so are you all against trading too? because traders and bankers are in the same boat. both don't produce anything of tangible value to society and both use leverage for parasitic speculation.
I have just as much contempt for the status quo or the "establishment", a word which reveals my generation, as you do. But your contempt for the status quo does not make Barry a political outsider and change agent simply because he has been marketed as one. JFK was more a change agent than Barry and he was produced by the same crowd that you harbor so much hatred for. Barry is not self-made, he never done nothing, but use his the force of his personality to fill the token slots given by those in power to people of color. I have no respect for Barry because he has made the same mistakes that the slacker and dolt Bush made. Bush and Teddy Kennedy being the poster children for the crowd that you revile, immature rejects in their own family, who became the family drunk and drug addict and even took a life in the process. But when your name is Bush or Kennedy that qualifies for a life in politics. Bush looked to surround himself with survivors of the Ford Administration to give him counsel, while he was going to use his good old boy personality to charm the pants off those Washington which had worked for him in Austin. Barry has not done well surrounding himself with people who serve him or the country. Rahm Emmanuel should have been left in Congress, his kind of rabidity should never be put in the executive branch. Nixon could attest to that. Hillary should have been VP. Biden should have Secretary of State. Summers should have been Treasury Secretary. Summers was not Treasury Secretary because somewhere along the line he made a politically incorrect assertion about women. He was an academic at the time and academics regularly engage in such discussions. But Barry's Presidency was dead on arrival, when he made the easy choice of choosing an inexperienced not ready for prime time serial tax scofflaw over Summers, who knows some economics, but beyond that he had the skills both to staff and manage a large bureaucracy. It is sad to see how overwhelmed Geithner is in his position. Barry needs to put this guy out of his misery immediately. Of course, Barry has other things on his mind, charming not Washington but his buddies in the media. If he ain't doing charts on ESPN, he is offending the handicapped on Jay Leno. Barry and Bush on the same path. Bush learned that personal charm does not trump hard work and competence. Barry's buddies in the media will allow Barry's ride to be longer and more fun that Bush's, but in the end, it will be another failed Presidency.
Buscoe and Ticketwatcher.... If I am mistaken about Obama being self made.... Which I may be.... I reserve the right to retract my ¨respect statements¨.... Bush, Kennedy....and their ilk do not belong in places of true responsibilities.... They belong in the protection of their mother´s warm bottled milk....never venturing out to what is actually the real world.... With regards to Obama...I was focusing on how he was brought up as a child without a silver spoon .... If one joins ¨The Fraternity¨....they should be rejected from responsible and important positions....as they are just permanently children at play....
Personally, I think Barry has already joined the fraternity. But it may be that he has not and he is still being recruited. If so what we have seen lately is really a seduction made in public in which Barry has indeed presented himself to all the world as one who is getting ultimate pleasure from that act of seduction and truly appears to be a "child at play".
What would go a long way are better decision making tools in highly responsible government positions.... A wiki type intelligence which could quickly project numerical financial impacts of policy changes should be at every official´s disposal....as well as the public´s.... This is not that difficult as there are many numerical impact policy models in many of the better universities.... Every official should be required to review such numerical financial impacts before they can vote.... The same info. should be made available to the public....
My grandfather was a farmer on a mediterranean island in the early part of the 1900s. No Electricity or running water. But guess what? He would enter into contracts with some of the local merchants in what amounted to futures contracts. He was hedging his livestock! Speculation and trading will always be around. It is needed. What is lacking today is transparency, among other things. The other great issue is the Federal Reserve stepping in to bailout the big banks. LTCM, Mexican Peso crisis, etc... These actions, over time, distort the amount of speculators in the economy. The big banks would not have made it to the size they are without the federal Reserve. And indirectly, the same w/ AIG. Trading and Speculation is important. But when you have a federal reserve that supports the system all too often (and not allowing occasional self corrections) then you have what we see today. A souped up Financial System greater than our productive economy and mostly parasitic as well. Dewton - I am assuming you trade on your own. Who bails you and I out when we lose? Nobody. Sucks for you and me, but guess what? It's exactly what an unimpeded natural system requires. It requires failures for bad decisions. It's like nature - there is a balance of predators and herbivores and vegetation. If we all got bailed out, then we would become parasites on the system. Too many of one kind. Too many predators, the herbivores die off and the vegetation takes over, too many herbivores... etc... Think about it. The system has a natural equilibrium for traders and speculators, for investors, entrepeneurs, and workers... The Federal Reserve distorts that equilibrium. The Big Banks completely smash that equilibrium by becoming "too big to fail" but ultimately, "too big to save." If the big banks collapsed as they should, it would have represented a natural boon to some other group. It didn't. Why? The big banks are fighting the law of nature. They have become the law. Statistics show that the majority of an individual's healthcare costs are born the last few months of his life. Time to pull the plug on these Superparasitic Zombie Institutions. Keeping them alive is going to cost us more than letting them die.
It's Ayn Rand, who wrote philosophy, not a plan for the current bailout and it's the WSJ, owned by Newscorp. Who cares?
Evidently you've forgotten her fictional character, Midas Mulligan.....a banker....and financier of some of the other characters in her novel, Atlas Shrugged. No society thrives without banks. And I'm certain that Rand would agree. Now whether she would agree with the FED, or some of the other modern distortions like FDIC and regulations which help to create the distortions and problems that modern banks have...that's another question. OldTrader