What role do you think banks and other financial institutions should play in the modern economy? Have a look at this comment from a news article posted a few months ago to www.telegraph.co.uk:
The banking sector is acting as a parasite on the real economy,” [Billionaire investor George] Soros said in his new book The Tragedy of the European Union. “The profitability of the finance industry has been excessive. For a while 35pc of all corporate profits in the United Kingdom and the United States came from the financial sector. That’s absurd.
Many people agree with Mr. Soros and think that banks – who have so much power just because they lend out money – play no real role in society.
I have my own feelings about banks, but I do think that financial institutions have a certain amount of usefulness in the modern world. But what I don’t like is when some folks take their disdain for big banks and apply it to individual investors. They tell investors to “Get a job” and to stop being “Afraid of doing an honest hard work”.
In other words, some people out there think that investors and entrepreneurs (people who make money for a living) don’t have any real job skills.
Well, I’m here to tell you that making money is a learned skill. Like an artist that who creates beautiful works with diverse mediums (clay, oils paints, and welded pieces of steel), an entrepreneur uses his or her abilities to make money using a diverse range of investment vehicles.
What are some of the abilities required to be an entrepreneur? An investor must practice:
- Recognizing and creating opportunities
- Evaluating risk
- Ignoring the naysayers
- Staying consistent while still being flexible to changing circumstances
- Deep self-reflection and post-mortem analyses of business successes and failures
- …and the list goes on
Individuals who invest in assets and create wealth are not parasites on the economy – they are the people who create jobs and who use their talents to make an ethical living.