What gets me the most is how much everyone buys into the massive ponzi scheme that is the stock market. Look, first you have to realize that most people and entities on the market are only a small blip on the graph compared to the big ones. The central banks, the banks that make up the central banks, and the various offshoot parasitical entities such as financial manipulation agencies and suprainternational corporations, are the real players in the market.

Sure, there are ups and downs, and a decent broker here or an ok hedge fund there may get you a reasonable return during the good years. That's not the point though.

The real point is that it is a massive ponzi scheme that feeds off of the misery and ineptness of the small players, not only that, but the market itself is manipulated as a way to gain much more substantial power in areas such as actual land ownership and commodities.

It's a cycle. Eventually, a few big players who know they have the ability to move entire markets, on a downturn cut losses and on the upturn amplify gains, do so, and then use their gains to grab exponentially more wealth, and power, enabling them to do it even better next time.

It's generally the classic Rothschild-Waterloo move. Nathan Rothschild heard back about Waterloo before even the British gov, caused a panic based off his reputation to get the market to plummet, and then turned around and bought it all up for pennies on the dollar. Market manipulation based on secret knowledge the rest of the market didn't have.

Then of course my other favourite example is the crash of 1907, (also a perfect example of the power elite rewriting history) The way they teach it is that United Copper was the instigator of the crash and JP Morgan was the generous saviour of the day, but the reality is much different. The panic really didn't kick off until Knickerbocker crumpled... and right as it started to, Morgan was the one who removed lines of credit to Knickerbocker in the first place! They were competitors, and Morgan got rid of them.

Then the Treasury intervened and suspended obligatory payments in the large Chicago and NY banks and that was that, the crash was inevitable at that point. Despite that fact, the crash was used to claim that a lack of a central bank was the problem (it wasn't), the National Monetary Commission was formed, which then toured Europe for insight into "proper banking methods".

They came back, had the Jekyll island meeting, and shortly after proposed the Aldrich plan, which got shot down because the public was up in arms against the "money trusts". The big bankers then pushed the Aldrich plan with a new name, aka the Federal Reserve Act, financed some groups to tout how much it was needed while pretending to hate it, and then got it passed on December 23 and signed by Woodrow Wilson the same day!

I could go on about the reasons why I think it was one of the worst things to ever have happened to the US, especially as it has spectacularly failed in its charge to prevent other crashes/panics, but what are the solutions?

I think we need to nationalize the federal reserve, and put control of monetary policy back under the congress where it constitutionally belongs.

Until then, we will continue to see Libor scandals, bailouts, hidden bailouts, crashes and fluctuations. We must address the fundamental problems of our economy before we can even begin to address the ponzi scheme that is the stock market.

edit: To keep it more on topic, I would be interested in seeing papers on the relationship between the Fed and the stock market, which I guess would be centred around interests rates, the federal funds rate, and dollar exchange rates on foreign markets.