Finance is about as old as civilization,* the Babylonians did it. To take an amount of money from someone who does not, at the moment, need it and loaning it to whoever can pay the most for the privilegie (often another middleman in the huge network that is a modern financial market) is a type of work that is essential to our system of production. Without people doing this kind of work this page would not have existed (if memory serves me right viaweb, PGs company, got venture capital). The arrogance with wich people diss finance (and the amount of upvotes these kinds of comments get) show why learning finance 101 really should be part of a good undergraduate curriculum.
edit: yes, some financial markets are indeed parasitic, this is often because someone got the public to guarantee for something. This has more to do with the political economy than financial markets per se.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Money
edit: yes, some financial markets are indeed parasitic, this is often because someone got the public to guarantee for something. This has more to do with the political economy than financial markets per se.