Take any stock in the United States. The average time in which you hold a stock is--it's gone up from 20 seconds to 22 seconds in the last year. Most trades are computerized. Most trades are short-term. The average foreign currency investment lasts--it's up now to 30 seconds, up from 28 seconds last month. So we're talking about really short-term. The financial sector is short-term. They talk as if they're long-term, because you have--essentially, economic discussion in this country is like a Chinese menu. You have what really happens in column A, and you have column B, what people would like. You take what really happens and you think, what word for what they'd like would be an appropriate label for this? So you can say--ripping off corporations and embezzlement, you can call that--Alan Greenspan would call that wealth creation. You have an appropriate euphemism for every kind of reality. But there's a disconnect between the language that you use and what's actually happening financially.

via Naked Capitalism