Financiers Skim Profits While Main Street Stagnates
With Charles Hugh Smith & Gordon T Long
27 Minutes - 21 Slides
Charles Hugh Smith and Gordon T Long share their thinking on why the
middle class in America has been experiencing a steady decline in their real
standard of living over the last four decades and why the decline has
recently accelerated. Their is a fundamental reason why productivity is
falling while corporate profits soar and the employment participation rates
falls.
The "Crippled" Capitalist System
The Capitalist System is based on the construct that savings are invested
into productive assets which increase productivity and in turn increase the
standard of living of the whole society within which it operates. This
mechanism has worked well for a century and and half. It no longer is
working.
Savings come from two sources:
- Household Savings
- Corporate Profits
Today Household savings borders on being an extinct concept and what there
is of it, is invested in financial securities. Therefore savings to be
invested into productive assets comes primarily from corporate profits or
"Wall Street" financing. We would argue that the capital is no
longer flowing into productive assets but rather being directed to other
venues which are unproductive and fail to increase the standard of living for
society. Be assured how22$100M going to change in their lives?
In fact three approaches today are skimming billions of dollars of that
"savings" from investment that will lead to rising standards of
livings. This is one of the reasons that standards of living are falling for
the vast majority of Americans.
Three of those major skimming mechanism are analyzed in this video:
- High Frequency Trading (HFT)
- Stock Buybacks
- The "Carry" Trade
A Financialized Economy Flows profits to The Fiancial Sector
There is nothing wrong with making profits. However, there is something
wrong in an economy when those profits don't flow into productive assets but
rather "circularly" flow back into financial products.
The Financialization "Skim" is Killing The Middle Class in America
This insidious and effectively "unsupervised" process has
resulted in:
The Results
Falling Real Incomes
The Wealthiest Now Almost Eclusively ReapThe Benefits
The Middle Class Has Effectively Been "Gutted"
There is much, much more in this 27 Minute video discussion which is
illustrated with 21 slides.
