It seems to me that the real problem with the markets is that there needs to be more transparency. And therein lies the rub. If everything were completely transparent, you’d have very little money to be made as the value of a company would be as objectively based as possible. However the more obscured and hidden these things become (like those ridiculous financial instruments) the easier it is to make money. The way you make money in the market is by buying a stock before it goes up. Now why would you do that? You buy things because you have reason to believe they are going to go up. Really in the end it’s a war of information. The more you know about things the better prepared you are to act on it. Whoever has the best information is in the best position to make money off of it.
I don’t know if we should necessarily have government in the mix telling banks what they can and cannot do. But how in the fuck is the market supposed to regulate itself when they’ve gotten into a position where nobody actually knows what the hell anything is even worth anymore? If the government can somehow impose transparency and somehow ban these redirection tactics that make such information less clear then I’d say we don’t need the regulations.
But this is all the result of decreased market transparency. I think that’s what we need to focus on in this country more than anything now. We need more transparency EVERYWHERE. The “oligarcy” has run away with greed and power and really fucked us all over. We need to keep tabs on their asses to make sure this shit doesn’t happen again. I just think we need to make everyone keep their books open. That way we won’t have these problems in the future.