"organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy."

I am linking a great article from Rolling Stone about Investment Banks role in economic crises over the years. This is something I have found incredible interesting for some time. The idea of speculative investments, and the idea of leveraging against yourself in order to drive prices through the roof. I have read a couple of great books about this Ugly Americans and Rigged. Both deal with smart Ivy league kids doing a new style of Wall Street gambling, that basically involves picking something that you know is going to blow up, driving up the price through a bunch of clever and inovative tricks, that the govt has not caught onto, and hopefully gettting out before anyone gets wise. You know I used to think that supply and demand was behind driving prices in the United States economy, but that was before I learned a bit about speculators. It is something I still do not fully grasp and there are only a select few that do understand what these guys are doing. However, I think they are dangering Capitalism as we know it, much like the Andrew Carnegie's, James Vanderbilt's, and John Rockefeller's of the world. Much like those guys I think it is time for the govt to step in and put an end to some of these trading practices. I know how un-republican of me...

I think this is a must read. Link