The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: franksolich on November 21, 2008, 09:35:27 PM
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4508284
Oh my.
The large-proboscised primitive.
Cyrano (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-21-08 11:35 AM
Original message
My (horrible) experience on the floor of the NY Stock Exchange
Many moons ago, one of my first jobs was as a page on the floor of the NY Stock Exchange. Pages would all sit together on a bench until called, and then go around the floor of screaming maniacs, collect little pieces of paper, deliver them all to a central point and go back to sit on the bench.
I really had no idea what all of these shouting people were doing, but every time I walked through the floor, I felt like I was in the middle of a madhouse. The hundreds of people shrieking all at once raised my blood pressure, quickened my pulse and set my teeth on edge. I saw two people have heart attacks on the floor over a period of a few weeks.
But here’s what really bothered me. I didn’t see where anything of value was being produced. Both my father and mother worked at places that actually made things. And for the life of me, I couldn’t see what was being made (aside from money) by these people who seemed to be creating nothing more than an ear-shattering din of indistinguishable shouts.
One day I went out to lunch, walked a few blocks to the Staten Island ferry and got on. Staring out over New York harbor, I decided I wasn’t going back to work (except to change my clothes and leave). Although I had no concept of the business being conducted at the NYSE, I had reached the conclusion that there was something about it that was terribly wrong.
I had grown up in a world where people either made goods, sold goods, repaired goods, hauled trash, made electricity flow, drove people where they wanted to go, and so many other tasks that were immediately identifiable. And right or wrong, I reached the conclusion that the place in which I was working had nothing to do with the real world, or the lives of anyone I knew. Little did I know that the horde of screaming maniacs had it within their power to destroy the real world.
Today, I understand the purpose of the stock market. And you can call me a socialist, a communist, or any other name you can think of, but I have never bought a stock and I feel there is something intrinsically evil about the entire concept.
I know that many of you won’t agree with me, but my case rests on the fact that today, Wall Street has driven Main Street into the sewer. No one should have that much power over the vast majority of us.
brooklynite (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-21-08 11:47 AM
Response to Reply #3
7. So by extension, we shouldn't have bankers either?
After all, they just push money around.
Cyrano (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-21-08 11:57 AM
Response to Reply #7
13. Bankers??? I can still remember my fist bank experience
I took out a loan for about $300, but I didn't get $300. I got about $279 because they took out the first payment that I owed them. So there I was, paying interest on some imaginary $300 that I'd never actually received.
At one time, thieves were immediately identifiable. They wore masks and carried guns.
Very few of them wore suits and told you to sign papers that only a graduate of Harvard Law School could understand.
Please don't lecture me about the finer points of banking.
anigbrowl (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-21-08 01:23 PM
Response to Original message
28. What the market does is match buyers with sellers
It's confusing and ugly close-up, but so's an abbatoir (which puts food on your shelf, unless you're a vegetarian), a grain mill (ditto), a coal plant (which generates electricty for you) and so on. If, as you say, you didn't understand what was going on, then that inhibits your ability to make a reasoned judgment about it.
Cyrano (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-21-08 02:47 PM
Response to Reply #28
42. Try reading the OP again.
I didn't know what was going on when I worked at the NYSE, but I do now.
To put it as simply as possible, (if perhaps a bit obscenely), the world is made up of ****ors and ****ees.
Most of those who control the stock market are the ****ors. The vast majority of those who invest in things about which they can't possibly have sufficient information, are the ****ees.
The stock market may have, at one time, and intermittently, been a place to profit by investing in ideas, productivity and the future. Who can seriously make that case today? The stock market is nothing more than a casino in which the house always wins.
Do you really believe that today's market matches buyers with sellers? Sorry, but given where we are now, it has become blatantly apparent that the market's sole function for years has been to match ****ees with ****ors.
The Angry Amish primitive and Oscar Wilde get into it, too.
Arguing about "analogies."
By the way, I wasn't aware Oscar Wilde was that old; I'd thought him circa 15-20 years younger than El Stupido Supremo, Pedro Picasso.
Apparently Oscar Wilde and Pedro Picasso are near the same age.
It was the "fist" "bank loan" for $300 that tipped me off; those haven't been made for decades, unless one's talking one of these paycheck or eezzee credit places.
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In every word he writes he betrays a complete ignorance of the topic that he is discussing.
First and foremost each company that is being bought and sold is a producer of something.
Perhaps what it produces isn`t sought after by the public in which case people won`t buy a stake in the company that produces it either.
Second is that yes there is trading going on and much of it is the greater fool theory (that will always exist) eventually everything should return to the mean which is to say EPS and other things will seperate a good company from a bad.
Now the one thing that could screw all that up is if the government adopts a policy which will punish a company to do business and thus through taxation lower that EPS.
Guess who is the actual ****or (sic) then.