"Thursday, September 27, 2007
I've sort of been following the stock market lately. I have a 401K plan with enough money in it that I've been concerned about its value once I retire. Of course the housing bubble finally burst - anyone could see it coming. That wasn't really a set back, as I'd avoided investments that were obviously going to be affected. But that pop dragged down everything else during the period of confusion that followed.
At some point it all would have sorted itself out, with those who'd gone for the fast buck, high interest, stupid mortgage paper investments paying the price of their avarice. And those who borrowed money at stupid-low rates that were too good to be true would pay the price as well, just as Darwin says they should.
Unfortunately, the government stepped in by making money easier to borrow. Basically they printed more money which added to the number of dollars that were backed by a limited amount of faith. The amount of faith didn't go up, so the value of each dollar went down.
In effect, even people making good investments lost value because of the government's actions. So dollar values of the stocks are back up to almost where they were before the bubble burst. But the value of each dollar is down. And all because the government decided to protect the greedy stupid at the expense of the conservative smart.
What happened to the marketplace of Adam Smith? Maybe next time I should just go for the nut-schemes knowing that Uncle Sam will cover my losses.
This is Desiree, completely unconcerned for the moment about marketplaces and retirement.
posted by D. Brian Nelson at 10:22 AM"
Visit Brian's site
No comments:
Post a Comment