bull/Calf has never been my flavor of koolaid.

[hill2016]

9. you are stringing together a lot of sentences

which don't make sense.

[AgingAmerican]

12. So sorry you are confused

[Eric J in MN]

7. We can better understand Bernie Sanders from the bills he supports.

- His "Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act" for regulators to identify banks which are too-big-to-fail and break them up.

- His "College For All Act" which has a tax on stock transactions.

- Elizabeth Warren's "21st Century Glass-Steagall."

Sanders also voted for Dodd-Frank.

[appalachiablue]

8. 'I'm doing God's work!' No Lloyd you're hallucinating again.

[daleanime]

10. ........

Not that it makes any difference to you, have a lovely evening.

[hill2016]

59. nothing which explains

what Wall Street is or isn't.

[daleanime]

63. There by saving you the effort....

of pretending to listen.

[Fuddnik]

11. Obviously, you know nothing.

How about Corruption Inc. on a massive scale.

Now, go back to your Hil-billy orientation center.

[Hortensis]

40. BUT, could you rank half of them? I confess

I cannot.

[ibegurpard]

13. I'll explain it to you simply

The goal is not to provide better goods and services to a market... the goal is to provide ever escalating profits to shareholders...more and more of whom are executives and CEOS who've been using the employee-generated profits from increased productivity and government bailouts to buy back their stocks.
THAT'S the Wall Street business model...vulture capitalism.

[RiverLover]

29. Well stated. Here's an example of that~

......Over the last two years, private equity firms and hedge funds have amassed an unprecedented real estate empire, snapping up Spanish revivals in Phoenix, adobes in Los Angeles, Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta, and brick-faced bungalows in Chicago. In total, Wall Street investors have bought more than 200,000 cheap, mostly foreclosed houses in some of the cities hardest hit by the economic meltdown. But they're not simply flipping these houses. Instead, they've started bundling some of them into a new kind of financial product that could blow up the housing market all over again.

No company has bought more houses than the Blackstone Group, one of the world's largest private equity firms. (Its many investments include Hilton Hotels, the Weather Channel, and SeaWorld. Among its institutional investors are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase.) Through its subsidiary, Invitation Homes, Blackstone has picked up houses through local brokers, at foreclosure auctions, and in bulk purchases. Last April, it bought 1,400 houses in Atlanta in a single day. In Phoenix, some neighborhoods have a Blackstone-owned home on just about every block. As of November, Blackstone had acquired 40,000 houses, most of them foreclosures, worth $7.5 billion. Today, it is the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the nation.

Blackstone's deep pockets—$248 billion in assets under management and a $3.6 billion credit line arranged by Deutsche Bank for buying houses—allow it to outbid individual buyers, driving up local real estate prices and pushing families out of the market. "You can't compete with a company that's betting on speculative future value when they're playing with cash," says Alston. "Institutional investors are siphoning the wealth and the ability for wealth accumulation out of underserved communities," adds Henry Wade, cofounder of the Arizona Association of Real Estate Brokers.

But buying houses cheap and then waiting for them to appreciate isn't the only way Blackstone is making money on these deals. It wants your rent check, too. In November, after many months of hype, the firm released the first-ever rated bond backed by securitized rental payments........

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/blackstone-rental-homes-bundled-derivatives

This is just wrong, and we can count on Hillary and any other conservative to do nothing to curb it. Bill Clinton enabled it to begin with, after all. RWrs do what they do.

[DanTex]

37. This is a good example of the shadow banking system at work.

And as much as Bernie likes to yell about Wall Street, neither breaking up big banks nor reinstating Glass-Steagall will do anything at all to prevent private equity firms like Blackstone from buying up homes and securitizing rental payments.

And, no, Bill Clinton did not enable securitization of payment streams like mortgages or rental payments. This predates the Clinton Administration by decades. And by the way, securitization is not a bad thing. The first securitized loans in the US are made by the government, by Ginnie Mae, and by reaching out to capital markets, they were able to offer affordable home loans to people that otherwise wouldn't have been able to get them.

As far as securitizing rental payments, rather than simply declaring it "wrong", what actually needs to happen is that regulations should be put in place to ensure that it doesn't get out of hand. One of the problems cited in the article is that these securities might blow up and investors in them could lose a lot of money. Of course, the same is true with any security. One thing that definitely needs to happen is that credit rating agencies need to be better regulated to ensure that they aren't stamping garbage bonds triple A. Dodd-Frank has already taken steps in this direction. Another thing that needs to happen is that if derivatives are written against these new bonds, they need to be traded transparently, and there need to be rules regarding margin requirements and so on so that the financial system doesn't get excessively leveraged in a way that a downturn could bring the whole thing down. Again, this is also addressed in Dodd Frank. And so on.

This is part of the reason that, as people like Krugman have pointed out, Hillary is the stronger candidate on financial regulation. Fixing the financial system requires understanding how it actually works, and finding solutions that will solve the problems that exist, not just things that sound good but won't make any difference.

[RiverLover]

44. Um, no.

.......The following year, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which “effectively shielded OTC derivatives from virtually all regulation or oversight” and marked a “key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis,” according to a 2011 report by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. (Born served as a Commission member.)

The OTC derivatives market expanded greatly after the bill was enacted, as detailed in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report. “At year-end 2000, when the [Commodity Futures Modernization Act] was passed, the notional amount of OTC derivatives outstanding globally was $95.2 trillion,” the report said. “In the seven and a half years from then until June 2008, when the market peaked, outstanding OTC derivatives increased more than sevenfold to a notional amount of $672.6 trillion.”

At the height of the financial crisis, the government approved a massive taxpayer bailout of insurance giant AIG, which had a $79 billion derivatives exposure to mortgage-related financial products that were tanking in value.......

http://www.pogo.org/blog/2014/04/how-the-clinton-team-thwarted-effort-deregulate-derivatives.html

This screw-up with deregulating derivatives is so obvious, even Bill had to admit it was a major mistake~

[DanTex]

45. The article you posted had nothing to do with OTC derivatives.

[RiverLover]

46. "Property OTC derivatives"

nt

[DanTex]

47. Bonds backed by securitized rent payments are not OTC derivatives.

This whole discussion is illustrating exactly the point that the OP was making -- a lot of people in the Bernie camp simply don't know what they are talking about when it comes to the financial system.

[RiverLover]

48. OMG, you're the one who is misinformed. This is hillarious.

Someone needs to tell 'American Homes 4 Rent' they don't exist....

http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/AMH/news

And you are trying to tell me I'm the one who doesn't know what I'm talking about.

Life is too short for this.

[DanTex]

49. "American Homes 4 Rent" has utterly nothing to do with the article you posted.

Last edited Wed Nov 18, 2015, 11:05 PM - Edit history (1)

It also has nothing to do with OTC derivatives. Apparently it's some kind of home rental company. Its stock is neither OTC (it trades on NYSE) nor is it a derivative. Here's a hint: just because you find something on a website with "OTC" in its name doesn't make it an OTC derivative.

And, again, that has nothing to do with the MoJo article, which was about rental-payment backed securities, which are also not OTC derivatives.

Seriously. Having the slightest clue what you're talking about is a good thing.

[hill2016]

58. I don't even think

he knows the difference between OTC and exchange traded...

[Thinkingabout]

60. Sanders voted for Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, it aided in the finanical crisis.

[Ron Green]

14. Anyone who creates no real wealth, but exercises a claim

on real wealth. And yet has been given a protected position in the marketplace.

These are people who ought to be in prison.

[hill2016]

36. why?

what crimes did they commit?

[Ron Green]

38. Perhaps no crime, and this is the problem.

If our society and the world are going to survive, we must turn away from capitalist empires and toward a sustainable earth community.

The finance "industry" is a primary player in maintaining the toxic and imperial political-economic system under which we're suffering, and this in one reason so many of us are dismayed at the inevitability of Hillary Clinton.

[Travis_0004]

42. So for example union pension funds

(which are mostly invested in stocks).

Also, I find it amazing how many people insist walstreet does nothing.

Bill gates once owned 100% of microsoft when he founded it.

He now owns 4%. Where did the rest go? Did bill gates give away 96% out of the goodness of his heart? Steve Balmer (former CEO) owns about 5%, other employees who worked there own a few more percent, but wall street owns well over 50%. Why was it given to them????

You can argue they bought it, which is true, but Bill gates did not sell it if there was no benefit, so I reject the nothing that wallstreet does nothing, I think that shows a lack of understanding.

[Ron Green]

43. I'm not talking about people's investments, or the legitimate shares

in legitimate businesses backing them. I'm talking about the parts of the financial sector that create and play "markets" with no other purpose than to make cash, at the expense of real wealth: clean air and water, healthy communities, good relationships among humans and all living things; and the goods and services that provide and maintain these.

Bubbles in high tech or housing are good examples of these markets that Wall Street loves.

[hill2016]

57. so why

do you care how other people spend their wealth?

I can say the same thing about casinos: no legitimate use other than making cash. Why does Wall Street get all the hate?

[Ron Green]

62. I care about how Wall Street speculators

spend other people's wealth. When they gamble for their own winnings and look for protection from losses, they're crooks.

[reformist2]

15. Yes, please lecture us about how we don't know what we're talking about - that will win us over.

[hill2016]

39. isn't it matter

to learn more about what you don't understand?

[RiverLover]

16. Banks use our deposits to gamble with & we bail them out if they lose at the table.

Simplistic, but it's what it boils down to, and it IS fraud. Or a big ole pyramid scheme.

Anyone else remember this? About a year ago?

......"Buried in the more than 1,600 pages of the omnibus package Republicans posted in the dead of night are provisions to put hard-working taxpayers back on the hook for Wall Street’s riskiest behavior," Pelosi said.

In a written statement declaring himself a "no" vote, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said: “It is unacceptable to threaten a government shutdown in order to do the bidding of the biggest banks and put taxpayers on the hook again for their gambling losses."​

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), who said he plans to vote no, called it "inconceivable" that Congress would undo a key part of Dodd-Frank.

"Why is Congress giving Wall Street a massive Christmas present, when so many hardworking Americans are struggling to make ends meet?" McDermott asked in a written statement........

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/12/10/elizabeth-warren-fellow-liberals-rail-against-bank-provision-in-spending-bill/

And you & every other citizen who says this is ok is part of the problem.

[Kentonio]

17. The irony of threads like this..

Is that the more you know about financial services, the clearer it becomes quite how much of a joke it really is. It's little more than a gambling ring based on the premise that the technical complexity will ensure very few people actually understand how ridiculous it really is.

Seriously if you ever want a cheap laugh, get someone to sum up one of those really complex sounding financial schemes in three sentences or less. You can basically guarantee it will come down to 'x borrows money from y in the hope that z will happen. If z doesn't happen, y makes money. If z does happen, x makes money'. If you want to train for financial services, save yourself the college money, and take a year out in Vegas, it'll probably do you more good.

[Electric Monk]

52. Michael Lewis has written many good books on it. I suggest the OP read some of them.

Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Price Of Everything, and The Big Short are all good, but he also written others.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=michael+lewis+books

[Agony]

18. ya left out CBOE

…and naked shorts

get a grip

[hill2016]

54. these are not

financial institutions.

One is an exchange the other is a trading rule.

[Armstead]

21. It's shorthand. Just like the GOP. Washington. and other symbolic terms

Wall St. is is a physical reference to a place, but it is also a term used as a symbol for a complex matrix of institutions and people and issues.

The underlying purpose of Wall St. may be good, but it has become distorted and monsterous over the last 35 years, thanks both to the GOP and Democrats like the Clintons. (and the Clintons are a team with the same friends and connections in the matrix)

It has been changed from a legitimate marketplace where companies raise money to a casino where financial vehicles are used to create money with money -- instead of production and services.

And it has screwed America by placing excess pressure to generate profits for investors who flip stocks and use the money to flip more stocks quickly, rather than investments based on good performance of a company.

It has also become a defacto monopoly, thanks to deregulation championed by the Clintons and their cronies.

It's a lot more complicated than that obviously, but to address your point -- People who are critical of what it has become are not stupid. It is a real problem, whether you care to admit it or not.


" target="_blank">



----------------------

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bill_clinton_the_republicans_m.php

...what about the deregulatory legislation Bill Clinton signed in 1994, before Gingrich & Co. took Congress?

Riegle-Neal hasn’t got a tenth of the press that the CMFA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley have, but it was a milestone in the creation of Too Big to Fail, allowing banks to cross state lines, effectively gutting state regulation of banking. The Christian Science Monitor that year quoted a Wall Street analyst saying that, “‘It also didn’t hurt that NationsBank president Hugh McColl has a working relationship with President Clinton or that the comptroller of the currency, Eugene Ludwig, was a successful lawyer at Covington & Burling and NationsBank had been a major client.’” Hugh McColl gave us Bank of America.

From across the pond, The Independent wrote in a piece that was prescient in more ways than one:

“In effect, Congress has said let the merger mania begin. There is virtual consensus that the legislation will allow both the big US banks and their foreign rivals in America - British banks among them - to grow much bigger.

Nor was that the only thing the banks got that year. The American Banking Association wrote about Riegle-Neal, the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1994, and the Community Banking Development Act that “the 103rd will be remembered as the first Congress in recent memory to pass “clean” pro-banking legislation.”

Clinton, on signing Riegle-Neal, praised McColl and the head of Chase Manhattan, and said, ” It represents another example of our intent to reinvent Government by making it less regulatory and less overreaching and by shrinking it where it ought to be shrunk and reshaping it where it ought to be reshaped.”

Again, this was before the Republicans took over Congress.

In 1999, on signing Gramm-Leach-Bliley into law, Clinton said, “This is a day we can celebrate as an American day” and that ” the Glass-Steagall law is no longer appropriate for the economy in which we live” and “today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down these antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority” and “This is a very good day for the United States.”

[Hortensis]

41. Good post.

[hill2016]

53. okay

let's start with some basic premises: what's wrong with a company focusing on generating profits and investors flipping stocks?

[Armstead]

64. Nothing wrong with it inherently. The devil is in the details.

The idea of business and capitalism is not inherently bad. But only if they are placed within the context of their overall impact.

It obviously gets very complicated. Since it is the basis of our economy and society, it can only work if there is a balance between self-interest and the public interest. But in addition to its benefits, Capitalism contains elements of abusiveness and is contrary to the idea of the public good and democracy.

It ultimately boils down to morals, ethics and priorities. Those are required to restrain the negative aspects of business, so that capitalism can work for everyone, rather than hurt everyone to benefit a few. When that is not self imposed, it has to be imposed by the rules of society.


There is also a dangerous dynamic within any institution or system. Wealth and power feed on themselves. The more power and wealth an institution or individual gains, the more ability they have to increase that geometrically. An example. Wal Mart. The more resources they have, the better able they are to move into a town, lose money on a store for a while to undercut existing competitors and drive them out of business to create a captive market. It also gives them more power to squeeze their suppliers and workers.

Since around 1980, the equation has shifted from a balance of those factors has shifted to the "Greed is Good" mentality. We allowed the negative aspects of capitalism to completely overshadow morals and ethics. There are endless examples, and it has been the death by a thousand cuts. We allowed a few corporations to become monopolistic empires. And Wall St. has changed the goal from a reasonable return on investment to a constant "quick killing" by screwing workers and consumers.

And individuals who step into the "lucky lane" will do awful things to their neighbors in order to gain obscene wealth. Whjere once a CEO might have been satisfied to earn 5 times the wages of average employees, it is not the goal to earn 50 times or more, with wealth in the Billions, while their employees just eke by.

It has degenerated to the point where corporate behavior that would have been considered totally unacceptable a few decades ago has become commonplace.

We have allowed Corporate America and Wall Street to do that for too long. The problem can be tracerd to the rise of Reagonimics and Supply Side economics championed by the GOP. But unfortunatly, the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton and the DLC/Third Way (shorthand but you know what I mean) jettisoned liberalism and bought into the same shit. by championing things like "free trade," excessive deregulation, privatization, monopolization and shrinking of the public sector to benefit the oligarchs.

The ONLY way to reverse this larger trend is to acknowledge the problem, take a stand against it and pursue the reforms that will restore a balance by reasserting Liberal/Progressive values and re-establishing regulations that will restore a healthier balance.

That reelates to this primary nonsense because it is not simply a matter of Hillary vs. Bernie. It is a matter of breaking free of the forces and Crony Capitalism that skewed the balance.

[DanTex]

22. Almost none. As evidenced by the replies to this OP.

[Armstead]

25. Naw it doesn't matter

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=823784

[whatchamacallit]

35. The OP was halfway to Stupidville

Your comment just completed the trip.

[hill2016]

51. do you have any

substantive points or just name calling?

[leftofcool]

26. I vote for no one!

[Android3.14]

30. What a poorly constructed OP

Do your own research, kid.

[Hepburn]

34. +1 n/t

[hill2016]

50. like I said

do you have any substantive points or are you just name calling?

[Scootaloo]

55. Are you supporting Clinton? Are you sure? have you checked? Check again. Are you still sure?

'Cause you're giving me flashbacks to the Romney campaign back in 2012.

[hill2016]

61. huh?

I just pointed out that a lot of people who criticize "Wall Street" has no idea what the term means.

How is that in any way a position of support for any campaign?

[Recursion]

56. Personally I'd always taken it to mean IB + PE

But I've recently found that it seems to mean something much, much broader to most people on DU, though I haven't been able to nail down exactly what that is. (I had asked "whom from Wall Street did Obama appoint to his cabinet?", and people were citing cabinet members' work in retail banks, at law firms, and at one point for the Walmart Foundation (!) as "Wall Street".0