Wall Street has no moral conscience. No public values. Zero.
Will never change. Why? Wall Street insiders have one goal: get
personally rich.
How? Wall Street gets rich by stealing money from America’s 95
million investors. Yes, they steal, skim, scam, siphon off your money,
using the neurosciences that a decade ago promised to level the playing
field for investors. But today it’s worse.
Too harsh? No. Vanguard’s Jack Bogle has been comparing Wall
Street to Vegas for decades. He sees gambling casinos with a million
“croupiers” manipulating Wall Street’s gaming tables 24/7, skimming a
third of your returns off the top.
You can’t win. They get richer pocketing millions by betting
against average Americans who work all day. Yes, the games are fixed.
They have zero morals. The house always wins. Always.
And we should go easy on Wall Street? No, they are crooks,
stealing your life savings, skimming, siphoning, scamming you. In his
classic on neuroeconomics and brain science, “Thinking, Fast and Slow,”
Nobel economist Daniel Kahneman uses similar gambling imagery: “50 years
of research” proves the stock-picking skills of fund managers are “more
like rolling dice than like playing poker.” Most underperform. The few
winners rarely repeat.
Worse, Wall Street brain scientists — all the neuroeconomists,
quants and behavioral-finance experts — all believe they’re “making
sensible, educated guesses.” But they “are not more accurate than blind
guesses,” says Kahneman. “This is true for nearly all stock pickers,
whether they know it or not … and most do not.”
Get it? Wall Street insiders don’t even know they are not
beating the market. They are in denial, lying to themselves and to you.
Brain science feeds Wall Street’s addiction, killing its moral conscience
Wall Street’s million insiders are so blinded by their
addiction to getting richer they’ve lost their moral compass. They’re so
deep in denial, so convinced they’re beating the market even when
they’re not, that they must project the lies hidden deep in their
brain’s dark shadows.
So they must manipulate data, hiding the truth from the outer
world, lying in an endless barrage of PR material to the 95 million
investors who are risking (and losing a third of) their hard-earned
retirement money to the croupiers running the casinos.
Folks, behavioral science is not complicated. And the DNA
guiding Wall Street’s brain is simple: Markets go up. Markets go down.
Their DNA loves the action. And they know how to get rich in markets, up
and down. Yes, the casino makes money skimming a third off the top … on
the way up, and on the way down. And the house always wins. They pocket
millions skimming a third off average Americans. Just ask Bogle.
But you already know all of this, right? Wrong. You forgot.
Your brain’s on overload. Wall Street knows you’re vulnerable, takes
advantage of you. Yes, all of today’s “smart technology” is just giving
investors an illusion they’re smarter.
Wrong. Wall Street’s lying to us, transforming us into the
dumbest investors in history. You even forget you’re being scammed, that
Bogle and Kahneman are right: Wall Street is stealing a third of your
money.
Wall Street’s decade-long brain-science “revolution” really has
accelerated the investor’s worst nightmare, with broken promises,
deceit and betrayal. This “new science of irrationality” is a combo
scam/snow job/cover-up. Since 2002, Wall Street’s new neuroscience tools
have failed America in six ways, with dire moral consequences:
1. Wall Street uses brain science to gain even more control of investors
Back in 2002 when Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics we
had hopes for a level playing field. It’s worse today. Kahneman exposed
Wall Street’s centuries-long myth of the “rational investor.” Gave us
hope investors could change, hope the brain sciences would give
investors new tools, new technologies, teach new behaviors, that Wall
Street might even help.
Just the opposite. Casinos and their cohorts were the “first
adapters” of neuroscience advances like high-frequency trading
algorithms and investor profiling in marketing. Plus neuroscientists got
paid big bucks to come work for Wall Street banks, Corporate America,
for politicians … to manipulate investors, consumers, savers, voters and
taxpayers.
2. Brain scientists keep investors predictably irrational for Wall Street
Kahneman proved investors have always been irrational. But
note, he also proved investors brains will always be irrational. Always.
So Wall Street can control our irrational brains using their high-tech
neuroeconomic data, strategies and algorithms.
As University of Chicago Prof. Richard Thaler writes in
“Advances in Behavioral Finance II”: Wall Street “needs investors who
are irrational, woefully uninformed, endowed with strange preferences.”
Why? Wall Street’s a money machine generating hundreds of
billions in fees, commissions, bonuses, options for insiders. Their
casinos will always be one step ahead of you, monitoring your action,
mapping, manipulating your behavior with algorithms that guarantee you
can never beat the market with your perpetually irrational brain.
3. Brain scientists will never deliver on Kahneman’s promise in 2002
When Kahneman, a psychologist, won the Nobel Prize in
economics, there was an implied promise that if investors, taxpayers,
voters simply followed the advice of the new brain sciences, they would
prosper because behavioral economists promised this new science would
make you “less irrational,” in control, and a successful investor.
Get it? Yes, brain science would give all investors the right
tools to become “less irrational,” and more successful investors … but
that would obviously hurt Wall Street’s bottom line.
Sorry, but that will never happen. Never. Neuroeconomics is
based on a false premise: That “irrational investors” can teach
themselves to become “less irrational.” No way, the human brain is — and
always will be — irrational, genetically “irrational,” and incapable of
reprogramming itself. No can do.
And ironically, the more we learn about our irrational brains,
the more we’re just kidding ourselves (with the help of the casino’s
neuroscientists) into believing we’re in control, acting rationally.
We’re not.
Remember, 88% of our behavior is driven by the subconscious,
stuff we don’t grasp but quants control with their algorithms. So they
can manipulate you into making irrational decisions. Amazing isn’t it:
Your brain really is your worst enemy.
4. Brain scientists mislead investors, only help the super-rich get richer
In congressional testimony a few years ago, former Fed Chairman
Alan Greenspan admitted that his capitalist ideology had failed
America: “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of
organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they
were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their
equity.” But there was a huge “flaw in the model … that defines how the
world works.” Except nothing’s change.
Greenspan admitted: “Those of us who have looked to the
self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity,
myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told Congress.
Unregulated markets “held sway for decades,” then “the whole
intellectual edifice, however, collapsed.”
Capitalism failed because it lost its moral compass, and there
was America’s long-term monetary head confessing his guilt.
Unfortunately, it’s worse today.
5. Brain scientists are partisan mercenaries with political biases
Bloomberg BusinessWeek put it this way: All economists,
including neuroeconomists, are political animals whose opinions are up
for sale: “No surprise, the equilibrium school mainly leans Republican,
and the interventionist school seems to be crawling with Democrats.”
In short, all economists are mercenaries for hire who can
“prove” either ideology, prompting “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas
Taleb to predict that the 2008 crash will happen again unless we “build a
society that doesn’t depend on forecasts by idiotic economists.” We
didn’t.
6. Brain-science books are useless self-help pop-psychology solutions
But investors keep asking: Aren’t there some of their books
that will help investors become “less irrational?” Well, the promise of
neuroscience is imbedded in all their books. And they’re by the
best-of-the-best. But don’t be misled by the titles: “Blind Spots: Why
Smart People Do Dumb Things”; “Blunder: Why Smart People Make Bad
Decisions”; “Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior”;
“Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives”; “The Logic of Life:
Rational Economics in an Irrational World”; “Nudge: Improving Decisions
About Health, Wealth and Happiness”; or “Predictably Irrational: Hidden
Forces That Shape Our Decisions.”
Unfortunately, no book can ever teach investors how to make
their brains “less irrational.” It’s impossible, because Wall Street’s
brain scientists will always be way ahead of that illusion … constantly
inventing new technologies, algorithms and marketing tools that’ll run
circles around America’s 95 million “predictably irrational” investors.
So you can’t change. Only Wall Street can change … but won’t.
They have no moral conscience. You should never expect Wall Street to
give up its addiction to getting rich off others … at least till after
the coming collapse, a market megacrash bigger than 1929, 2000 and 2008
combined.
So forget about making your brain “less irrational.” As Thaler
put it, Wall Street “needs investors who are irrational, woefully
uninformed” … and that’s you.
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