Dow Jones Industrial Average hits 14,000

[Egalitarian Thug]

41. Why this is really nothing much to celebrate.

Prior to the gutting of ERISA and flogging the alphanumeric soup of "individual retirement plans" on the public, the DJIA was really irrelevant to the average worker. It was a piece of trivia published in the WSJ and fretted over by executives and those with the means to invest, IOW people with knowledge, means, and interest in the topic.

Legalizing and rewarding the theft of the average person's earned equity (pre-seventies pensions as the primary example) and thereby forcing all of us into a market we have no control over and little if any knowledge of has captured and required us to root against their own interests. The worse things are for the average citizen, the better Wall Street likes it, so the higher the averages go.

One piece of evidence of this is the numerous "I've finally recovered my retirement account" statements here on this and the other threads.

You haven't, your equity was still stolen, you will never get that back. You've lost the interest you should have made over the intervening years, you will never get that back. You've lost the time and all the myriad effects that has had on your life, you will never get that back. You've lost the unimaginable amounts of money that you, as American taxpayers, are on the hook for in fueling this so-called recovery you will never get that back and your grandchildren will still be paying for that long after you're dead.

It is the illusion, the cynical manipulation of our collective perception that causes us to cheer our own losses to the exclusive benefit of those that stole what was ours that is so insidious. By making you feel better, you are motivated to participate in your own demise. All those losses listed above, and many more that would take hours to write, came from you and went to them and they don't even have the decency to thank you for it, nor do you have the understanding(?) to demand their gratitude and remuneration.

You're cheering your torturer for backing the thumbscrews off a quarter turn.