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Just another example of the facade of social mobility in the US. All the laws on the books are written to protect the uber rich and Wall Street banks due to the fact the government is impregnated from top to bottom with friends of Wall Street. How are the regulators supposed to regulate when there's a revolving door of employees between government regulators and Wall Street? Then when Wall Street's gambling blows up, tax payers have to bail them out so our entire way of life doesn't collapse due to financial armegeddon. Yeah, America is "the land of the free" alright. NOT.
Yes and dear government will have to step in and protect all your money. That is where we are heading. I believe the push is for annuities. You retire and uncle sam gives you a stipend and you nod your head and say thank you while they steal the rest. Sounds just like another retirement program they stole all the money from.
Link this to the other thread about how 75 percent have little retirement savings. Wall Street has harvested what they could save. Sorta like growing a garden and then the critters come at night and all your work is for nothing.
Just another example of the facade of social mobility in the US. All the laws on the books are written to protect the uber rich and Wall Street banks due to the fact the government is impregnated from top to bottom with friends of Wall Street. How are the regulators supposed to regulate when there's a revolving door of employees between government regulators and Wall Street? Then when Wall Street's gambling blows up, tax payers have to bail them out so our entire way of life doesn't collapse due to financial armegeddon. Yeah, America is "the land of the free" alright. NOT.
Les Leopold: In The Looting of America, Leopold debunks the prevailing media myths that blame low-income home buyers who got in over their heads, people who ran up too much credit-card debt, and government interference with free markets. Instead, readers will discover how Wall Street undermined itself and the rest of the economy by playing and losing at a highly lucrative and dangerous game of fantasy finance.
He also asks some tough questions:
Why did Americans let the gap between workers' wages and executive compensation grow so large?
Why did we fail to realize that the excess money in those executives' pockets was fueling casino-style investment schemes?
Why did we buy the notion that too-good-to-be-true financial products that no one could even understand would somehow form the backbone of America's new, postindustrial economy?
How do we make sure we never give our wages away to gamblers again?
And what can we do to get our money back?
In this page-turning narrative (no background in finance required) Leopold tells the story of how we fell victim to Wall Street's exotic financial products. Readers learn how even school districts were taken in by "innovative" products like collateralized debt obligations, better known as CDOs, and how they sucked trillions of dollars from the global economy when they failed. They'll also learn what average Americans can do to ensure that fantasy finance never rules our economy again.
As the country teeters on the brink of what could be the next Great Depression, we should be especially wary of the so-called financial experts who got us here, and then conveniently got themselves out. So far, it appears they've won the battle, but The Looting of America refuses to let them write the history--or plan its aftermath.
The amerikan dream, you have to be asleep to believe it. Some Americans need to turn off the reality trash media and start researching.
"If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. This was the bombshell dropped by Frontline’s Martin Smith in this Tuesday evening’s PBS program, The Retirement Gamble."
2% is a high fee to pay when you can get funds that charge less than .75%.
Just another example of the facade of social mobility in the US. All the laws on the books are written to protect the uber rich and Wall Street banks due to the fact the government is impregnated from top to bottom with friends of Wall Street. How are the regulators supposed to regulate when there's a revolving door of employees between government regulators and Wall Street? Then when Wall Street's gambling blows up, tax payers have to bail them out so our entire way of life doesn't collapse due to financial armegeddon. Yeah, America is "the land of the free" alright. NOT.
This is why the US has the least amount of social mobility of any 1st world nation. Income inequality has pretty much killed off most social mobility in this country and it has become perminent. If you're born poor than you have a 90% chance of dying poor while if you're born rich you have a 90% chance of dying rich. There just isn't much social mobility in the US over the last 30 years.
"If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. This was the bombshell dropped by Frontline’s Martin Smith in this Tuesday evening’s PBS program, The Retirement Gamble."
2% is a high fee to pay when you can get funds that charge less than .75%.
Vanguard is your friend. Charles Schwab too. 80% of professional managers under-perform the relevant index after management fees are taken into account.
Just another example of the facade of social mobility in the US. All the laws on the books are written to protect the uber rich and Wall Street banks due to the fact the government is impregnated from top to bottom with friends of Wall Street. How are the regulators supposed to regulate when there's a revolving door of employees between government regulators and Wall Street? Then when Wall Street's gambling blows up, tax payers have to bail them out so our entire way of life doesn't collapse due to financial armegeddon. Yeah, America is "the land of the free" alright. NOT.
Yep, they make a fortune on fees on 401K accounts and people don't even know they are paying for it. The whole program is the bankers dream come true, but then again, they invented it. The other dream they are pushing for is the partially privatized retirement accounts, and in UK is was experimented with, and the people lost 50% of their profits to the banks in fees.
Last edited by Finn_Jarber; 04-29-2013 at 07:34 PM..
Yes and dear government will have to step in and protect all your money. That is where we are heading. I believe the push is for annuities. You retire and uncle sam gives you a stipend and you nod your head and say thank you while they steal the rest. Sounds just like another retirement program they stole all the money from.
Create a crisis and impose their solution to the problem on us.
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good thread
