As we saw in Chapter 3, banks mark up borrowers’ interest rates as an indication of value added (FISIM): an obvious example of fictitious financial value. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Today, leading investment banks like Goldman Sachs and J. P. Morgan don’t attribute their employees’ vast salaries to success in ordinary borrowing and lending. The great bulk of these banks’ profits comes from activities such as underwriting the initial public offerings (IPOs) of corporate bonds and shares, financing mergers and acquisitions, writing futures and options contracts that take over risk
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