Super-rich become wealthier again, Sunday Times says

If "we" don't agree with people then it's natural to SHUT THEM UP --

turn it off

self-censorship

WE WILL MARCH FORWARD!!

Ah the beauty of the "market" -- just a few world wars -- maybe a nuclear arms race -- there's got to be some money here somewhere.

reply to post by Conspiracy Pianist


I think some people do think that.

Its part of the myth of America. "We are all equal and if you dont succeed its only because you didnt try hard enough."

But of course not everyone can succeed. No economic system is set up for everyone to be at the top. They are all pyramid shaped, and like many multi level marketing schemes, they require a broad less advantaged class to draw wealth from.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


Most of it was to ensure the faith in USA financial markets.

Really (besides AIG and GM and C) these banks really didn't need the money, but needed to be ensured in the eyes of foreign interest as well that these would be backed by the full faith and credit of the US GOV.

Institutions like GS,BAC,BBT only needed to have the guarantee that there would be .gov cash backing the operation if it was needed.

We have banked off most of this actually (minus AIG) and hopefully the new financial regulation will have specific rules on how to unwind banks of this size so they can "fail" in an orderly fashion such as the length of unwinding and how assets should be sold off. We are in the process of selling all pieces of AIG off currently and trying to do it in the most efficient way possible I am sure.

A lot of people still lost a lot of money, no doubt, but so did every employee of these companies as well. Not everyone can be the CEO (obviously).

[edit on 25-4-2010 by GreenBicMan]

Ah FAITH !! oh yeah now we're talking.

It's a CULT!

www.thenewpress.com...

Top Heavy The Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It

Wolff vividly illustrates how the gap between the haves and the have-nots in terms of wealth is greater now than at any time since 1929, immediately preceding the Great Depression. As the nation considers trillion-dollar tax cuts and the abolishment of the estate tax, Top Heavy takes a sobering look at how the wealth of the top 1% of households continues its heart stopping expansion while the current distribution of wealth in America invites the surprisingly apt comparison with the class-dominated societies of nineteenth-century Europe.

www.econ.nyu.edu...

[edit on 25-4-2010 by drew hempel]

Originally posted by GreenBicMan

We have banked off most of this actually (minus AIG) and hopefully the new financial regulation will have specific rules on how to unwind banks of this size so they can "fail" in an orderly fashion such as the length of unwinding and how assets should be sold off. We are in the process of selling all pieces of AIG off currently and trying to do it in the most efficient way possible I am sure.

Downsizing these businesses is a wonderful move.

When you say we have "banked off" most of the loans, does that mean they have been repayed to the US government? And if so, why dont we see that reflected in our debt?

books.google.com... ei=jgrVS6nRMobU9ASh35HKDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=edward%20wolff%20economist&f=false

Wall Street analysts typically greet down-sizing announcements with cheers!

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


I am not the best person to answer that question. I am sure some .gov website would detail this a lot better than I could. I don't know if that money went anywhere but back into the "bailout fund". Not sure.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


www.businessinsider.com...

The next day Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Fed, voiced a different concern: that the excess bank reserves created by the Fed’s MBS purchases create the potential for high inflation. He advocated selling $15 billion-25 billion of MBS a month, which would clear the Fed’s inventory in five years instead of the 30 it would take for the bonds to mature. Read more: www.businessinsider.com...

www.wnd.com...

Next bubble: $600 trillion? Cities, states, universities could sink from monster derivatives meltdown Posted: April 19, 2010 By Jerome R. Corsi As interest rates begin to rise worldwide, losses in derivatives may end up bankrupting a wide range of institutions, including municipalities, state governments, major insurance companies, top investment houses, commercial banks and universities. Defaults now beginning to occur in a number of European cities prefigure what may end up being the largest financial bubble ever to burst – a bubble that today amounts to more than $600 trillion. The Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, now estimates derivatives – the complex bets financial institutions and sophisticated institutional investors make with one another on everything from commodities options to credit swaps – topped $604 trillion worldwide at the end of June 2009. To comprehend the relative magnitude of derivative contracts globally, the CIA Factbook estimates the 2009 Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, of the world was just under $60 trillion.

reply to post by Conspiracy Pianist


O yeah, do people come to America for the land of opportunity? Let me ask you this, why are you where you are. Did people teach you how to save, earn, etc.? Do you accept your fate and blame on others? Do you moan about working for your boss instead of doing something about it?

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


Noooo, you put yourself where you are. Don't blame on the rich that made to the top. Look back in your past and figure out why you are not at the top. Did you want to get rich? Was there a motivation to get rich or get money to help your family? Perhaps you don't like being an entrepreneur. Perhaps you just like being where you are and don't like to be ambitious like others. 75% of millionaires were born in poverty. They don't like where they are and they did something about it. Now you have people working for you instead of the other way around. Perhaps you should encourage those below to do something about it instead of bitching and complaining about increasing their salary because they earned it for some reason.

Originally posted by andy1033
reply to post by yellowcard

 

Personally i could not give a feck about those people. There is a price to pay in so many things in life, and they know they too have to pay for it.

But like you said its only the con of the stock market that is totally fixed, that makes these people like this.

Do you realize how difficult it would be for the stock market to be a "con?" That's like saying that supply and demand doesn't exist.

books.google.com... #v=onepage&q&f=false

One of the twentieth century's most thorough and discerning historians, Karl Polanyi sheds "new illumination on . . . the social implications of a particular economic system, the market economy that grew into full stature in the nineteenth century."

www.amazon.com...

The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy [Deckle Edge] (Paperback)

www.amazon.com...

www.linktv.org...

www.davidkorten.org...

Korten identifies the deeper sources of the failure: Wall Street institutions that have perfected the art of creating phantom “wealth” without producing anything of real value. Its major players engage in speculative trading, buy into asset bubbles, create debt pyramids, and engage in predatory lending practices. Their seeming success created an economic mirage that led us to believe the economy was expanding exponentially, even as our economic, social, and natural capital eroded and most people struggled ever harder to make ends meet.

books.google.com... #v=onepage&q&f=false

The Environmental Endgame: Mainstream Economics, Ecological Disaster, and Human Survival (Hardcover)

www.amazon.com...

[edit on 26-4-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 26-4-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 26-4-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 26-4-2010 by drew hempel]

topdocumentaryfilms.com...


www.linktv.org...

www.amazon.com...

books.google.com... #v=onepage&q=food%20first&f=false

www.share-international.org...

www.amazon.com...

www.amazon.com...

www.amazon.com...

www.mindfully.org...

The problem is that the story told by economics simply does not conform to reality. This can he seen clearly enough in the recent, high-profile examples of the failure of free-market thinking—how media giants have continued to grow, or how loose accounting regulations have destroyed countless millions in personal wealth. But mainstream economics also tails at a more fundamental level, in the way that it models basic human behavior. The core assumption of standard economics is that humans are fundamentally individual rather than social animals. The theory holds that all economic choices are acts of authentic, unmediated selfhood, rational statements reflecting who we are and what we want in life. But in reality even our purely "economic" choices are not made on the basis of pure autonomous selfhood; all of our choices are born out of layers of experience in contact with other people. What is entirely missing from the economic view of modem life is an understanding of the social world.

www.amazon.com...

[edit on 26-4-2010 by drew hempel]

www.amazon.com...

The Myth of Free Trade: The Pooring of America (Paperback) ~ Ravi Batra

SMU Professor Ravi Batra's significant work outlines why America has become a debtor nation. The main cause is free trade. This policy has caused real wages to fall for 80% of the work force despite increased productivity because of manufactured goods falling relative price. This phenomenon is known as "agrification". Moreover, poor leadership has allowed foreign nations such as Japan, South Korea, and China to sing free trade's praises while following protectionist policies as tariffs, quotas, exchange controls and the like at home. The post WWII General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade rounds or negotiations have resulted in a lack of reciprocity for American exports. Before GATT lowered tariffs, to permit imports to flood U.S. markets, the country was largely a closed, self-sufficient economy. However, since we have become an open economy the country has become awash with red ink in the current or trade account. To remedy this critical situation, Dr. Batra suggests a national policy of "competitive protectionism". This solution entails raising the average tariff from 5% to 40% while promoting domestic competition to spur innovation by prohibiting most mergers and monopolies. The result might be an improved living standard for Americans. The standard of living has declined for most workers as measured by the real wage since 1973 - - the year the U.S.A. became an open, free trade economy.

www.amazon.com...

The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (Political Economy of Human Rights) (Hardcover) ~ Noam Chomsky (Author)

www.amazon.com...

To Chomsky, the Cold War was just a passing phase in the West's 500-year global domination of poorer nations, providing the U.S. with easy formulas to justify criminal interventionist actions abroad and entrenchment of privilege and state power at home. Marshaling meticulous scholarship, this leading critic of American foreign policy cogently argues that Washington's support-open and covert-for repressive regimes in Colombia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Angola and elsewhere has undermined attempts to create meaningful democracy, thus exacerbating poverty and misery. Chomsky, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor, describes NAFTA as a protectionist pact, mislabeled "free trade," which is likely to drive millions of Mexicans out of work while enriching U.S. agribusiness. He sets the Israeli-Arab conflict in the broad context of America's postwar domination of the Middle East along lines established by British imperialism, with family dictatorships taking orders from Washington and protected by "regional enforcers," preferably non-Arab (Turkey, Israel, Iran under the shah, Pakistan). His devastating critique of the "new world order" foresees a growing abyss between rich and poor-both internationally and at home. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

reply to post by drew hempel


no amount of money will end poverty. More money will give folks an opportunity for folks to blow some cash and in a couple of years they will be poor again.

The "rich" would love taking a big slug of the defense and give it to poor folks. They'll invest in malt liquor firms and quick-stop markets and make a killing

Originally posted by GreenBicMan
reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

 

It did correct naturally.

This is what happens when the Fed Funds Rate goes to 0-.25.

Take a look at historical Fed Funds Rates and see the correlation vs. DJIA. That is also part of the reason this train isn't going to stop on the upside until we get at least 50 basis points higher. More like a lot of the reason actually.

You may think that is manipulation, but all it really amounts to is monetary policy and the results that follow.

The market is rebounding like this because it is actually undervalued. All this crisis really was about is a month or so of extreme uncertainty and then reevaluation of risk took place.

Think about things like AAPL which makes up a majority of NASDAQ percentage wise. It is dominating its 2007 sales BIG TIME, how can that be in an environment like this? It is because of disposable income from people not paying their mtg. and it is also due to the rest that had a job this whole time still enjoying the fruits of their labor.

It doesn't seem natural to you but it is natural when you understand long term price action in financial markets. That point can't be stressed enough. We will see good times and bad times again, no doubt. J
ust save for the rainy day.

You doto realize the market has always been controlled. Evidence of a pattern is evidence of control.!

But lets put that aside for a second along with the margin calls that created the depression.

This isn't 2003, and the market is not undervalued. People just want to ignore things like mortgage backed securities, CDO,Credit default swaps and securitization. They have changed the market it is now commonly known to be backed by the most worthless garbage that ever existed. There is no putting Pandora back in the box. Confidence bah.

I mean they are issuing worthless paper(stock), based on more wothless paper(CDS), based on fiat currency, based on debt. And people are still under the illusion that this stock market is based on market forces. It is based on manipulation.
From the first bailout under bush to the previous 3 under Obama these company's are no longer making profit or earning money. They milk the market.

In fact most of the assets value have been shifted repeatedly higher while peoples wages have been purposely suppressed. Thus the markets value itself is artifically inflated. Funny how some didn't understand drew I got every response without reading the full link.

reply to post by ISHAMAGI


No, I must disagree strongly my friend.

Evidence of patterns is only a visual landscape of the psychology that drives financial markets. Nothing nefarious about it. Some other good reading if you are interested in market psychology would be here but with some research you will be able to find much better links and descriptions.

History is always repeating as human psychology really never changes over the years relating to greed and fear.

GL