Yipeee, financial regulation!
That’s all I’m going to say about it. I’m sure there will be thousands of places to read all about it all weekend. I’ll just say that it’s about freakin’ time SOMEBODY did SOMETHING to reign in the madness. Whether it’s a good bill or a bad bill doesn’t really matter as much as the concept that financial institutions NEED to be regulated. The rest we can get right over time. I consider this to be a huge market positive because the Financial sector has grown like a cancer on the markets since deregulation. When corporate profits totaled $4Tn in the 80s, the Financial sector made $400Bn – now that coprorate profits are $6Tn, the Financials make $2.5Tn – that’s 40% of all the money earned in corporate America and ALL of 2 decades worth of growth going to the Financials!
Not only that, but that $2.5Tn is AFTER bonuses and dividends that add another $2.5Tn to the total so out of $8.5Tn earned in corprorate America, 60% goes to one sector. That’s what a cancer does, it sucks resources away from the healty organs in the body and eventually grows big enough to kill it. America has gone from a country where investors make money by investing in companies that build things and sell things and create jobs to a country where investors gamble with “investing institutions” and, rather than put money into creating energy solutions, we trade 6Bn barrels of oil per month back and forth on the NYMEX in order to decide who will end up taking delivery of 25M barrels (0.4%) at the end of the month.
Why do they do it? The fees, the fees, the fees, the fees. Even the stock market has become a casino and not only do the financials make the fees but they build a culture that tells you to BUYBUYBUY and SELLSELLSELL every other day so they can rake and rake and rake those fees but that is not enough for them – they also have to insert themselves in as Market Makers where they make money on the spread every time you buy and sell but that is not enough and they then track your trading and write programs to analyze your trading patterns so they can bid against you – YOU, their CLIENT!
That’s still not enough so they game the system by taking on the role of…
