The Nobel prize winning economist James Tobin summarized the emerging problems of Wall Street back in 1984. He said “Very little of the work done by the securities industry … has to do with financing of real investment.” Instead of doing the creative work of establishing real assets through investment, Wall Street is doing distributive work of financial assets which is moving wealth from one source to another. “They are engaged in distributing wealth not creating it.”1
The shift in the economy that began during the Reagan era is all about short-term strategies to make fast profits. Economic analyst Rana Foroohar makes the case that the U.S. system of market capitalism itself is broken. She says “that the ...
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