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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pogeu Mahone who wrote (110834)	1/27/2008 4:52:11 PM
From: Kerry Phineas	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Some of those numbers are hard to believe, seem exaggerated. $500 trillion in derivatives?

To: Pogeu Mahone who wrote (110834)	1/27/2008 5:15:41 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Zeus, I realize that much of this is only beginning to hit the mainstream press and understanding of government regulators, central bankers etc...but it's really not new at all. I've been reading warnings about this for about a decade - but mostly in non mainstream sources, on super bear pages etc... I used to work for Citigroup. I was an employee or consultant there for close to 20 years. There were several employee benefits designed to encourage employees to hold the stock. Despite that, I dumped all my stock in the late 90s. Now granted, I may have been a bit premature in my fears. ;-) But it was already obvious to me back then that all the major financial institutions were getting close to impossible to analyze because of all this kind of stuff. I used to love to invest in the brokers and investment banks also, but haven't held one since Salomon was taken out. This is one of the things that makes me so anti-government, anti-government institution, anti-Fed, anti Wall St, anti politician etc... I consider myself a reasonably well informed guy on these issues. Certainly way more informed than the "average Joe". However, I don't consider myself to be at some "elite level" of understanding. I just have a little more to work with "upstairs" than the average guy, take an interest in this kind of thing, and don't have a family to distract me much. So I have to ask myself, if I am often many years ahead of the Fed government, central bankers, regulators, etc... in my understanding, I'm only putting about 25% of my energy into this, and I'm nowhere near the top, just how F'N stupid are all these people running the country, running financial networks and newspapers, and why should we trust them to do anything or form any opinions at all? This is not the first time either. This is about the 3rd time in my 20 year investment career I saw a specific potential disaster looming many years ahead of the "leadership, mainstream media, etc.."

To: Pogeu Mahone who wrote (110834)	1/28/2008 11:33:53 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

His one mistake is that he believes reality will come to roost. I've been believing the same thing for a couple of decades now and haven't been right, yet, on that score. <G> We have very much "misunderestimated" how much investors, individual and institutional alike, can lie to themselves. BTW, misunderestimate is my second favorite Dubya word. My favorite is one he didn't create, but which was created by Stephen Colbert about his administration, "truthiness."