Wall Street provides nothing of societal value that could not be done at a much less cost. It is nothing but a wealth transfer engine that has gamed government and Americans into believing they are the engine that provides the engine to our economy.
As I have stated clearly in the book “As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Solution to Right Wing Doom”, banks and investment banking serves a utility role that makes an asset like a company liquid allowing it to get operational capital and/or shared risk/reward ownership. Wall Street corrupt model of paying itself makes it the only industry that has no risk either because they make money in trading on the upside or downside, they make money as a percentage of any investment banking deal which makes them severely overpaid given the size of these deals, or they rape shareholders and/or tax payers when they hit the downside.
That American citizens continue to believe that rewarding these charlatans is what makes our economy move is a direct result of skewed information that the Right expounds, non-existent investigative reporting by our media likely due to corporate ownership of all mass media, corrupt politicians that continue to mislead, and an overworked or lazy population that either does not have the time or desire to research that what affects their financial or the country’s well-being.
Wall Street executives should be paid like utility executives. Wall Street employees should be paid like utility employees. After-all all they provide is a utility. They produce no product or real service to the average consumer. Interestingly our electricity, water, sewage, and phone generally work flawlessly day in and day out. If we want our financial system to operate at that level maybe we should pay them and respect them exactly as we do utility companies and their employees.
My Book: As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom
Book’s Webpage: http://books.egbertowillies.com – Twitter: http://twitter.com/egbertowillies
What Good Is Wall Street? Much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless.
by John Cassidy November 29, 2010
A few months ago, I came across an announcement that Citigroup, the parent company of Citibank, was to be honored, along with its chief executive, Vikram Pandit, for “Advancing the Field of Asset Building in America.” This seemed akin to, say, saluting BP for services to the environment or praising Facebook for its commitment to privacy. During the past decade, Citi has become synonymous with financial misjudgment, reckless lending, and gargantuan losses: what might be termed asset denuding rather than asset building. In late 2008, the sprawling firm might well have collapsed but for a government bailout. Even today the U.S. taxpayer is Citigroup’s largest shareholder.
The award ceremony took place on September 23rd in Washington, D.C., where the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to expanding economic opportunities for low-income families and communities, was holding its biennial conference. A ballroom at the Marriott Wardman Park was full of government officials, lawyers, tax experts, and community workers, two of whom were busy at my table lamenting the impact of budget cuts on financial-education programs in Vermont.
Pandit, a slight, bespectacled fifty-three-year-old native of Nagpur, in western India, was seated near the front of the room. Fred Goldberg, a former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service who is now a partner at Skadden, Arps, introduced him to the crowd, pointing out that, over the years, Citi has taken many initiatives designed to encourage entrepreneurship and thrift in impoverished areas, setting up lending programs for mom-and-pop stores, for instance, and establishing savings accounts for the children of low-income families. “When the history is written, Citi will be singled out as one of the pioneers of the asset movement,” Goldberg said. “They have demonstrated the capacity, the vision, and the will.”
Pandit, who moved to the United States at sixteen, is rarely described as a communitarian. A former investment banker and hedge-fund manager, he sold his investment firm to Citigroup in 2007 for eight hundred million dollars, earning about a hundred and sixty-five million dollars for himself. Eight months later, after Citi announced billions of dollars in writeoffs, Pandit became the company’s new C.E.O. He oversaw the company’s near collapse in 2008 and its moderate recovery since.
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Wall Street, investment bankers, and social good : The New Yorker