Hi Cyrus, et al,
Cyrus Afzali wrote:
> On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 23:52:43 GMT, Joseph Crowe
sbcglobal.net>
> wrote:
> >> Hi Faye, et al,
>>
>> There are times when investing in securities just does
>> not make longterm sense.
>
> Honestly, I would never say the last sentence is true. If you do
> research and plan, you can make money in any market condition.
I'd offer a couple of situations in which you might not want to
invest in equities. One is an environment in which a fiat currency
is manipulated to allow financing of ventures that would not gestate
in a free market. There are two examples of this phenomenon. The first,
and so far most radical in this country was "The Great Depression".
Remember that under Wilson, the income tax, the Fed and abandoning
the gold standard came about. The resulting feeding frenzy of
speculation bombed in 1929. Investing in equities after that was a
real crap shoot because there was not much in the way of predictive
factors that would tell an investor which companies would survive.
Of course, the number of stock market investors was low back then,
but my grandfather was one of them....he was wiped out for a long,
long time. Trust me, people were not making money in those market
conditions. A second, somewhat milder form of the same phenomenon
was referred to as the dot com bust. There are other market
perturbations in the pipeline that could effect peoples' abilities
to make money in equity markets in this country.
> People
> just have this notion that retirement planning should be no work, and
> it's not going to be that way anymore since most people don't have
> guaranteed pensions that are automatically managed.
Maybe some people have those notions.
>> That's a good reason to do your own homework. Financial planners
>> are not inherently better investors than any individual.
>
> Right. All they're supposed to do is recommend investments that are
> suitable for your objectives. They're not really investors per se, but
> rather custom salesmen that are supposed to match your objectives with
> available products. Most don't actively manage in the sense of
> individually trading for you.
It's still a lot easier, and more productive for me to manage my
own financial life. Having brokerage accounts and/or IRAs with a firm
like Schwab, Fidelity etc. makes it convenient to research your own
investments. Of course, they don't handle any offbeat investments like
commodities, but you can manage your own investments.
>
>> How do you feel about the AMA and the insurance industry? Those
>> are the big three lobbying powers that have essentially ruined the
>> medical system here, IMO.
>
> We have this notion that doctors should be wealthy because medical
> school costs so much. Same with lawyers. Neither really gives us a
> guarantee of good service, just high costs.
We? I'd just like to see individual doctors compete in a free
market. As for lawyers, well let's not go there.
>> I'm not sure what the "like?" generation is, but with a 47 trillion
>> unfunded mandate (SS and Medicare) generational differences are likely
>> to be trivial....look to the Italian and Spanish public pension
>> disasters for a preview of what to expect here. Socializing the
>> medical system is not the answer either. Removing power from the
>> lobbies and the FDA and really having real free market in medical
>> care would certainly help. But that's not what the majority want or
>> even understand.
>
> European systems have a much more liberal sense of benefits. In
> Ireland, for example, everyone is guaranteed a minimum level of
> benefits, even if they didn't work in the private sector. All that's
> expensive. It's the same in other European countries.
The European countries are all different. What they have in common,
though, is that the failure of their social benefits systems is coming
a little sooner than ours. There are some of the same factors at work
but since the European countries tend to be more socialist in their
approaches to pension, medical care etc. they are finding it more
difficult to maintain in a globally competitive market while keeping
the benefits. (which does not even begin to address the inherent
inefficiencies of letting government handle anything like social
services).
> The real problem here is two fold: we're not putting workers into the
> system quickly enough to account for all those going out of it and
> demanding benefits and secondly, between prescription drugs and health
> procedures overall, we have a situation that basically guarantees
> health costs will continue to rise sharply.
The real problem is that people believe that government provision of
social services is a good, or even doable thing. Social Security and
Medicare are Ponzi schemes.....they would never have worked longterm
even if the ferals had actually invested the loot. The prescription drug
benefits will simply speed the disintegration along. Isn't it
interesting how the pharma industry is lobbying to shut down access to
vitamins etc. through the FDA. If we have absurdly high medical costs
you can look to the merchantilist policies your government implements.
