According to Econ 101, people are supposed to get paid for the exact value they create. There's a certain simple, compelling logic to this: If you weren't producing at least $50,000 for your employer, why would your employer pay $50,000 to keep you around? More sophisticated economics allow for you to get paid a little more or a little less, but never too far off.
But this kind of thinking ignores a bigger question: What if your employer itself isn't adding value? When companies or governments simply suck value out of the rest of the economy instead of creating it, economists call it "rent," which basically means redistribution. I suspect that many Americans these days wonder how much of their paycheck comes from value-added work, and how much comes from "rent."
He goes on to talk about health care, finance and education sectors of the economy and how expensive they have become. I have to agree that I don't think we are getting what we pay for in these areas.
Entrepreneurs and investors like me actually don't create the jobs -- not sustainable ones, anyway.
Yes, we can create jobs temporarily, by starting companies and funding losses for a while. And, yes, we are a necessary part of the economy's job-creation engine. But to suggest that we alone are responsible for the jobs that sustain the other 300 million Americans is the height of self-importance and delusion.
So, if rich people do not create the jobs, what does?
A healthy economic ecosystem — one in which most participants (the middle class) have plenty of money to spend.
HSBC laundered money for Mexican drug dealers and people with ties to terrorists. They were fined, and no one is going to jail...because hurting HSBC would just be too scary for the financial markets. Too big to fail all over again.
I wasn’t going to be bribed off my story, but I understood their panic. Here, after all, was a group that included many of the executives whose firms had collectively wrecked the global economy in 2008 and 2009. And they were laughing off the entire disaster in private, as if it were a long-forgotten lark. (Or worse, sing about it — one of the last skits of the night was a self-congratulatory parody of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” called “Bailout King.”) These were activities that amounted to a gigantic middle finger to Main Street and that, if made public, could end careers and damage very public reputations.
I wasn’t going to be bribed off my story, but I understood their panic. Here, after all, was a group that included many of the executives whose firms had collectively wrecked the global economy in 2008 and 2009. And they were laughing off the entire disaster in private, as if it were a long-forgotten lark. (Or worse, sing about it — one of the last skits of the night was a self-congratulatory parody of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” called “Bailout King.”) These were activities that amounted to a gigantic middle finger to Main Street and that, if made public, could end careers and damage very public reputations.
It's like the real life skulls, only much more exclusive. Amazingly, they didn't kill that guy as I would have expected.
I wasn’t going to be bribed off my story, but I understood their panic. Here, after all, was a group that included many of the executives whose firms had collectively wrecked the global economy in 2008 and 2009. And they were laughing off the entire disaster in private, as if it were a long-forgotten lark. (Or worse, sing about it — one of the last skits of the night was a self-congratulatory parody of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” called “Bailout King.”) These were activities that amounted to a gigantic middle finger to Main Street and that, if made public, could end careers and damage very public reputations.
It's like the real life skulls, only much more exclusive. Amazingly, they didn't kill that guy as I would have expected.
i skimmed the article but did come across that part where they were throwing him out. he probably could have said "give me a million and i won't publish" and they'd get it taken care of that night. pretty amazing how money is like pennies to them.
i dont know if i could handle reading the whole thing. im sure it would depress/annoy me.
Well that's an interesting article. I'd like to think it gets out, blows up, and changes the world. Reality is it won't and that's the most depressing part of it.
I couldn't sleep last night and ended up watching this documentary. It's a pretty good recap, imo, of the who/what/where/when. It's made clear the subprime mortgages were toxic and largely led to insolvency. I kind of wish they had explained how much capital of the troubled institutions were tied up in these worthless packages. And, I wish I understood why inter-bank lending was so important. But, regardless, this is a pretty good recap, imo.
Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be investigated, New York University’s Stern School of Business Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Albert Metz, a managing director at Moody’s Investors Service, wrote in a draft research paper.
“The structure of the benchmark is certainly conducive to collusion and manipulation, and the empirical data are consistent with price artificiality,” they say in the report, which hasn’t yet been submitted for publication. “It is likely that co-operation between participants may be occurring.”
The paper is the first to raise the possibility that the five banks overseeing the century-old rate -- Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Nova Scotia, HSBC Holdings Plc and Societe Generale SA -- may have been actively working together to manipulate the benchmark. It also adds to pressure on the firms to overhaul the way the rate is calculated. Authorities around the world, already investigating the manipulation of benchmarks from interest rates to foreign exchange, are examining the $20 trillion gold market for signs of wrongdoing.
