What's on the Agenda?

Down with Wall Street! Down with the 1%!

While there is no doubt that Wall Street has some issues and tends to encourage traders and analysts who put their egos and personal well being before their clients (unless those clients are worth a lot of $$), change isn't so simple. Obviously, local banks would be a great idea to keep money in the local community, but they wouldn't be able to find the necessary capital to small and large businesses at rates as low as commercial banks.

Without getting too technical, Wall Street makes markets and it won't be government that will change how capital markets operate. Once again, leave it up to tech to solve our problems.

UberX shook up the taxi industry because taxis had a monopoly on transportation and were lazy. AirBnB changed up the rental market. Whatsapp, Facetime, and Google Hangouts are edging us that much closer to abandoning sim cards. It's only a matter of time before all of the industries with monopolies are forced out of their convenient state of comfort.

It will be the new-aged entrepreneurs that have the available technology and know-how to make trading cheaper. Robinhood allows anyone to make free trades as long as they are stocks in the US market (which is the only market that matters anyway). Other brokers can charge you between $2-$10 a trade which basically makes it impossible for any normal person to make money and trade as they see fit.

Wall Street has been greedy and reckless and it would be stupid to tell them to just shut down. You'd be putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work. What will have to change is how they make their money and the kinds of services they're providing to people.

Tech is coming in hot and Wall Street (and other companies) is going to have to change before entrepreneurs, like the founders of Robinhood, give them a run for their money.

At the same time, you shouldn't expect Wall Street to change anytime soon. They have a lot of good friends on Capitol hill and I'm sure their checkbooks are well tied to the people who matter.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

The Wall-Street Demeanor