AEBak Wall Street-enak dira, Wall Street-ek eta Wall Street-erako prestatuak[1]. Horixe esan nahi du erreskateak, ez besterik[2].
Aspaldian ekonomian bi sektore nagusi baziren ere, FIRE[3] sektorea eta ekonomia erreala, FIRE hedatuz joan da, etengabe[4].
Izan ere, Randall Wray-k dioenez, orain dena da FIRE[5]. FIRE da nagusi nonahi[6]. Erregulaziorik gabe kapitalismoa lapurreta bat da: iruzurrak nonahi azaldu dira[7].
[1] Ikus http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2012/02/03/30-trillion-to-promote-crony-capitalism-the-fed%E2%80%99s-bail-out-of-wall-street/.
[2] Wray-ren hitzez: “…that is what it is taking to rescue Crony Capitalism—an America of, by, and for Wall Street. It will take more. Much more. (…) This will not stop—so long as we have Crony Capitalism, the Fed and Treasury will need to keep shoveling dollars into the bottomless pit.”
[3] Ikus https://www.unibertsitatea.net/blogak/heterodoxia/2007/07/01/fire-sua-ote/; https://www.unibertsitatea.net/blogak/heterodoxia/2007/09/16/fire-sua-ote-inflazioa-langabezia-eta-fire-delakoa/; https://www.unibertsitatea.net/blogak/heterodoxia/2007/10/08/sua-fire-ote-burbuila-finantzarioak/.
[4] Ikus http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2012/07/23/why-were-screwed/. Wray-k dioenez, “After 1990 we removed what was left of financial regulations following the flurry of deregulation of the early 1980s that had freed the thrifts so that they could self-destruct. (…) thieves took over the financial system.”
[5] Ikus http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2012/07/23/why-were-screwed/. Wray-k dioen moduan, “…they took over the whole economy and the political system lock, stock, and barrel. They didn’t just blow up finance, they oversaw the swiftest transfer of wealth to the very top the world has ever seen. They screwed workers out of their jobs, they screwed homeowners out of their houses, they screwed retirees out of their pensions, and they screwed municipalities out of their revenues and assets.
Financiers are forcing schools, parks, pools, fire departments, senior citizen centers, and libraries to shut down. They are forcing national governments to auction off their cultural heritage to the highest bidder. Everything must go in firesales at prices rigged by twenty-something traders at the biggest and most corrupt institutions the world has ever known.”
[6] Honela segitzen du Wray-k:”… everything is financialized as Wall Street has its hand in every pot. (…)
Food? Financialized. Energy? Financialized. Healthcare? Financialized. Homes? Financialized. Government? Financialized. Death? Financialized. There no longer is a separation of the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) and the nonFIRE sectors of the economy. It is all FIRE.”
[7] Honela dio Wray-k: “The top four US Banks hold $171 Trillion [trilioi amerikarra = 1012] worth of derivative deals like this. Derivatives are really just bets by Wall Street that we will get screwed—it is all “insurance” that pays off when we fail. Everything is insured—by them against us.
What is healthcare “insurance”, really? You turn over your salary to Wall Street in the hope that should you need healthcare, they will allow your “service provider” to provide it. But when you need the service, Wall Street will decide whether it can be provided.
Oh, and Wall Street’s undertakers have also placed a bet that you will die sooner than you expect, so it wins twice by denying the coverage.
Finally, US real estate—the RE of the FIRE–underlies the whole kit and caboodle. That is the real story behind the GFC: given President Clinton’s budget surpluses and the simultaneous explosion of private finance, there simply was not enough safe federal government debt to collateralize all the risky debt issued by financial institutions to one another back in the mid 1990s. Wall Street needed another source of collateral.
You see, all the top financial institutions are dens of thieves, and thieves know better than to trust one another. So lending to fellow thieves has to be collateralized by safe financial assets—which is the traditional role played by Treasuries. But there were not enough of those to go around so Wall Street securitized home mortgages that were sliced and diced to get tranches that were supposedly as safe as Uncle Sam’s bonds. And there were not enough quality mortgages, so Wall Street foisted mortgages and home equity loans onto riskier borrowers to create more product.”
