What good is Wall Street?

[WillyGilligan]

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010 ... ct_cassidy

It's an 8 page monster of a read, but the upshot is that banks don't really pursue any of the functions for which they get treated the way they do. Financial manipulation trumps providing services to customers, and we're all suffering for it.

[Ancient History]

At rock bottom, a bank is a business, and most businesses are aimed at making a profit.

[Serious Paul]

The term I've always heard, in reference to this sort of behavior, is "Churning." It looks really busy, but in reality is going no where.

[Jeff Hauze]

At rock bottom, a bank is a business, and most businesses are aimed at making a profit.

Which has no impact or change on what Willy mentioned, but sure, let's trout out the old excuses.

[Bonefish]

At rock bottom, a bank is a business, and most businesses are aimed at making a profit.

Except they're not really making a profit. They arn't increasing the capital of society so much as they are concentrating it in their hands. Which, you know, could have bad repercussions.

We're not talking about them just, say, making some money, but in fraudulently scamming people out of money by selling shit that they knew wasn't worth what they were saying it was.

The funny thing is, the guys who pulled for the bail-out? They're also the ones who typically hold that the government shouldn't be involved in their operation. It's like a college kid who tells his parents he doesn't want them to be all up in his shit, cuz he knows what he's doing. But after he's spent all his tuition money on dope and hookers, he moves back home. And to make it worse? He continues to demand that his parents stay out of his basement bedroom! He knows what he's doing!

[Ancient History]

I think y'all are reading slightly more into my piddly little sentence than it merits. It's a general truth of banking, not a condemnation of the article or a sweeping summary of every financial institution. Finance revolves around the continuing flow of money, on smaller and smaller fractions of interest on larger and larger collections of debts and assets. In the normal course of things some people will get greedy and short-sighted, and some people will default, and then the money men get it in the shorts. And if enough of them are doing it on a big enough scale, major financial organizations fail, and we get the current mess. That's the cost of growth-driven economic systems instead of sustainable economic systems.

[Jeff Hauze]

I think y'all are reading slightly more into my piddly little sentence than it merits.

I think most of us were pretty much aware that a bank is a business, and business generally shoot for profit. Was there some need to remind the class?

[Ancient History]

I'm an idiot that likes to restate the obvious? I'm a snarky bastard? It seemed like something cogent to say at the time? Take your pick, any and all of the above may well be accurate.

[3278]

It's an 8 page monster of a read, but the upshot is that banks don't really pursue any of the functions for which they get treated the way they do.

Absolutely. The funny thing is, they kind of never have. This has always been what banks do, it's just that they've gotten very good at it, and had time to get money and people in the right places in government to get what they want.