This is not an effective argument. The computer software industry is also producing a larger than ever percentage of GDP. In other news, the building wooden ships sector is not responsible for much of the GDP in recent years. Is that a problem?
The private goods-producing sector value added fell 6.4 percent in 2009, after a 4.2 percent decline in 2008. The private services-producing sector declined by 2.1 percent, after a 0.4 percent increase in 2008. The finance and insurance industry grew 6.1 percent in 2009, partially offsetting the widespread economic decline. The increase was primarily driven by the strong recovery of the insurance carriers industry.
From a December 2010 report from the government's bureau of economic analysis.
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/industry/gdpindustry/gdpindn...
So what? Infrastructure isn't inherently parasitic. Lots and lots of infrastructure isn't even necessarily bad.
I view finance as infrastructure. The machinery that hooks investors up with investees is fundamentally useful. The machinery that lets people and businesses manage risk, that lets them define very specifically what gains and losses apply to them in what events . . . that's really darn useful stuff. If it's complex sometimes--even incomprehensible--in order to achieve something, so what? So is software. So is engineering in general.
Some people practice finance badly, I don't doubt; some engineers are snake oil salesmen, too, hiding behind the inherent complexity of problem and solution. The government bailed out finance and that's bad, but it bailed out auto, too. That doesn't make car manufacture generally parasitic.
Those are historical specifics, justified complaints against individuals and events. But I don't see anything here justifies the demonization of the industry in general.
There may be many or even most individuals who are acting in good faith, but the sector as a whole appears to be broken.
This isn't about demonization. It's about pointing out a serious threat to society's continued prosperity.
And as for the auto industry - they shouldn't have been bailed out either - that doesn't somehow make it better that the financial industry was. Also the auto bailout was a rounding error compared to the financial bailout.
What industries are declining, and why do you believe that finance has failed them?
That's a quote from a December 2010 report from the government's bureau of economic analysis.
That's not the general trend, however, that's just a blip caused by the recently ended recession.
http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html
That's roughly the point where GDP growth became positive again.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&...
[edit: can't respond to your post, but June 2009 is also the time period when industrial production and retail sales started growing, and when the stock market recovered.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/INDPRO.txt http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/RSAFS?cid=6 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/SP500?cid=32255 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ALTSALES?cid=98 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/DGORDER?cid=98
The period Jan 2009-Dec 2009 was bad, but Jun 2009-present was a period of growth for most sectors. ]
Well, I don't know that I find that very persuasive. Industries rise and fall all the time, for many reasons; the world is a complex place. Perhaps a useful financial instrument now is keeping things from getting worse somewhere else. Or perhaps it will bear fruit in a decade, as one would generally expect with an investment. Such an argument seems hasty without a good understanding of what the relative growth rates of different industries under different conditions should be -- a rather tall order.
I do certainly see the moral distinction between George Soros' currency manipulation and Warren Buffett's shrewd investment, despite the fact that both men made their money with money. But I don't think it would make sense to reckon their true productivity by comparing their fortunes. Likewise, if one is going to suggest general dysfunction in the financial industry, I'm much more interested in what you think it's doing wrong specifically -- where the growth that you think is unhealthy is coming from -- than how big it is.
To talk in concrete terms, I think I read elsewhere that a lot of the recent growth in finance has been in insurance. It seems sensible to me that if a lot of people have lost money, insurance, and its role in mitigating financial risk, would be more important. Without it, we might see people completely unwilling to take on financial risk at all until they had more money, which would be devastating. At a first glance, I don't see anything unhealthy about such an industry's growth being decoupled from the rest of the economy--or even inversely correlated.
And as for the auto industry - they shouldn't have been bailed out either - that doesn't somehow make it better that the financial industry was.
Oh, indeed, I am not arguing that. Both were terribly bad. I was arguing only that a bad, but specific, historical event doesn't make the industry as a whole fundamentally bad. No one would say, "The government bailed out the auto industry -- making automobiles is fundamentally parasitic on society!" I mean, making those particular automobiles, sure. But all automobiles ever? That's overblown. But people do seem to take the financial bailouts as evidence that the industry as a whole is amoral.
Contrast this with the finance sector. What would happen if Goldman was not bailed out. What investment banking firm would still be standing and what would it look like?
This is an industry that has an increasing percentage of our smartest minds. Add to that its extreme proximity to all money anywhere. The result? It's obvious that this industry is going to drift towards increasingly smart ways of capturing as much of our money flow as possible.
The finance world seems to become increasingly centralized, where very few companies become better at leveraging their size to increase their share of smart minds, money and power. That is the opposite of what competition is meant to do. With all these advantages, it seems insane that the industry needed a bailout.
It's not a few companies being bad. It's a market structure that can only result in bigger banks needing to pay their staff bigger bonuses to compete with each other, getting more power, extracting more money from everybody else. How could it be otherwise?
Economists' whole basis for their arguments is through empirical data and mathematical facts. Saying economists just relies on dreams is absolutely absurd and shows complete ignorance of the field.