Not ready for prime time, come back later!
When the tail wags the dog, the dog is in ... trouble. When a small and relatively insignificant part (the tail) of the whole (the dog) is so powerful that the whole does what the part dictates, something is wrong. Cancer works this way; a few cells begin to multiply out of control and the body begins its march toward inevitable death. But when the tail wags the tail that wags the dog, it is as though a flea in the tail is wagging the tail that wags the dog; here, things are really not the way they should be. The Dog in our parable is the Economy, the national economy or the world economy. The Tail is Finance, or the Financial System. The financial system is those “industries” whose sole “product” is money. Banking, insurance, brokerage and – lest we forget – gambling. All other industries deal in real products and services, things we can actually touch and see and feel; only Finance has no real product and no service that is not an instance of Paul trading money with Peter. Banking pays you interest for your deposits, and gives you loans and mortgages for your promise of future payments of returned principal and the interest thereon. Insurance isolates you from low-risk but high cost phenomena in your lives, like your home burning down or your needing major heart surgery. Brokerage lets you invest in some piece of the overall economy, taking a small risk to get better returns on your capital than would otherwise be available with a savings account from your local "commercial" bank. And gambling, an industry of negative social utility that seduces you into the belief that you can get rich with no real effort and then swallows all your money, but not before assuring you that you will do better next time, guaranteed! This is Finance.
