Oh Wall Street. What Have You Done?

I read an article in the Washington Post this morning that the U.S. has slipped from fifth to seventh in competitiveness in the world. The ranking is by the World Economic Forum. In it's findings, it exposes a failure of the leaders, that's plural, for past and continued political disputes, as well as business's continued criticism of both public and private sectors. But it was one of the followup comments by (bnkarpus) that I was most impressed with. He, or she, stated "New wealth needs to be created and that is NOT done by Wall Street firms, they only recycle and take a part for themselves." That's a statement I would rank about as high as any single indictment we could use to explain the problems that exist in this country. Not of Wall Street or its work, which is useful to business and industry, but the extent to which Wall Street has taken over the economy of this country. It has become the driving force behind this country. Private equity and derivatives and similar businesses rule how and what this country will do or have. And they spend untold millions to recruit top college graduates and influence politicians to work for them and for their interests. The problem is, that's exactly opposite to what the function of Wall Street, Banks and private equity firms should be, and was many years ago. It's the main reason that in 1929, this country fell into a Great Depression. When the acquiring of wealth becomes more important them the creation of wealth, this country suffers. When you make something, you've created wealth, but when you take that product and finance and refinance and leverage it for all those to profit from it, that only raises the cost of that product for the user. It does not create new wealth like the actual building of that product does. So while we often need to finance and sometimes refinance, it should only be to increase the creation of wealth and not to recycle the wealth, which increases the cost without adding real value.