Global Financial Crisis = Conspiracy to get our money out of our pockets into the banks pockets

Let me just start by saying that this post is entirely my personal opinion and merely seeks to vocalise my slowly forming position on this issue. I would be grateful for anyone's feedback - both for and against, particularly from anyone with a better grasp of economics and finance than I have.

I do not place the blame at the door of any specific group such as NWO, Masons, Illuminati or even Lizards but I think that in common with many conspiracy theories the reality of the issue can sometimes be obscured by the more outlandish reasons as to 'why'.

I will start by outlining some of the issues - As I said before, please feel free to chime in and correct me.

Toxic Debt and the bubble that bursts

We hear that the root cause of the current situation is the buying and selling of collateralised debt between various banks and that once prudent banking organisations all seemed to try and get a piece of this pie, due to what seemed like a never ending opportunity to make money. Where did this money come from? From ordinary people who, by previous reckoning, wouldn't have been allowed a mortgage but were encouraged to get one from the highest level.

This has also been promoted in a socioeconomic way by the popular concept that we should all get property and we aren't really moving on in our lives if we don't own a house. Where did this come from? Why can't a young couple countenance having a family without hitting the milestone of owning a house first? How many of us were successfully brought up in rented accommodation without our parents feeling that they are spoiling our lives in some way?

Anyway, for some reason the banks decided that a risk that they would have avoided in the past was now palatable and not only that but a source of significant income. If this was good business, why hadn't they done it before? There seems to have been a step change for some reason.

A function of any market is that it sets a value on 'things', generally linked to a number of factors such as supply and demand, its potential future value and its intrinsic value - with intrinsic value being the most significant to this argument. Look at the 'dot com' bubble of recent times; any chancer with an idea was suddenly floating business that had paper values of billions with intrinsic values actually very low (or even negative) - Look at even successful ventures like Facebook - They have a paper value approaching $8 Billion at last reckoning but the company's only means of real income is advertising (or similar issues such as selling your data).

Consider what you would get for $8 Billion in terms of a manufacturing business with real assets such as Intellectual Property Rights, plant, factory buildings, stock etc - what would you have to 'shake a stick at' - much more than you would if you spent the same money on Facebook. If times get tough with your manufacturing site - you could sell 'stuff' and liquidate your assets but the point is that you have 'stuff' to sell. What happens to Facebook? The bubble bursts and what was 'worth' billions is now only worth a few servers and some rented office space. Who tells us these things are worth billions? Bankers. What makes them worth billions? The driven up share price bought by institutional investors spending our money from investment bonds, pensions and superannuation policies. This is real money that comes from your wages but where does it go when the bubble bursts? Into the pockets of other bankers - it doesn't disappear like the inflated share price. A share that your 401K bought for $10 one day and is worth 45 cents the next still cost you $10 - Has this money gone up in smoke? Like the law of physics that states that energy can't be created or destroyed, it only changes state - has this money been 'created' and then 'destroyed' when you worked an hour for that $10.

This seems like a massive version of 'find the lady' to me - where we are the suckers.

Too Big to Fail - Have some cash

We have heard the phrase 'too big to fail' applied many times over the last few years. Why is this the case for banks and financial services companies when it has not been the case for manufacturing for the last 30 years?

Many people compare the current situation with te Great Depression and the Keynisan 'New Deal' policies that resulted. Certainly the US is still gaining value from the infrastructure that was built 90 years ago and provided much needed jobs and market stimulation. Where are our taxes being spent now? In schemes that will provide value for generations to come? No, it seems that our leaders do not have the vision beyond preventing the collapse of banks that brought us to this position in the first instance.

Why no application of market forces in this instance? Why isn't the government letting the banks collapse? Surely they would merge and acquire each other in the normal way when times get tight? That has been the doctrine of the last 30 years? It can always be said that the saying 'every cloud has a silver lining' is a good analogy for life since there are rarely events that do not benefit someone. Are our leaders trying to convince us that this situation does not fall into this category and that all of the money lost and the many billions that will be wasted on bail outs are not benefiting someone?

Where is this money going? This is money you have worked for, could hold in your hand, could spend at the store - instead it has been invested by others, often without your knowledge, into 'stuff' that has no intrinsic value. When this is discovered and both you and the banks have made a loss, the government hands more of your cash to the banks (who lost it in the first place) but none to you.

Where I come from this sounds like a swindle

Putting it all together

So far I have concentrated on current events and while I may have got things wrong (feel free to point this out - constructively of course!) I haven't made too many conjectures beyond asking questions. Now I will try and delve the 'why' issue. As I said before, I have a difficulty with linking this to any particular theory other than the 'enrichment of bankers'. I would struggle to say that shifts in the economy of this scale are still about the enrichment of individuals and have to be related to ideological issues. Sure people can be motivated by money but could an individual (or group) really be motivated by so much money that it has no practical purpose beyond being probably already 'rich'.

When you lose money on a fair bet and then see the bookie driving a nice car, you understand the mechanisms at work here and can then choose not to bet again or be more determined to 'break the bank' and beat the odds. Whatever your choice, it is your choice.

To me, the current situation seems like a means to strip money out of our pockets without giving us the choice. In the past we could choose to invest or not, with the ability to stick the cash under our beds if we choose. This left a whole section of the world population removed from the bankers grasp. Then times changed and pensions linked to the stock market arrived and soon we were all investors, whether we knew it or not. This still isn't good enough for the bankers though, now we need to get at the money through an enforced means such as taxation where people have no choice but to give money to the banks.

This time, however, there is no parallel to seeing the bookie with the nice car - we can't see who benefits from all of this and this is what scares me the most:

With no obvious winners from all of these losers and the size of the sums involved (meaning that the winners would be more obvious if they were up front about it like the bookie) - what is the motivation behind what could be a global banking conspiracy that has been enacted over 30 years, involved sociopolitical change at the highest level and is making many billions disappear into thin air through actions that do not seem to fit in with any 'common sense' laws that may exist in this universe.

Here I turn this over to you; what do you think?