Replies to post #44488 on Politics and Money

[properlynumb]

There's a lot of welfare going on out there.
There's people who get government checks and then there's the banksters who take wealth away from the population.
Here's a look at where the Big Bucks are-----
('notional amounts' is dollar value that is leveraged with a smaller derivative cost)

OCC’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities
Third Quarter 2011
Executive Summary
Insured U.S. commercial banks reported trading revenues of $13.1 billion in the third quarter, 78% higher than in the second quarter, and 214% higher than $4.2 billion in the third quarter of 2010. Revenues in the third quarter were a record, but overstate actual trading performance due to the inclusion of a significant amount of revenues that were unrelated to core trading activities.

Trading risk exposure, as measured by Value-at-Risk (VaR), decreased in the third quarter as dealers actively reduced risk in the face of increasing global financial risks. Aggregate average VaR at the 5 largest trading companies declined 6.1% from the second quarter to $673 million. VaR in the third quarter 2011 was 8.8% lower than a year ago.

Credit exposure from derivatives increased sharply in the third quarter. Net current credit exposure increased 39%, or $141 billion, to $504 billion, due to declining interest rates.

The notional amount of derivatives held by insured U.S. commercial banks decreased $1.4 trillion, or 0.6%, from the second quarter of 2011 to $248 trillion. Notional derivatives are 5.7% higher than at the same time last year.

Derivative contracts remain concentrated in interest rate products, which comprise 82% of total derivative notional amounts. Credit derivatives, which represent 6.3% of total derivatives notionals, rose 3% to $15.7 trillion.
http://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/trading/derivatives/dq311.pdf

[DesertDrifter]

i was going by the graph you posted, which shows a decline.

You forgot food stamps in your laundry list, btw.

But even if the issue is arguable, it still doesn't paint a distinction between parties on that issue as viewed by statistics. The other was the premise that the democrats have expanded the public sector.

Here is something about that:

Private-sector jobs grow as government jobs decline: Sunday's Numbers
Published: Sunday, April 10, 2011, 9:00 AM

1,656,000: Increase in private-sector jobs nationally from March 2010 through last month, an increase of 1.5 percent, Bureau of Labor statistics show.

356,000: Estimated cut in government jobs during the same period, a drop of 1.6 percent.

http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2011/04/private_jobs_grow_and_governme.html

So the democrats are expanding the public sector, are they?