via Dylan Ratigan

I sat down yesterday with former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to go over some of the ideas in my new book, Greedy Bastards. Believe it or not, there is a good kind of greed, when money is invested to create real wealth, long-term. But that is not what we are doing today.

Spitzer, who went after both mobsters like Tommy Gambino and Wall Street firms, said both sectors “squeeze money” out of a sector, and that there are more parallels there than we would find comfortable. “The mob was at its most powerful when it was a monopolist,” he said. “Each has figured out how to use leverage” and “how to eliminate competition”. The three letters we have to understand to get Wall Street, Spitzer said, are “OPM” – Other People’s Money.

We discussed how naked credit default swaps can be classified and regulated as online gaming, according to controversial figure Dick Grasso, who used to run the NYSE. Spitzer called the swaps market a “cesspool” which doesn’t do anything but let people “bet in a casino without any social utility.” Finally, we talked about how banking regulations are like the water coolant in a nuclear reactor for the fuel rods. Without them… meltdown!

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