I received a message last week from a savvy reader, a former McKinsey partner who has also done among other things significant pro-bono work with housing not-for-profits (as in he has more interest and experience in social justice issues than most people with his background). His query:
We both know that financialization has, among so many other things, turned large swaths of the capital markets into a casino
Here’s my thought/question: is there a house?
The common wisdom is that the ‘house wins’ in casinos
In all likelihood, at least in the great financial crisis, the TBTF banks were the ‘house’… yet, it’s at least a bit different from a casino house because, absent the bailouts, those banks would not have won.
So, who or what was really the ‘house’? Was it the Fed? Did the Fed actually ‘win’?
Naked CapitalismMaybe the ‘house’ is the 1% …. or, more precisely, the .01%???
Who Wins in the Financial Casino?Yves Smith
