Letter writer: Wall Street must Bern

Graphic by Lori Deaton

You can never sufficiently disparage the ethics of most of the stock and financial markets. Many of their big manipulators are compulsively gambling, financial felons, all the more treacherous for believing they’re engaging in a noble ethic: maximizing profits.

It’s bad enough that just direct stock transactions are brazen bets designed to exponentially accelerate consumption on a finite planet whose resources are fast running out. But the side “derivative” bets of the markets that produce absolutely, nihilistically nothing — microsecond arbitrages, credit-default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, commodity futures … the list is gigantic — are about $1.2 quadrillion (1,200 trillions) in gaseous size, compared to the world’s approximately $80 trillion of solid GNP in 2015, according to Economywatch.com.

When these frenzied financial shell games collapse, which they inevitably always will certainly do, the solid economy crashes with them. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act may have slowed this process somewhat, but it certainly got nowhere near abolishing derivatives — as the quadrillion number proves.

To let such a gambling ethic control our economy in an age of rapidly depleting resources and Armageddon weapons is to be led by obviously idiotic, malignant, suicidal insanity.

That is the importance of Mr. Bernie Sanders. He is a hope that the parasitic chaos of Wall Street can be rationalized. No one can be sure he can do it. But at least it’s a hope. Whoever represents that hope should be maximally supported.

So vote for Bernie. Vote to end the vicious financial vehicles by which Wall Street unconsciously strives to turn the world’s population into bloody, starving, snarling wolves ruthlessly fighting over the last few scraps of a carrion planet — all while monotonously, sneeringly chanting: “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”

— Bill Branyon
Asheville

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11 thoughts on “Letter writer: Wall Street must Bern

  1. The Real World

    Yes Bill, you are right to be concerned. Too many people don’t seem to realize that little has changed in the financial markets since the meltdown in 2007-2009. Derivatives continue to be a “dark” market….meaning all of those contracts are put in place privately not on an open exchange. So, who the hell knows what the true exposure is? It’s gigantic, as you say.

    One of the problems is that we have a Wall St Govt. and have had for a long time. Bush Sr and Jr, Clinton, Obama….all of them were/are in the pockets of the bankers. And Goldman Sachs is very accomplished at getting their top-level people into important posts in our Federal Govt. I wish I could share your enthusiasm for Sanders but they will own him too and squish him back in his place if he gets too uppity. No, he would kowtow like the rest of them.

    I think a correction to sanity isn’t going to happen until we’ve had the Mother of all meltdowns. It’s coming; don’t know when but 2016 is a year to pay close attention as the fractures are apparent in many places — oil prices, China, Europe (immigration a very serious issue there that the US media is barely covering), America almost 20 trillion in debt, US stock market is nervous, ETC.

    Can’t recommend this highly enough, titled: The Warning: http://www.pbs.org/video/1302794657/ (runs a bit less than 1 hour)

    Also, rent this as it’s also very good: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/?ref_=nv_sr_6

    And just for some scary fun: http://www.usdebtclock.org/ (it also helps put some of Bernie’s “free everything” into real world perspective.) Lastly, to get even more worked up, do some online research for these keywords: negative interest rates and bail-in

  2. Lulz

    LOL, but he omits that fact the Wall Street is flourishing in this crap economy not on fundamentals, but government money lulz. Also conveniently doesn’t tell us that the crash was because of a housing bubble built on the government insistence that low income buyers should be able to get loans to buy a home. And that the government would back such mortgages. Does that sound familiar LOL. Can you say student loans.

    You just keep on believing HALF the story lefty loons. And that your precious and perfect government can save us all. The same one that kills veterans on waiting list while those who “work” within it get bonuses LOL.

    • boatrocker

      Aw hell, I had to say it- remember who called Reagan’s “trickle down economics’ the BS it really was?
      George H. W. Bush called it ‘voodoo economics”

      I love it when fascists turn on each other- and what’s old is new again! woo hoo!

      • Lulz

        LOL, calls me a fascist, looks the other way when the Clinton’s make bank from cronyism lulz. LOL, calls me a fascist, looks the other way when millions of dollars of tax money is poured into the RAD where a corporate brewery is the centerpiece lulz. LOL, fascist are leftist you fool.

        Say, where did all those billions of dollars Obama claimed were for shovel ready jobs end up??? LOL, calls me a fascist yet looks the other way lulz.

        Go away hypocrite. LOL.

        • boatrocker

          Uh, no, fascism is a far righty thing. Like fasces, the bundle of sticks with the axe used by the Roman Empire? Like Franco from Spain, like Mussolini from Europe?

          Like what originated in Italy during WWI as a reaction to liberalism, Marxism and anarchism?

          And please praytell point out how I referred to you as a fascist? I referred to Reagan and George H W Bush, as clearly stated.

          I’d point to you to various sources that define fascism, but somehow I think your, uh, worldview is chiseled in stone already.

          Hypocrite my ass, by the way- never taken any assistance and don’t drink at hipster breweries.

          And lastly, nope, I will not go away- when you make comments such as you do, I will point out the lack of critical thinking.

  3. James

    “The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money” as the great Margaret Thatcher once said. Wall Street by and large is not the enemy – for every bad apple, there are tenfold more good ones who are trying to grow the economy which creates jobs and allows us to have a lifestyle that is comfortable. Crazy ole Bernie has yet to offer any rationale on how he’ll pay for the free stuff he’s promising all the low information progressives fawning all over him and no, taxing the corporations and punishing Wall Street is not the answer and is not practical. These companies can easily pack up and move to Ireland and Singapore where they’ll be welcomed with open arms.

    • NFB

      And the problem with robber barons is that eventually you run out of other people’s money to steal.

      When we had in place a mixture of market principles with some regulation and something resembling a social safety net — as we did for several decades after WWII you have some stability where recessions occur but are generally short and not too deep. When you go on a rampage to undo those regulations, dismantle that minimal safety net — as we have been doing for the past 35 years — recessions are longer and deeper. The reason Sen. Sanders has managed to earn such a following, especially among millennials despite being an avowed “socialists” is that many of them have only seen the cutthroat, trickle down style of capitalism and have found it wanting. Sometimes capitalism has to be saved from itself.

      • Lulz

        LOL, allows for open borders where many automatically can sign up for benefits and yet doesn’t see that lulz. And blames capitalism yet not the glut of low wage workers from south of the border that have done more damage to pay than anything else. LOL, truly the definition of a lefty looooooooooon! LOL.

        • NFB

          LOL. And who is welcoming that “glut of low wage workers from south of the border”? Capitalists with dollar signs in their eyes who see labor as nothing more than another commodity to cut costs on to drive up their profits at the expense of others lulz.

  4. The Pontificator

    Bernie Sanders is a career parasite in his own right. He has spend his life being a professional victim.

  5. c

    ” If you are young and not liberal, you have no heart; if you are old and not conservative, you have no mind”.

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