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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nextrade! who wrote (26642)	1/23/2005 7:16:14 AM
From: nextrade!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Standing Solo In The Crowd gold-eagle.com Bill Bonner Ek aur ek guyazah A Hindi saying, meaning "1 + 1 = 11" When we picked up James Surowiecki's new book, The Wisdom of Crowds, we not only expected to be appalled; we counted on it. It is much easier to write a review of a man's errors than it is to praise his merits. Beyond that, we had reason to expect little. We have come to believe that crowds are full of dumbbells and psychopaths; it would be a nuisance to alter such a strongly held opinion at this stage in life. What's more, we felt that the book would probably provide encouragement to communists. No one takes Bolshevism seriously any more. But unseriously, comically, almost accidentally, it has taken over most of the world - including the United States. The cost of paying retirements has been collectivized. health care has been largely collectivized - both by government force and by the insurance industry. Risk of all sorts - including financial risk - have been spread out so much, no one knows exactly how far they reach. If a man defaults on his mortgage in San Diego, who will be the ultimate loser? It is hard to know. Risk is collectivized. And modern corporations are hardly the exploiters and despoilers of Marxist imagination. Au contraire, public companies are now owned by "the people" - through millions of small shareholdings and mutual funds. And they are managed in such a way that almost guarantees that the capitalists will never make money. Dividend yields are below 2% - while the inflation rate is 3.3%. Investors take on the dividend...even though it represents (assuming the share price remains constant) a net annual loss of 1.3%. The capitalists no longer exploit the proletariat, in other words. Instead, the workers exploit the little capitalists.