Ezra Klein: One of the world's biggest bond traders (PIMCO co-CEO) is all for Occupy Wall Street

[highplainsdem]

His tweet here

http://twitter.com/#!/ezraklein/status/124882918605721600

links to this blog post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/financiers-for-occupying-wall-street/2011/08/25/gIQAypFwjL_blog.html

-snip-

For those who don’t know el-Erian, he’s a co-CEO of PIMCO, one of the world’s largest — and wealthiest — bond trading operations, with more than $1 trillion under management. Despite being based in Southern California, PIMCO and its leaders are titans in finance. So I called el-Erian to ask him what exactly he saw in this movement that is, in large part, dedicated to combating his industry.

-snip-

Mohammed el-Erian: My reaction was colored by two views I’ve expressed already: One has to do with what has happened to finance. In the mid-2000s, the thinking about finance evolved to believing it was a standalone phase in capitalist progression. Society -- in particular the U.K. and U.S. -- bought into the notion that the path of development was agriculture to industry to services to finance. And that explains a lot in terms of people’s mindset. The name of the industry went from “the financial services” industry to “the finance industry.” It lost sight of the fact that it services the real economy. You cannot simply exchange paper.

The other catalyst to my reaction was I was at an airport early, and I saw someone on the TV say the movement was inconsequential and illegitimate. That’s not right. This reflects something that has become more important around the world, which is the desire for greater justice and fairness,.In the U.S., the bailing out of the financial sector was sold on the basis that it would allow growth and job creation to resume, and that has not happened. So the rationale for socializing those losses hasn’t played out.

We have seen these things before, and they go in one of two directions. Either they coalesce around something that begins to influence political elites and encourage a midcourse correction. And that would be healthy. I think we do need a midcourse correction to bring down unemployment. But there’s another possibility that the movement doesn’t look forward, gets frustrated and becomes violent. That would be bad for everyone. So a contributor to increasing the possibility of the first outcome and reducing the possibility of the second outcome is understanding why this movement happened.

-snip-

[AntiFascist]

1. It's great to see the meme: "socializing the losses" used as widely as it is...

in this case, by someone from the finance industry itself. This should remain one of the primary concerns of OWS.

[highplainsdem]

5. I agree.

[Aerows]

2. This guy gets it

And he's right. We do need to a see a correction, and if one doesn't happen, then it WILL get violent. You can read the handwriting on the wall - these folks are so angry they've been there for nearly a month, and more are springing up elsewhere. The corporate media tried to ignore it, but it's gotten too much momentum, now.

I sincerely HOPE that it stays peaceful, and that some real change is affected. If not, though, I don't see how they are going to avoid it spiraling into violence - particularly since the actions of some of the police officers have only served to escalate tensions. People will only take so much before they have had enough.

[indepat]

3. When Mohammad al-Erian and Bill Gross speak, the wise listen up

and heed. :patriot:

[Buns_of_Fire]

4. When "financial services" decided they no longer needed to be a "service" to the

productive segment of the economy, things went to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly. Mr. el-Erian sees it very clearly: Hubris is always followed by Nemesis.

[high density]

6. "You cannot simply exchange paper."

Is there some reason why politicians can't accept this fact? It's time for our economic policy to start rewarding real investment, not speculation and endless money churn.