Comments by "MeTube - tacticalvote co uk" (@OneAndOnlyMe) on "Do the people who work in the City of London add value?" video.

  1. They are fund managers so of course they would have have. They manage portfolios of equities that underpin funds that in turn underpin people's retirement plans. I have my pension fund with Blackrock as they are the best at what they do, and because I wanted my pension fund to grow at its fastest rate possible. I'm not concerned about ESG or ethical investing.
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  2. Businesses need to raise capital to grow. People are happy to fund it in exchange for shares in the business. Shares create a market. Nothing negative about it. If people are going to make and sell things to make a profit, then there will always be markets.
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  3. Same, I commuted from Norfolk. The folk who think the City doesn't add value don't have a clue.
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  4.  @archvaldor  Sure they did. London is where many thing happened first before being applied to rest of the UK. Street lights and paving, for example, started in the City and was then used as the pattern by government for rest of the country. Postal coding is another.
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  5. So you mean like shop keepers?
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  6.  @OhAwe  Agree! I would also add that just because we don't experience a benefit it doesn't mean there is no benefit. Much of the capitalism of the west has helped to lift people out of poverty elsewhere - and yes we did it initially to exploit low cost labour, but the labour costs have caught up now, as they inevitably were going to. We expedited the development of under developed economies, and I don't mind that I saw no benefit to me.
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  7.  @HighWealder  That's because China is a) a much bigger country, and b) because it's investing in its infrastructure.
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  8. It's not all "gambling". Much of it is trading along cyclical patterns of supply and demand.
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  9. And, many of the jobs in the City are support roles, for example, for every trader there will be 10 support roles (mid office, back office, tech, legal, compliance, etc). Those are real jobs with high salaries, paying 40%+ tax. The same can be said for the Civil Service, most jobs are the supporting roles necessary to make the whole function properly.
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  10. Keynes could not say that today, not in the 21st century and the globally connected economies that need to trade 24/7. The demand today is for round the clock trading, so much so that many exchanges and platform operate out of hours trading. Trading (equities, commodities, futures, derivatives, currency), mergers and acquisitions, asset management, fund management, venture capital (funding new business and innovation), pensions and insurance products, management consulting services, legal services, technology services (infrastructure and software development). Salaries start at around £75k with decent bonuses starting at around 10% of salary. 1 trader requires around 8 support personnel (mid office, back office, technology, legal). In the 21st century trading equities and commodities, futures and options, is not just for the City boys and girls. It's for anyone who has the knowledge to do so from anywhere in the world. (Worked in technology, interest rate derivatives, JP Morgan; energy trading, BP; consulting, various banks.)
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  11. Most Civil Servants are not on "huge" salaries. Civil service salaries are very standardised, it's not like the private sector where you can move around and keep bumping your salary up every few years. Also civil service covers a lot of things, it's not just Whitehall. Teachers, council workers, the job centre, anything where a service if provided by government, central and local, there are civil servants. That person you speak to when you call DWP, that's a civil servant.
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  12. Why?
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  13. Considering the City trades commodities and energy, if those traders stopped, alarm bells would go off around the world. We would know pretty sharpish.
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  14.  @markwelch3564  The "customers" are counter parties to transactions. The value is to the beholder/payer as the OP said.
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  15. They pay high income taxes in the UK as their pay is processed by the UK arm of the businesses.
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  16. They provides services that other people are willing to pay for. The value is whatever the payer is willing to pay for it. These services wouldn't exist if there was not value to them.
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  17. It's not that simple. These days parts of all exchanges operate 24/7, offering out of hours trading depending on the platforms and the equities involved in the trades. The LSE is a business itself, if anyone tried to shut it down, the business would simply move to another place and still continue as the LSE (it's just a name). NYSE wanted to buy LSE at one time, that would have made it US business still doing what it does in London.
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  18. Actually no. Those are all private commercial property investors.
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  19. Every trade incurs stamp duty. Every second millions of trades take place.
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  20.  @physiocrat7143  Not really, because even if you chose to view through that lens, trades flow in both directions, so the 'rent' is not coercive.
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  21. Most in the City preferred to have remained in EU. The City accepted the result and adapted. For financial services it was more about the headache of recognizing professional qualifications and less red tape. Financial services is a global business and will make money no matter what the politics. All political choices have upsides and downsides, but both upsides and downsides can be profitable with the right trades/hedges.
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  22. Because the physical exchanges and their data centres are in London. Doing the job remotely means network latency.
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  23. Incorrect. You're assuming every producer wants to operate their own market place, they don't, because their business is the production of a thing. They use the market makers to get the best price for their product.
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  24. Today there is the physical place called "The City", but there is also the wider, virtual "The City" that stretches from the Square Mile to Canary Wharf.
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  25. Yes they have private and workplace pensions. Same options available to all of us. Many also contribute most of their salary to their pensions so they can build up their retirement pots fast and retire. The City is a high stress environment so people want to get in make their money and get out before they burn out.
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  26. If you want to make money as fast as possible to retire as early as possible, and for the rush, there's no other sector worth going to work in like the financial sector. Management consulting is a close second.
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