The Case for Eliminating Wall Street

[marmar]

excerpt from David Korten's "Agenda for a New Economy":


Efforts to fix Wall Street miss an important point. It can't be fixed. It is corrupt beyond repair, and we cannot afford it. Moreover, because the essential functions it does perform are served better in less costly ways, we do not need it.

Wall Street's only business purpose is to enrich its own major players, a bunch of buccaneers and privateers who find it more profitable to expropriate the wealth of others than to find honest jobs producing good and services beneficial to their communities. They walk away with their fees, commissions, and bonus packages and leave it to others to pick up the costs of federal bailouts, gyrating economic cycles, collapsing environmental systems, broken families, shattered communities, and the export of jobs along with the manufacturing, technology and research capacities that go with them.

Even more damaging in some ways than the economic costs are the spiritual and psychological costs of a Wall Street culture that celebrates greed, favors the emotionally and morally challenged with outsized compensation packages, and denies the human capacity for cooperation and sharing. Running out of control and de-linked from reality, Wall Street has created an Alice in Wonderland phantom-wealth world in which prospective financial claims and the expectations that go with them exceed the value of all the world's real wealth by orders of magnitude.

We can no longer afford to acquiesce to a system of rule by the those engaged in the pursuit of phantom wealth far beyond any conceivable need - and to no evident end other than to accumulate points in a contest for the top spots on the Forbes list of richest people.

.......Korten then goes on to explain the why and how. ....... This book is crucial reading IMHO, and I'm not one to pimp products, but I feel the same way about this book that I do about the film 'The Corporation': Essential.

[FarCenter]

1. Actually, Goldman Sachs is the only big firm still on Wall Street

The trading is mostly electronic, and trading floors are dispersed.

The big data centers aren't even in New York City anymore, due to security considerations.

[Vidar]

2. K&R

[aaronbav]

3. Excellent article!

Just kicking it so it will be seen!

[scarletwoman]

4. k&r -- I absolutely agree. Wall Street performs no useful function; it's a parasite, sucking up

the fruits of others' productivity and draining the common wealth.

sw

[Octafish]

5. Thanks for the heads-up.

These Wall Street banksters are something. Take John Grasso, please:

The Real Deal: The Ultimate New Business Cold Call -- NYSE Grasso and the FARC rebels in Columbia

BTW: marmar, where you at the DIA / DFT when they screened "The Corporation"?

If so, I was the guy sitting next to the snoring guy, who was behind the guy who reeked of a distillery befouled by bongwater.

[scarletwoman]

6. This needs a kick! (nt)