Web of Debt

I just read an interesting article int he "Ask Marilyn" column of "Parade" magazine. http://www.parade.com/askmarilyn/2009/07/Sundays-Column-07-19-09.html From reading it, it appears that short of companies selling their own stock to investors, the stock market is just a casino. It also means that management should be rewarded for improving a company's internal financies and actual, physical productivity instead of paying attention to stock prices! (Quite the opposite of what most publicly traded companies now do.)

Does anyone else have other viewpoints on this?

Yes, I think I agree with Marilyn, if we are talking about the way things are arranged now.

The "Wall Street: markets do not operate as "free markets" should. Monopoly positions are taken by the wealthiest traders and brokerage firms, investment bankers, and even the government and Fed become involved. In this arrangement the "exchange" and the big players become "the house" or the casino, operating against the small or medium investors. And we know the house always wins in the long run.

The stock markets appear to be recovering, but if one peers closely enough behind the curtain we can see that most of this "recovery" is an manipulated illusion, created out of the unprecedented extortion money the Wall Street banksters received from the USGov't taxpayers, via the congressional "bailouts" plus unauthorized trillions issued by the Fed (at taxpayer expense) under "emergency powers" clauses in the 1913 FRA.

I strongly suspect that once the "sucker money" starts coming back into the markets in sufficient quantity we will see another market collapse, or "correction" and another bunch of fools will get taken to the cleaners. Wash, rinse, repeat as desired.

I am also reaching the conclusion that the time for "corrections" to the financial, banking and money systems has passed us by. I think the "window of opportunity" to avoid disasters has closed.

And why would corporate managers who are heavily loaded with stock options as a major part of their compensation want to do anything other than manipulate stock prices up or down, depending on whether they are long or short those options? They can gain both ways, if they are really clever and time theri moves just right. Can you or I match that? I think not.

Corporate executives can pocket millions or even billions by driving their companies bankrupt, and have been doing so over the past months and years, ever since the S&L collapse of 1987-99, Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing, and the like.

Actual physical productivity? That's a joke now. Far too slow for those who expect to become wealthy beyond imagination within a decade or two. Too many good "pump and dump" schemes to take the slow road.

Not pretty, but you did ask what I thought.

Yes, the productive economy is left in the dust. What these people fail to understand, is that the productive economy is the real source of wealth. When it stops producing, everything will collapse and those fabulously rich executives/gamblers may find themselves burning their stolen dollars in an effort to cook a few cockroaches for supper. Unfortunately, the rest of us may be even worse off - unless we can secure our own plot of land and farm it well enough to feed our families.