I don’t claim to be an economist, in fact I keep away from economic traditional thinking and I have been using the term ‘intelligent common sense’ as the only way to appreciate our economic realities.

The banking system performs a useful function in facilitating the exchange of goods and services within our local and global interconnected economies. However, it is my contention that in the last decade the banking system loosened up this important intermediary economic function and created too much money. The Initial Public Offering (IPO) of new corporations have raised ever increasing capital, huge loans have been used to sustain unprecedented acquisitions and mergers, and a sustained environment for buying stock was artificially manufactured by investment banks.

Yes, corporate greed has been the culprit for the increasing economic gap between the rich and the poor, and the banking and investment system must be blamed along with the Enrons and Worldcoms of our global economies.

The U.S. real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at a rate of some 4% during the 90’s, yet sociologist Kevin Phillips points out "The total value of stock ranged from 30 percent of GDP to 90 percent of GDP as the economy expanded and contracted after 1925. That is, until 1994 and 1995, when stock values began an unprecedented ascension that reached 225 percent of GDP in 2001!"

The stock bubble was there, the banks knew, every plutocrat knew, and people at large didn’t know.

References

The World This Week: America the Plutocracy. The return of voodoo economics. By Alan Bisbort, Published 08/01/02 http://www.newmassmedia.com/nac.phtml?code=har&db=nac_fea&ref=21426