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Much of the dilemma we are in can be placed entirely on the shoulders of that casino which Reagan placed on the pedestal - Wall Street. Beginning in the Reagan era all news programs included a report on how Wall Street did on that day, the 401(k) was devised in order to pour average American dollars into it, and it has grown transacting millions of shares daily to hundreds of millions today.
It is dictating how corporations do their accounting forcing
them to show profits on a daily basis not merely quarterly, it is dictating how
corporations operate, it also had a huge hand in those free trade agreements
that have sent our jobs elsewhere, and it has rewarded corporations for sending
jobs off shore as when corporations announce large layoffs of employees their
stock is raised. It actually reinforces joblessness.
To show how frail Wall Street actually is, or rather how controlled it is by big money, recently Bank of America announced it was in trouble. In order to keep the market from experiencing a drastic drop, Warren Buffet put $5 Billion into it, thus the market remained steady. How can anything that can be controlled by a single person be that sound? Is this any different than a casino, where the "slots' are engineered?
Do investors, or would they best be called gamblers, actually have "ownership' in companies they gamble on? Do they have control over wages of Top Executives? Bonuses? Whether to build foreign facilities? Have a vote on who is on the Board of Directors? Can they even ask a question at a shareholder meeting?
How valuable is Wall Street to the economy of our entire nation, not just the wealthy? Is it anything but a means of transferring wealth from average people to the wealthy? How many retirement accounts have been devastated by gambling through Wall Street? Aren't there less risky methods for such accounts, under the mattress perhaps?
