Quote of the Day: Wall Streeters are there to help themselves make money

If you have money, you will know one thing about the financial industry. It is largely parasitic.

A parasite attaches itself to you and drains you of your blood. Its interests are at odds with yours.

The stockbroker, for example, wants to encourage you to buy and sell – when that is precisely what you shouldn’t do.

And the fund manager, the dealmaker and the structured products engineer – they all make their money by encouraging you to spend yours… often on things that make little sense.

Wall Street sells dreams… hopes… and pies in the sky.

Sure, its labor force tends to dress well. They often go to the best schools. They are smart. They are presentable. But get close enough, and you will see they struggle to mask the moral strain of flogging hopeless investments to people who they believe were “born yesterday.”

Wall Streeters are not bad people. They are not dumb people. Neither saints nor sinners, they are just like the rest of us. But their industry encourages a huge fraud: That they are there to help you make money.

They are not. They are there to help themselves make money.

How?

By taking it from YOU.

The financial industry is very large and very profitable. The service it pretends to provide is helping to match worthwhile investment projects with the capital they need. The service it actually provides is separating fools from their money.

But the financial industry isn’t equally bad to all comers. It reserves a special zeal for the “suckers.”

(bold and italics original)

This is from Agora Publishing’s founder and president Bill Bonner published at the Wall Street Daily. 

The above is an example of the principal-agent problem or the agency problem as previously discussed. Of course the participants are not just direct intermediaries mentioned above as this should include Wall Street appendages or indirect participants (e.g. information intermediaries etc.), but most importantly it involves the major beneficiaries of "separating fools from their money": specifically governments and publicly listed companies supported by their patron: again the government.