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The key word here is innovation. Lot of the stuff you described (except perhaps debt securitization) is old and tested. To an outsider like me, it looks like a lot of financial innovation today (the kind that Wall Street does by hiring Physics and Math Phds)is primarily aimed at making a few rich people even richer at the expense of everybody else and provide zero or negative value to society. Why should we encourage that behaviour? Then there is the good kind of innovation like Micro-financing that is done in places like Bangladesh, and that you know, actually is designed to help the common man. Even crowd-funding (is that financial innovation?) could be considered good (although caution and regulatory oversight should be built in). This is kind of innovation seems to be the exception rather than the rule though.

I say financial innovation should treated by govt. with greater caution and suspicion especially when the effects of such innovation has consequences on the wider economy or when it involve other people's money.(Who's bright idea was it anyway, to allow banks and funds to gamble with people's pensions and deposits?)

If you can provide a counter-example to this, that would be much welcome.

edit: And no, I don't think a world without debt securitization would be such a bad thing.



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