Is it possible to fix our economy so Main Street AND Wall Street are happy?

[yurbud]

It seems pretty clear that bankers, brokers, and hedge fund managers are willing to tolerate some re-regulation, but by picking the likes of Geithner, Rubin, and Summers, Obama is trying to reassure them that they still get to make up their own rules.

But is it possible to make them happy without grinding the rest of us into hamburger?

Or should they go in the grinder?

[lostnotforgotten]

1. Sadly There Is No Easy Fix - It Will Get Much Worse Before It Gets Better

eom

[Idealism]

2. Stocks go up when businesses make better than expected profits

They do this by cutting their overhead (equipment, rent, employees) or inventing a new product that people want or need.

What is easier to do, firing and outsourcing your employees or inventing "Google?"

Wall Street does not have the average American's interests, never have and never will. They look out for number 1 at the expense of the yearning masses.

[yurbud]

6. what Obama said about bookkeeping tricks with government budget is doubly true for Wall St.

We have to take the reward out of running Enron-like shell games.

[knowbody0]

3. what greater good do they serve?

seriously, we should be going into survival mode and eliminating waste.

[yurbud]

5. to be waste, they'd have to be the byproduct of some useful function, like digestion

they are a couple of steps below that.

[baldguy]

4. Yes - do everything to save Main St.

Wall St is just a parasite feeding off the rest of the economy. They should be happy to steal a few drops of blood now and then.

[PM Martin]

7. Lulu and Brazil has been able to make both sides content

up to this point. Brazil is of course a developing nation.
Different factors are at work there.
These days, we must tell Wall Street and Company to F**K Off!
What is good for Main Street will be good for Wall Street in due time.
When Main Street comes first, when Main Street prospers, then Wall Street will follow.

[yurbud]

8. they need a ritual humiliation, emasculation, and a real effort to find their hidden assets

[PM Martin]

9. We know where their "hidden" assets are

They are in Switzerland, the Carribean, and off the coast of England in Jersey.
Now how do we get to them?

[yurbud]

12. Obama's Justice Dept. is already going after Swiss UBS LINK:

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/8-0&fp=49a31eb0070dbe74&ei=8nujSeTGDaXYgAOt9oC3Cg&url=http%3A//uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKWBT01063320090212&cid=1303849147&usg=AFQjCNHKOuh1BAnTtCaE4MTdQarkuqJgSw

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/business/03irs.html?ref=business

[lib2DaBone]

10. We need new ideas..leaders that think "outside the box".....

The old ideas are not working.

Obama needs to get tough...the Republicians still control the media and they will do everything they can to derail the economy.

[whoneedstickets]

11. The end of public corporations....

..Something disastrous happens when corporations go public.

Typically started as 'one person's' dream, once a company is sold to the public it ceases to retain any semblance of the ethics, motivation, attention to market and customer orientation of the old firm and instead becomes a money-making venture that could just as well be completely divorced from the primary business of the original.

The CEOs, lackeys of the venture capitalists and hedge fund aristocracy, are welcomed into the 'club' as long as they make maximizing shareholder value priority #1. Concepts such as long term planning, sacrificing for growth and responsible stewardship are jettisoned for the siren of quarterly earnings reports.

Vision, when it exists, is only in its debased form, fixated on market manipulation and creative accounting for everything from derivatives to depreciation. Attention to product quality, customer service and employee relationships becomes secondary to maximizing cash flow (that's all the 'real' side of the business is good for)so that this 'income stream' can be 'leveraged' into some financial 'instrument'. After all, it is in these capital markets (and not on main street) where fortunes are made.

[yurbud]

13. I completely agree. Microsoft, Walmart, just about any other mega-corporation

started out as a decent business.

Then when it went corporate and the original entrepueners faded into the background, the sociopathic behavior sets in.

What we ought to do is encourage the co-op model, so businesses will at least be less likely to outsource jobs since the decision-makers are the workers themselves.

Unfortunately, it looks like part of Europe's war against Yugoslavia was about destroying that businesses model, which was just a bit too successful for corporate comfort.