I think part of the problem is that there's a whole lot of people out there who can't quantify how much wealthier the people feeding them the "Creating Jobs" stuff are. See: http://videosift.com/video/Most-Americans-Unaware-of-Growing-Concentration-of-Wealth at the 1:40 mark. Everyone thinks they are middle class that's a 29k avg neighborhood and 140k neighborhood, 3:30 repeats it again....they think the majority of Americans are middle class.

I'd venture to say that many people in that crowd are there, not because they understand that the people working on wall street dwarf their salary probably by a factor of 4 or 5 in the lower paid white collar jobs and up into the 100+ factors when they get into the upper positions. They are there because they want what they had back, and they can now see that Wall Street or at least the mentality of Wall Street has in a very short period of time affected many aspects of their lives.

If they could still afford a place to live, food, and have a decent job, they probably would have never noticed the long term erosion of the system by those with the money and power...twisting it so they took more of the pie and left the middle and lower class to figure out how they will afford their house (debt which in turn shifts more money up the ladder).

I mean most people who have jobs right now, the only information they care about on unemployment is when it comes from someone they know who they consider to be a "useful employee" and not their stoner brother, etc. And even then it's probably "These things happen, you'll find another job." until they are still unemployed 6 months later....maybe they were just lazy. 12 months rolls around and they are still unemployed? Now it starts to scare the living shit out of people, especially when another friend or family lost their job a month or two back. When it looks like it might affect them personally is when they care, and by that time it's been 1-2 years of people they know going unemployed at various times...working at McDs or Walmart because there's nothing out there.

http://videosift.com/video/Food-Speculation-Explained

Showing another way the Wall Street mentality is just giving us all a good screwing. Instead of these folks taking their talents to create something, they leech off of the people doing the work and drive up costs while creating massive uncertainty for everyone involved.

http://videosift.com/video/Elizabeth-Warren-The-Coming-Collapse-of-the-Middle-Class

Shows that people were experiencing bankruptcy more often that you would assume, but were able to hide it. Plus the general fixed costs being increasingly higher over the years with no overall salary gains to offset them.

http://videosift.com/video/Paul-Krugman-Income-Inequality-and-the-Middle-Class

Showing that they have been on the union bust kick for 30 years now at least, and it's something unique to the US because Canada in a similar global economy still has the level of unionized work force as the US had 30 years ago. Education has nothing to do with the income disparity. And the income disparity was fixed by policies put in place during the 1930s and early 40s. Which have been removed layer by layer since then, with increasing frequency in more recent history. And he points out in the video that the highest paid hedge fund manager makes more in a single year than 88000 NY teachers do in 3 years, my recounting of it might be off a little it's near the end of the video.


http://videosift.com/video/Multi-Millionaire-Rep-Says-He-Can-8482-t-Afford-A-Tax-Hike

Then you have this knucklehead talking about 200k to feed his family and how he can't afford a tax hike because it will prevent him from investing in store improvements and openings (that make him MORE money, so yeah..). Jon Stewart covered this in a much more funny way and how stupid the argument being made is. I'll re-iterate my take on this though. If they can't create jobs with the money they have coming in now after all the other tax deductions over the years, and all the opportunities before this day to do.....they will not do so. It's a fool's bet to depend on some guy who can't demonstrate how he has created jobs in the last 2-4 years in some meaningful way and how those low taxes make it possible to do so. Taxes would pretty much force him to reinvest in his business because if he tried to take it in profit he'd be paying a chunk of it out in taxes.




I think the most profane thing about this country right now is that people who want to work can't find work. And those who are working, especially blue collar jobs have a bunch of white collar guys speculating on their production....every thing that blue collar guy makes/produces probably has 10 or more white collar guys trying to make a buck off of it. It's like a house of cards, except the support structures are the very few people who still put out useable materials. It's crazy how something like that was let run wild, with more and more of the regulation taken away so they could stack even more cards onto the mess. The money isn't to be had in production, it's made in speculating/futures/etc...and it's just massively crazy to realize that all the middlemen are allowed to drive up the costs of oil/food/etc instead of cutting that shit out through regulation.

Nope, you're thinking of alpha managers in investment banks. Speculators are the risk takers in derivative contracts and act as the counter-party to those hedging (transferring risk away).

In the example they give of the farmer and the miller both are effectively looking to minimize risk with the farmer worried about a price drop at harvest date and them miller worried about a price hike on purchase at harvest. They exchange their risk and in effect both of their potential gains and losses are cancelled out as in doing so they have established a fixed price.

In practice it doesn't work as neatly, you may have a lack of willing counter-parties to the farmer if prices are expected to go up and the miller does not wish to lock in a price. This is where speculators step in to take the counter-party position. The point is though, without speculators or someone to take on this risk, there would be no way to hedge or transfer risk away (or the margins would be considerably higher) so speculators fill a vital role without which there would be greater risk and uncertainty.

The video is quite confusing in that it then goes on to refer to the intermediary as a speculator without properly explaining that this only applies while the bank has not found a willing counter-party speculator to sell the contract to. If they choose to retain the counter-party position themselves though they are of course speculators.>> ^Darkhand:

Can someone tell me why we need speculators? In all seriousness I just want to understand. Please correct me if I am wrong but speculators just seem to me to be people who tell investors how to invest their money so the investors doesn't have to do research themselves?

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>> ^Darkhand:

Can someone tell me why we need speculators? In all seriousness I just want to understand. Please correct me if I am wrong but speculators just seem to me to be people who tell investors how to invest their money so the investors doesn't have to do research themselves?


It's partly in the video. Speculators help farmers and people who use farmers' goods by pre-purchasing and pre-selling harvests at fixed prices. That way, a farmer knows exactly how much his crop will be worth when he harvests it, and a bread company or whatever knows exactly what they will be paying for the next batch of incoming wheat/flour/etc. The speculator studies the market and establishes a price both parties are willing to pay, even though neither party has produced or consumed the good yet. These are called futures.

This stabilizes food sources, which is a good thing. The problem is when people speculate on the speculators and sign all sorts of promises to pay each other depending on what happens...these are referred to in common terms as "bets". Yes...they bet each other on the outcomes of food production. It gets made to look complicated with lots of legalese, but it really isn't very complex.

>> ^Darkhand:

Can someone tell me why we need speculators? In all seriousness I just want to understand. Please correct me if I am wrong but speculators just seem to me to be people who tell investors how to invest their money so the investors doesn't have to do research themselves?


so rich people can get richer?
leverage is all fine and dandy... but that's why you NEED government, to limit/inhibit actions like these... ie to protect the INTERESTS OF THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE... not the few

the concept of FREE MARKET ECONOMICS completely collapses once entities arise that have enough money to fundamentally change/inhibit free market action, whether through purchasing of politics, monopolization, or simply buying out the competition... supply/demand becomes secondary in the equation, and fantastic, there's no one there with the power to stop it... and don't expect those benefiting from it to control themselves... the actions of Wall Street over the last 30yrs can't be plainer proof of this

its ironic that most people that tout FREE MARKETS use NATIONALIZATION as the alternative... in the extreme... both are facism...

don't believe the propaganda and brainwashing, the most humane and sustainable economics lay somewhere in the middle...

its just sad that until the tragedy that the 3rd world is facing because of this type of economics is visited upon 1st world countries... nothing substantial will be done... because the politicians don't work for the people... they work for business... and business has no morals... only limitations, which are slowly (and moronically) being eaten away by the call for small government and the hijacking of libertarianism

"its nothing personal... just business"

Thanks for the promote!

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