http://www.newscientist.com/...-that-runs-the-world.html

SOL is ranked too high

what are you some sort of communist

http://youtu.be/ZPV_8gM5pVs

drink it.

DRINK IT!!

i've always had a problem with running anyway. glad they can do it without pain.

If they are really running the world they are doing a pretty bad job IMO... :P

The problem is that they don't exercise control on each other but their stability is directly connected.

they aren't really 'running' the world more than collectively they own a large portion of the world's investments. It's a well known fact that in general stocks and other investments are not widely held and this impacts the stability of the system. The issue is that these companies are all from the same general industry and an event that impacts that industry severely is much more likely to cascade. When the boomers retire we are probably going to see an example of this when all pension funds have to start selling assests as people cash out.

The article is nothing really new other than a formal ranking at a moment in time.

As an aside, many of those companies own what they do because they are borrowing money from their customers to invest or holding money collected from customers sort of "in trust" to pay future liabilities. It's large contributor to economic success. But the price is economic stability. Without this system we may as well go back to feudal times where it took 200 years to build a cathedral.

The question is are we better off with more financial institutions but smaller ones? That's not an easily answered question.

END THE FED TOO!!

Ron Paul rEVOLution 2012!

Read your history: Booms and busts happened about every 3 years in the US before the Fed was created, because before the Fed each bank was an individual entity. Look up the Panic of 1876 - that happened before the Fed, and the world took over a decade to get out of that one. Simply saying "end the fed" means nothing without your proposal for what to replace the system with.

And don't give me "Free markets will figure it out!" -- because quite frankly even the current situation is an example of free markets NOT figuring it out. Yep -- over 80% of the bad loans from 04 onward (original definition of Alt-A and lower) were originated by UNregulated PRIVATE companies. And yet.. thanks to the bailouts you have backstopped them.

If anything, instead of talking about "groups that run us" -- you should be focusing on "corrupted by money from corporations" or "Not." The big fight is not liberal/conservative but rather oligarchy vs republic.

we must vote for a supreme chancellor!
someone strong!
someone deep in knowledge of the dark side!
then and only then can we be free!

AxA is #4!

I knew it!

Its the Illuminati!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/...-movement/article2203026/

the fluffuminati!

Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

I think you're mistaking where the loans originated with the repackaging (or in some cases multiple repackagings) of the loans as derivatives sold with exceedingly high marks (in fairness, they were rated based on geographic, income-based, and a multitude of factors--except they didn't encompass the theory of the bubble or a system-wide failure).

The argument for the regulated system (Fed) is that it prevents the big crashes. While that may be the case, it also may be significantly hindering the rate of recovery as well. The last problem centered around the theme of 'too big too fail' and yet the tendered solutions only made the same players bigger and increased their abilities to hurt the market/system down the road.

Another point is that we never escaped the boom (bubble) and burst model. We have the same issue except now it's prolonged booms and evidently busts as well. The booms and busts of the path were more associated with industrial production whereas today they're more associated with investments (tech, real estate and what have you). But make no mistake our eventual recovery and subsequent boom will be met with another bust. It is cyclical, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Lead, Follow, or Get The Heck Out Of The Way.

You say it like it is smth baaad in being communist :)

boom/bust cycle is an economic thing and doesn't necessarily pertain to industrial production but rather to almost any good or service. It's more a product of human behavior although arguably it's a product of any kind of competitive behavior. We see the same type of thing in nature with predator/prey.
The general point to "the fed" was initially to reduce volatility... lower downs but in exchange one gets lower ups.

The issue isn't so much a normal cycle. The issue is if you break the equilibrium with too large of a crash. Letting all those banks fail could very well result in that and there is no evidence that recovery would be any faster. NO government can survive a large crash while sitting on their hands, the population won't stand for it. This isn't about ideology as much as it is about not creating a situation like 1920's germany.

um, 1920's Germany kinda had a lost war to deal with, didn't they?

Tovaryschi, news flash: being a communist is 'smth' bad.

During the 1920s, Germany took on so much debt that when the depression started in 1930 and those debts were called, their financial system collapsed entirely. There were no longer the peaks and valleys of a boom/bust cycle (however tempered) -- there was simply banana-republic style super inflation.

The reparations from WWI were part of the reason why Germany was forced to take on that debt-load but the cause of the debt-load is irrelevant. Once it exists, the economy is vulnerable to a crash which essentially ends economic activity.

I think this is what martian is getting at anyway.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.