Mr Khan said:
Kasz216 said:
Mr Khan said:
Marks said:
These protesters are protesting all the wrong things which is why I'm sick of this occupy wall street thing. It should be occupy the whitehouse/federal reserve/congress...not wall street aka the people that create jobs, wealth, etc. |
But they don't create jobs and wealth. They just sit around trading each other funny money and don't do a damn thing to increase actual value. That belongs with entrepreneurs and people who are actually on the ground and, you know, making things or providing services.
These people are like a new aristocracy. Like the gentlemen farmers of old who just sat around and did whatever they pleased off the backs of the peons that served them, these people do nothing but leech off society.
The Middle Class and some of the more productive regions of the upper class are right to desire revolt against Wall Street, to speak nothing of this nation's much-abused underclass. The people who work need to strike at the Finance sector and rapidly curb its excesses
|
A) Just about everyone in the middle class has a very vested interest in the stock market. It's often where there retirement fund money is at least to some degree... be it through Mutual Funds or Retirement plans or whatever.
54% of americans own stock... and this is the lowest number it's been since 1999.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/147206/stock-market-investments-lowest-1999.aspx
B) The stock market isn't "Funny money" being traded. It's ownership in a company being traded. The fluctiations in the stock market represent the chaning values of the companies they are trading. There isn't anything fake about it.
C) Something like 90% of a comapnies job growth comes after issueing stock... because entrepenuers need money... and the stock market is how they can get it. Even most "angel investments" and venture capitalist money that comes in BEFORE an IPO comes in because they want the rights to a certain amount of shares when it comes to the stock market.
http://www.nysemagazine.com/jobcreation
When you comapre the number of IPO's lately versus how they were when jobs were growing in great supply.... a pattern develops. In general lots of companies no longer see the advantage to go public, and instead stay private and small.
|
I suppose my post let on an implication that i was opposed to all finance, which is absolutely untrue, since i am a modernizationist at heart and the ability for individuals to invest and for corporations to gather funding from stock ownership is a critical part of our modern world, however we have gotten well beyond simple investment in a corporation, and i would argue that this has occurred to an unhealthy degree.
It creates the aforementioned nonproductive money handling class. What of commodities paper-trading, derivatives, short-selling, credit-default swaps, points upon which the gain of money is tied to nothing but shifting around digital points, creating money from nothing, hence "funny money"
|
I would actually argue that none of those are just "shifting around digital points" and only looks that way to people who don't look deeply into what they are.
For example short selling essentially is a bit of insurance and a way for mutal funds and hedgefunds to recoup money they may lose on stocks they own by loaning it to lenders.
Really, it doesn't actually create any value at all... and in general kinda helps most of the time because Wall-street tends to be very optimistic. Short Sellers can't work if there aren't buyers willing to pay that price anyway.
Credit Default swaps are also more or less an insurance policy.
Furthermore, all these actions make stocks more attractive to own. Which makes venture capitalists go after new IPO's harder... because it's all the more valuable to be on the ground floor.
