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MaN On A HeDGe...
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Alphamentalist...
"I was just following orders"
Right?
It will be good to watch you hang.
i am not one of those. but i know the type you are talking about. and i don't think there are many people who have a know-something-is-wrong view of the worst of finance who then carry on because they were told to. i know a few people, like william, who have bailed out of disgust at the current mess. my current career choice--an admittedly uphill fight in the TBTF world--is an effort to nudge the industry towards higher ground. so maybe i would go so far as to drape myself in that flag. that all said, in many ways big finance is like a big utiltity. you flip a switch and your lights come on because of the efforts of a nameless, faceless army of workers who do obscure things inside their respective bubbles of specialty without seeing how the entire machine fits togethor: coal miners, truck drivers, engineers, plant builders, plant operators, etc. finance is the same way. your ATM works, your etrade account works, your SPYs are correctly priced, your company is able to hedge raw materlals, etc because of the efforts of a faceless--currently assumed to be guilty--army of workers. when tepco polluted the northen hemisphere did you castigate the workers at your local coal or gas fired plant? when a big pharma firm markets a dangerous drug do you flog the salesman at your health insurer? or when the NSA spies on you do you lynch someone at Dell--becasue they built the computer you got spied on with? i will assume the answer to those questions is no. and if i have assumed correctly, why are we gloryfying harm against people who do the little jobs that make your financial activities possible just because we are pissed at the bad apples?
Ok, I let this slide because I thought you knew what Banzai said to you...but I have to draw the line at calling big finance "an industry" and I'm going to have to dumb this down for you.
One assumes "an industry" produces useful products that people buy voluntarily and if they don't buy them, they are not impacted negatively by their choice. They are in the same position they were before, without a monetary loss, which is the product of a purchase...we would have to agree here, most sane people can't help but agree.
Thats not how it works.
The Fed (a product of centralized government) leverages the value of governments unbacked fiat currency and GIVES IT to big Wall Street finance, thus sucking the value out of everyones labor for it, so it can profit at no risk to itself...its free money to them.
Maybe you missed the part where you're own labor is devalued constantly...it is everywhere in an unbacked fiat monetary regime (a phenomena) called inflation. The ATM works, yes, of course, but the money it spits out purchases less and less and less than it did before, over time.
Where did the value of that "less" go in your "industry"? Into who's pockets?
Exactamondo!! Big finance is a tollbooth, not an industry.
that's mainly more misdirected rage. follow the QE money...
1. USTs are offered by USG
2. dealers buy USTs
3. fed "creates" money
4. fed gives money to dealers for USTs
5. rinse and repeat as often as they like
banks/dealers see some MTM on their rates books as long as rates are moving lower (which, generally, they are not doing reliably anymore) and they see the bid/offer spread (really tiny sums) when they buy from USG and sell to the fed. and because they are not lending in this known-to-be-rigged world they see excess cash pile up once the money trickles through the USG/economy and back to the banks. short story? the big banks are not even close to the big beneficiaries of QE. QE is helping .gov and its minions. don't take my word for it, though. follow the money and calc the benefits yourself. hate the fed? yeah, i get that. hate what the USG has become? yeah, i get that. hate the TBTF paradigm? yep, i get that, too. but the original point was it is off target to celebrate when one of the underlings kills himself because he has been squeezed to the crush point for shit he didn't have a part in.
"but the original point was it is off target to celebrate when one of the underlings kills himself because he has been squeezed to the crush point for shit he didn't have a part in."
Squeezed by whom or what?
Bamzai said fuck this. This isn't me (said he) and I'm going to expose it instead of smoking the pipe or jumping for some guilt trip trying to be laid on me not of my own making.
You're the one defending "your industry"...explain its innocence & systematic benevolence to me again when the next body passes by your balcony on the way to the ground.
There are several contributors to this site who decided to walk away from careers in finance simply because they decided they could no longer continue the charade.
There are many others in the business who know better but risk being blown off by their clients for speaking truthfully about the house of cards instead of steering them safely through the game until the music stops.
Everyone has their own personal limit. And of course they have family to worry about. But it is a hell to live through.
No wonder a significant number of highly regarded fund managers have decided to suspend client business.
And no wonder those who endeavor to make an honest living in the business wish worse than a quick and easy jump upon people like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein.
Hopefully, some one will grow tired of waiting & give some them a push.
Exactamundo !
Not only a Great modern Artist but a pretty formidable wordsmith to boot.
Nice work!
yes indeed.
i didn't count, but that seems about 150 words from WB...seven score and ten of gems, genius and wisdom. one hundred and fifty words to distill the internal conflicts and competing motivations wrestling for primacy within the 'good' guys still toiling away for that which is unambiguously evil.
my question is this: how 'good' -- on a relative basis -- are these good-guys when they continue on devoting the whole of their energy, ambition and devotion to a system that is uniformly wicked...a system which has declared open and hostile warfare on humanity itself?
and to those 'good' remaining, pretend not that there aren't still options available: drive a cab, push a broom, pick up a hammer and saw (our Savior was, after all, a carpenter)...devote yourself to something productive rather than parasitic...discover for yourself the true relationship betwixt labor, capital and one's sense of self; then you may come and speak with one such as janus about this 'invisible hand' of yours, this efficient allocation of capital of which you boast and the materialist dialectic to which you ritually sacrifice.
what profit it a man to gain the world and lose his soul?
in other words, jump-fucker-jump!!!
that, or recognize that war has been declared on us all, and to pretend otherwise is deliberate self-delusion and unforgivable folly.
'all' is not fair in love...but 'more' is moar than fair in warfare.
we didn't start nor declare this war, but we sure-as-shit will finish it.
we are anonymous, we are everywhere and we are your great and penetrating nightmare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWVxI6XZAuE
and still you fuck with us.
woe unto you all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCqxq6xqoXI
on the 31st floor/
a gold plated door/
won't keep out/
the Lord's burning rain,
janus
It really is like a cancer that spreads and spreads.
The only solution is to cut it all out.
Many honest professionals have said: Oh I am going to buck the trend by working with such and such a firm. They are different.
What happens? There is either too much pressure to match the lowest common denominator in order to compete or some schlemiel like Bob Diamond decides your employer will make a marvelous platform for big time schlemielery.
The cancer has to be removed.
Many honest professionals = useful idiots
"The cancer has to be removed".
Fukushima will make sure there's more where that came from.
STFU you appologist douche
Perhaps these people: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-sec...
great share, ptoemmes.
and for any of you who may at some point while reading that article question whether or not it's an imagined or exaggerted episode, concocted to burlesque the foibles of the fortunate few, i can tell you it's all too true.
i must, however, admit that the 'homophobic' jokes were side-splitting and the 'mysogeny' (especially that directed at hitlery) was mirth-making to the max (and so i must pass along my kudos to the uber-'elite'...they do seem to at the very least possess a keen sense of humor; and that has been my own experience as well. they do give and receive the best of stuff in the market of wit (and, at least in this respect, they're fair-traders)...it's a shame they're so constrained by the system the support. and i suspect they hate it just as much as the rest of us; only, with one important caveat -- they get to keep the spoils they've 'earned'.).
i hold-out hope that we can come to some arrangement. but such hope dims with the passage of time...and time, well, time is my friend -- time is on my side:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHVeyo4W18U
now you always say/
that you wanna be free/
but you come runnin back/
to me-eee-eee-eee,
janus
When Black Friday comes
I'll stand down by the door
And watch the JP men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor
Agents of the law
Luckless pedestrian
I know you're out there
With rage in your eyes and your megaphones
Saying all is forgiven
Mad dog surrender
How can I answer
A man of my mind can do anything.....
Can you hear the evil crowd
The lies and the laughter
I hear my inside
The mechanized hum of another world
Where no sun is shining
No red light flashing
Here in this darkness
I know what I've done
I know all at once who I am
Don't Take Me Alive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhYif4ZRqRk