Good one! :)

I'm a Democrat (not one who follows any party line), and what you're saying makes perfect sense to me. Providing liquidity is a necessary service for wealth creation, just like hundreds of other services people provide. My only complaint with the financial industry is they act as if they are the main underpinning of wealth creation and no one else would step in if all the major financial firms failed. Allocating capital is a necessary function, and a new banking system would crop up if our current system didn't exist.

Plays? :)

Rome... Athens... Beijing... The large picture is cities qua. In other words, while this city or that may prosper or decline (Rome, Stockholm, Magdeburg, Benares), the structural-functional purpose of the City qua City enables it to survive. Cities qua were, are, and will be the proving grounds for the engines of creation. To deny The City is to deny capitalism.

Take a look at this pop density map and compare to the GDP" map.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=popu...

"City Air Gives Me a Splitting Headache."

Cities are the engines of enterprise and creation. Many survivalists and preppers disparage the City qua City, but in history (fact and theory), the city endures when farms fail. Austin is one of those engines. So is San Francisco. Both are surrounded by looter-moocher failed states. Texas is fascist; California is socialist. Nonetheless, the city endures. Moreover, no magic formula exists. Central planners have tried to create "enterprise zones." Indeed, enterprise zones do exist; but they cannot be planned.
"City Air Makes You Free" here:http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2013/11/city-air-makes-you-free.html

look at this map and compare with the GDP map. It population density.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=popu...

Cities were the engines of enterprise and creation. You simply have to look at cities now to know that's true. Detroit is no more, there's little in Philadelphia, Chicago is a cesspool of crime, murder and corruption, and the only thing New York makes is hedge fund managers.

The only thing propping up these cities is the ridiculous amount of government spending.

I know I am going to get negative ratings by all of you for this, but here goes: the reality is you may have been unconsciously influenced by "Occupy Wall Street", watching too many Hollywood films, and listening to the Democrats too much.

I can't believe you are saying that commerce is not a value-added activity. One of the most important functions of banks and Wall Street firms is the disintermediation of risk. Short-term to long-term, equity to commodity, insurance, etc. Properly matching up entities with counter-balanced risk is a large activity of investment banks and trading firms. Those are truly some of the most important activities of the modern world, and enable a huge measure of wealth creation through risk allocation. Railroads, airports, container ships, new enterpreneurial firms, and drilling in deep water, all depend on this very, very essential function.

In one theory (whose??) wealth is created ONLY by agriculture, mining and manufacturing. All else is protection, transportation, consumption or plunder. GDP counts plunder (i.e. government activity) and is thus misleading.

Anyone up for making a different map? Hint: Omit DC entirely.