miffed by the swift grift

Letting thoughts about the SAC story and Reader Comments float around in head, last night:

thought --

pure grift
pure.  grift.
"Hedge funds bring NO productive benefits to the US economy, it's "hedge I win, tails you lose".  It's

pure grift

for the wealthy."

= = = = = pure grift
(true grit)...
pure grift -- grift comes from impure dealings -- so the complete and utter corrupt nature of the deal -- the grift -- is pure....the lack of purity is -- pure. ...

And some of those ga-zillions of dollars made in hedge funds etc. has gone toward supporting candidates in both parties, sometimes -- maybe even usually, or always -- from the same donor....

A Commenter last week wrote in -- "So The Citadel Group is involved.  They gave $1 million to Obama in '08, and then went over to the Republicans.  The parasitic psychopaths club is exclusive and non-partisan."...and we've been over that in this blog -- how they give to both parties -- and can give $$ donations to opposing candidates -- some to Obama, some to McCain, for ex. -- (which, in a way, would cancel each other out...but -- the contributor is not desperate for one or the other candidate to win, the contributor wants to have the position of being a significant donor.  Regardless of who wins.

-- in our June 25, 2013, post -- "a genuinely weird campaign"...[bcl excerpt]---------The fat-cat action is still one of the most dramatic aspects of a presidential campaign, but even in this colorful area the tension is leaking away -- primarily because most of the really serious fat cats figured out, a few years back, that they could beat the whole rap -- along with the onus of going down the tube with some desperate loser -- by "helping" two candidates, instead of just one.--------------------[end BCL excerpt]
{Hunter Thompson -- Fear and Loathing:  On the Campaign Trail '72}

Campaign donations are hyped in some quarters as being a Big Bad Thing -- I don't think it is, let Cohen, Madoff, et. al. give money to candidates, I can't afford to....that's their "job"....
And I don't think it means they "own" the politicians.  The politicians (public servants) can still do what they want.
(There's a wonderful scene in the film Nixon which illustrates this -- Pres. Nixon goes to Texas to visit J.R. Ewing -- oops, I meant a character in the movie played by Larry Hagman [sorry] -- and Larry Hagman gets on a roll of basically, the world's changing around me, I'm gettin' older and growlier and I'm rich why can't I have my way every minute, all this environment stuff... and he sort of tries to "muscle" the president, who sets down his teacup and -- let's just say ends the visit.

What the Larry Hagman character has purchased is the "idea" of influence  -- an idea which the contributor "sells" to himself.

Contributors don't own our public servants.  There's a story-line -- "narrative" -- that says they do, I do not think it is a true one....)

====================
And so if hedge funds cheat on the stock market, what are the reasons why that's bad?
1.  did they actually "wreck" the economy? -- if so, then that IS bad
2.  the insider trading causes a situation where the "average investor", or "individual investor" is essentially being ripped off.  the game is, in that case, rigged... and
3.  not only individual investors, but a lot of working people who have IRAs, and don't control where their money is invested...

...do the people investing the IRA money know the insider information, in order to make the playing field level?  well probably not or they'd be arrested too, right?

back to the essential perspective that every time someone
Makes Money
on the stock market, others
Lose Money

and so if some of these folks are cheating, then it's the other investors (both individual, and IRA contributors) who are being cheated -- that's a lot of people....

--------------------------------
There's a received wisdom that you have to invest your money, so that you will "have your money Working For You."

Of course this received wisdom is usually being received
from
a stockbroker or financial planner
who is a person with a job, who's trying to make money from you.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jay Leno:  "They say we're supposed to get our money working for us. ....I kind of feel like -- I'll work -- let the Money rest."

Gerald O'Hara in Gone With The Wind:  "Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts."

-30-