RE: [A-List] "The Late '90s Never Happened"

[joanna bujes <joanna.bujes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 05:54 PM 10/25/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> Actually in the latter half of the 90s wages and incomes
> rose for every income class.  Your pensions/savings
> weren't wiped out until later.
>
> As you say, now is a different story.

No, what I'm trying to get accross is that it's the same story. The first
part of the story had to do with suckering the suckers or outright
theft/fraud. In the second part,  the insiders took off and everyone else
got left holding the bag. Where is your money? It's in Aspen, it's in
Switzerland, it's in the Bahamas.

You could say ordinary people got hurt because they were greedy but that
would be ignoring three key facts 1) the disappearance of pension plans and
the barrage of propaganda on the long-term buy-and-hold-and-can't-lose
stock market strategy....which led a large number of people to put 401k in
stocks 2) the forced investment of 401Ks into stocks, and sometimes into
specific stocks, which gave the employee no choice about where to put his
401K money, and 3) the fact that lots of people with traditional pension
plans will get screwed anyway because the funding of those plans is
dependent on the stock market....and on the speculation, corruption, and
theft that continue.

You don't have to feel sorry for me; I don't have a penny in stocks; I
could see that bubble from miles away, but it doesn't matter because if
this situation leads to a major depression...all little boats, even the
prescient ones, will sink.

Joanna