Why my 401K is now worth half what it was in January
When I went in and checked the value of my 401K today, after the market dropped over 500 points (the biggest one day drop since September 11, 2001). I saw that it is now worth half what it was at the start of the year.
Jeebus frogging Cripes!
It's not that I'm highly leveraged or optioned, or invested in any number of highly suspect derivative securities.
We are now watching what happens to an economy that has had 8 years of Republican deregulation.
Hel-lo?
There's a reason stuff is regulated: it's to protect financial markets from greedy fucks like the jokers running Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch. Get rid of the regs and sooner or later you get the predicatable result we see today (and a couple of weeks ago with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac): a bunch of hotdogs with MBAs out attempting to game the system.
Works great until it stops working. Then...whoops.
And of course the real villains will walk away, their purses still bulging and fat, looking for the next opportunity to screw things up.
The only possible good I get from this is that maybe Harold Simmons, the billionaire right-wing shit-flinger responsible for financing the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004 will feel the pinch and decide he can't afford to carpet-bomb the truth in this year's election.
My old man is a life-long Republican and a retired credit manager. He used to say, "If I owe you a hundred bucks and can't pay you, you've got me over a barrel. If I owe you a hundred million and can't pay, I've got you over a barrel."
He'd never have let this shit happen.
Jeebus frogging Cripes!
It's not that I'm highly leveraged or optioned, or invested in any number of highly suspect derivative securities.
We are now watching what happens to an economy that has had 8 years of Republican deregulation.
Hel-lo?
There's a reason stuff is regulated: it's to protect financial markets from greedy fucks like the jokers running Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch. Get rid of the regs and sooner or later you get the predicatable result we see today (and a couple of weeks ago with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac): a bunch of hotdogs with MBAs out attempting to game the system.
Works great until it stops working. Then...whoops.
And of course the real villains will walk away, their purses still bulging and fat, looking for the next opportunity to screw things up.
The only possible good I get from this is that maybe Harold Simmons, the billionaire right-wing shit-flinger responsible for financing the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004 will feel the pinch and decide he can't afford to carpet-bomb the truth in this year's election.
My old man is a life-long Republican and a retired credit manager. He used to say, "If I owe you a hundred bucks and can't pay you, you've got me over a barrel. If I owe you a hundred million and can't pay, I've got you over a barrel."
He'd never have let this shit happen.
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