Reply #197: A long long time ago when I was a very naive young man;

[ooglymoogly]

In one of those Forrest Gump moments in my life and as happenstance would have it, I knew a few of the 4 or 5 biggest banking names in the wall st game; But one in particular. I knew them through their children who were my age and living in a land far far away where ex patriots stuck together like family. The one I am speaking of, the patriarch of one of these families, found out I was playing around in the stock market; We had several long winded and candid discussions and these are some of the things I learned from this extraordinary man; He told me the stock market is so designed to be so complicated the casual observer can only figure out the part meant for him to figure out; He told me the stock market is designed for very powerful men in banking families who can and do effect world events to their favor, who can manipulate it into a sure bet for themselves; Insiders who know when to get in and when to get out. Men who can investigate companies and know what is true and what is false and can make or break them and how, what was coming down the pike in world affairs could effect that company; Who was sniffing around in the weeds to gobble up that company, Who needed financing, etc; That the market would most likely not work for me unless I was miraculously lucky and that it was not only a big gamble for me, it was in the long run a sure loser for me. He considered the 95% of investors who fit this category, no more than suckers playing an endless shell game with master slight of hand shell gamers; Unless that investor was investing in a field he was on top of and was a player in that field; "You are an architect", he said; "Invest in houses, buildings, things that you know about".


For decades, in sickness and in health, I have watched the market ebb and flow and with each ebb, fall, invariably during or shortly after a pug administration taking the casual investor down a notch or two or to the bottom. I have not owned a stock since those days; Though I believe the stock market to be an excellent concept, if it were operated by honest folks. That dream is a fairy tale. The stock market is as crooked as a snake and if given the chance will rob us all blind, as evidenced by the last 8 years and the great depression and the depression before that.

The TARP bailout is more of the same on steroids. It is the biggest fraud and robbery in history. The banks that have been rumored into failure should not be allowed to fail but be taken over by our government until the banking system is sound again, with strict safeguards and regulation period! and those who caused the failure, be it by rumor or manipulation, put in jail.

But then the ruling class thinks we are all too dumb to figure it all out; That this is just a replay of the great depression where a few big banking families ended up owning everything and are now playing the same astronomically lucrative record over again caring not a whit, who it hurts or destroys.