Another Study Finds The Right Wing Is Wrong, As Usual

I've noticed more than a few fellas with signs declaring themselves 'veterans'. Are they also lazy parasites? Or are they probably lying pace no heroic veteran would ever ask for a handout? I will say that the people asking for handouts seem to be proportionately divided between 'real Americans' and 'those people'.

 

And I wonder how many socialists that claim we must all sacrifice would give their job to the homeless person?

 

You are a charlatan and a trickster. No wonder you work in the financial services industry! You said that "Small business in the US is defined by the SBA up to 1500 employees and revenues of 10-20 million." Nice try. The key little phrase here is "up to." That's what they say in those informercials when they try to trick people into buying useless stuff. Yea, I guess a small business could have "up to" 20 million in revenue, but most don't have anywhere near that. If you're willing to trick people just to make a point,imagine what greedy people like you would do in the financial industry to make money. Tricking other people in order to make a buck--yea, that's really "wealth creation."

 

Actually, this is not true at all. Income inequality at the very top 1% is a relative recent phenomenon, and has been going on for only the past 20-30 years. Check this out:


Now why has this been? Well this boom in inequality completely coincides with a colossal change in the financial services industry. It used to be that the public put its money in banks, and banks made loans to borrowers. This system worked, and it was good. Back then, our nations brightest individuals didn't go into banking. They became doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professional trades. However, over the decades, this system has been supplanted by a system called shadow banking, whereby debt is securitized, and the securities are then sold to the public. Many of these securites are highly complex, and risky. It is this system that is responsible for the growth in income inequality. The shadow banking system itself does not generate any value for society. It is simply a parasite--a leech, that takes money out of the economy, and puts it into the hands of the wealthiest 1%--those who work in the financial services industry and who control the trade of these financial securities. It is this system that was responsible for the volatility that caused the financial disaster of '08, and it continues today. So when I hear republicans talking about the rich being "wealth creators," you know it's all bull.

 

Is every Liberal on this board, self employed? Either that or on welfare, which is weird that they have an internet connection Because when you read what they write, it seems they just hate everyone who makes money. If they're self employed, do they hate themselves? Do they hate their business partners? Their suppliers? Their bosses? Those who work for them? WTF do you people do for a living that you are so against those that do better than you? Considering their business knowledge I can't believe for a second many of you own your own business, because you post far too much and your knowledge of how money flows seems lifted from books or blogs rather than real-world experience. So many of you must be employed by the very people you despise...or the govt, which is weird since you should be working not posting during work hours on MY dime? And if you are willing to work for the people you despise, that says a lot about your character.

 

I don't hate people who make money. I'm training to become a doctor, I work over 80 hours a week to improve peoples health and save lives and when I am done, I will be making 300-600K per year, on average. If you work hard and you do something useful for society, then you deserve to make some money. But many of the nation's richest people didn't work hard. They inherited their wealth. And many others don't do anything useful for society. Many earned their money in the financial services industry, where they basically made money by using financial tricks not available to ordinary investors. I'm supposed to believe that this is "wealth creation?" Gimme a break. When the top 6 wealthiest Americans hold more wealth than the bottom 100 million Americans, something is terribly wrong.

 

Best wishes for success with your training. You're entering a tough and stressful profession and deserve to be well-rewarded for your hard work. Many bankers deserve jail. I worked in cervical pathology before retiring so I understand where you're coming from.

 

It seems like the right doesn't really doesn't have a problem with social spending, but only as long as the least wealthy receive little to no benefit.

 

Thanks. I love my job, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. I would do it even if it didn't make much money. My friend works in finance, is my age, and has a net worth of $10 million. But he doesn't seem happy, and I wouldn't want his life. Money doesn't buy happiness.

 

You'd laugh if you knew how much I earned. I was responsible for screening and diagnosing Pap smear tests where missing a dyskariotic cell could result in serious consequences for the woman. My salary? £12,000 pa for ruining my eyes, peering down a microscope for 8 hours a day! I, too, loved my job.

 

FFS. No, it includes everything down from there too.

http://www.sba.gov/content/what-sbas-definition-small-business-concern

Please, lefties, do some research other than on leftblogs and huffpuff as to what small business is and business demographics generally before just repeating propaganda.

 

Perfect leftist... student with little if any real world experience, yet absolutely adamantly convinced of wealth propaganda and finance industry "tricks" obtained... somewhere.

In my career, I've represented many doctors and medical offices in many different capacities. Yet I'll be the first to admit that my actual knowledge of the pratice of medicine is very basic. What if I took that miniscule general knowledge of medicine and made statements like "Doctors control too much wealth, all they do is write prescriptions and scam medicare!" How ignorant would that kind of statement be? What kind of blowhard idiot would that make me? Yet the left, with less knowledge about business and finance than I have of medicine, freely opines as such every day of the world here and elsewhere. The left are simply experts on everything without doing much of anything I guess. There's a medical/psychological term for that, anyone? anyone? Bueller? anyone? begins with an "n," anyone? Bueller?

 

You are SO going to deserve all the angst when you become a doctor and start earning real money and the government takes half of it and what's left is eaten up by malpractice insurance. You're also going to just LOVE working with Obamacare. All of your silly, romantic dreams of healing people and making their lives better will fly out the window when you realize you're spending half your time filling out compliance paperwork.

Who knows, you might even stop being a silly Leftist and become a conservative. Experiencing reality has a way of making that happen.

 

I see, so investing in young companies trying to grow, create jobs, compete with larger entrenched companies, is "tricking other people." You have an extremely slanted, myopic view of the financial industry. Like most businesses, most financial services companies are completely honest, normal people like you and me trying to make a living. They may be insurance salesmen making 50k a year or large hedge funds who make more when their clients make more.

And to remind you, all those people, unlike government with the big gun at our heads, make their living via purely -voluntary- transactions. So who are the real "tricksters?"

 

I do not call businesses "small" that are making 10-20 million a year... maybe that is just me

 

and you have yet to explain how selling risky financial derivatives helps society in any way. You have had ample opportunity to do so, and yet you have not.....When pressed, you try to change the subject and say things like "small business owners are useful to society".....an evasive maneuver used by dishonest snail-oil salesmen everywhere. No, I don't work in the industry but I have plenty of friends who do. We've had these discussions and it used to be that "well, I help society by making markets efficient." But even that dribble is no longer true. I'm training to become a doctor, and I can tell you in one sentence how doctors help society. Can you please explain how selling credit default swaps helps society? I'm listening..... Yes, some doctors do scam medicare. But even those doctors are doing more good for society than most of these finance guys. The guy who collected millions from medicare makes his money by treating retinal diseases--essentially allowing the blind to see--kinda like jesus allegedly did way back when. How many blind people have been cured by a credit derivative contract?

 

I remember in first year law school when all my friends were leftist kids, and I'd been in the working world for 15 years before going back to law school. They would go on and on repeating the leftist junk their leftist professors had spouted all through college. They would argue leftist abstractions and generalities til the cows come home. Then, once they got their first paycheck, suddenly things were no longer so abstract, more than one was like "WTF?? where's my pay? what did I get for all that?" 90% of them became libertarians on the spot or soon after.

 

Yes, some didn't work hard to get their money, but many of course do. When you retire, are you going to give your kids nothing? Are you going to donate it all? Doubt it. You're going to hold on to some of it and pass it down, assuming you'll have kids. The thing is, many will think YOU get paid far too much. You're going to be one of those rich people if things go as planned. YOU'RE going to do what everyone does. Hide the money, using tricks to pay as little as possible in taxes. You are naive to think otherwise, because once you obtain the money, your attitude will flip. YOU'll be looking in from the other side and say, "WTF, I'm not giving the govt all my money for them to (*)(*)(*)(*) it away on people who didn't work as hard as me."

Loaning money to people for them to create new business, a new product, pay others, is obviously a needed service. Not glamorous but certainly a necessity. KNOWING all those tricks is not something anyone can do. If it was easy, everyone would go into a finance and be millionaires. MOST people with wealth were not handed a few million then sit around doing nothing....sorry. THAT is a liberal meme....drenched in bitterness and jealousy.

Its indeed wrong that very few hold so much wealth, but what should we do, forcibly REMOVE it from them? Become one of them and blow the doors open so that it can never happen for anyone else. Screw all of them like they are screwing everyone else, right? Good luck.

 

Sociopathy, the absence of empathy.

It's noticeable in the language used to describe those less fortunate. When the words are de-humanising sociopathy is afoot!

I think the most glaring example today tends to be when Muslims are described, especially Palestinians. if it was late 1930's the glaring example would be the Jews being described in sociopathic terms.

It's not a partisan issue but the right does tend to attract the worst offenders, or, perhaps, most vocal, if I'm to be generous about it.

Which doesn't happen often since I, too, have my own sociopathic demons to contend with so burn them all with fire, they're not sentient so it doesn't matter.

Oops!

 

I don't recall being asked that particular question. Will the answer do any good at all? I doubt it, but OK:

1. Derivatives allow companies, institutional money pools like 401ks, pensions, etc., and individuals to quantify and manage financial risk more precisely. Coca Cola swaps off risk in the sugar market, Hershey in the cocoa market, large union pensions, 401ks, most investment companies do similar. This allows them to undertake risk in other areas such as M&A, VC or PE investments. This is but a small piece of the story, but enough for here.
2. Environments of controlled risk lead to stability as opposed to volatility, greater market liquidity and optimism.
3. More liquid, stable markets with more optimistic participants encourage greater capital investment in growing companies. Companies and their employees benefit by greater access to capital in various capital markets for debt, equity.
4. Greater capital investment in growing companies leads to downward pressure on pricing together with job and wage growth.

This is a chapter of the story of American capital market supremacy, just one chapter but a key one. When we look at innovation, it's not merely who invents a piece of technology, new service paradigm, etc., but rather who can get it to market fastest in a form that consumers will voluntarily buy. One small example, Canon, one of the great Japanese companies, held many key office equipment patents in the 80s-90s. American companies such as HP, though, won the distribution battle via superior marketing and capital market availability in the US. Sophisticated US capital markets and structures are the fuel of rapid, practical innovation. Laymen wonder, "how could Tesla lose with a superior product?" Answer: "JP Morgan's mastery and use of capital and distribution markets." Oh, you believed all the simplistic textbooks about dirty dealing? Of course that's all you got because the leftist academic doesn't understand finance, markets, and has an axe to grind to boot. JP puts cheap electricity in homes, but of course is just a "Robber Baron" for posterity. You fall for that? The tricks you should focus on are the propaganda tricks the left has played on your economic and political awareness your entire life.

One company has lots of street level consumer financial exposure, say personal finance or car loans, recession resistant but subject to greater general default risk. Another company issues lots of AAA bonds, not recession resistant, so cyclical, but low default rate. These two companies trade risk through certain credit swap arrangements. Likewise a bank with a portfolio of one type of risk seeks to smooth its risk curve by trading risk with a bank who is differently situated in portfolio risk.

Diversifying risk leads to stability of operations generally, fitting operations to plans. This allows more growth or other investment, which often consists of hiring more or paying more to talent.

 

You seem to use this bait and switch tactic, every time you post. Maybe it's so natural to you, as a salesman, to use this dishonest tactic, that you don't even notice it even more, which is sad. We're not talking about salesmen making 50K a year or honest banks making loans directly to small businesses. We're talking about giant billion dollar financial firms that make their money by repackinging debt in complex ways and then re-selling it, while re-arranging the terms of that transaction to favor the firm.

And just because something is voluntary does not mean it is right. Insider trading is completely voluntary, but it is definitely not right. What you have is multibillion dollar firms using their immense resources and connections to leverage the market in ways that are unavailable to the ordinary institutional investor. That allows the rich to use their wealth, to essentially extract even more wealth from the system. And that's not right. It's not right that the 6 richest people have as much wealth as the poorest 100 million people. It isn't right that some people toil all their lives to achieve a meager living, while others inherit obscene amounts of wealth, just by sitting on their butts. It isn't right that the real "wealth creators" (ie the small business owners, the doctors, the engineers, etc) don't make much money, while much of the wealth goes to people who don't do anything useful for society at all.

 

When the words equate to a hagiography of people who make terrible choices over and over that we all pay for and encourage through subsidizing them, propaganda is afoot.

You obviously have no clue as to what the words "sociopathy and sociopath" mean. Or rather is the sociopath the one who cuts the meth addict off entirely to save his life? or the crass leftist who keeps subsidizing a deadly meth habit for self-interest of the leftist politically and financially, regardless of what happens to the meth head and his family in the end. Seems pretty clear who the "sociopath" is in that scenario.

 

Sorry, but rich who publicly shout from the roof tops how liberal and progressive they are, but behind closed doors pull every little trick in the book just like the people they publicly dismiss are FAR worse and far more destructive than those who may be open about it. AT least you know where they're coming from. The fox disguised in the hen house are the worst of the worst. HELLO GEORGE SORROS!!!!


Also, maybe people have a certain attitude about others due to first hand life experience and FACTS rather then idealistic musings, ideas and concepts they read about or learned in a class. Nah, couldn't be that=)

 

No, it's -you- sitting in -school- and the left generally who expect the rest of us to gullibly buy that the entire US commercial world is composed of Enrons and Lehmans. It isn't, not even close. I have worked for securitization firms, and there is nothing inherently wrong or bad in what they do. They make a cut of the deal just like a car dealer or realtor does, and the bonds they create are just like any other tools, can be misused or used properly, yet tools they remain.

What you don't realize is that focus on the debt-packaging firms themselves is part and parcel of government/union/muni blameshifting propaganda. Did you know, for instance, that many large pools of money across the country, municipal, union funds, trillions of dollars, are controlled and administered by political operatives as part of "spoils of victory" rather than any rational, experienced money managers? Did you know that those operatives' compensation is hinged to performance, so that when they start using the legitimate financial tools incorrectly, and a few years of outsized returns result, they get rich? Then by the time the house of cards fall in, they have "moved on" or already received their huge bonuses... that they kick back part of to the people who put them in control? Did you know this kind of thing is set up by design?

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/07/n...s-in-inquiry-into-mismanagement-of-funds.html
http://www.mail.nrtw.org/en/blog/foundation-comments-union-pension-funds-invit-12302908
http://www.timesunion.com/local/art...ds-frozen-following-complaints-of-2304908.php
http://lwcjustice.org/?p=134
http://www.stltoday.com/business/lo...cle_9601f7b8-b658-510f-8ce8-6cdae915a5e2.html

But of course, it's all those faceless WS firms who sell "garbage." How naive to believe that govt/union blameshifting propaganda narrative wholesale, you bought it hook, line sinker didn't you? How many of these types of stories linked above are/covered versus how many ENRON stories? 1:20? 1:100? Ever wonder why Enron got -so much- press in MSM for -so long-? If you were going to pick someone's pocket, wouldn't it be a wise idea to shout "hey, over there! that guy just stole some lady's purse!" right as you slid your hand over the wallet?

Maybe not 100% of the time, but I do know that most of the time someone has a gun put to their head, that wrong is more prevalent than in voluntary transactions.

Inapt analogy, apples/oranges, and insider trading is prosecuted under a fraud on the market theory. The whole point of fraud is that the fraudulent representation invalidates any voluntary component of a transaction. Maybe I should start spouting a bunch of half-baked ideas about prognosis and diagnosis of disease, would you like that? Would it annoy you?

 

This reads like propaganda from the oil companies when they tried to convince us that having lead in our systems was good for us. the problem is that every single one of these transactions is based on assumptions, and when you repackage simple debt into complex financial instruments, you are repackaging assumptions on top of other assumptions. And if you want me to believe that this arrangement somehow results in a stable, low-volatility market, then I have a bridge to nowhere to sell you.

Keep in mind that these instruments are all recent---they were all developed in about the last 20 years. Before them, markets were quiet, they were low-volatility, they were boring. And things were fine. All this market volatility is recent, and is entirely on the results of a system, that as you claim, is supposed to manage risk. Yea right. Is that what Lehman Brothers told itself , right before it collapsed? Clearly, it was doing such a great job "managing risk."

So let's review the last 10-20 years and what these supposed "risk management instrucments" have brought us. Have they improved the living standard of the nation's poorest? Not at all. Have they improved the lot of the middle class? Not really. Have they significantly improved the lives of the vast majority of Americans? Hardly. I can tell you what they have done. They've created a situation where virtually all of GDP growth goes to the top 1%.

So I ask you to tell me how financial instrucments helps society, and the best you can come up with is "well, it manages risk." What a load of BS. Please come back when you have a real answer.