Monday, July 29, 2013

Wall Street As More of the Economy: Unjust and Riskier?

The financial sector, which includes banks like JPMorgan and insurance companies like AIG, had the fastest earnings growth in the Standard & Poor’s 500 in 2012.[1] As of mid-2013, the sector comprised 16.8% of the S&P 500, almost double the percentage back in 2009. With the technology sector weighing in at 17.6 percent in 2013, the financial sector was poised to become the largest sector in the S&P 500. The traditional critique of the financial sector having a larger share of the economy is that the sector doesn’t “make” anything. As this argument is well-known, I want to point to two others.




1. Alex Barinka and Whitney Kisling, “Banks Poised to Lead S&P 500 as JPMorgan Beats Microsoft,” Bloomberg, July 29, 2013.