I actually spoke with my homebuilder about leverage. His company took out a loan to purchase the (now my) property with a downpayment of I think 10% of the undeveloped value. It was common for him to do that, and interest payments could drain his profit margin if it took too long to sell a new home. So at least he was levered 10x. But even if all builders did that, it would still carry less risk than the too-big-to-fail banks by virtue of being distributed across many small independent organizations. No single collapse eould trigger a cascade.

> Neither databases nor the construction industry are leveraged 10x+.

Maybe banking shouldn't be either?

How much leverage is the right amount? Regulators seem to think it is somewhere around 10x.

It's probably context dependent; which is why it's //critical// to never lie about, cover up, or over-simplify that context. In my opinion, doing that is quite nearly as bad as murder. At the very least doing such things should bar someone guilty from working in the industry for many decades.

"The right amount" then is when expected losses are less than expected profits; with some safety factor. This is complicated by allowance for both rare really bad sets of loss all at once and absorbing losses over a longer time. I think the solution for both is insurance. In fact, I really hope that the US FDIC (mandatory insurance for deposits, though it hasn't kept up with inflation) represents the basic insurance for the 10% figure you quote.

> Neither databases nor the construction industry are leveraged 10x+.

Leverage is not the sole determinant of risk. Wildcatters are far riskier than someone who is 10x leveraged and holds 2 year notes.

> Neither provides fundamental utility to other sections of the economy through lending activity, which can result in liquidity events at otherwise perfectly solvent firms.

You picked the method of harm that is unique to finance. I could just easily claim that bankers will not build faulty levees or cause untold harm to the planet.

> Neither can drive prices in other sectors through speculation in financial instruments or through financial reporting and reporting downgrades.

It's not obvious to me that this is a method of harm. If oil is underpriced in the US and overpriced in Europe then buying one and selling the other will cause a shift in prices. Arguably this is a benefit because now everyone is paying/receiving fairer prices.

Regardless, bankers are neither traders nor research analysts so I'm not sure how relevant this is.

Wildcatters' risk does not extend beyond their own immediate circumstances.

I seriously doubt that car salespersons' incentives are a noticeable factor in global warming.

It is not unreasonable for the category to be extended to include financial-industry incentive risk in general.

How about if you put up an argument for your position? Just one, to start with.

Well, first of all let's go back to what my argument was.

> I think both are massively corrupt, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of breath wasted on bankers as compared to other salesmen.

I'm not sure what you want to see. Do you want me to link to articles about corruption outside of finance? I'm not sure that I'm aware of a study on the amount of corruption in banking as compared to database sales for example.

Let's see an argument for the disproportionality; that sales incentives in 'construction, databases and cars' are comparably as potentially harmful as are the incentives in banking. These are the issues that you have been demanding arguments for, so let's see your side.