Star Wars is Pretty good and I recomend seeing it, but the most important movie you’ll watch this year is “The Big Short” https://youtu.be/NcV2FPXg5is?t=865
The biggest con job of the last 50 years is the banks convincing the people that Government is the problem.
What followed was a swelling of financial services from a healthy 2.5 to 3.0 percent “Vig” on our economy to double that:
www.tcf.org/...
Maybe a doubling of 3 percent doesn’t sound all that bad to you.. Consider that 3.7% is our entire spending for non-tertiary education. (excludes college costs). So imagine all the, time, resources, and effort we spend educating our kids for 12-13 years being syphoned off by another industry unnecessarily. Because let’s face it; this extra “product” was largely pure bullshit, derivatives, and other bets-on-bets that served no real social value. I penned this rant a few years back that worth revisiting:
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Dear Financial Services Industry;
Do me a favor.... DON'T INNOVATE!
It seems whenever you “innovate”, with a CDS or derivatives, Me and my 401K end up getting f@#ked!
We people who work and produce things for a living don't need much from you. In fact, the products we actually NEED from you have been around for hundreds of years
We want to get insurance so we can worry less. Hire some actuaries to figure out the likelihood my house will burn down or my car will get crushed, then sell me a policy with a slight markup.
We want to lend and borrow money. When I give you money give me a slight annual return on my money. When I borrow money check that I'm a good risk then give me loan that doesn't rake me over the coals. I think 7 percent is a good usury limit. The spread between those two number will be your profit.
We want to support group initiatives with cash. Offer us some bonds that will support these public and private works that we believe in.
We want to invest in each others companies and share in the rewards of a growing economy. Sometimes we want a say in how the company is run sometimes we don't offer us two kinds of stock. And because this stock market should be geared toward building real wealth, and helping good companies, you should be penalized harshly for speculation, day trading, and short selling. Profits on shorts and short term capital gains should be taxed at 50%. This would force out all the leaches on in the market. Company insiders should have to file a public record and wait four months before selling any shares of their own company. Take a commission on the sales.
That's it! Full Stop.
The main beneficiary of all the other crap you sell 99.9999% of the time it's only you. Financial services should be like my plumbing. We all know how it should work and you don't F@ck with it. "Innovative" ideas like "let's see if cherry bombs work better than Drain-O" will ALWAYS end badly.
It's not rocket science. The only reason we need very intelligent people at the treasury right now is to untangle the giant cluster f@ck you've created with your "innovative" products. In the future however we are going to need our best and brightest in Medicine and science and education.
So again: PLEASE! NO MORE INNOVATION!
End of rant
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So it’s been 9 years since the crash that devastated all of us in 2007 and the underlying greed, deregulation, and value-less skimming still persists.
Check out this visualization of the world’s financial “assets”:
money.visualcapitalist.com/...
If you’re not scared by it, you probably don’t understand it.