industry is making bricks, trade is

Post #306,121 by boxley 3/24/09 2:53:11 PM Reply	industry is making bricks, trade is Selling futures on bricks bricks wholesale bricks retail options on bricks bricks short sales and if it wasnt for the above no one would bother to make bricks thanx, bill
Post #306,124 by drook 3/24/09 6:12:41 PM Reply	Question for you If the only sector of the economy that's showing a profit is finance, but they're showing enough profit to make up for everything else, is that economy productive or not? -- Drew
Post #306,129 by boxley 3/24/09 7:00:55 PM Reply	no bricks for you :-) you will have to define the boundries of the economy you speak of take walmart who controls the supply chain from the farmer, to the packer to the frozen food display, they can earn a profit by sqeezing every dime out of the labor of the people in between because they own all of the other pieces. That is their strength, if a walmart store is profitable is it productive? Your question doesnt have a binary answer because of the scale of what you are measuring isnt clearly defined example during the dot com craze where financiers and stock investors oversubscribed the market 100-1000 times the actual value if any of the companies behind the stock, where those companies productive? Right until they shut the door they were. Were they valued correctly? No fucking way, just like google today. The profit that one man gains in finance is the bet minus the cost against another player in the trade with an opposite bet. People bet up huge pots by borrowing against what they had already won and it wasnt until the first guy who couldnt back his call that everyone tried to cash in at once. It doesnt work that way in a card room where everyone bets using borrowed money and it doesnt work on wall street either. thanx, bill
Post #306,162 by beepster 3/25/09 8:26:06 AM Reply	Answer for you it depends on what they are deriving their profit from and which sector of the business you are talking about. If its banking, and they are turning a profit..is that profit derived from loans to the businesses that are allowing them to expand? Allowing them to continue to pay workers through a down cycle? If yes, then the answer is "yes, this is a productive economy". I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
Post #306,179 by drook 3/25/09 12:48:27 PM Reply	That doesn't sound like the last several years -- Drew
Post #306,180 by beepster 3/25/09 1:11:25 PM Reply	Its certainly more complicated and there is a lot of equating "wall street" to banks...which can't be done anymore in a straight fashion...but it certainly is a core function of the entities themselves...and getting clarity around rules (and certainly about what constitutes a "security" and its creation re: derivatives from CDOs etc) is part of what I was speaking of before that needs to be reworked by the Fed to clean things up. I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.

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