TruthSavvy.

Today’s 777 point sell-off in the Dow signals Americans that our capitalism is not properly serving our interests. American capitalism is now an asymmetrical game that benefits elite traders while undermining the common good. People’s retirement savings should not be exposed to the capital destruction that occurs when prices in the “float” fail to provide fair market discovery of real corporate value.

The float consists of the shares held by market-makers, specialists and the like; these shares are readily available for transactions. (The float is a small sliver of the total shares issued. The size of the float in any issue reflects market-maker judgments about the potential for supply/demand imbalances.) Why should action in the float re-price entire issues? The system of pricing by float activity enhances trading liquidity but at the cost of leveraging price movements. Share pricing in the float reflects the dynamic of price momentum analyzed technically. This pricing is often divorced from fundamentals, especially in times of fear or exuberance. A trading based valuation of America’s corporate worth comes from a flawed model of finance capitalism designed by dark geniuses to benefit veiled interests. This is why a Main Street economy with high profitability can be brought to its knees by a Wall Street system of asset pricing.

Wall Street has not been a proper steward of the public interest. Consequently, many far-sighted people don’t want to "buy-in" to Wall Street again, regardless of House Speaker Pelosi’s advocacy of the idea. An increasing number of people want freedom from Wall Street's culture of greed.

The members of the U.S. House who had the courage to resist the bailout now need to find a better way to build capitalism, perhaps a capitalism built on the model of aggregated dividends. But the U.S. Congress made it difficult for individuals to shift their money into alternative investment systems. This is because people who withdraw their money from Wall Street’s congressionally subsidized “tax sheltered plans” face a 10% early withdrawal penalty. This penalty is extracted on top of the high marginal income tax rate that most working couples face during pre-retirement years. (Meanwhile, thousands of hedge funds managers revel in the bounty of a capital gains rate sheltering of their multi-million dollar incomes — largesse sent their way by a well bribed Congress.)

The Manhattan Island culture will never do as a human resource pool from which to staff integrity-based capital institutions. New institutions constituted across the fifty states should reflect the diverse circumstances of the states from which have grown many great corporations that look nothing like Wall Street! If the Congress spends money to stabilize the economy, it should go for a new system — one that serves all Americans, not a vaunted few.

Until the 1980s, the evolution of the stock market was supposedly a public interested affair. The common good was to be advanced by the widening participation of the public in corporate profits. In theory, the rewards of capital enterprise were thought to exist significantly in the public domain. In other words, land, sea and air belong to everyone; if the great corporations of a nation garner great profits by developing land, sea and air, the benefits should further the common good as well as benefit frugal investors everywhere. But when Wall Street got its soiled hands too firmly around the enterprise, it siphoned the wealth that belonged in the public domain.

Americans should aspire to a capitalism of best practices, integrity and the fair distribution of rewards. The proposed bailout does not serve this end.