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Mr AC, it's not impossible to do- it IS called front running and they are getting away with it. If they weren't doing it with computers or they weren't so big, they would have been prosecuted for this.

Google "front running" and "Goldman Sachs". You'll find numerous articles on the subject starting a few months back as people realized what they were doing.

Here...
http://seekingalpha.com/article/150397-flash-trading-goldman-sachs-front-running-everyone-else

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/is-goldman-stealing-100-million-per-trading-day/

I would tend to agree more with the article linked below. Human traders have little or no input into trades nowadays, the big money is in high frequency trading on the margins, when this programs go wrong the impact is quite massive. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/05/high-speed-trading-glitch/

Real money (value) isn't created (poof!) by the state.

Agreed. But in the current system, it isn't the state who creates money - it's banks, in the form of debt, via the mechanism of fractional reserve lending.

Thanks. That was an interesting post. That's what I look for here; stuff I've never heard of, mixed in with thought, and knowledge of history. Given your list, and an understanding of what Wall St.'s been up to lately, couldn't WS come up with a "financial instrument" which encapsulated your "Real wealth" factors? Tradeable shares in the most livable communities on the planet, for instance? See http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/05/cdos-for-dummies/ for an interesting/damning view of how it's done now.

Sorry to others in this thread that deemed my comments "trolling". I consider it "aggressive discussion." Philosophy + knowledge of different spheres + divergent viewpoints == $truth?

Besides, this is /. It ought to be fun, else what's the point?

About there being enough money... This pie chart really says it all, and end all arguments:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bailout-pie.png

A Mars base? That’s literally a drop in the bucket compared to those other “expenses”.

It seems too convenient that the one moment where Obama was openly critical of Chinese leadership occurred during the only public venue which was not broadcast on live television. Those admonishments of Chinese censorship were intended more for us back home than the repressed Chinese people; a political stunt to appear as if he cared about human rights abuses without paying the associated political price of taking such a stand. If you doubt this, ask yourself this: why didn't he make such statements during his two earlier live broadcasts just days earlier?

So continues the Obama Administration's strategy of trying to have its cake and eat it too. It's almost as if a PR firm was elected President instead of a leader. ("Now with more Change(TM)!") On every major policy issue he has tried to split the difference until what remains is an unrecognizable mess, like cooperating with the Chinese to censor his criticism of their... censorship...

He is fast becoming a joke, a self-parodying symbol of a broken political system. Some examples:

• The war in Iraq. Barack Obama made a name for himself by condemning the invasion of Iraq. As a primary candidate, he soon became THE "anti-war" candidate. He promised a complete withdrawal from Iraq within 18 months after election. His solution after becoming president? A "residual force" of more than 50,000 troops which will remain indefinitely. Well, so much for that...
• Financial Regulation. Publicly, the Obama Administration has been very critical of the banking industry and its fraudulent practices which led to the financial collapse of 2008. At the center of the industry's dysfunction is the clear conflict of interest between Savings Banks operating as Investment Banks, which basically allowed these institutions to make bets with other people's money. This was made possible through the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act. The very first step to preventing future bubbles would be to the modest and completely logical reinstatement the Glass Steagall Act. That option, however, is completely off the table, because it would be too disruptive of valued democratic campaign contributors like Goldman Sachs. So, instead, the Obama Administration has artificially supported the flawed banking industry by throwing an approximate 23.7 Trillion dollars, or 170% of annual GDP at it without requiring ANY substantial reforms. Of course, the administration claims reforms are coming, but what leverage is there now? Now invigorated with an infusion of public money, these firms have dramatically increased their lobbying and campaign contributions to prevent any reforms from taking hold.
• Cap and Trade. Publicly touted as a beginning step to limiting carbon emissions, the Obama Administration's Cap and Trade legislation is nothing more than a massive government handout to polluting industries. So watered down with loopholes and handouts, there are serious questions as to if it will even accomplish its stated purpose of decreasing carbon emissions at all, let alone in the next few years.

The list could go on and on including: comprehensive Healthcare Reform (i.e. Medicare for All with Prescription drug price negotiations), limiting lobbyist influence (in his own administration, even!), repealing Don't ask, Don't tell, etc.

All of this, of course, is textbook post-Clintonian Democratic political strategy. The only problem is: this isn't the 90's. The public winds have changed. The information sources have changed. The problems are too big to be swept under the rug. I don't think even Barack Obama understood just how much his talk of transformative change and real progress resonated through the hearts of a disillu

Buffett is a Democrat.

And yes, Buffett did benefit from the bailouts... Not to mention Buffett recently tried to back Goldman's recent proposal to buy tax credits from Fannie Mae. He's not the boogeyman, but he's not the nice, friendly man with a sincere belief in capitalism that he is sometimes made out to be.

would still cost much less than what we spent on banksters.

That graph is bunk and the graph's creator admits that he lies in the graph to get media exposure... In the comments, three pages down: "As the text suggests... this is not the total out of pocket expenditures of the bailout. It represents 'monies spent, lent, consumed, borrowed, printed, guaranteed, assumed or otherwise committed' For example, the 5.5 trillion in Fannie/Freddie mortgages are likely to return at least 95% of exposure"

Yes and so does the $3tn commercial paper programme etc etc... Please don't get your information from disinformation websites, please.

would still cost much less than what we spent on banksters.

Unemployment is just over 7%. During the great depression it was 25%. In the early 80's it was nearly 10%. The unemployment rate has been higher than it is here at least since 1996 in France, is the sky falling there?

Because unemployment is calculated differently now than it was during the 30's.

Workers that have been out of a job are not counted after a certain period of time. Nor are workers that have given up looking for a job or ones that have taken minimum wage part time jobs because they cannot find full time employment:

U3 is the "official unemployment rate" according to the BLS website. Due to this, it is the current measure of Unemployment that gets focused upon by most media, and therefore the public. It has, over the years, slowly excluded many of the factors that USED to go into how the US reported unemployment. Hence, there has been a gradual decrease in the Unemployment rate that has occurred regardless of what was happening in the Jobs market.

U3 is now comprised in a way that merely repeating it without a slew of caveats borders on fraud.

U6, on the other hand, is the broadest measure of Unemployment: It includes those people counted by U3, plus marginally attached workers (not looking, but want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past), as well as Persons employed part time for economic reasons (they want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule).

The U6 rate for January 2009 is 13.9% - far more worrisome than 7%, and far closer to how it was calculated in the 30's. And Roosevelt didn't have to deal with high unemployment AND a nation debt 2/3 the size of the nations GDP at the same time.

More like 7.4 trillion last I looked, so its more like $24,000 per person.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/more-bailout-comparisons/

Personally I'd like to see the banks give an as detailed presentation to congress as the auto industry is today.

Break down of large U.S. purchases here.

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures â" combined:

- Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
- Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
- Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
- S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
- Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
- The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
- Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
- Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
- NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

data courtesy of Bianco Research