OPINIONS

1. This society is torture for people who don't like gambling.
2. To keep one's head above water these days it is necessary to be a financial whizz kid, one needs to spend as much time studying investments etc. as working. Every aspect of life is becoming a lottery. It is ludicrous. This aspect of life has to be made much simpler.
3. The Stock Market stinks, it is a casino for gamblers.
4. Bankers probably know next to nothing about many of the ventures they invest their customer's money in, all they understand is collateral, balance sheets and ratios. Their analysts only observe businesses from the outside. There is no way that banking should be in private hands, it is too open to abuse.
5. In the good times when the Stock Market is going up few investment managers consistently do better than the market indices. In the bad times it is revealed that they have been incompetently paying too much for shares and their customers suffer grievously. They can remove their own ill-gotten gains from the market and convert them to cash before it is too late and without causing an immediate crash in prices, (because their holdings are small relative to the sums invested by the funds they manage and those held by large institutions), their customers aren't so fortunate. These fat rats must be curbed and controlled or eliminated.
6. Private individuals can't be allowed to select where their money is invested, they aren't qualified to do it, for the most part they are gambling. It shouldn't be necessary for private individuals to be financial experts in order to prosper: even for highly intelligent people, being a financial expert is more than a full time job. All private and institutional investments could be made in a single fund, two or three competing investment teams could then be given portions of this fund to manage, the rewards given to each team's staff would depend on it's performance. Performance would probably be assessed annually, it would have to be measured in an intelligent way to curb the short-termism that currently blights the markets. The staffs of the investment teams could be swapped around to keep each one competitive and their portions of the overall fund could also be adjusted according to performance. The investment teams would have to be given criteria for making their investment decisions that were in accordance with the Government's overall economic strategy. Members of the investment teams would have to have unfettered access to comprehensive details of the operations and finances of all companies and organisations (also trade organisations etc.) operating in this country to enable them to make sound investment decisions. Similar openness might be required from foreign companies invested in.
7. When the Stock Market crashes the stockbrokers of the rich can get their client's money out into cash early without causing the market to go into free fall, because the money they have invested is small relative to the amount invested by insurance and pension companies etc.. Ordinary people who have their money tied up in these institutions can't, they are the fall guys who take the losses. The rich re-invest when the prices are near there minimum and make a killing as they rise again. The financial markets are rigged for the benefit of the rich and the exploitation of the poor, like everything else.
8. Small investors are used as mugs by the rich and the financial establishment, they are the ones left holding all the stock when the market crashes, the bankers and the rich have all converted to cash. Effectively, all the insiders of the financial world probably sell their own holdings to their clients when they see a drop in share prices coming.
9. The main cause of 'boom and bust' cycles is the gambling nature of investment. When the stock prices are rising everybody wants to take advantage and buy, so stock prices rise faster, when it is falling everybody wants to do the opposite so stock prices fall faster, in both cases it is almost inevitable that there will be overshoot followed by a correction that starts the next half cycle, instability and oscillation therefore results.
10. This suits gamblers with plenty of money very well, they can increase their wealth with almost no effort merely by buying and selling at the right times. Provided they don't try too hard to maximise their profits it is almost risk free. No wonder Capitalism is so popular with the wealthy establishment and any alternative so unpopular.
11. These people also welcome the entry into the market of less affluent people with little financial knowledge and little time or inclination to gain such knowledge because, to a large extent, it is those people who destabilise the market by misjudging when to buy and sell.
12. Capitalism benefits rich parasites and harms people who do useful work.
13. Investment shouldn't be left to gamblers (and many investment managers of insurance, investment and pension companies are little more than gamblers).
14. Experts, (panels of experts preferably), with in-depth inside knowledge of particular industries are probably the people best equipped to make sound investment decisions although, of course, they are not infallible and will make some mistakes.
15. When Japan was booming it's investment strategy was controlled to a large extent by a department of Government known as MITI which was somewhat similar to our DTI.
16. Unqualified people should be prevented from choosing where their investments (apart, perhaps, from a small proportion for what they consider to be deserving causes) are invested.
17. Investments should go into a general pool, their destination should be decided by panels of experts (whose performance is monitored and, perhaps, whose tenure is time limited) and the profits from the investments should be averaged before being passed to the investors.
18. The general public shouldn't have to study finance, the stock market, the performance and prospects of every company in the market, the prospects of currencies, futures, junk bonds, gilts, derivatives, commodities etc., etc. on top of forty hours of useful work in order to earn a decent living.
19. People shouldn't have the freedom to interfere in important things they don't understand and could foul up.
20. A significant number of people are now making their living by Day Trading and other forms of gambling on the Stock and other markets. They are not investing, they only hold shares while they are sitting at a terminal trading, they sell within hours, minutes or even seconds of buying if it makes them a profit. They are not doing anything productive, they are parasites. This sort of behaviour must be prevented.
21. It isn't possible to buy shares in the country or the Bank of England, it is only possible to invest in them by buying Government bonds, National Savings Certificates or Premium Bonds isn't it? Government bonds are fixed term loans aren't they? National Savings are intended to be a no risk scheme to encourage the less well off who don't have bank accounts to save aren't they? The Government doesn't often need investment, most of the time it can get all the money it needs by taxation. Would it be better if commerce was financed in this way? Would it be better if it was financed by fixed term loans? Fixed term loans are less convenient than shares for the company that needs money, the borrowed money has to produce a return more quickly. (Can't a new loan be negotiated if necessary, provided prospects are still good.) They are less convenient for the investor because they are harder to sell before maturity, if that becomes necessary? (Bonds issued by companies are traded and their values are quoted on a daily basis just like share prices, aren't they?) The Government should decide the level of investment overall, competing bodies of experts should determine the distribution of the investment. The expert body getting the best results, taking into account long term as well as short term returns, should be rewarded with a bonus and/or a bigger proportion of the total funds to invest. Should the level of investment overseas be returned to Government control?
22. A considerable number of people in this country are probably living very nicely off the misery of thousands of Africans working in the gold and diamond mines of South Africa.
23. The City is little more than a giant casino handling very large bets.
24. What do traders in the City do that makes them so valuable? They buy and sell shares etc. using other people's money to try to make a profit for those people and themselves. If they are successful they are valuable. To a large extent they are gambling.
25. If only qualified people with a proper knowledge of what they are doing were allowed to trade on the City markets there would be no need for most of the traders and a much more stable financial system. The larger an edifice the more mess it makes when it falls. EU Monetary Union, Single Currency. The larger an organisation the more difficult it is to make changes to it.
26. Pensions to be the only long term private investments allowed?

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