"vinny" wrote in message ...



Well...as far as the economy goes? The damage of the trade laws reffered
to as a sucking sound set us to crash in 2000-2002. On top of that the
"world trade buildings", yes, that is their name because that's what they
were, the "world" trade buildings literally crashed. World trade was
disrupted for 5-7 years at least. During that time the bush dildo's kept
our economy running at growth levels the whole time. Long after it should
of naturally crashed.
They get an A+ at domestic fiscal thinking.

Where the money went was a 3.5 trillion dollar war. Look, he even managed
to pay for some of that during the time of stress with his good domestic
fiscal policy.
Low taxes, low regulation, and stimulus directly to the people in cash
form. That stuff really works. Hell it just funded the longest war in
Americas history?

The banks....pfft. CRASH AND BURN ASSHOLES! It's worth anything we have to
go thru to end that tyranny on us. Friggen 1%..yah it's really 30,000$ on
your home final price.
Screw that.
And damnit without the crutch of the banks buisinesses will "front or
lend" to their customers because they will have to. Like they did 20 years
ago.



that's funny. i have been wondering if their attempted social security
privatization scheme was an attempt to loot people's social security
retirement money to keep their ponzi scheme going until after the election.
wondering if they knew what was coming and were desperate to get their hands
on huge wads of cash. i'm still "on" about that, seems people have
forgotten, the utter gall of what the previous administration attempted to
do. what would the world look like if people were allowed to have put their
social security money in the stock market? would they've gotten "bailouts"?
i doubt it. there would've been gnashing of teeth for sure. millions of
u.s. citizens retirement money, pfft. how would we as a nation have
remedied that situation? let them starve to death?

b.w.

William Wixon wrote:
"vinny" wrote in message ...


Well...as far as the economy goes? The damage of the trade laws reffered
to as a sucking sound set us to crash in 2000-2002. On top of that the
"world trade buildings", yes, that is their name because that's what they
were, the "world" trade buildings literally crashed. World trade was
disrupted for 5-7 years at least. During that time the bush dildo's kept
our economy running at growth levels the whole time. Long after it should
of naturally crashed.
They get an A+ at domestic fiscal thinking.

Where the money went was a 3.5 trillion dollar war. Look, he even managed
to pay for some of that during the time of stress with his good domestic
fiscal policy.
Low taxes, low regulation, and stimulus directly to the people in cash
form. That stuff really works. Hell it just funded the longest war in
Americas history?

The banks....pfft. CRASH AND BURN ASSHOLES! It's worth anything we have to
go thru to end that tyranny on us. Friggen 1%..yah it's really 30,000$ on
your home final price.
Screw that.
And damnit without the crutch of the banks buisinesses will "front or
lend" to their customers because they will have to. Like they did 20 years
ago.



that's funny. i have been wondering if their attempted social security
privatization scheme was an attempt to loot people's social security
retirement money to keep their ponzi scheme going until after the election.
wondering if they knew what was coming and were desperate to get their hands
on huge wads of cash. i'm still "on" about that, seems people have
forgotten, the utter gall of what the previous administration attempted to
do. what would the world look like if people were allowed to have put their
social security money in the stock market? would they've gotten "bailouts"?
i doubt it. there would've been gnashing of teeth for sure. millions of
u.s. citizens retirement money, pfft. how would we as a nation have
remedied that situation? let them starve to death?

So, it's your money and you think the government is a better steward of
it? do they not have newspapers on your planet?
I guess you will be thrilled when they raise your kids for you and send
someone over to service your wife regularly too then?

I'll save my own money, invest as I see fit, and accept the result
without whining.

On 2009-07-24, RBnDFW wrote:
So, it's your money and you think the government is a better steward of
it? do they not have newspapers on your planet?

He was talking about Social Security money.

Giving it to Wall Street to manage, does not seem like a good
solution, for obvious reasons. (the money will end up being stolen by
legal means).

I'll save my own money, invest as I see fit, and accept the result
without whining.

The second part of this is always more difficult than it seems.

i

Ignoramus2408 wrote:
On 2009-07-24, RBnDFW wrote:
So, it's your money and you think the government is a better steward of
it? do they not have newspapers on your planet?

He was talking about Social Security money.

Right. Our money.

Giving it to Wall Street to manage, does not seem like a good
solution, for obvious reasons. (the money will end up being stolen by
legal means).

He was talking about allowing individuals to designate part of it
(half?) to a self-directed fund with limited options, slightly more
risk, but higher likelihood of returns. Still way better than the
current options - zero.

I'll save my own money, invest as I see fit, and accept the result
without whining.

The second part of this is always more difficult than it seems.

I lost 95% of my Roth account in the last year.
I'll be OK.

On 2009-07-24, RBnDFW wrote:
Ignoramus2408 wrote:
On 2009-07-24, RBnDFW wrote:
So, it's your money and you think the government is a better steward of
it? do they not have newspapers on your planet?

He was talking about Social Security money.

Right. Our money.

Giving it to Wall Street to manage, does not seem like a good
solution, for obvious reasons. (the money will end up being stolen by
legal means).

He was talking about allowing individuals to designate part of it
(half?) to a self-directed fund with limited options, slightly more
risk, but higher likelihood of returns. Still way better than the
current options - zero.

I'll save my own money, invest as I see fit, and accept the result
without whining.

The second part of this is always more difficult than it seems.

I lost 95% of my Roth account in the last year.
I'll be OK.

Ouch. Sorry. I thought the most people lost would be something like
60%.

So, realistically, let's say that a soon to be retired, or retired man
-- not you, but someone less principled -- loses 95% of his social
security money due to some bad luck.

And then this person has nothing at all for retirement. Do you think
that it would be possible to throw him out to the street and let him
die of starvation. I do not think so.

So what this will end up, is the worst of both worlds, with high
return investors subsidizing low return investors. That creates a
moral hazard of people investing in risky things, such that heads they
win, tails we lose.

The only beneficiary of "let's use Social Security money to gamble on
the latest investment fads" would only be Wall Street.

If you, like me, like to invest money, it is best that we do it
outside of Social Security funds, which are not exactly ours anyway.

i

I wanted to add one thing.

There used to be a notion out there that stocks outperform bonds over
the long run. Just how long the "long run" should be, is unclear: as
of a few weeks ago, stocks UNDERperformed bonds for the last 5, 10,
15, 20 and 25 years. See

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725925791924871.html

The article is also very interesting, as it questions whether
Prof. Jeremy Siegel's data that he relied on in making claims about
"Stocks for the long run", is actually biased to bolster his claims.

Anyhow, the long run determinator of any asset's return, is the amount
of owner earnings that are attributed to every dollar initially
invested. This is true of both fixed income securities (where owner
earnings are bond coupons) as well as stocks. While returns fluctuate
in the short run, in the longer run they reflect accruing earnings.

If a society places magic faith into some asset because some
professors claim that this asset will make them rich by means of a
miracle, and everyone buys it, then the logical outcome of this will
be that the price of it will rise. By the law of mathematics, the
amount of owner earnings per dollar invested, will decline in inverse
proportion t othe price paid. That, in turn, will mean that the
collective of owners will earn a lower return.

What this means is that a recommendation that may work for an
individual investor -- such as "put more money in stocks" -- will NOT
work if everyone tries to follow it and everyone competes for the same
asset. All that these reallocations accomplish is changing relative
prices of asset classes.

The fallacy of applying individual recommendations like "put more in
stocks" to the whole collective, is called "fallacy of composition"
and is well known. The simplest example would be a crowd or people
watching some performance. While it may make sense for an individual
to stand on his toes to get a better view, if everyone does this, no
one will be better off.

The wealth of all of us collectively is determined by what we produce
as a society, minus our debt to foreigners, not by relative prices of
pieces of paper. Changing how much we value certain asset classes does
not change that, at least not by much and not directly.

In our specific example of "investing social security in magic
securities", the effect of that would be that the prices of those
securities will rise, the society as a whole will not become richer,
but it may seem richer for a while and underreserve for the future
expenses of caring for old people. The hopes will turn into
disappointment.

The Republican behavior in trying to obfuscate this rather simple
reality, was a big turnoff to me.

As things stand, I am not really poor and do not have a vested
interest in "taxing the rich" and such things. But I do try to
recognize realities that exist regardless of what is my immediate
financial interest, or my love of guns.

i

On Jul 24, 7:42*pm, Ignoramus2408
wrote:


So, realistically, let's say that a soon to be retired, or retired man
-- not you, but someone less principled -- loses 95% of his social
security money due to some bad luck.
Could not happen under the proposed plan. Less than 50 percent,
probably more like 20 percent, could have been invested in stocks.
And that money would have to have been invested in diversified
stocks. So the person could possibly have lost about 10 percent of
his Social Security retirement. And if you think that Social Security
will provide enough money for retirement without other sources of
income, you are going to have a rude awaking.


And then this person has nothing at all for retirement. Do you think
that it would be possible to throw him out to the street and let him
die of starvation. I do not think so.

So what this will end up, is the worst of both worlds, with high
return investors subsidizing low return investors. That creates a
moral hazard of people investing in risky things, such that heads they
win, tails we lose.

The only beneficiary of "let's use Social Security money to gamble on
the latest investment fads" would only be Wall Street.
Not true.


If you, like me, like to invest money, it is best that we do it
outside of Social Security funds, which are not exactly ours anyway.

So you do not think the Social Security funds are our money? Did the
tooth fairy provide them?

Dan

On Jul 24, 3:45*pm, "William Wixon" wrote:


that's funny. *i have been wondering if their attempted social security
privatization scheme was an attempt to loot people's social security
retirement money to keep their ponzi scheme going until after the election.