If you hate bankers and politicians you aren't alone. But you may find it interesting that (aside from these two groups of people being notorious for corruption and greed), you may hate them for another reason - they really don't produce anything.
Now of course, your Captain works in banking and you would be asking him the question, "why are you ripping on yourself?" But in maintaining intellectual honesty I have to admit, the banking industry doesn't produce anything. We provide a service. And that service is risk assessment and capital. Sounds boring, but it's vital to any economy. Why, could you imagine if banks did their job during the build up to the housing bubble that we would not be in this problem we're in now? But that aside, in the end, banks ultimately provide a service that should support the rest of the economy. They should not really become the economy themselves because "banking" is not really a consumable item. It's a supporting service.
Ergo why Henry Ford (I believe it was) said something to the extent of "if banks and finance companies become too big relative to the rest of the economy, you have problems."
So, in my biennial perusal of the NIPA accounts, I decided to calculate the financial services industry as a percent of GDP.
Now, normally at this point in time I would continue on about the ramifications of this, and how this is more proof the entire economy is a debt inflated bubble, but I think we have all been reading Cappy Cap enough now that the economics lesson is self-evident.
Besides, why waste time reading something you already know when you really should be enjoying the decline!
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