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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (215323)	1/18/2005 4:53:12 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573994

neolib, re: Depending on the nature of 1-3 above, you get from the lottery to the banking industry. Stocks fall somewhere between those two. I always thought of the markets as a horse race without a finish line, and where you could cash out your bet as the race was run. John

To: neolib who wrote (215323)	1/18/2005 4:59:59 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573994

Sure, there are alot of exercises in fraud that have occurred in our stock market that can be exactly likened to a ponzi scheme. But that isn't the norm. It's simply corruption that we police against. You're assertion was that the whole stock market is a ponzi scheme, which is an assertion that difficult for people to take seriously. As far as a means to gamble, I am wholeheartedly with you on that. This is why I am worried about how much freedom of choice Bush will propose in his plan. If he limits the freedom to lifecycle/horizon funds and or bonds, then he is eliminating the gambling risk. If he lets people invest in individual stocks or options, then he's ennabling gambling and I'd be against it. Social security is too important not to manage the risk appropriately (90% of people depend on it as a primary means of retirement funds). As for your thought experiment, I believe that it's simply important to ensure we limit the opportunity for gambling. The stock market can be a very powerful tool for economic growth and for retirement wealth, but only if modern, prudent financial planning is done.