[ex-Texan]

The comments at the link are enlightening. Some are terrifying. I recommend everybody click the link and scroll down deep This ought to be obligatory in a sane world. But we live in an insane world where people invest their life savings with institutions with no moral compass whatsoever and all the instincts of organized crime. 'Nuff said.

I leave you with one brief excerpt. The editing is mine:

Now you can see why Goldman Sachs has its panties all in a bind about their little ol’ computer program… That is what investing has boiled down to these days – who can get their order in front of the next guy and get it to the exchange the fastest.

As a long time speculator I used to be proud of my profession but I must say that this new breed of fund managers and their quant boxes disgust me because it feeds into the notion that we are nothing but a bunch of low-life parasites who produce nothing useful. At least we once did a lot of analysis and provided liquidity and served as a conduit for commercials looking to offload risk.

We have now been reduced to a bunch of leeches sucking money out of the hands of those who actually still believe that the markets serve as a price discovery mechanism. Trading/Investing has morphed into a hopped up video game on steroids.

[FromLori]

Why oh why does government sachs join the chorus line for the dollar to fail?

http://bluelori.blogspot.com/2009/07/in-our-hands-anti-fascist-film-from.html

[stephenjohnbanker]

“You sound an awful lot like a shrill from the NYSE. Apparently you are not aware that there is no longer a buyer of last resort in the market, just clever robots who do not need to provide any actual liquidity. And yes, that is a bad thing.”

Interesting the banter between these traders.