Community Comment

Who you gonna trust?

Posted by Dave

March 24, 2009 6 a.m. • 9 comments

Good morning, Netizens…

Yeah, tell me about it!

It sounded so nice, so respectable, so dependable when they signed us up for our 401k’s, didn’t it? However, now that we have wandered down David Horsey’s Carnival Midway where the real wheeling and dealing takes place, the money we invested isn’t worth a fraction of its original value, now is it? The only thing we can be certain of is that our financial worth and savings took a big hit while some faceless, nameless guys who own the Midway, such as the rabid bats at AIG, and thus actually control the how the show runs, made a killing doing so.

In several James Bond movies, there are several references made to crooked roulette wheels, where the Bad Guys are capable of manipulating the outcome of each roll of the wheel. In several other movies there are crooked dice, which because they have their edges altered in various ways, can be made to fall in more predictable ways. Of course, since the beginning of time there have always been crooked cards, altered to where they could be read by those-in-the-know in high-stakes poker games.

If the truth is known about our current economic and financial woes, it seems to me as if we all were gambling with our investments when we signed up for various fiduciary products, including our 401k plans; it is just that they told us our savings were all so secure. They told us we were being wise and cautious investors, which we should be.

They just didn’t tell us the equipment was all rigged in the favor of Fat Cats could manipulate the outcome in their favor anytime they wanted to do so with insufferable ease. Apparently they did that.

Short of the Ouija board, a shaman or a soothsayer, who can you trust in these days?

Oh, before you answer that loaded question, since you’re going back out into the Carnival Midway, please grab me a box of popcorn, would you please?

Dave

Nine comments on this post so far. Add yours!

Jeffrey_Grey on March 24 at 6:48 a.m.
Dave,

As an outside observer (I wouldn’t trade in stocks, even with someone else’s money), it seems to me that the stock market is like a little monkey who scrambles up a coconut tree and finds a coconut. (Profits.)

Other little monkeys see the first little monkey’s coconut and they want one of their own. So pretty soon, other little monkeys are scrambling up that coconut tree in search of coconuts.

After a while, it becomes a monkey obsession. All that matters is getting a coconut of your own. All other considerations fall by the wayside.

And then, a particularly clever little monkey (let’s call him ‘Bernie’) figures out that if you cut down the coconut tree, the coconuts will be really easy to get to.

And so they are.

For a while.
JeanieSpokane on March 24 at 8:45 a.m.
Jeffrey - That’s such a good example for a pea-brain like me to try to figure out what the heck happened to my coconuts! Not only was the tree cut down, but stupid ‘Bernie’ didn’t take into consideration that no more coconuts would be coming from the tree.
ChefGus/ John Olsen on March 24 at 10:21 a.m.
The book “The Madness of Crowds”… ( i forget the author).. tells one all they need to know bout the “markets” be they equity/cash/bonds/real estate/ art/ coins/ gold and silver etc etc etc..

and the really simple, yet hard to execute method to “be with the big guys” is to monitor what THEY are doing… so as an example.. BAC Bank of America was as low as $3 a share recently.. and the insiders were buying hundreds of thousands of shares at that price……. while all of the “citizens” were busy selling their shares at the bottom….. so turn around and two weeks later it is at close to $8 a share…. three thousand dollars in…. and eight thousand dollars out… put the five thousand difference in your pocket and walk away…

Whatever the “crowd” is doing… have the guts to do the opposite…. with “guidance” from the insiders… it DOES work…. john
garfnagn on March 24 at 7:11 p.m.
you nationlize everything, you hire armys of regulators who work for the fedral government and you tell American people “look, the free markt doesn’t work, it gets us all in a bad place, so now we ar egoing to be communists and some of you won’t be millionires anymore but nobody wil have to eat dogs they catch and sew their babies cuts shut with string they pull off their threadbare clothes. Then we can all share in the Amercan dream like God wanted us to when he blessed America to be the best country in te world and said “Hey America you’re the catchbasin for all the dirty soapy water people of the world to collect and puddle and become clean happy sparkly water agaiin!” and thus it was so until Reagan the wors president ever we had except for tricky Dick Nixon, who changed the economy formula from one of supply/demand Keynesian guns or buttr to anything goes trickle down guns and butter who cares bout deficints not me! and now look at what 3o years of conservatism has wrought. Even Clinton was just a repulbican plahing democrat with a turgid babymaker he could n’t keep in his preseident pants, but he killed welfare for poor peeps and kept Reaganomonics alive. He was suc a pervident not a presdent. Anyway now the banks except mine which is US Bank ironically enough, are failing and the fatcats are rolling naked in there bonuses and we, the small Amercan workers and disability collector like myself, are suffering the slings and fates of outrageous fortune takers but mos’ def not fortune tellers I must say. So what’s it all gonna mean when we become communist and treat each other the same with a gov that kicks everything back into shape? Well it means that when I go to the convenienc store to buy like a german sausage (which I love with a capitol L) and a coke and some beef teriyak jerky then I can pay with my govt check chump change and tell the cler khey man, nice job, you make what my psychitriast makes and he hadda go to Medical School and you just got an GED from your work release program I bet. Then I watch the cable news whe I get home and see Rachel Madow who i think is like a hot babe who I wish would do a swimsuit calendar of hot cabel babes, and Rachel intervews some economist who says America is fine now, since it took over the financial lending institution and constiuted new regulations on toxic debt and I’d be chewng my jerky going stop filming this guy with his beard and tweed sport coat and get us some close ups of my new cable tv girlfriend Rachel Maddow, dammit. Then I’ll sign on to the intrenets and surf govt website which would be all left on the intrenets but I would not much care because would I be eating a shnauzer or a dachsund? Nope, just real beef jerky for me thanks Uncle Sam.
lewis8457 on March 25 at 9:26 a.m.
The only bank i will ever trust again is the fireproof vault i have in my basement………
ChefGus/ John Olsen on March 25 at 10:14 a.m.
Garfnagn, thanks for the personal insight shared… i gather you DO know that Dr Maddow is an “out Gay” woman? Got her PhD from Stanford i think… john
cantyoureadthesigns on March 25 at 10:50 a.m.
As one of my Business Law professors taught me 25 years ago, a mantra he repeated to us at the beginning of every class session, pounding his desk:

“WE TRUST NO ONE!”
garfnagn on March 25 at 6:39 p.m.
ChefGus, I didnt know my cabel tV girlfriend Rachel Maddow was on the other team like that! omg its like the one time I had a girfriend and she was like “hey garfy, your realy cute and i like it when you buy me thinks at teh dollar store an dtake me to movies, but I think i like girls maybe better, if i was a lesbean would you be mad?”

And i told her “not if I can watch!” but she wasnt offering a deal like that so we broke up and ive been lonely and stuck with cable tv girlfriends ever since. I guess i will have to find another cable tv girlfriend thanks.
ChefGus/ John Olsen on March 25 at 7:01 p.m.
garf, since it is a “cable tv” girlfriend… she might be a good friend… many of my very best friends are Lesbian Women… and it is not too complicated cause they don’t like me “that way”… although a dear friend once said (An Out Lesbian Woman).. “well if I were going to choose to be with a man, John is one I’d choose”… so perhaps there is hope for you as well?? You might try Suze Orman…. Oh, she’s out too…. Hmmm… well best wishes in your quiet quest for quality.. j