Quote from Michael Hudson:
We live in a capitalistic society, and much of the world does too. If you’re going to have capitalism, then you’ve got to have capital, and you’ve got to have organizations like Goldman Sachs that are in business to take capital from savers, people who have the capital and want a return on that money, to the people who need it all around the world, and that’s what they should be doing as opposed to gambling with our money but you need to have that functioning properly for capitalism to exist.
Ok, I don’t know about you, but every investment account I’ve ever looked at says “may lose value”. Nowhere is it guaranteed that our investments will make money, thus they are a gamble. I’m not sure if Mr. Hudson was just talking to fast, or didn’t quite articulate his point very well, but it sounded an awful lot to me like he was advocating more regulation on where investment firms can put our money. Now, the context of this quote is a discussion surrounding the occupy wall street movement on Democracy Now podcast(about 52 minutes in is where this quote is), so I’ll let you draw your conclusions. I don’t think there is ever going to be an answer to this that makes everyone happy, when you invest in wall street, you are taking a risk, the size of the risk depends on what you invest in. If you let other people invest your money for you, you are still taking a risk, they aren’t guaranteeing that they are going to make money for you. In this case, as in all others where things exchange hands, buyer beware. You had better do your homework on who you are investing your?money with, as I shouldn’t be bailing you out if you don’t (nor vice versa). I don’t think there can be any other answer, look at what’s happening when they try to regulate the investment industry. People think that because it’s being regulated, they don’t have to do their due diligence selecting an investment firm, then you get what we have now, a lot of people p-o’d because they got the wool pulled over their eyes and fleeced. So is more regulation the answer? Why would it be? That’s what happens whenever government starts sticking its nose in places it doesn’t belong. “Oh, our rules made things worse? Well, here, have some more rules to make it better.” Then everyone’s resources are spent trying to follow the (more…)
