Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Alchemy and financial innovation

Alchemy is the supposed technique of transmuting base metals, such as lead and mercury, into silver and gold by the philosopher's stone. It never happened. Many people were cheated over the centuries.

The modern form of alchemy is "financial innovation". It has led to massive transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the investment bankers, and to the collapse of the global economy.
Posted by at

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wealth transfer from the ordinary man in the street to the rich using the insurance agents , the salespeople , the RMs as the CONduit.

September 08, 2009 10:09 AM
Tan Kin Lian said...

The investment bankers of today are similar to the alchemist of olden days. The investment bankers promise investors that they would make a big gain on their investments (e.g. subprime mortgages, hedge funds) but make the investors much poorer.

The alchemist promised to make gold out of lead and collect the fees from their clients, and never delivered on the promises.

September 08, 2009 10:59 PM
Anonymous said...

Sounds like the PAP government. They are not very different from the money managers. They say we will do this and this for Singapore, and in the end, all that resulted in they have grown rich off the people of Singapore. They give themselves multi-million salaries but their performance is jaw droppingly poor. In fact, we have more problems compared to 20 years ago.

September 13, 2009 6:13 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Blog Archive