Banking allows us to get mortgages. "Finance" gives us 2% down payment mortgages which are than packaged and sold to Japanese pension funds with currency and i

Banking allows us to get mortgages. "Finance" gives us 2% down payment mortgages which are than packaged and sold to Japanese pension funds with currency and interest rate hedges mixed in... which then go on to screw everyone involved since NO ONE reads or understands the terms of the investment vehicle besides the financial engineers who wrote & sold them. The same holds true for all the points you listed. Fortunately, Capitalism has a fail safe. All this financial nonsense would have been fixed if the banks were allowed to fail in 2008. The US federal government is largely to blame for the continued parasitical rent seeking of the high finance class.