Trump doesn't have investments in Russia. They have investments in him.

Le pen was trounced!!!!!!!!!!

Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of Trump's disgusting worldview and a reaffirmation of justice and globalism.

**** Trump and every one of his supporters. The alt-right can crawl back into thier holes and focus on better ways to see through bedsheets

Well, let's flesh this out a bit more:
- after President Bernie leaves office following 8 years of fighting Wall Street, do book companies stay away from his book like it's anthrax? Or do we think people still want to read books by Presidents in this scenario and that a publisher somewhere decides it's in their interest to give him lots of money to secure that book deal?
- after President Bernie leaves office following 8 years of fighting Wall Street, do we think banks are paying him $400k for an hour of his time?

Like, your basic flaw here is that the book deal isn't about an enormous transfer of wealth from a publisher to Obama. It's an enormous transfer of wealth from people who buy books to Obama, and to facilitate getting a deal done the publisher fronts some of it in advance.

DVaut has a coherent theory here, you do not. What the **** actions is a president going to take like "gee if I'm not friendly to ________ then book publishers might not want to deal with me after I leave office"???

People should read this about speakers that charge hundreds of thousands for a speach. It's not always some nefarious access issue. It's basic supply and demand.

https://priceonomics.com/why-do-famo...000-to-give-a/

It makes a difference that it's Wall Street because Wall Street already has vastly outsized influence on government. It makes a difference that it's Wall Street and he's a Democrat. Unions are supposed to want to hear from him, not union busters. Not only do publishers not have huge influence on government, the publisher will expect to make a profit on the Obama deal.

A book deal could be quite suspect. If Obama got a book deal that was clearly very unprofitable for the publisher and you found that the CEO of Goldman Sachs or of Exxon were behind funneling a bunch of extra money into the deal it would absolutely be scandalous, newsworthy and worth complaining about on 2p2.

And yet Truman and Carter basically refused to do it. They were just virtue signaling? They were just idiots?

They were making different choices in a different historical and economic time.

However, as the article points out it wasn't until Reagan that high paid speeches became common for ex-presidents.

Nice timing on the story.

Imagine how much fun you could have with that if you were James Comey and didn't care about your job.

mehhh. sounds like a personal problem.

It's not religion. There's no mystery to it. It's quite easy to grasp the concept of high finance and the outsized role it plays in the modern economy.

Please elaborate on why you feel the comparison to religion is apt.

To be fair, I'm using the term religion loosely as analogous to belief in the absence of evidence.

Your point is not what I called religion. It was his assertion that all finance is rent-seeking which is trying to increase ones share of wealth without increasing overall wealth. This is just a ludicrous position not worthy of debate.

Fly is an extremist when it comes to the financial sector. He holds a religious belief that the entire sector is evil and out to destroy the world.

To your point, there is no doubt the financial sector has far too much influence and receives too much of the financial pie.

In the 60s finance was like 5% of GDP. Wall Street basically issued bonds for big companies. Now finance is about 20% of GDP. And that growth has benefited exclusively a) Wall Street and b) the wealthy and powerful. The finance bro argument that their super duper awesome innovation benefits everyone is complete bull****.

Really now? Perhaps extremists are all prone to hyperbole, but the market zealots are so sensitive and seem so frightened. Any talk about systematic greed and inherent problems or in antisocial incentives in Capitalism brings such a defensive reaction. It reminds me of how when someone criticizes endemic racism in a police department the reactionaries freak out about it being a war on cops.

It's really a selling point for socialism and anarchy. The only explanation for the incredible fear that capitalists have, even of small bands of peasants sharing land thousands of miles away, is that it really is a vastly better system and they're terrified that the jig is up if too many people see it.

Because there are no alternatives, other than fantasy.

The market is the only viable system of economic organization. We can debate how "free" it should be and there is no doubt it requires limitations.

My point is simply demonizing the entire sector is just as stupid as anarcho-capitalists that think that a totally free market is viable.

Like all things we are debating degree and not kind. Let's stop pretending there is some alternative to the market organization of our economy or that every person working in finance is Bernie Madoff.

All I'm asking for is the same perspective we demand of the right when discussing their favorite bugaboos.

You think getting paid a few hundred k per year creates a "need for graft"?

i forgot that we get Yates tmrw

Your description of anyone else's position is way off. There certainly are alternatives to market organization at various levels; for example, for the whole health care industry. Regardless, that's not the gist of what's been talked about. The finance industry in general being rent seeking is not anything like saying that every person in the finance industry or even the majority of them are evil. There are some structural issues, like fiduciary duty, which are at best amoral and perhaps immoral. Generally profit off money is neither profit off labor nor off the ownership of the means of production; it's much like profit off lending the use of property which sounds a lot like rent to me.

Perhaps that point is arguable, I'm not sure. But characterizing it as fanatical, lunatic, demonizing is pretty darn fanatical.

I think the only person who posts in the Politics forum who might be an absolutist about entirely dismantling Capitalism is Shame_Trolley.

My comment was directed at flys assertion that the entire financial sector is rent seeking. He literally used the term 100%.

Debating degrees is where the interest lies and I'm happy to do so. I've said itt several times that there are big issues with the financial sector.

Read his post again. I'm pretty sure that he specifically attributed it to a general characteristic of the industry as opposed to each individual in the industry.

539 people are directly responsible for the annual allocation of 4 trillion dollars, and have significant influence over how a whole bunch more wealth is distributed. Paying them each a few hundred k per year pretty much guarantees graft.

If we payed the president 50 million per year, senators 10 million per year, and representatives 1 million per year, America would be a much better place.

I would love to see the evidence that beyond a threshhold of say four times the median salary more pay correlates well with less corruption.

How is that different? The "industry" is simply the sum of all people's actions. Had he argued there was some rent-seeking in the industry this discussion would not have occurred.

Why did you delete your post, micro? It was a good post.