IS MY COUSIN FREAKING CRAZY???

[Sebass1271]

She thinks she knows it all. She used to work for a bank before and now she works for aconsultant political company. Thsi is what she tells me about this market situation.


her response:

I am sorry but your 401K has NOTHING to do with your knowledge of politics, it is common sense to be a better informed investor in your own 401K and other market accounts. Am I the only one sitting here remembering how long ago this started in the Economy, I can remember that it was quite a few months ago when mortgage companies starting a trip down the toilet and foreclosures and unemployment were coming in at a loss.


my e-mail:
you are in the political arena janderyng, not everyone knows this was going to happen.. it is not enough you saying being proactice vs reactive.. not everyone follows politics as you do to be informed. i am sure since you did know, you moved yours six months ago.

just my thoughts...


her first e-mail;
I am sorry to say this but this is why I said being reactive vs. proactive is terrible, you should have frozen your 401K months ago or moved investments into different areas that would have allowed room for growth with some protection of a downward market. This problem did not start right before this Bill was thought up it started a while ago.

what the fuck gives with her????


_________________________________________________
also she thinks the bailout has nothing to do with Democrats and republicans since
this her points on the bailout.
"Lets put politics aside for one freakin minute or I am going to explode with frustration. At no point did any Democrat say this Bill would 100% be the best thing since sliced bread for the economy. Bankers and Investors have a “frugal and cautious” approach when it comes to the involvement of government and the Markets. Why is it that no matter how many times I say the word hesitant, very carefully that comes across as purely being against it. I think there are a lot of people out there from both sides wondering what this plan really means. Hesitation provides room for question, Democrats “fixing” anything is not the way I look at it, I believe the Democrats added necessary stipulations to this Bill that came as an IDEA not a full formed Bill when it first arrived to the Banking Committee".


"We need to look at the long term affect on this, what areas it will adjust in order for our Markets to stabilize not just provide a rushed injection of money, not to mention the FED pumped an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression"

what the fuck is her problem?
we are on the verge of a something ugly and she still thinks politics had nothing to do with it? or partisan politics or bad policies?

[DianeG5385]

1. She's right, maybe you should listen to her

We are in serious trouble and I must say, I have less than 10% of my portfolio in equities. Today's vote is the ultimate in treason to our country.

[Sebass1271]

2. How can she take it so slightly?

and you? All that we have been going thru is because of bad policies and politics and when needs to be fixed, has noghting to do with politics??

Please explain this one to me?

[cottonseed]

4. It might be that you see it through a political prism.

She sees it through an economic prism. She concedes there were problems, I just don't think she agrees that it's purely political. Which when you consider that this issue arises from monetary policy along with deregulation then you both may be "correct".

[Sebass1271]

9. Thank you,

this is what i am trying to explain to her.. but as you stated, we both have "good points"

[anigbrowl]

7. What she's saying is it's not the job of the government or a political party to look after your 401k

It's YOUR job. You can vote for the policies you think are going to be best for the long-term health of the country, but your 401k is not a guaranteed asset like your savings account. It's an investment, and investments can go down as well as up. That's not just small print, it's a warning to you to be aware of risks. The problem in this country is that the market in general has been going up for so long that people have quite forgotten their risk and assumed they are entitled to endless growth in their investments.

Obviously you are not a financial expert and you can't predict everything that's going to go on in the future, or you would probably invest in stocks and bonds directly rather than through a 401k. But you still need to remember that where your 401k money goes is basically like voting with your wallet on what you think is going to happen in the economy. It is ultimately up to you to manage it, and if you think that the political climate in recent years has been bad and that it has given rise to much financial chicanery (something I agree with you about), then the right thing to do is express your lack of confidence in that part of the market by putting your money into a more conservative investment than leaving it in a growth one.

[anigbrowl]

3. No, she's smarter than you and you should ask questions instead of arguing.

She's quite right that you are being wilfully ignorant. Those of us who pay a lot of attention to business news have been talking about this possibility for over a year. I am no fat cat or even wealthy; in fact, I'm pretty poor because my own employment is fairly unsteady. So I am not lording it over you from a position of privilege.

BUT, and it's a big one, this situation has been in the works for a long time and you don't need special knowledge or inside information to know that. If you read the business and finance news regularly (eg go to the financial Times website) you would have seen this coming a long time ago.

So I suggest you stop dissing your cousin, apologize, and ask her to recommend a good accessible primer on the workings of capital markets.

[Sebass1271]

8. I am not dissing my cousin

just because you well informed and well read and read financial markets does not mean the entire country reads it. You are maybe one of few percentages that is well informed about what could happen financially in this country. PPL are busy with their date to date lives, mortgages, day cares, schools and all they care about is to save as much as they can.

I do believe however, that this economic turn down is not only because of the markets it has a lot to do as well with politics. Something that you want to dismiss and ignore. You are seeing this economic meltdown just like her and ignoring one huuge factor, politics played the cards here too.

You are being very rude and have proven some accusations as why sometimes we are called what we are called by the right.. - you consider yourself knowledgeable in certain area have to dismiss and treat others like peasants...- that is the republican way, it should not be the Democratic way –

[CJCRANE]

12. I agree with you nt

[anigbrowl]

15. You're suggesting she's 'FREAKING CRAZY'. Of course you are dissing her.

Yes, I am one of the few people that pays a lot of attention to the business news. The majority of people are woefully under-informed, and they should be more informed because this stuff is important.

I am not dismissing the role of politics in creating this situation. It is in large part a Republican mess, although they have had a fair amount of help from the democrats who have been carried along by a false sense of security over the last couple of decades.

But the fact that it is a political mess does not mean that it's OK for the average Joe or Jane to just cruise along without paying much attention to the finance pages: political messes occur when the electorate gets complacent and assumes things are just going to keep going along more or less as they always have.

If more people had paid attention to what was coming and voted with their pocketbooks earlier (eg by moving their 401k funds into safer assets), then this would have been addressed and resolved earlier. In general, political change follows in the wake of economic change, and the vast majority of people just went along with the status quo because they believed it was going to benefit them over the long term.

That's the way of the world, because in general humans have the attitude that if it ain't broke, you don't fix it, and the number of us saying 'the financial system is broken and will crash' in the last few years were such a small minority that few people took the warnings seriously.

This bailout today has failed partly because many many people have been calling Congress and saying 'if this shit passes I'll never vote for you again'. The vast majority of those people don't understand what the underlying economic problem is nor why it would be a good idea to resolve the situation now, because it's going to cost a lot more if we postpone this.

It is, in some ways, a failure of democracy because the general public lacks much economic knowledge. And one reason they do so is that the public at large has done pretty well over the last few decades and have gotten complacent. Some people have done very badly and have rightly complained about the inherent unfairness and inequity of the financial system.

But the fact is that such people are in a minority, and more people have made a lot of money (eg through rising house prices) over the last 20-30 years than have lost out. Now the bill for that is coming due and people are seeing those gains wiped out in many cases, so now they are paying a great deal of attention to the financial news, but they have a lot of catching up to do. It's sad to say, but when people with authority have talked about the need for caution and restraint during periods of high economic growth, they've frequently been ignored or told to shut up.

[marions ghost]

5. Seems arrogant,

"buyer beware" bullshit, if your cousin is talking about ordinary people with retirement accounts.

Your post is confusing at the end--are those your words or hers?

So is she a Democrat or Republican?

[Sebass1271]

10. the last

two paragraphs are hers.. which i agree with you.. she is being extremelly arrogant.

thanks..

[marions ghost]

16. I read from what she says...

"tough, I got mine"... smug & righteous

Of course the average wage earner would trust that their 401K is solid and not worry too much about it. You're supposed to "leave it there." And individuals trying to save for retirement should not have to know what to do in case the economy collapses. Duh. It points up the fact that retirement savings should preferably not be in volatile investments, period. But I expect we'll hear more of this same kind of tacky rhetoric as your cousin's dishing out all over the place. Take responsibility, Consumer #884-65-0029! (yawn) Nah, there are others who need to be doing that!

Where I'm coming from is not ever having trusted that 401K deal. I'm too cynical and used to not being wealthy. But I understand, and have every sympathy for, those who are merely trying to maximize their profits for retirement.

[mwb970]

6. I'm afraid she sounds right to me.

Especially about restructuring your investments. I pulled my retirement account completely out of stocks a year ago. If I hadn't, my balance would be many tens of thousands of dollars lower now.

[Sebass1271]

11. Why did you do this one year ago?

You know, she is claiming the same thing. She pulled her six months ago. I want you to tell me why? Because you follow the financial markets a lot?

You can't blame (like she is) people for not knowing this. NOT EVERYONE FOLLOWS THE FINANCIAL MARKET.

[CJCRANE]

13. I think politics and finances go together.

If I had invested in Halliburton and Big Oil for instance (based on my knowledge of Bushco) I would have made an enormous profit.

[mwb970]

14. Gee, I don't really "follow the markets a lot".

Part of my morning routine is to read the Business page at cnn.com for ten minutes or so. I also keep track of the balance in my retirement account, especially the stocks part (if any), checking it every two or three days. (It's online, and takes perhaps 60 seconds to check and jot down.) I watch CNBC for a half hour or so most days. That's about it.

All through 2007, until autumn, I was pleased to find my account balance going up and up and up (nice, considering I am unemployed at 55+ and have little "real" income). In fact, my balance was going up faster than I was spending it! But, along about September 2007 or so, the stocks stopped going up so much and seemed to be down just as often. The stories on cnn.com and CNBC by commentators I had come to trust began warning that the market had likely peaked. Spooked, I pulled out of stocks. The Dow, then at almost 14,000, fell and continued to fall, but my retirement money was (relatively) safe in a Money Market account.

None of this required any special knowledge or business/economics experience (I have none) and not much time, just attention.

Before you think I'm building up to "and, therefore, you are an idiot for not paying attention", I'm not. You see, in the 90s, while I still had my job, I paid no attention at all to my investments in my retirement account. Damn! Looking back now, I can see that if I had pulled out of stocks after the dot-com bubble burst and bought back in a few years later, I would have almost $100K more than I do now. I didn't pay attention until I lost my job and the retirement account became all-important. If I had been managing it all along I'd be much better off now!

[anigbrowl]

17. Right, not everyone follows the financial market. But you should.

Look, most of the time people pay more attention to the sports section of the newspaper than the business section. I used to be like that too (well, I read arts and culture because I don't care much about sport, but same difference).

Like some other posters, I got fucked in the past because I wasn't paying attention. So now I read it carefully and think about it a lot. It mattes because the business pages very often tell you what is going to be on the front pages 2 or 3 months in the future.