Wall Street Ponzi Schemes, Market Disequilibrium And Transparency - The Great Scam
I haven't really talked much of derivatives on here. First, it's not a topic area I'm very interested in. Second, while they represent extreme risks in the system, they aren't even really tied to the cause of this crisis. Third, there are many voices who have a much greater understanding of the depth and breadth of the derivatives messes. We've had quite a few voices out there warning about the derivatives market for ten to twenty years. Literally. Martin Mayer is probably the foremost voice who has been outspoken on the topic. If you are interested, you can read two of his very well written discussions of the derivatives madness from 1999 here and here.
Rather than focus on the obvious, that is the derivatives mess that has been beaten like a rented mule, the focus of this post is on the less than obvious motives behind derivatives, the schemes of Wall Street and the future impact of a financial world vastly different than today. I'll focus primarily on credit default swaps given their enormous popularity over the last handful of years.
A perspective, often floated in the media, that no one could have predicted the derivatives mess or any of the other financial messes is based on lies from those who swindled money from society and now want us to bear the burden while they walk away with our money. That's right. Our money. Any outsized earnings in the finance industry over the last fifteen ten years likely contributed to destroying the economy. Nary a dime was earned. Again, literally. Instead it was literally part of the greatest wealth transfer in history. It was taken from society via financial scheming. Interestingly, one of Mayer's perspectives that is relevant to the bigger picture today is that risk-shifting typically transfers risk to those less able to bear it. How ironic and prescient. One might consider how this statement applies when it comes to the transfers of risk from the banksters to the Federal Reserve. From the goons on Wall Street to the American taxpayer. This environment has nothing to do with moral hazard. It's much deeper and exponentially more sinister.
Derivatives, while meant to provide some semblance of business value when first introduced, have become havens for the incredibly self-destructive gambling mindset so prevalent on Wall Street. Wall Street has taken incredible risks with our money at the exact time when the underlying economy could not afford it. Now these risks belong to society courtesy of the Federal Reserve and Washington politicians. Stabilizing the banking system is one thing. Bailing out the criminally insane is something else. Bernanke and Washington may feel there is no choice and therein lies a serious dilemma. This brings up a very significant point that has been lost in the derivatives discussion. The most obtuse impact of derivatives is not the products themselves. It is that they encourage immoral speculators to take massive risks in assets that are substantially riskier than would otherwise be taken in an attempt to reach for personal profit. And, to do so with a false sense of security that these assets are insured via the derivatives market. Or at least the appearance of security in any cases of outright fraud. In other words, derivatives reinforce a behavior of reckless gambling in the banking system. Reckless gambling with society's money. Were derivatives actually confined to business use, much of the finance employment in the U.S. would cease to exist. What does this tell us? Much of our economy is based on Ponzi economics.
One of the most popular fad "hedges" on Wall Street right now is the credit default swap or CDS. Mind you, it was this same paranormal notion that a hedging vehicle would allow undue risk to be taken that contributed to the 1987 crash, the 1998 mini-crash and the LTCM debacle. In fact, there is substantial evidence that attempts at hedging risk actually caused the stock market crash of 2008. Remember, all of these crises were the result of excess greed and lack of regulatory control of society's money. How often must government be beaten over the head until they realize our money must be protected and, by conclusion, Wall Street behavior needs to be regulated? It appears timelessly. We could easily fix this with additions to our constitution as we wrote long ago. This would protect our society from the endlessly profligate politicians and their partners in crime, financial lobbyists. We have had these Wall Street near death experiences so often that it is only corruption, favors or naivety that can explain why nothing has been done about it.
Frankly, the majority of Wall Street's current businesses aren't sustainable but lobbying and special interests play a role in sustaining them such that we constantly deal with these crises and end up bailing out these scams every handful of years. We'll see if this time is different. If it is, it will be at the hands of the people that change takes place. The political arrangement with Wall Street is far too handsome for it to be changed by the foxes guarding the hen house. That includes the foxes in Washington and on Wall Street. Lobbyists will continue to infiltrate our government and attempt to convince politicians to save these corrupt games that are being played with our money.
Credit default swaps really aren't a complex topic although the terminology may make it appear as such. Credit default swaps are simply insurance contracts. Mostly for corporate debt. Instruments that have skirted regulatory oversight. As Michael Greenberger told us, Wall Street was able to lobby politicians so they eluded regulation and ballooned into a multi-trillion dollar gambling component of Frankenstein finance. Below is a nice video explanation of how credit default swaps work. That said, the use of credit default swaps is overly simplified in this video. Many of the real risks and uses that involve outright casino gambling aren't discussed.
An unregulated CDS market ironically provides a basis to mount an electronic run on the very financial institutions that have profited so handsomely by keeping them unregulated. How? Simple. Speculators can purchase protection (CDS contracts) against the prospects of a company defaulting on their debt without even owning the underlying corporate bonds. In other words, rather than hedging for business purposes, gamblers can pile on to debt instruments by speculating without limit in the CDS market. They can then illegally (naked) short the company's stock, driving its price down. To anyone watching the credit markets and a company's stock price, this creates an artificial appearance that a company is in more serious trouble than is really the case. The speculators can then ring up substantial profits on their bets. And, I do mean substantial. Isn't this just rich? I haven't followed the game in detail but I would assume many gamblers in these scheme have been paid billions by the Federal Reserve on many of these bets. Billions in taxpayer dollars. What should be done is to tear up any contracts that aren't legitimately taken as a business hedge on the underlying debt. This is a case of using tremendous leverage to gamble with our economy and financial system. It is one of the great swindles of all time. It involves a great transfer of wealth from society to many immoral speculators. Remember, there was no wealth creation using any of the current schemes. Only transfers of wealth. Strictly winners and losers. Look in the mirror for the loser. This is why we are seeing a great concentration of wealth at the top of society - they are robbing the rest of society of its wealth. Yet, we hear it called free market capitalism by those doing it. Who want to continue to do it. Of course, it's easy to bend the media message when one has so much money. Ask the laid off steelworker in Ohio or the laid off autoworker in Michigan or the laid off construction worker in California what they think. We are witnessing the last great bubble to pop. That is, the bubble of robbing society and getting away with it. That party is over. Those who have taken from society are going to be paying much of it back because regardless of whether low taxes are preferred, the government will eventually use these gains to pay for programs to support basic services for society and those experiencing economic hardship. Those who took from society are the only ones able to pay higher taxes. Unfortunately, many who honestly earn substantial incomes are also going to be punished.
I saw Jason Trennert comment one time on the ability to create a "run" on a company using CDS contracts. He said it was akin to taking out a life insurance policy on someone and then killing them to collect the policy. And, doing it legally. Unfriendly governments attempting to destabilize the U.S. or hedge funds raiding a targeted firm or Wall Street firms attempting to destabilize a competitor could possibly attempt to manipulate the CDS market. It is almost a surety that illegal activity in the CDS market has led to the demise or financial instability of at least one firm. But we don't know because no one knows anything about this market. It is completely deregulated. There were even rumors some of the recent panics created by the CDS market came from overseas locations friendly to terrorists. Legal shorting methods cannot cause insolvency. Illegal shorting coupled with manipulation of the CDS market does have the potential to literally destroy a firm that might otherwise survive. So, what does the SEC do? They leave the CDS market unregulated and ban legal short selling. I wonder what role lobbying played in these decisions.
The CDS market is just a sample of the concerted efforts at removing transparency from financial markets. Lack of transparency extends into nearly every financial market and has fueled remarkable and completely unsustainable profits for Wall Street. Profits that were often achieved at the expense of some legitimate concern be it a municipality, a homeowner, an individual investor, the taxpayer, governments and on and on and on. Even stock trading is being removed from public view. Lack of transparency is systemic and has no basis I can find except for criminal intent. Why? Because it fuels massive profits. Who cares if they are sustainable or even ethical.
One must understand an environment lacking in transparency to understand why firms would spend billions lobbying government and even more billions creating vehicles outside of the scope of transparency. These schemes present tremendous opportunity for profit by anyone who controls the flow of market information - that typically being a monopoly or someone able to distort market forces by subverting government oversight. In this case, that would be Wall Street who has monopoly access to capital. Restricted access to transparency creates an environment where manipulation and substantial profit is possible at the expense of any counter party be it individual investors, governments, businesses, school districts or anyone else partaking in the scam.
Let me use a simple analogy to drive home the concept of outsized profits created by those who control the flow of information. Look at the automotive business Forty years ago. It was a complete oligopoly. There were no consumer protection laws nor any consumer advocacy groups. If someone wanted to buy a car, they were at the mercy of negotiating a price from an oligopoly without any idea what the transaction costs or profits were. And, given the market was very illiquid, in other words, few dealers to chose from, firms could actually collude to make it impossible to achieve any type of price discovery or transaction costs. That is the situation which exists today with the variety of financial shenanigans on Wall Street. The biggest Ponzi scheme today is not Bernie Madoff. Not even close. It is the trillions of dollars Wall Street bilked from the world.
As an aside, this lack of transparency is also a foundational strategy for the financial supermarket concept that has led to these massive consolidations of financial firms buying up complementary businesses. Let's take a short paragraph to digress and explain what I mean by this. Monopoly firms bundling complementary services at a bottom line price versus piecemeal solutions from smaller or niche competitors gives unfair advantage to "bottom line price" deals across a wide array of solutions. This allows profitable lines of businesses in a monopoly to subsidize less profitable or unprofitable ones and theoretically allow these huge firms to illegally price below cost to drive smaller or niche players from the market. This approach reduces competition and increases profits. Free markets? Why when the government will allow firms to do as they wish? (I have had a post outlined for some time on why this financial supermarket strategy will fail regardless. I'll try to get it up at some point.)
Back to the CDS market. What we have witnessed is the largest unregulated insurance scheme on earth. And, the last time I checked, JP Morgan was the largest player in this market. Here is an excellent Newsweek article explaining JP Morgan's involvement in the mess we now see developing in the CDS market.
I want to take a moment here to reiterate something we have talked of before. Many of the business models on Wall Street are broken. Permanently. Firms need to find new methods of making money in the future as unsustainable business models implode, never to return. I remain dubious that most will successfully make the jump. This is not like GM or Chrysler where they have proven business models and market forces caused by the banksters along with poor management decisions have joined forces to jeopardize these firms. As an example, many financial firms made substantial profits in an unregulated CDS market. On a go forward basis, these profits will erode substantially. In fact, on a go forward basis, most participating in the CDS market won't even find a legitimate reason to actually participate in the market as Mayer told us. In other words, much of the business undertaken on Wall Street is make-work that becomes totally worthless in a transparent and regulated world. Even legitimate CDS-related profits will likely stabilize at a level 70-90% less than today. So, as an example, are CDS-related businesses even viable in the future? Probably not. Now multiply this across all of the schemes on Wall Street and what will the employment impact be? Even if the Federal Reserve has made it clear JP Morgan, as an example, will be saved at any cost, I believe its stock price has yet to reflect substantially lower profits on a go forward basis. Not just because of a changing economic environment but because heretofore viable businesses will no longer be viable or may require substantial business unit restructuring to survive at lower profit levels. While it is impossible to determine a precise future valuation, JP Morgan's fair value is likely to be substantially lower than today's stock price. And, I do mean substantially. And, JP Morgan is light years ahead of most Wall Street firms in its depth and breadth of strong management. We still haven't seen the awakening to the extent of the exodus out of the financial sector that has yet to take place. Most still believe this environment can be revived. It can't. It won't.
As I write this, the government is reeling in many of the derivatives markets. I don't know exactly what the future holds but the speculative parties are over. Regulation and transparency is coming to the financial markets regardless of the billions spent by financial institutions lobbying government. Any time the government gets involved in providing a regulated and transparent exchange and clearing house for financial instruments, it drastically reduces the ability to make money. Drastically. In fact, when the government got involved in providing transparency in the bond market, bond traders cumulatively lost $1 billion within the first year. Why? Because all buyers and sellers have access to the same information including counter party risk. In other words, the scam is no longer possible or desirable. Spreads are drastically reduced. Liquidity and transparency will increase efficiency and reduce profitability achieved by gaming the system. This has happened time and again as regulators clamp down on financial schemes. Hence, the constant Wall Street desire to stay one step ahead of the regulators with new "inventions" that steal from society. Frankly, there's an easy way to stop this as well. It would be a nonprofit or highly regulated banking system that was designed to support real investment in the economy rather than the perpetual scams we see decade after decade. And, that is exactly where we are going. Not nonprofit but with rules meant to support the real economy. Don't buy the argument of over regulation. Financial innovation is not a source of wealth creation in the economy. It's more often than not a method of stealing from the economy. And, it has been going on for decades. As we now see across a wide array of problems from the unregulated commodities scheme to unregulated derivatives to unregulated hedge funds and even to many private equity schemes, financial innovation and financial control over the economy has cost the economy trillions and trillions of dollars, has led to trade agreements that raped America of wealth and has created the largest financial bubble in history. The economy will suffer for years to come because of these and many more schemes. Financial firms spent billions of our deposit money lobbying our own government to destroy trillions of dollars of our money, our employment and our livelihood.
The only way the world will change is if you change it.
Rather than focus on the obvious, that is the derivatives mess that has been beaten like a rented mule, the focus of this post is on the less than obvious motives behind derivatives, the schemes of Wall Street and the future impact of a financial world vastly different than today. I'll focus primarily on credit default swaps given their enormous popularity over the last handful of years.
A perspective, often floated in the media, that no one could have predicted the derivatives mess or any of the other financial messes is based on lies from those who swindled money from society and now want us to bear the burden while they walk away with our money. That's right. Our money. Any outsized earnings in the finance industry over the last fifteen ten years likely contributed to destroying the economy. Nary a dime was earned. Again, literally. Instead it was literally part of the greatest wealth transfer in history. It was taken from society via financial scheming. Interestingly, one of Mayer's perspectives that is relevant to the bigger picture today is that risk-shifting typically transfers risk to those less able to bear it. How ironic and prescient. One might consider how this statement applies when it comes to the transfers of risk from the banksters to the Federal Reserve. From the goons on Wall Street to the American taxpayer. This environment has nothing to do with moral hazard. It's much deeper and exponentially more sinister.
Derivatives, while meant to provide some semblance of business value when first introduced, have become havens for the incredibly self-destructive gambling mindset so prevalent on Wall Street. Wall Street has taken incredible risks with our money at the exact time when the underlying economy could not afford it. Now these risks belong to society courtesy of the Federal Reserve and Washington politicians. Stabilizing the banking system is one thing. Bailing out the criminally insane is something else. Bernanke and Washington may feel there is no choice and therein lies a serious dilemma. This brings up a very significant point that has been lost in the derivatives discussion. The most obtuse impact of derivatives is not the products themselves. It is that they encourage immoral speculators to take massive risks in assets that are substantially riskier than would otherwise be taken in an attempt to reach for personal profit. And, to do so with a false sense of security that these assets are insured via the derivatives market. Or at least the appearance of security in any cases of outright fraud. In other words, derivatives reinforce a behavior of reckless gambling in the banking system. Reckless gambling with society's money. Were derivatives actually confined to business use, much of the finance employment in the U.S. would cease to exist. What does this tell us? Much of our economy is based on Ponzi economics.
One of the most popular fad "hedges" on Wall Street right now is the credit default swap or CDS. Mind you, it was this same paranormal notion that a hedging vehicle would allow undue risk to be taken that contributed to the 1987 crash, the 1998 mini-crash and the LTCM debacle. In fact, there is substantial evidence that attempts at hedging risk actually caused the stock market crash of 2008. Remember, all of these crises were the result of excess greed and lack of regulatory control of society's money. How often must government be beaten over the head until they realize our money must be protected and, by conclusion, Wall Street behavior needs to be regulated? It appears timelessly. We could easily fix this with additions to our constitution as we wrote long ago. This would protect our society from the endlessly profligate politicians and their partners in crime, financial lobbyists. We have had these Wall Street near death experiences so often that it is only corruption, favors or naivety that can explain why nothing has been done about it.
Frankly, the majority of Wall Street's current businesses aren't sustainable but lobbying and special interests play a role in sustaining them such that we constantly deal with these crises and end up bailing out these scams every handful of years. We'll see if this time is different. If it is, it will be at the hands of the people that change takes place. The political arrangement with Wall Street is far too handsome for it to be changed by the foxes guarding the hen house. That includes the foxes in Washington and on Wall Street. Lobbyists will continue to infiltrate our government and attempt to convince politicians to save these corrupt games that are being played with our money.
Credit default swaps really aren't a complex topic although the terminology may make it appear as such. Credit default swaps are simply insurance contracts. Mostly for corporate debt. Instruments that have skirted regulatory oversight. As Michael Greenberger told us, Wall Street was able to lobby politicians so they eluded regulation and ballooned into a multi-trillion dollar gambling component of Frankenstein finance. Below is a nice video explanation of how credit default swaps work. That said, the use of credit default swaps is overly simplified in this video. Many of the real risks and uses that involve outright casino gambling aren't discussed.
An unregulated CDS market ironically provides a basis to mount an electronic run on the very financial institutions that have profited so handsomely by keeping them unregulated. How? Simple. Speculators can purchase protection (CDS contracts) against the prospects of a company defaulting on their debt without even owning the underlying corporate bonds. In other words, rather than hedging for business purposes, gamblers can pile on to debt instruments by speculating without limit in the CDS market. They can then illegally (naked) short the company's stock, driving its price down. To anyone watching the credit markets and a company's stock price, this creates an artificial appearance that a company is in more serious trouble than is really the case. The speculators can then ring up substantial profits on their bets. And, I do mean substantial. Isn't this just rich? I haven't followed the game in detail but I would assume many gamblers in these scheme have been paid billions by the Federal Reserve on many of these bets. Billions in taxpayer dollars. What should be done is to tear up any contracts that aren't legitimately taken as a business hedge on the underlying debt. This is a case of using tremendous leverage to gamble with our economy and financial system. It is one of the great swindles of all time. It involves a great transfer of wealth from society to many immoral speculators. Remember, there was no wealth creation using any of the current schemes. Only transfers of wealth. Strictly winners and losers. Look in the mirror for the loser. This is why we are seeing a great concentration of wealth at the top of society - they are robbing the rest of society of its wealth. Yet, we hear it called free market capitalism by those doing it. Who want to continue to do it. Of course, it's easy to bend the media message when one has so much money. Ask the laid off steelworker in Ohio or the laid off autoworker in Michigan or the laid off construction worker in California what they think. We are witnessing the last great bubble to pop. That is, the bubble of robbing society and getting away with it. That party is over. Those who have taken from society are going to be paying much of it back because regardless of whether low taxes are preferred, the government will eventually use these gains to pay for programs to support basic services for society and those experiencing economic hardship. Those who took from society are the only ones able to pay higher taxes. Unfortunately, many who honestly earn substantial incomes are also going to be punished.
I saw Jason Trennert comment one time on the ability to create a "run" on a company using CDS contracts. He said it was akin to taking out a life insurance policy on someone and then killing them to collect the policy. And, doing it legally. Unfriendly governments attempting to destabilize the U.S. or hedge funds raiding a targeted firm or Wall Street firms attempting to destabilize a competitor could possibly attempt to manipulate the CDS market. It is almost a surety that illegal activity in the CDS market has led to the demise or financial instability of at least one firm. But we don't know because no one knows anything about this market. It is completely deregulated. There were even rumors some of the recent panics created by the CDS market came from overseas locations friendly to terrorists. Legal shorting methods cannot cause insolvency. Illegal shorting coupled with manipulation of the CDS market does have the potential to literally destroy a firm that might otherwise survive. So, what does the SEC do? They leave the CDS market unregulated and ban legal short selling. I wonder what role lobbying played in these decisions.
The CDS market is just a sample of the concerted efforts at removing transparency from financial markets. Lack of transparency extends into nearly every financial market and has fueled remarkable and completely unsustainable profits for Wall Street. Profits that were often achieved at the expense of some legitimate concern be it a municipality, a homeowner, an individual investor, the taxpayer, governments and on and on and on. Even stock trading is being removed from public view. Lack of transparency is systemic and has no basis I can find except for criminal intent. Why? Because it fuels massive profits. Who cares if they are sustainable or even ethical.
One must understand an environment lacking in transparency to understand why firms would spend billions lobbying government and even more billions creating vehicles outside of the scope of transparency. These schemes present tremendous opportunity for profit by anyone who controls the flow of market information - that typically being a monopoly or someone able to distort market forces by subverting government oversight. In this case, that would be Wall Street who has monopoly access to capital. Restricted access to transparency creates an environment where manipulation and substantial profit is possible at the expense of any counter party be it individual investors, governments, businesses, school districts or anyone else partaking in the scam.
Let me use a simple analogy to drive home the concept of outsized profits created by those who control the flow of information. Look at the automotive business Forty years ago. It was a complete oligopoly. There were no consumer protection laws nor any consumer advocacy groups. If someone wanted to buy a car, they were at the mercy of negotiating a price from an oligopoly without any idea what the transaction costs or profits were. And, given the market was very illiquid, in other words, few dealers to chose from, firms could actually collude to make it impossible to achieve any type of price discovery or transaction costs. That is the situation which exists today with the variety of financial shenanigans on Wall Street. The biggest Ponzi scheme today is not Bernie Madoff. Not even close. It is the trillions of dollars Wall Street bilked from the world.
As an aside, this lack of transparency is also a foundational strategy for the financial supermarket concept that has led to these massive consolidations of financial firms buying up complementary businesses. Let's take a short paragraph to digress and explain what I mean by this. Monopoly firms bundling complementary services at a bottom line price versus piecemeal solutions from smaller or niche competitors gives unfair advantage to "bottom line price" deals across a wide array of solutions. This allows profitable lines of businesses in a monopoly to subsidize less profitable or unprofitable ones and theoretically allow these huge firms to illegally price below cost to drive smaller or niche players from the market. This approach reduces competition and increases profits. Free markets? Why when the government will allow firms to do as they wish? (I have had a post outlined for some time on why this financial supermarket strategy will fail regardless. I'll try to get it up at some point.)
Back to the CDS market. What we have witnessed is the largest unregulated insurance scheme on earth. And, the last time I checked, JP Morgan was the largest player in this market. Here is an excellent Newsweek article explaining JP Morgan's involvement in the mess we now see developing in the CDS market.
I want to take a moment here to reiterate something we have talked of before. Many of the business models on Wall Street are broken. Permanently. Firms need to find new methods of making money in the future as unsustainable business models implode, never to return. I remain dubious that most will successfully make the jump. This is not like GM or Chrysler where they have proven business models and market forces caused by the banksters along with poor management decisions have joined forces to jeopardize these firms. As an example, many financial firms made substantial profits in an unregulated CDS market. On a go forward basis, these profits will erode substantially. In fact, on a go forward basis, most participating in the CDS market won't even find a legitimate reason to actually participate in the market as Mayer told us. In other words, much of the business undertaken on Wall Street is make-work that becomes totally worthless in a transparent and regulated world. Even legitimate CDS-related profits will likely stabilize at a level 70-90% less than today. So, as an example, are CDS-related businesses even viable in the future? Probably not. Now multiply this across all of the schemes on Wall Street and what will the employment impact be? Even if the Federal Reserve has made it clear JP Morgan, as an example, will be saved at any cost, I believe its stock price has yet to reflect substantially lower profits on a go forward basis. Not just because of a changing economic environment but because heretofore viable businesses will no longer be viable or may require substantial business unit restructuring to survive at lower profit levels. While it is impossible to determine a precise future valuation, JP Morgan's fair value is likely to be substantially lower than today's stock price. And, I do mean substantially. And, JP Morgan is light years ahead of most Wall Street firms in its depth and breadth of strong management. We still haven't seen the awakening to the extent of the exodus out of the financial sector that has yet to take place. Most still believe this environment can be revived. It can't. It won't.
As I write this, the government is reeling in many of the derivatives markets. I don't know exactly what the future holds but the speculative parties are over. Regulation and transparency is coming to the financial markets regardless of the billions spent by financial institutions lobbying government. Any time the government gets involved in providing a regulated and transparent exchange and clearing house for financial instruments, it drastically reduces the ability to make money. Drastically. In fact, when the government got involved in providing transparency in the bond market, bond traders cumulatively lost $1 billion within the first year. Why? Because all buyers and sellers have access to the same information including counter party risk. In other words, the scam is no longer possible or desirable. Spreads are drastically reduced. Liquidity and transparency will increase efficiency and reduce profitability achieved by gaming the system. This has happened time and again as regulators clamp down on financial schemes. Hence, the constant Wall Street desire to stay one step ahead of the regulators with new "inventions" that steal from society. Frankly, there's an easy way to stop this as well. It would be a nonprofit or highly regulated banking system that was designed to support real investment in the economy rather than the perpetual scams we see decade after decade. And, that is exactly where we are going. Not nonprofit but with rules meant to support the real economy. Don't buy the argument of over regulation. Financial innovation is not a source of wealth creation in the economy. It's more often than not a method of stealing from the economy. And, it has been going on for decades. As we now see across a wide array of problems from the unregulated commodities scheme to unregulated derivatives to unregulated hedge funds and even to many private equity schemes, financial innovation and financial control over the economy has cost the economy trillions and trillions of dollars, has led to trade agreements that raped America of wealth and has created the largest financial bubble in history. The economy will suffer for years to come because of these and many more schemes. Financial firms spent billions of our deposit money lobbying our own government to destroy trillions of dollars of our money, our employment and our livelihood.
The only way the world will change is if you change it.
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