Forum Post: Financial Parasites
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 6, 2011, 1 a.m. EST by justicia
(58)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
This essay, posted back in 2009, is one of the best explanations of the looting that has taken place in our country:
Eating our Seed Corn: How the Financial Industry Managed to Extract Equity from Just About Everybody
One of the great illusions of late 20th century finance was that banks were profitable. On paper - investment, commercial and mortgage banks appeared extremely profitable. The percentage of total S&P 500 profits that was attributable to financial companies rose steadily from 1980 to 2000, and by 2007 reached 40%, depending on how you measured it. This meant that two out of every five dollars of profit generated by America’s 500 largest companies came from the financial function. This, by the way, understated things, since it left out the quasi-banks like General Electric and GMAC.
The illusion comes from the fact that this paper profit was not the result of selling products that allowed businesses and consumers to be more productive and more profitable in their own right. What was really happening was that financial firms were extracting equity that had been built up over nearly a century by businesses and consumers. The financial business had become a predatory business, scavenging the land for pockets of wealth to convert into cash that would be funneled in part to the banks as fees. [...]
Good info but it ignores the elephant in the room.
The one that creates all the money out of thin air.
End The Fed. NONE of the stuff described in the article could take place without funny-money.
Check this out Hank:
Money as Debt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3sKwwAaCU
And "The Web of Debt" by Ellen Hodgson Brown.
Stop Bankster Thieves! Abolish the Fed. Create a public bank as they have in North Dakota.
Thanks, Justicia,
I've been passing the Money As Debt link out all along (since it came out!).
Ellen Brown I disagree with. And have had arguments online with her personally. She advocates what I call the Zimbabwe approach. And State issuance of currency. It's still money-for-nothing, and has been a total disaster to every society that tried it. Every time. The society, not just the government. It's incredibly destructive. It destroys wealth and freedom. The only way to stop the cancer is with commodity-backed, redeemable currency. Redeemable in gold or silver. Like it says in the constitution.
Thanks for your reply!
North Dakota provides an excellent example of a public bank that hasn't destroyed wealth. In fact, it returns money to the government every year and enables financing of public works at lower interest rates.
It's still fractional reserve funny-money, created from thin air, and worse, it's under the control of state bureaucrats.
I'm not saying it isn't better, but it is not a long-term solution to the underlying problem. Which is essentially legalized counterfeiting.
Thank god, a sensible person!
Thanks!