Good Finance, Evil Finance, Occupy Wall Street, And Mike Markkula

The preceding discussion should make it abundantly clear that poorly regulated, greed-crazed financial systems can cause serious damage to the economy. The Great Depression, which was initially triggered by a stock market crash and later exacerbated by a massive wave of run on banks by depositors desperate to get their money before the banks went out of business, painfully illustrated the scope for colossal damage. A frenzy of greed-driven financial speculation drove up stock prices to unsustainably high levels, and it was only a matter of time before they came crashing down to earth. The failure of the US government to decisively help the banks made things much worse. Similarly, the greed-driven wave of so-called financial innovation — the kind of innovation that tries to repackage garbage into gold — that preceded the Global Financial Crisis devastated the global financial system and severely disrupted the flow of credit to the real economy. Thankfully, the US and the rest of the world learned well the lessons of the Great Depression, and intervened boldly and forcefully to shore up the banks, averting a re-run of that apocalyptic horror show…