Wall Street is still playing us for suckers

[Crackerjack]

How moronic. Wall St aren't playing us for suckers. Washington is. But please don't let reality ruin your fantasy..... oh, wait, it's not your fantasy... all you do is regurgitate the opinions of others.

If you trust Wall Street and the bankers then you are really naïve.

The problem is that it's impossible to tell where Wall Street ends and Capitol Hill begins. Sadly, the OWSers have been misled into thinking that pitching a fit at Wall Street will accomplish something.

 

[uscitizen]

We have learned nothing nor taken any steps to prevent the "investment" mess from happening again.

Therefore it WILL happen again the lure of greed is just too strong.

 

[Intense]

We have learned nothing nor taken any steps to prevent the "investment" mess from happening again.

Therefore it WILL happen again the lure of greed is just too strong.

The Angry Horde is too used to "Something For Nothing", that is greed too.

 

[KissMy]

Investors & clients are "Muppets"

Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

 

[impalero]

The problem with our current system is the government and the policies they have in place that have only benefitted a select few at the expense to everyone else.

These policies have contributed to redistribution of wealth to the 1%.
The same policies are responsible for jobs being outsourced or off shored to cheap labor countries.
The same polcies are responsible for the open borders market we have that increase the supply / demand ratio to the 1% benefit.
These policies are responsible for the huge number of H1B Visa's granted to put even more downward pressure on wages.

All these policies have redistrubuted wealth to the top 1%, where the Government - CEO - Wall Street Loop is all that matters and the rest of the country is expendable.

The "Free Market" has been rigged to benefit them.
In the spirit of the "Free Market", they would have also opened the doors wide to aspiring business managers and foreign CEO's in other countries, to come run companies here in the US. This would have also placed downward pressure on CEO compensation and the inequality in this country would not be so high.
The rest of the world has no problem finding talent to run their companies at 1/1000 of the cost.

The problem with the government is who is running it.

The ones running the government come from the Big Banks and Corporations in this country and when their in government, they exist only to serve each other.
Their Primary Responsibility should be to the American people and this country and it is not.


There are Venn Diagrams that list the relationships between Government, The Big Banks and the Corporations as well, which most have seen.
Just from Goldman Sachs alone, there are hundreds that have revolved between the government and the company.

The solutions:



Therefore, the logical conclusion is to eliminate the conflict of interests that exists.
There should be seperation of Corporate, Banking and State.

Campaign Finance Reform!

One Dollar, One Vote

End of Lobbying

We should also do away with Nafta and many of the other Trade programs that have not benefitted everyone in this country.

If we were to shrink the government, it would also defang and take away the power from a lot of these corporations and banks and give it back to the people and the small business's of this country.


We need a government that represents the country and not an elite few.


The problem to me now is, how do you change the government when the fox's are already in it and call the shots? Do you think they are going to relinquish any of their power willingly?