Haven't read the whole thread, but I think we're all just in the Transmission and Distribution business. We deliver products all around all the globe in 50 msec or less. If that's not something to be pround of I don't know what is.
We will deliver just about anything you want - stocks, bonds, pork bellies, whatever - but you will have to pay a price. We assume the risk and so we deserve a reward, a nice reward if you ask me. (Of course, if you ask the SEC, you deserve to be squashed like a bug because you are not a big, fat institution that's been around since the House of Rothschild.)
The economy starves w/o capital and we feed it that liquid water. Almost every non-governmental job in our country depends on us to take that capital and push it around to every foreign and domestic investor on the planet.
And, by the way, don't tell me the brokerages could do it w/o us -we've all seem what market makers will do when you let them run the show.
We ought to be pround - dang proud!