Muirgeo also suggests that “the guys at the top took out their big chunks and left everyone below holding loans.” But the guys at the top were the mortgage companies, the ones doing the loaning, which are now going bankrupt and asking the government to bail them out. So how exactly was it in their benefit to make loans to people who would be unable to pay them back?

Derivatives and such are magic. They made houses in my area go up in value by 50% in several years. Then the guys at the top took out their big chunks and left everyone below holding loans on houses that were maybe 1/3 more then the value of the houses.

Here’s a good explanation of the trillion dollar financial heist that no one is talking about.

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1

I guess some guys call this capitalism but I call it high tech robbery and I call the people who defend it simple vacuous shills who contradict their own claims to free and competitive markets.

And though I risk violating Godwin’s Law, I can’t help but point out the similarities between scapegoating investment banking “wizards” who get rich “while adding nothing to the nations real productivity and often taking from it,” and, well, to put it bluntly, Hitler. This is how anti-Semitism begins, not with a bang but with a muirgeo.

I’m sure a lot of effort, hard work and time goes into those Wall Street Wizards trying how to create complex investment products and asset bubbles that get them rich while adding nothing to the nations real productivity and often taking from it.

The facts of how much wealth is accumulated using the government are well spelled out by David Cay Johnston, John Perkins, Kevin Phillips , Joseph E. Stiglitz and many other responsible knowledgeable authors.

Ah but things never change there were plenty of well-to-doers comfortable supporting King George back in the day before the last revolution. At some point you’re really not supporting democracy when you make excuses for such massive non-market, non-democratic concentrations of wealth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

It is not realistic to expect people to gauge welfare of others using as a measure prices of goods they don’t themselves consume. In other words, what matters to most people is the nominal differences in wealth and income, not basket-of-goods adjusted ones – for the same reason that they don’t care about effort needed to earn high income (how much sympathy did people laid off from finance jobs get because their jobs involved long hours and lot of stress?).

Nevertheless, keep up the good work.

And how in the world is success measured in terms of profit increases an indication of a zero-sum transfer?

I see muirgeo’s mastery of logic and economics hasn’t improved much since he fled the comment threads at Cafe Hayek.