| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Banks Are Evil
< 
]]>
I don’t talk to my classmates from business school anymore, many of whom went to work in the financial industry.
Why?
Because, through the lens we use to look at the world here at PeakProsperity.com, I’ve increasingly come to see the financial industry — with the big banks at its core — as the root cause of injustice in today’s society. I can no longer separate any personal affections I might have for my fellow alumni from the evil that their companies perpetrate.
And I’m choosing that word deliberately: Evil.
In my opinion, it’s long past time we be brutally honest about the banks. Their influence and reach has metastasized to the point where we now live under a captive system. From our retirement accounts, to our homes, to the laws we live under — the banks control it all. And they run the system for their benefit, not ours.
While the banks spent much of the past century consolidating their power, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 emboldened them to accelerate their efforts. Since then, the key trends in the financial industry have been to dismantle regulation and defang those responsible for enforcing it, to manipulate market prices (an ambition tremendously helped by the rise of high-frequency trading algorithms), and to push downside risk onto “muppets” and taxpayers.
Oh, and of course, this hasn’t hurt either: having the ability to print up trillions in thin-air money and then get first-at-the-trough access to it. Don’t forget, the Federal Reserve is made up of and run by – drum roll, please — the banks.
How much ‘thin air’ money are we talking about? The Fed and the rest of the world’s central banking cartel has printed over $12 Trillion since the Great Recession. Between the ECB and the DOJ, nearly $200 Billion of additional liquidity has been — and continues to be — injected into world markets each month(!) since the beginning of 2016:
With their first-in-line access to this money tsunami, as well as their stranglehold on the financial system that it all runs through, the banks are like a parasite feasting from a gusher on the mother-lode artery.
It should come as little surprise that, with all this advantage they’ve amassed, the banks have enriched themselves and their cronies spectacularly. They have made themselves too big to fail, and too big to jail. Remember that their reckless greed caused the 2008 financial crisis, and yet, in 2009, not only did bankers avoid criminal prosecutions, not only did the banks receive hundreds of billions in government bailouts, but they paid themselves record bonuses?
And the bonanza continues unabated today. By being able to borrow capital for essentially free today from the Fed, the banks simply lever that money up and buy Treasurys. Voila! Risk-free profits. That giveaway has been going on for years.
Couple that with the banks’ ability to push market prices around using their wide arsenal of unfair tactics – frontrunning, HFT spoofing and quote stuffing, stop-running, insider knowledge, collusion, etc — the list is long. James Howard Kunstler is dead on: we don’t have a free market anymore. Instead, we have rackets, run by racketeers. The rest of us are simply suckers to be fleeced.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton recently agreed:
Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like the banking and the health-care sectors just might, said Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton on Monday.
If an entrepreneur invents something on the order of another Facebook, Deaton said he has no problem with that person becoming wealthy.
“What is not OK is for rent-seekers to get rich,” Deaton said in a luncheon speech to the National Association for Business Economics.
Rent seekers lobby and persuade governments to give them special favors.
Bankers during the financial crisis, and much of the health-care system, are two prime examples, Deaton said.
Rent-seeking not only does not generate new product, it actually slows down economic growth, Deaton said.
“All that talent is devoted to stealing things, instead of making things,” he said.
(Source)
As further proof, let’s look at this data recently obtained by Zero Hedge. In the past 4 years, JP Morgan’s in-house trading group has had exactly 2 days of losses:
That’s not trading. Trading involves uncertainty and risk. This situation has none. It’s an extraction process — siphoning value from the market day after day with ironclad dependability.
And it’s not just a few dollars here and there. In 2016, JP Morgan’s daily average trading revenues were $80 million. Per day! That’s nearly $20 billion for the year.
So if not “trading”, what should we call it when a bank can extract tens of billions of dollars a year from the markets, with no downside risk? “Sanctioned theft” sounds about right.
Because for every trade there is a buyer and a seller. If JP Morgan is the winner everyday, who is losing? Turns out, it’s the big pools of “dumb money” that don’t have the cheat codes for the system the way the banks do. These are the pension funds, the index funds, the retirement accounts — the aggregated money of all the ‘little people’ out there. Little people who don’t have visibility into how they’re being constantly fleeced; nor do they have agency to do anything about it even if they did.
So yeah, “theft” feels like a pretty accurate term.
And it’s reached the point where the banks don’t even care about hiding it anymore. If you had a nice inside racket going on, wouldn’t you at least pretend to hide your advantage, to avoid drawing attention? Not the banks. They’re either too proud or too obtuse to conceal it. Look at our string of perfect trading days! Look at our record bonuses!
These boasts fall on the ears of everyday American’s as the modern version of Let them eat cake!
And just like the out-of-touch French monarchs, the banks have positioned themselves as the enemy of the public. For as I claimed at the beginning of this article, a tremendous amount of the injustice in this country can be laid at the feet of the banks directly, or indirectly via the Federal Reserve.
Are you a senior who can’t afford to retire because you can’t live off your fixed-income savings? Thank the Fed’s 0% interest rates for that.
Are you a millennial who can’t afford to buy a home? Again, thank the Fed’s policy of suppressing interest rates and thereby blowing another housing bubble.
Are you struggling to get out of poverty? Are you finding it hard to remain in the middle class? Whatever your income, are you having to work harder and harder to just stay in the same place? See here how the Fed’s money printing, and the banks’ first-position access to it, has created the most concentrated imbalance of wealth in our country’s history:
Are you frustrated with how our lawmakers seem to serve corporations instead of the people? Listen to this mind-blowing podcast of how gobs of lobbyist money, much of it provided by Wall Street, dictates how our politicians legislate:
(Click here to launch podcast)
Whether it’s social equity, the security of your job or retirement, your day-to-day existence, or the fairness of the laws we live under — our fate is currently in the hands of the banks. And, of course, should their behavior trigger another meltdown of the global economy — something we warn about often here at PeakProsperity.com — we’ll have them to thank for that, too.
Yes, the banks are going to keep writing the rules in their favor; and yes, there’s little agency any of us has individually to do much about it. But as a society, we need to start addressing the dire situation we’re in honestly and openly. By whatever path, we have granted the banks far too much control over our lives, and they are taking gross advantage of that. Exactly like a parasite, the banking system is siphoning off our wealth and limiting our freedoms and future prospects — all for the benefit of an elite few.
That’s wrong. It’s immoral. And it’s Evil.
It’s far beyond time to call a spade and spade. The path to change always begins with an accurate assessment of the problem. We need to start using accurate language – like “evil” — when discussing the harm we’re being subjected to. We need to make it clear to our elected officials and to our communities that we understand what the banks are doing and that we find it unacceptable.
We need to make the criticism specific and personal. To JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. To Fed Chair Janet Yellen. We need to turn up the heat on the perpetrating decision-makers, so that the borg-like structure of the banking system no longer serves as a deflective shield to scrutiny and criticism. These people need to feel the disapproving stares when speaking to the public. They need to hear the disdainful boos, and see their faces on the protest signs and nightly media reports.
And if you yourself work in the financial system, I’ll be blunt. You’re part of the problem. Just like my former classmates, I’m sure you’re a very nice person in many ways — but you’re complicit in the banks rapaciousness.
Source: https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/107415/banks-evil
I worked loans for the Bank of Axx-xxxxx after I finished school because I didnt know any better, I made them show me they had no souls before I finally quit. Its for sure, they are usurious gangsters who stole our money and lives. Alternatively, they are Vampiric ghouls, sucking the life out of us. The Christ and Andrew Jackson threw them out. Close the Fed.
Evil abounds but it’s all part of Hollywood that helps hide the truth. It’s not science fiction to conclude that the Hi-Tech, social, political, economic and cultural world of the 21st century is an intentionally fabricated, virtual reality. Governments and their leaders, financial and economic indicators, graphs and sales prices, the news and publications, the social, political and cultural landscape we inhabit, even the fears or prosperous futures we are promised – it’s all part of a grand, complex, intentionally fabricated virtual reality. The distinction between Hollywood, computer games, Facebook and the fabricated façade is blurred or removed and therefore all of humanity floats along like clouds of zombies in a psychedelic haze, ripe for exploitation by those who create and perpetrate this mesmerizing, fictitious situation of civilization today, whether or not we know this and whether or not we like it. We are controlled by THEM.
When dissidents and protesters talk about reform, or revolution, or how the situation must be reverted to the good-old-bad-old-days of the past, they forget that about 99% of American, European and Australian populations believe in, accept and help manage and reinforce the fabricated matrix or reality show they call “real life.” As such, their ability to make any significant contribution to changing anything is neutralized by the very illusionary nature of the construction they want to change. You can’t change virtual reality because it’s intangible, unreal and elusive like a ghost. It’s like Hollywood movies where anything goes and anything happens without any rules, constraints, rational patterns and predictable, controllable events. It’s all just Hollywood and Hollywood isn’t real.
We are conditioned to think along certain contrived and socially accepted lines of thought. We are limited by the realistic looking but fabricated barricades that prevent us imagining and planning alternative, morally ideal, fair and generous types of civilization and ordered systems. You can’t change virtual reality if you are only working with virtual reality. Without knowing, grasping and influencing reality, you cannot change it.
Instead of taking a hard grip of reality and doing something significant in the way of change, dissidents and protesters inside the virtual reality are only seeing, hearing and fighting the illusion, the fabricated matrix. So-called independent financial and political analysts who tell us the situation is unsustainable, very risky and near disastrous tend to forget that they themselves are being tricked by the grand fabricated matrix and are also educated and mentally controlled to think in terms of the façade, even though they might deplore the people at the top of the pile and the way things work. Their distorted information, assessments, projections are the best they can do but also distorted at the core by the fake reality they try to interpret and predict. Cracks or tears these champions of “Truth” and heroic journalists make in the fabric are repaired by the controllers of society as quickly as they appear.
The only time we will ever be able to plan, build and sustain a better world for the next generation in the next age and civilization is when we work actively and consciously towards promoting the collapse and destruction of the existing Hi-Tech virtual reality that controls the minds of 21st century slaves – the 99% of American, and European people if not all the so-called “civilized world.” Decades of indoctrination and mind control must be undone. But that’s too demanding; too hard for indoctrinated mind-controlled slaves. Acceptance of the way things work, compliance and following the herd is much easier. Successful revolution for a better world must end indoctrination and mind-control and that cannot take place until there is a crisis. A massive upheaval of society must first take place before this artificial collective reality that has been created in 99% of human minds will crumble and fall apart. That’s the time to engage people in serious conversations about revolution and change. Until then it’s a waste of time.
Globalists need and pre-planned a massive upheaval of society in the next few years as an essential phase to successfully trick, convince and move the herds of humanity into accepting a New World Order. When that takes place, most people will become disorientated, crazy and violent. Chaos will erupt and hundreds of millions will die; but agents of the New World Order will control and herd the masses into their new slave quarters, servile factory jobs, limited freedom and means of travel.
As soon as this coming massive upheaval of society takes place, that’s the time to engage people in serious conversations about revolution and change. Chaos will erupt as the elite controllers and New World Order are challenged. Survivors of the conflict will be the high-quality elements of society that are needed to plan, build and sustain a better world. Trouble-makers, bankers, politicians, greedy criminals, gang leaders, lazy parasites and malingerers will not survive the chaos and conflict but that will make the task of ordering society in the next world and civilization much easier than the existing challenge in this crazy, greedy, corrupt and irresponsible world we have today.
BIN changes name to “Before It’s Fake News.”
Fake news is posted on and off the Web. The web is full of fake news and BIN is a web aggregate sit of sites. If you do not like he fake news here turn on CNN, read your copy of the times and have your mind blown away by the usual drivel – and you get to pay for it.