Submitted by: Donald Hank
Bank Revenues Surge on Trading Over What Fed Will DoDiverging monetary policies are creating ideal conditions for banks to make money from trading currencies as Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) to Goldman Sachs (GS) Group Inc. say rising volatility is boosting earnings.“If there’s higher volatility, there’s higher volume and higher opportunities for us to generate revenue,” Bernie Sinniah, the London-based global head of corporate foreign-exchange sales at Citigroup Inc. (C), the second-biggest currency trader, said in a phone interview.
How does a bank
“generate revenue” from such activities?
Remember that trading
is inherently a negative-sum game.
That is, due to the fees and costs not only does someone lose for
everyone who gains the total amount left between
the two participants in the trade is less than the sum of what
the two started with as the exchanges and other
intermediaries all siphon off a piece of the action for
themselves.
At its core all this
activity is non-productive; it is effectively stealing from
the productive part of the economy.
Oh sure,
it’s legal stealing,
but make no mistake — every dollar of this “revenue” is a dollar that used
to belong to someone else and now it doesn’t. In addition the fees
and costs are siphoned off and those are
also removed from the original owner.
There is no “there”
there. And there is no net economic activity that accrues as a
consequence of this activity either. At best it’s a push (the
banksters have some funds and spend them, but the other person does not
and thus does not spend them.)
There’s no “benefit”
here folks.
Quite to the
contrary.
Donald Hank Comments:
Anyone who accuses a middle class person of envy for being angry at the
banksters and their cronies in government who completely
destroyed our capitalist system is himself guilty at least of
insensitivity but most likely of hard hearted selfishness as well. And if that
person has profited from corporate cronyism, then he is guilty of a crime.
There is absolutely no difference between defending the corporatism
(cronyism) that has been stealthily substituted for capitalism
-- and is destroying the middle class -- and saying 'let them eat
cake.' If the middle class ever regains its rightful state in our country,
woe unto the ones who profited from our pain!
We won't soon forget.
Don Hank
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