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Facebook WTF?

American Investment Bank Rips Off Small Investors - big surprise there then.
 
One more reason for people to be angry at Wall Street. I can't believe anyone still trusts them with their money.

A guy I worked with for years has retired. I saw him recently and he made a comment that he fears any mail coming from the company. Afraid that when he opens it, it will be notification that the retirement fund is broke.
 
I can see why pension plans are broke, just look at how many people GM used to need to make a car compared to how many they need now (same in all industries). Automation got us away from subsistance farming, and now it will make us starve in the land of plenty.

The big ripoff now is instead of pensions we have 401Ks for retirement. First the company that overseas your 401K at work stiffs you with crazy fees left and right. Then all that money is bet on wallstreet every fraction of a second. If the bet wins then wallstreet people get a big bonus, if it loses you lose your money.

If you look at the history of wall street traders it was a low pay dead end job UNTIL 401K's were thaught up, all that steady stream of captive money made a few people very rich and the rest of us getting statements saying we are worth $xxxxxx in monopoly money. There isn't much of a difference in giving money to madoff or anyone else in wallstreet, as long as they pay out less then they take in the ponzy works.

Another issue is that banks DO NOT NEED US. Why would they need our money (which they pay next to nothing for) when they get 0% interest lowns from the FED and then park those loans in government bonds for a profit. The whole point of investing is to make more then inflation (so whatever you saved isn't worth less every day) and wall street or casinos is the only legal way to do that.
 
I am always amazed at how people see Wall Street and how they view investing. People invested in Google when it was trading 300 times earnings. In other words it would take Google 300 years to make what you were paying for it. Never mind what small percentage of earning that are paid out to shareholders. The only way for Facebook to earn any real money is with advertising. I mean the service is free, have you ever purchased anything because it was on a Facebook page. I know I have not, so I would view facebook as a marginal place to invest my money. Most of the customers of facebook are teens or young adults, in other words not a lot of spending power. On the other hand when Sirus Radio was $0.11 a share, it looked like it was worth betting maybe a $1,000.00 that they would make it even with their debt load. I mean every month they hit my account for a service fee. Unless you have the time to watch the market everyday and have the software and service to track changing trends, pick a good mutal fund with someone you trust and forget individual purchasing.

The reason most people lost money in 401-ks in the market is they wanted 10% to 15% earnings rather than a 4% to 5% return and invested in higher risk stocks and funds. Even in today's market you can earn close to 2% with no risk.

The stock market is kinda like Vintage Computer if you do not know what you are doing you probably should leave it alone.
 
I can see why pension plans are broke, just look at how many people GM used to need to make a car compared to how many they need now (same in all industries). Automation got us away from subsistance farming, and now it will make us starve in the land of plenty.

The big ripoff now is instead of pensions we have 401Ks for retirement. First the company that overseas your 401K at work stiffs you with crazy fees left and right. Then all that money is bet on wallstreet every fraction of a second. If the bet wins then wallstreet people get a big bonus, if it loses you lose your money.

If you look at the history of wall street traders it was a low pay dead end job UNTIL 401K's were thaught up, all that steady stream of captive money made a few people very rich and the rest of us getting statements saying we are worth $xxxxxx in monopoly money. There isn't much of a difference in giving money to madoff or anyone else in wallstreet, as long as they pay out less then they take in the ponzy works.

Another issue is that banks DO NOT NEED US. Why would they need our money (which they pay next to nothing for) when they get 0% interest lowns from the FED and then park those loans in government bonds for a profit. The whole point of investing is to make more then inflation (so whatever you saved isn't worth less every day) and wall street or casinos is the only legal way to do that.

Depressing but true.

In New Zealand we have our issues with financiers and greed, but it seems no where near as bad as the US. Is there no universal government-guaranteed pension there for everyone?

Terry
 
In New Zealand we have our issues with financiers and greed, but it seems no where near as bad as the US. Is there no universal government-guaranteed pension there for everyone?
Well, there's a chunk they take out of our paychecks for that - the question is whether we'll ever see a dime of it...
 
Terry:

We have Social Security for pensions and Medicare for medical, but both have been mis-managed and poorly administrated. Even most of our City, County and State workers pension funds are in trouble. A lot of them were never funded, just an accounting entry made.

Jimmy
 
The retirement systems been scammed before. Even the ERS (state run agency for state employees Employee Retirement Service) investors had moved a bunch of stock to Enron before that huge debacle. Not a corrupt choice on their end though, hard to play the blame game when companies hold back bad news and have public share holding.
 
I think Enron is a prime example of what I said before, they increased sales between 1996 and 2000 from $13.3 billion to $100.8 billion. I mean what did they know about energy that every other energy company in the world did not. I mean even Cisco in the same time frame only increased sales 41%. In investing Risk vs Reward, if you are pulling in high earnings you better be ready, make some short term money and get out, but only if you can affort to lose it. Who was handling the investing at ERS? Did they bother to look. Enron was hiding debt, but the balance sheet was not what was driving Enron's shares out of site it was their income statement.
 
Terry:

We have Social Security for pensions and Medicare for medical, but both have been mis-managed and poorly administrated. Even most of our City, County and State workers pension funds are in trouble. A lot of them were never funded, just an accounting entry made.

Jimmy

Keep in mind both are supposed to supplement, NOT replace, your own retirement savings.
 
Social Security doesn't matter much when you are laid of at 50 and can't find another job. Even if you do collect the amount you will recieve is worth less each year since it doesn't keep up with inflation plus most old people on SS don't get enough to cover their prescriptions (medicair doesn't cover most drugs) let alone pay rent or food.
 
Keep in mind both are supposed to supplement, NOT replace, your own retirement savings.

Wages have been depressed for a long time. For many people, after paying living expenses, there isn't much money left to put into savings or a 401K. The average amount people have in a 401K here in the states is $50K. That means there is a whole generation of Americans that are headed into retirement with very little monthly income.

There has been an ad running on TV recently from a retirement investment group. One guy is holding a big sign with a dollar amount that represents the amount of money he expects to have in his account when he retires.That figure is $1,000,000.
I have heard it said by financial experts that to retire comfortably, you need hundreds of thousands of dollars in a retirement account. I would hate to say how few people will have $100,000.

Social Security doesn't matter much when you are laid of at 50 and can't find another job. Even if you do collect the amount you will receive is worth less each year since it doesn't keep up with inflation plus most old people on SS don't get enough to cover their prescriptions (medicair doesn't cover most drugs) let alone pay rent or food.

I have noticed that people that have never been layed off don't realize (or care) what it is like to be without work for an extended period of time. I was layed-off almost 3 years ago and just found fulltime employment 8 weeks ago. During that time, I only had 2 part time jobs that payed $10 and $12 an hour. Unemployment, only payed 33% of what I was making when fully employed. That meant that each month I had no choice but to draw from my retirement account which is now almost gone. And there are many that have it far worse than me. Many have lost their homes or worse. I have seen 2 people in the last 6 months that used to live in my neighborhood that are now homeless.

So, my patience with Wall Street and their corrupt system is less than zero.
 
Facebook is the AOL of this generation. Remember the AOL Time Warner deal? As far as Enron and retirement funds, the people running the fund owned Enron stock until it went down, then it got shifted to the retirement fund as it dropped to zero. And it's not just your 401K, it's also your insurance premiums they gamble with.
 
I am just pretty cynical, with anything to do with the goverment, I keep going back to the 3 biggest lies ever told. 1. The check is in the mail, 2. Yea Baby, we are going to get married, 3. I am from the Goverment and I am here to help you.

Enron had over 19,000 employess, they were posting earning of over $5 million per employee. I mean even as obsene as GE and Microsoft, theirs are below $500,000.00 per employee, this had to be a red flag if not a flaming red flare. When things are just to good to be true they usually are.

I am still pretty unhappy about General Motors and Chysler, most of the 401-ks and a lot of the State, County and City pension funds had stocks and bonds for both companies and took a huge hit. I mean that whole deal was driven by the goverment. The bank bail outs were ever worse and I work for a bank kinda. If we mess us let the owners and managment take it on the chin.

But that being said when it gets right down to it, the person responsilbe for taking care of me, is the guy I see in the mirror each morning. If I do not have enough to retire on, then it's my fault, non of you guys here owe me or should be responsible for me. We somehow have seemed to lost sight of that fact.

Jimmy
 
But that being said when it gets right down to it, the person responsilbe for taking care of me, is the guy I see in the mirror each morning. If I do not have enough to retire on, then it's my fault, non of you guys here owe me or should be responsible for me. We somehow have seemed to lost sight of that fact.
Well, only to a point Jimmy. I'm a great believer in personal responsibility, BUT when weak/incompetent/misguided governments allow big business to screw most of the population you can't blame yourself. Governments should protect citizens. Not just from external threats but also internal ones...and one of those threats is corporate greed, which has blossomed in the last 30 years in most western democrocies. It's obscene and it's wrong. Unfortunately (and depressingly) it's so deeply embedded there seems to be no alternative model (or at least no government will RISK an alternative model).

Tez
 
Tez:

I think you are right about the goverment being any help, I am just really unhappy about what kind of mess we are leaving our children and grand children.


Jimmy
 
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