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Forum Post: Common sense financial regulations to prevent economic suicide (Flash Trading, Speculation, Leverage)

Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 6, 2011, 5:07 a.m. EST by optessimist (1)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Have gotten good feedback from using neckties as noose imagery to drive home the point about short term greed equaling economic suicide. The sound bites below may help the imagery

———————————————————————————————– This is not a declaration of war against greed, in the traditional sense. This is, in part, a rebellion against suicide.

Long term "greed" is not suicidal; 401ks, pension and retirement funds, higher education and home ownership, are all variations of wanting more. The expectation of a healthy return in proportion to capital invested over a reasonable amount of time has always been considered normal.

The hope for a bigger return on increased investment over an increasing length of time could be labeled long term greed, though as long as risk remained in reasonable proportion to size and immediacy of reward, was never previously considered harmful, and more often simply considered a sustainable investment strategy and good business sense.

Sense departs when addictions present themselves however, and addictions untreated are suicide. The repetitive exposure to increasingly risky behavior in proportion to immediacy of reward is a form of pathological risk and reward addiction, and in the form of Flash Trading, Speculation, Insufficiently Leveraged Holds and other high risk gambling behavior, has become life threateningly endemic throughout this current incarnation of our financial industry, and should accordingly be treated as a major public economic health issue.

If corporations have been afforded the considerations of legal person hood, so too might medical person hood of corporations, and our economy at large, be considered. As volatile metrics are not precursors to lengthy lifespans, so too do the wildly fluctuating valuations evidenced in our daily stock markets pulse warn of an erratic vital statistic; an indicator so drastically unpredictable and wide ranging in any normal person would be considered dangerously unhealthy.

No healthy person makes spontaneous 2 billion dollar losing bets with company stock for personal benefit. No healthy person laughingly causes power outages on a hot California day to increase that days share price. No healthy person sells customers his products while simultaneously betting against them.

No healthy industry bankrupts its own consumer base for short term profit.

No sane government assists it in doing so.

Addicts cannot always be solely depended upon to police themselves, interventions in extreme cases are necessary. In the same manner that the other destructive behaviors of addiction are sensibly monitored and protected against, particularly with regard to our nations engineers, pilots, and decision makers, so too can we not submit to the danger of our economic engine being maintained, navigated and manipulated by short sighted extreme risk takers.

The financial sector cannot sensibly be considered a sustainable investment repository until common sense regulations against Flash Trading, Speculation, and Insufficiently Leveraged Holds are implemented, thereby helping to save us, and it, from its suicidal self.

  • just some thoughts to maybe go along with the imagery, but could help get even more press than my friends already are getting.

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[-] 0 points by agnosticnixie (17) from Laval, QC 13 years ago

401ks are a scam.