Quote Originally Posted by Gandalf View Post
Printing money from nothing and then printing more money based upon the debt that you issue and giving all of the benefits to your rich banker cronies who extract and extract and extract is not exactly capitalism. I call that bullshit.

Capitalism is where you buy and sell things that people need. Wall Street has nothing to do with capitalism and going on the bail outs they have had over the past century they would likely agree. It's cronyism.
Printing money from nothing and lending it out to make a profit -- banking -- is fine. Banking is a necessary thing. Bankers are credit intermediaries. They match borrowers and savers and mean all the capital created by an economy is put to its most productive use.

And there's a case for a well regulated stock exchange where people can invest in shares and even a derivatives market where firms and individuals can hedge risk and plan future costs effectively, insure against losses and so on.

Those things are all good. It's just when we use all the money we make to capture regulators and legislators and that's when things start to go wrong. A well-regulated noncorrupt financial system, great, a big plus for society. What we have now, not so good.