The Wall Street guys you're disparaging are actual businessmen - people who legitimately make money.

On the other hand the "Cleantech" folks are glorifid panhandlers. Their entire business model is based on how much free money they can get from government handouts, not providing goods and services to people who would voluntarily purchase them.

And that's the real difference.

"The Wall Street guys you're disparaging are actual businessmen - people who legitimately make money."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! This is a joke, right? You're being sarcastic? The finance industry is built on a few fundamental premises, none of which have anything to do with "legitimately" earning money. Among the basic tenets:

(1) Federal laws discourage "defined-benefit" pensions and strongly encourage "defined-contribution" pension plans, which leads to

(2) A percentgage of all working-class people's income being siphoned off and given to "the Wall Street guys," who

(3) Give that money to really, really rich people and corporations to gamble with, after taking a certain percentage off the top for themselves -- and maybe another percentgage from the rich people to help them gamble with your money.

The bulk of the money that comes from working people and goes to rich people is not, contrary to the Wall Street myth, being used to make the economy; it's being turned into casino-style "financial instruments" which are nothing but an extremely complicated Ponzi scheme at which the rich people and "the Wall Street guys" simply CAN NOT LOSE, because (a) they're already rich, (b) the money they're pissing away is not theirs, and (c) the day after your 401(k) turns to shit, you make another contribution straight out of your paycheck because you have no other choice. Oh, and (d), if and when the whole house of cards collapses, they point out that -- due to their successful efforts at evading all meaningful regulation -- they are "too big to fail," and therefore taxpayers had better bail them out or else they'll destroy what's left of the economy.

In return you get, for example, IPOs that only rich people can subscribe to on the first day, which are then sold to your mutual fund a day later at a prodigious markup; you get one set of investment advice for "the little people" and another set (often diametrically opposed) given to the very wealthy in advance so they can profit off of the advice given to the little people; you get an interlocking system of boards and "compensation committees" that ensure insane compensation packages for top executives regardless of whether it's in accordance with the desires or best interests of the shareholders; you get unregulated futures and commodities markets that drive the power of oil and energy through the roof just long enough to bankrupt entire states; you get "credit default swaps" that are nothing but naked bets on financial transactions the parties have no direct interest in, leaing to the creditors of bankrupt auto makers refusing to accept a discount on bonds because they, and a bunch of other people who never had anything to do with the bonds themselves, can make it all back through the bets they placed with international financial bookie AIG -- and thus the US govenment pays them twice, once when it bails out GM and once more when it pours endless rivers of cash into AIG to keep it afloat (because if AIG went under, rich people who gambled someone else's money on bond defaults wouldn't be able to collect).

And of course while all of the "investments"-slash-wagers are made with the money of working people, the profits all stay with the gamblers. It's a sweet system if you're one of "the Wall Street guys" because there is essentially no way to lose. You can only win.

And the government better not seek to fix any of that even after the fact! Meddling socialists. It's sort of like being raped, wherein the rapists persuades the government to legalize rape, and then gets the government to bring him a steady supply of victims, and then expects a thank-you card from the people he raped -- and anyone who suggests resisting is threatened with death.

I appreciate your black humor but frankly, it's getting harder and harder to laugh about "the Wall Street guys" these days.

I look forward to the second half of your post, in which you discuss the clean-tech people.

Also remember that the idea of stock ownership as means of retirement didn't feel quite so silly before the bottom fell out of the market... and remember who (starts with "S" and ends with "lick Willy") set us up the bomb on that one.

(Google "someone set us up the bomb!" if you missed it in 2001.)

Great post, rocket88. The next post from horolog, -- it wasn't even in the 90's that all this movement to change the banking system and workers relationships with their employers occurred. All these changes were instituted or begun in the 80's under Ronnie Ray-gun.

Rocket, this is spot on, wish I could recommend a reply. When I first started really looking at the Wall St situation after the crash, I was completely shocked at just how much everything is rigged in their favor.

You're right, they can't lose. Thank god the crash happened before some Republican got in office and followed through with their plan to turn Social Security over to Wall St (like Bush wanted to do during the last Repub administration.) At least that stupid idea will be off the table for a loooong time.

To the OP: Considering the fact that most of Wall Street collapsed or almost did because of a combination of negligence, incompetence, hubris and some fraud, I think you are making a difficult argument. I don't think Cleantech plans on operating as permanent panhandlers, I think they are looking for funds to start up projects that will pay for themselves in the future.

Rocket88: There is a lot in your post that everyone can agree on: the compensation committee good old boy network, the bailouts which use public funds to backstop private rewards, the problem of too big to fail and all the little injustices which have slowly made it too easy for the "rich to get richer" in this country. But I want to point out where I think you are throwing around the blame too carelessly. For one thing, if you think defined benefits are any better than defined-contributions then you don't know anything about how pension funds work. Despite problems, 401ks may be the lesser of two evils and I don't know of many that are compulsory. Also, the hysteria that surrounds unregulated energy markets and commodity speculators is completely misunderstood by the public

"too easy for the 'rich to get richer' in this country"

I don't want to make it any harder for anyone to get richer in this country. Any regulation on who (other than criminals) would be arbitrary and contrary to the role of government in protecting our pursuit of happiness. What I don't like to see is the poor getting poorer, but fortunately the quality of life for the poor has been improving with our infrastructure (roads, labor efficiency gains, computers, etc.) with stunning reliability since the end of the Great Depression, which, by the way, was farcically analogized to our current situation over and over by both sides of the political spectrum. Mass starvation, anyone? No?

I like the idea of decreasing taxes across the board. I'm in a group that donates to feed the deserving poor on a monthly basis and I would like us all to be able to afford more of that. I think the path to social justice would hasten with this, but perhaps I'm just not jaded enough.

There's something about that here, too:

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Actual businessmen my ass. The large banks get all their money supply from the government (at 0 interest), and then they charge interest on that cash, even though its printed out of thin air. Basically free money.

Theres absolutely nothing free market about the banking system.

Rocket88, are you bitter?

1. So the Federal government creates a bad regulation- so that is wall st's fault

2. It is not being "given" away. You can choose not to enroll and build your retirement yourself. You can create and IRA and be your own "Wall St Guy."

3. it is not gambling, again you can do this all yourself.

To your other points

a) there is no law stating a poor person can't invest your money. The "rich" people managing 401ks are not the best paid. Most 401k managers are on the low end relatively speaking.

b)This point is just dumb- of it isn't theirs. Then again you don't have to use them either.

c) Yes you do. Call HR and say I want to stop all my contributions to my 401k. You can also choose a better 401k, with a manger that does better.

d) The mutual funds were not the point of failure. They were collateral damage, just like unemployment.

Your post has a few contradictions: First it too much overbearing Fed regulation then it is too little regulation. You also complain that the rich have access to IPOs (technically it is not the rich but institutions) yet the "little people" are shielded from access to hedge funds for their protection. You complain about government intervention only endorse it later.

You then go off topic: Compensation packages have nothing to do with investment practices, futures markets rarely have anything to do with 401ks, ditto with credit default swaps.

Then wild assumptions: profits stay with gablers while the poor working people suffer- boohoo

You leave out many facts: the whole mess was created by fed policy (low exchange rates and homes for poor people), yes the wall st guys leveraged too much- but so did the average Joe (credit cards, 2nd mortgages, home equity loans,etc), most business I know do not force you into a 401k and you can refuse to participate, the evil rich people suffered more (percentage wise and dollar amounts) than the 401k crowd.

Investing is a bit of a gamble- if you don't like it go put your money in a nice CD that earns a whopping 1.50% or a government bond from CA which results in a IOU or just stuff your money in your mattress. Did you think the 28% returns would last forever? Yes the Wall st crowd got burned by overextending, but they were not the cause of the collapse- they just trusted the government cornerstone Feddie and Fanny which were corrupt to the core. In any case if you are a young or middle age investor this shouldn't matter too much in the long run and if you are near retirement you shouldn't be too affected because your 401k should be mostly bonds and or cash. Investing in the stock market is a heck of a lot safer than investing in a local business. In any case no one made you do it.

You have to overlook a lot of reality to cling to those illusions, Gunsmoke; my hat's off to you. First off, the biggest benefit from your 401(k) is not its market performance, it's your employer's matching contribution. If you want to get that, you have to stay in the employer-backed plan.

Second, there is no such thing as "beating the market," notwithstanding the fact that the people who administer your plan take large percentages of your money based on the notion that they will manage the fund so well that you will more than make up for the fees they skim off the top. That's simply false, over the long run; as has been well-demonstrated, even a stock-picking monkey can beat the market sometimes (and beat the well-paid "Wall Street guys" most of the time).

And as my earlier post pointed out, you can't win with a do-it-yourself approach, either. The system is rigged. Ever try to subscribe to an IPO? How much capital do you have to invest in single stocks? What influence will your 2 shares of Citi Group have on curbing its insane compensation policies? And what is your stock in GE worth when there are "sovereign wealth funds," hedge funds, etc., placing unregulated, off-the-books wagers on whether it defaults on its bonds or not? Not to mention the ability of all of the large investment banks to make money on short sales whenever they want, by simply taking a short position and starting a rumor.

So you can't opt out. Not many defined-benefit pensions anymore, Social Security is not meant to be enough to live on, and even if you were willing to give up the employer match that comes with your company 401(k), an individual investor who isn't handling a fund at least in the high nine figures has zero chance of competing fairly in an unequal system.

The best you can do is to go into an index fund; they charge lower fees and in the long run you won't do any worse than any other fund.

No sense even trying to address your repetition of the falsehoods about poor people and Fannie Mae causing the economic collapse; one thing I've learned is that once someone has absorbed that bit of right-wing idiocy, facts, logic, and reason have nothing whatsoever to do with the conversation.