November 2005 Archives

Heh; http://www.snopes.com/holidays/thanksgiving/shopping.asp

Be it a question? Very informative article on the history of pensions in the U.S. here. I am not done reading it yet, but it is of some pertinence to me since I was notified yesterday my pension benefits had been "frozen," as a partial result of my employer filing for bankruptcy a couple months ago. I don't sense I am in any immediate financial trouble personally, but something tells me the crap is starting to hit the fan pretty hard in the U.S.A. of late. Did you know the negative effect of the bursting housing bubble will be worse for you than the 2001 stock market crash? When Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae go down, we will all be left holding the bag. It is not a small bag. Also, the U.S. dollar is substantially overvalued right now (about 30%, so I hear) and is due for a downward correction in the very near future. "Laugh while you can, monkey boy!" - Lord John Whorfin

"On this issue, it is important to note that the track record of the economics profession and so-called financial experts has been abysmal. Very few economists recognized and warned of the stock bubble in the late nineties. The vast majority of economists and financial experts continued to recommend that investors, including large investors like pension funds, put their money in the stock market even as the bubble grew to ever more unsustainable levels. It required nothing more than simple arithmetic to recognize the stock bubble. Once the price to earnings ratio in the market got far above its historic average (it peaked at 33, the historic average was 14.5), it was impossible to believe that the stock market could generate anywhere near its historic rates of return, unless one believed that economic growth would vastly exceed the widely accepted range. The fact that so many 'experts' managed to completely miss something that could have been detected as easily as the stock bubble should be kept in mind when assessing views on the housing market."