>>>Again, Bernie gets this.
>
>But does "only" Bernie get this?
>
>I've said before that the entire speculative arm of banking is parasitic, scooping money from people doing productive business, in exchange for nothing of value. The scoopers would say that they force efficiency, but if this breed of "efficiency" carves $ from one or both sides in a productive business transaction, why is this useful for the participants? This is especially true of currency where (for example) the daily NZ$ churn exceeds the annual GDP. A small tariff on currency transactions will make little difference to people actually purchasing goods or services internationally (and who already pay fees and shaved rates to the transacting banks) but will end speculative buying and selling microseconds apart to try to scoop a profit from changing rates. I can't see why the citizenry has to maintain systems capable of handling bloated currency transacting by trolls expecting a share of every cart crossing a bridge the troll did not build and does not own.

In school, a long time ago, in a securities investments class, this very subject was covered.
The prevailing thought amongst people in favor of free markets, was that speculators made the markets more efficient and prices more stable.

Seems wacky when you see the news.
But news, of course, is only news if it is shocking.

The finance textbook claimed that speculators, on average, lost money
and that actual real buyers and sellers in the markets were better able to go about their business by getting predictable pricing for future transactions.

Speculators of course provide the vast majority of transactions.
More transactions do drive down the cost of each transaction.

Futures trading was actually banned for onions in 1958 because of outrage about two speculators who had cornered the market on Onions and made such a mess of the market that farmers went bankrupt.

Some studies have concluded that futures trading reduced price volatility and some other studies have concluded the opposite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act#Effect_on_price_volatility