By Phil Angelides and Bart Dzivi – Banking in the United States is a heavily subsidized industry. The two primary and on-going sources of subsidy are the insurance of deposits, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, and access to extraordinarily cheap money from the Federal Reserve. And that doesn’t even count the trillions of dollars showered on banks to keep them afloat during the financial crisis.
Betting on financial derivatives, where one party is long the contract, and another party is short the contract, is not an activity that can credibly lay claim to public subsidies. It does not expand capital access for businesses that put people to work and provide goods and services to the economy. It is simply a zero-sum game of chance dominated by a handful of giant banks. more> http://tinyurl.com/crtupbg
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