From the moment the financial industry is not used to gather capitals to finance productive activities, it is just a totally sterile activity. Its only purpose being the manipulation of money and payment of profits to the manipulators, without actually creating any real wealth. Finance is like a parasite and, like many parasites, it has penetrated so profoundly every cell of our society, that you can’t remove it, without killing the whole economy at the same time. I am all in favour of people and companies making a healthy profit. However, why should we put up with people making extortionate profits at our expense, while manipulating the political life and the whole economy, so that they suck more of the profits every day, while starving the real economy? The financial industry is fighting desperately against any kind of regulation, helped by well financed lobbies and politicians, left and right of the spectrum. If we don’t find a way of regulating and getting gradually under control this scourge, its only limit will be its only stupidity and greed – time and again amply demonstrated by occasional huge losses registered by banks – the latest today, by JP Morgan. This is not capitalism, this is just stupidity.
Financial services should be crazy to allow regulation, as it would destroy the perfect system they have created: I win, you lose, I lose, you lose. They always get to keep the profits and they manage to get bailed out when they screw up – call them stupid. And they will always find legislators who know what’s good for them, smart enough to do their bidding, in the full knowledge that the reward will be worth it. They are one up on the mafia: the mafia has to racketeer, blackmail, scare its victims and, occasionally, torture and killa the recalcitrant ones. Financial services just have to find people who will convince the populace to vote against its own interests – and it works, every time.