"Greed is good" - the famous and trite line from Gordan Gecko in the movie Wall Street. Gecko has nothing on the executives of Goldman-Sachs, who are triumphantly announcing their record profits. What work has Goldman done which earns them this fortune?
I am not a fervent socialist, nor am I a devoted capitalist.
But in a country where middle class and lower class wages have either remained constant or fallen for thirty years, you have to wonder what the hell is going on when an investment bank can report profits of $25.84 billion dollars. $16.5 billion will go to salaries and, most importantly, bonuses.
New York Times
How does Goldman earn those funds? Essentially, by being a transaction cost. Goldman produces nothing physical. They don't build factories, schools, roads, develop medicines, create movies, write software, treat the sick, protect the nation. They provide investment advice, primarily in the area of investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, and other financial services. The people who created that $25.84 billion dollar profits are the people who actually did something.
$25.84 billion dollars in profits - an amazing number. Enough to fund a dozen major universities on the scale of the University of Michigan, UVA, Duke. Far more than the budget of NASA. Not enough to pay for the Iraq fiasco, but it's a start.
How are we going to convince people to become scientists, engineers, teachers, firemen or policemen when such amazing sums can be made by manipulating a spreadsheet?