Closing Wall Street’s casino

[roseBudd]

http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2011/11/18/closing-wall-streets-casino/

Most of the bets on Wall Street were pure speculation. Against $15 trillion of mortgage bonds, Stout said, Wall Street marketed credit default swaps in 2008 with a notional value of $67 trillion. Worldwide, traded swaps at their peak equaled $670 trillion or $100,000 for each person on the planet, vastly more than all the wealth in the world. Those numbers make it a mathematical certainty that the swaps were mostly speculation, not hedging.

Stout likened some derivatives to a market in fire insurance in which you buy coverage not for your own home, but for those of strangers. Such insurance would create an incentive to commit arson for profit. Yet we allow speculative derivatives that melted the housing market.

[msongs]

1. how bout a 25 cent tax on each derivative or item traded to cover the damages caused to society? nt

[Moostache]

2. screw that...how about reparations?

I think a total loss of personal assets for anyone who drew a salary, bonus or grant of stock options based on the performance of these frauds. They should be forced to make restitution - and instead of the jobless and proverty striken doing the time for the crimes of the banksters, the banksters themselves should be in the public square, in the stocks, in the prisons, but out front and as a visible example of public humiliation.

This country is a steaming pile of shit and the reason for that is the stench of corruption that allows these criminal assholes to walk free while the bought and paid for political class grovel and suck the corporate dick for more money...

We do not have a Capitalist society any longer and have not for a very long time...this is a Plutocratic cesspool and the sooner we pull the plug on it, the sooner we can start cleaning out the smell...

[Lucky Luciano]

3. Stop sugarcoating how you feel. nt

[roseBudd]

4. i think they shoukd be forced to actually invest in American jobs.

[freshwest]

6. Sign at Milwaukee Occupy: 'Don't Make Us Bring Out The Guillotine!' Tell it, dude!

[Hotler]

8. +1 n/t

[meow2u3]

5. A smart lawyer can use this unenforceability of gambling debts

...and apply it to Wall Street's practices. A good attorney, especially a Wall Street defector, can use the gambling debt loophole not only to keep homeowners from being foreclosed on, but he or she can also argue to cancel the mortgage debt altogether. I wouldn't put it past an Occupy lawyer to take those foreclosure cases.

That would make the banksters shit a collective brick. Meanwhile, I'd be laughing my butt off while banksters whine. :evilgrin:

[roseBudd]

7. From my research prior to CFMA, bucket shops were illegal

Derivatives are nothing short of gambling