> did the large banks really attack risk systemically? Or did they just line up their bets all in the same direction? Again they're banks so they don't really

> did the large banks really attack risk systemically? Or did they just line up their bets all in the same direction? Again they're banks so they don't really line up their bets at all. Like you said, they are mostly making connections. I'm like 75% sure that I'm using the term right if I call them "market makers" when they do their job of making connections. And as market makers, they make money by brokering transactions, even in the abstract sense of the word. So they can make good markets or stupid inflated markets. A good market is loaning to businesses that want a little boost in growth and packaging that risk for investors. A bad market is lending huge amounts to people while using the house that they are paying off as collateral (sub-prime) and then packaging those assets in a hundred ways and telling your salesmen to push it, making the whole system so complicated that no one knows whats really going on. Most banking actions live in the middle of that. begin_rant{ Speaking of global risk again. I need to look into it more but the biggest banks play a huge role in making the market in foreign investment especially the relatively new area of "emerging markets". I really think this ends up fucking over small developing economies on so many fronts. * The American/European money crowds out domestic investment, but then at the end of the day when the small country's currency starts inflating (it always does), the debtors owe their debt in dollars which is a terrible situation. * American/Euro money might suddenly disappear when there is an American market scare. Small countries are so small that a blip on the American market can rock them into a crisis. That's why things that only temporarily shocked large companies and banks in the US changed entire political regimes in Argentina and Indonesia in 2001. Can you imagine an entire country (big ones!) more vulnerable to the market than a single US corporation thats actually being publicly traded? * Politicians are humans. What inevitably happens is one political party in a country gets tons of under-the-table (with 21st century nuance of course) money by opening their country up to US investment. Monsanto and Rio Tinto and Starbucks move in and no local companies will ever compete again. History has not been written yet but I have a bad feeling this is what Mauricio Macri wants to do all over again with Argentina. Argentina will become a more favored subject nation to the global powers while the Macri family gets rich. He will deal with a few short-term economic problems while sacrificing the future of the nation to exist without the tyranny of globalization. } end_rant (excuse me)