http://youtu.be/0ieaqiP6tX4
Very happy to read this David Dayen piece:
If asked, Americans of all political persuasions will say overwhelmingly that they prefer “tougher rules” for Wall Street. But what does that actually mean?
You can frame this conventionally: supporting regulators, punishing rules violators, mopping up 2008-style disasters to limit the damage and attempting to prevent such chaos from happening again. But by “tougher rules,” maybe Americans are really signaling a vague but persistent dissatisfaction with an economy that has become dominated by the financial sector. And you can see within that how transforming banking back to its traditional purpose — as a conduit for putting capital in the hands of worthwhile business ventures and driving shared prosperity — would be one antidote to an unequal society full of financial titan gatekeepers, who confiscate a giant share of the money flowing through the system.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren — in many ways the avatar of a new populist insurgency within the Democratic Party that seeks to combine financial reform and economic restoration — will speak later today in Washington at the launch of a new report that marks a key new phase in this movement. Released by Americans for Financial Reform and the Roosevelt Institute – and called “An Unfinished Mission: Making Wall Street Work for Us” — the report is a revelation, because it finally invites fundamental discussions about these issues. Its 11 chapters from some of the leading thinkers on financial reform do look back at the successes and failures of the signal financial reform law of this generation, the Dodd-Frank Act. But the report also weaves in a story about how we can reorient finance as a complement to the real economy, rather than its overriding force. Mike Konczal, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the co-editor of the report, tells Salon, “The financial sector is still eating up a lot of GDP [gross domestic product], and it’s not clear what we’re getting out of it. We want to get the conversation at that level.”
This report fills in the details, creating definable action items and goals that could serve as a marker for legislative and regulatory action, as well as primaries in the next several election cycles.
What you are getting out of the financial sector’s dominance in GDP is a straightforward bubble.
I want to know when the financial wizards are going to be held accountable for the outrageous fees being charged to “manage” 401(k)s. Since we have really no alternatives for saving for retirement, and the fees are eating up the value of the account assets by the time people retire, and Social Security is not enough to live on and may not even be there, how are people supposed to save for their old age? THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW. I watched Frontline “Retirement Gamble” and got so PO’d I almost blew a gasket.
Personally, I think it is too late for reform. What we need is not reform of Wall Street, but independence from Wall Street.
Every state should strive to have an independent Bank for the citizens of that State, as does North Dakota. A bank that considers whether a project is good for the long term interests of the people – not whether it measures up to return on investment criteria set up by Wall Street.
Cities should be looking at their own currencies, which would support regionalization, and the development of local economies, using – oddly enough – people who actually live in that region.
Lots of “Corn pone Nazis” – to use Kunstler’s term – call for political secession. What we need is as many forms of financial secession as we can develop, to get out from under the thumb of these globalization-loving and planet ruining, ‘trades done in a nanosecond count as “investments”‘, Wall Street pricks.
Very good questions, Tracey – I know very little of investments – but let me mention a couple of people with blog sites and a good number of podcasts which discuss different “big picture” views of the economy.
One person is a biologist/attorney very much interested in the economy named Nicole Foss, or “stoneleigh” as her blog pen name sometimes notes. I know her talks/interviews have been broadcast on the James Howard Kunstler site, and also at various permaculture sites, plus her “home” site of “The Automatic Earth”.
Her greatest economic theme of concern is rapid collapse in the financial sector, which she argues will send off a wave of deflation. Hence, she will sometimes advocate that maybe the thing to do is put less aside for savings now, and divert some of that stream into hard assets (e.g., significant improvements in insulation and energy saving measures around where you live) which may be a better investment than paper stock/bond investments in the longer term.
Another view which might be of interest is that of Woody Tasch, who writes at the “Slow Money” site. He argues that local investments, especially in food growing/processing and local restaurant develop, might be a better long term choice if you are interested in your local community.
“it’s not clear what we’re getting out of it” Not Clear? It’s sure clear to 99% of Americans what we’re getting out of the financial sector. We’re getting fucked. Americans have been sold a bill of goods, enabling Banksters and Hedge fund CEOs to gamble using our money, to lose OUR money while they make profits on OUR LOSS, and then using OUR MONEY to bail them out of their losses. Heads on pikes would be the most emotionally satisfying approach to reining in Wall Street, but a simple return to the Glass-Steagall rules that made America the #1 economy in the world would have my support.