Why does America hate Wall Street?

By Mouser the King Cat

  Why does America hate Wall Street? Then why doesn’t everybody convert their 401(k) plans IRAs to all-cash? (OK, we know the answer, but dead money might be better than eroding money. Just sayin’.)

            Politicians see hay to be made. Attack ads from both parties target Hillary Clinton, who also badmouths Wall Street but comes off like the scandalous fraud she always has been as she accepts boatloads of Goldman Sachs cash.

            A passionate defender of Wall Street is Ben Stein. From The American Spectator:

Wall Street is a group of firms and individuals that perform a vital service. They sell income streams from corporations to people and groups who need income. They take the income from the XXX Corporation and sell it to John Q. Public or the West Virginia Coal Miners or to your parents’ estate. They might be thought of as a giant irrigation system that sends water from a river -- corporate earnings -- to the thirsty farmers -- people who will need income to retire or to send their kids to college or to pay for nursing care.

They also arrange for new entities to raise money to pay for starting up factories or mines or Internet facilities. They also arrange for corporations to merge or to acquire other entities that will throw off cash.

The immense majority of the time, they do this on the up and up. They are paid well, to be sure. So are NFL quarterbacks and Washington Nationals pitchers and movie stars and real estate developers. Lots of people are well paid. We mortals marvel at the income of a man who can throw a football beautifully but we don’t hate him. We are impressed by the wages of a woman who can run a big Internet firm well but we don’t hate her. I wonder why we are told to hate Wall Street in particular so much.

So there you have it from the public speaker and author and lawyer and economist and comic actor and commentator and I’m tired of typing all the stuff he has done or might do. His highest-profile gig at the moment is on “Cavuto on Business” on the Fox Business Channel, where he should be counseling some fellow panelists on how to use their indoor voices.

My favorite story about Mr. Stein involves the game show in which he was both co-host and contestant. The original pitch consisted of four words -- “Win Ben Stein’s Money.” The show ran from 1997 to 2003 and launched the TV career of a young man transitioning from radio. That would be Jimmy Kimmel.