an overview of the financial markets & their economic/political role...

...the US financial system performs dismally at its advertised task, that of efficiently directing society’s savings towards their optimal investment pursuits. the system is stupefyingly expensive, gives terrible signals for the allocation of capital, and has surprisingly little to do with real investment. most money managers can barely match market averages—and there’s evidence that active trading reduces performance rather than improving it—yet they still haul in big fees, and their brokers, big commissions. over the long haul, almost all corporate capital expenditures are internally financed, through profits and depreciation allowances. // doug henwood, p.3, wall street