Re:
Too Big to Fail.
I'm very close to AIG and its workings, as I deal in the financial services marketplace. Personally, I have no allegiance to any company and aside from the obvious loss of wealth for millions, I'm laughing my way to making more purchases and was hoping the whole thing circled the drain.
It hasn't. Yet. It may still. It's a house of cards.
But the reason AIG was "saved", thus far, was because it's TOO BIG TO FAIL. Isn't the only thing TOO BIG TO FAIL the government? Should it not be a concern when a company is SO big it cannot be allowed to fail? Does this not go against everything capitalism is based on? "Rollerball" anyone? (Google it if you don't know).
AIG has its hand in everything and nearly a TRILLION dollars in assets. Their near failure was not a failure in business operations, but a lack of operating cash flow in the short-term. Bad bets in the credit default swap market resulted in greater losses. Plus, hurricane after hurricane, combined with the CDS payoffs, resulted a in a BIG short-term cash pull.
The Government has a 79% Stake in AIG.
That's a first. I don't even know how to take it. The government has 80% of the AIG stock. They actually OWN a publicly traded company. What now?
The Economy.
6 out of the last 8 years have been SEVERE busts in several markets, and also booms. The largest run-up in the commodities market. One of the most frantic Stock Market cycles. And a RE/mortgage market that hit such fictional levels, Jim Cramer had to periodically make himself look like a fool and heritic until people noticed the truth in his words.
They have been VERY speculative years. Compared to your grandparents, who were BUY and HOLDERs of solid companies, and then woke up rich (AT&T, UPS, COCA COLA, DISNEY, GE, MMM, etc) our current and previous generation were rampant speculators, built on greed. It reminds me of Charlie Sheen vs Michael Sheen in "Wall Street."
Gecko created nothing. Before he was arrested, Charlie (Buddy) didn't either. His father did. He created and maintained safe planes, and while he wasn't rich, he had the respect of his co-workers, he impacted MORE people positively than Gordon Gecko did, and he had his honor; didn't sell his soul.
Our prior and current generation doesn't CREATE much of anything. We sell ideas, we push paper, take orders, and middle manage everything. School has wrung the entrepreneur out of kids that would effectively sell candy or lemonade or newspapers. The purpose of EDUCATION (not school) is to CREATE independent thinkers and operators, not canned, rote, programmed, children who are so alike, unless they are sent to the principals office, you don't know they are rebellious or different.
College is no different. Only the elite schools teach a program different in philosophy than the business schools, state, community, and expensive private colleges. Just because it's 40k/year to go, doesn't mean the 4 years of education is teaching a person to be INDEPENDENT or even the learn financial concepts people need to grasp our economy. I know. I know some who went to the best. If you don't care about your independence, that which our founding father's had in mind, NO ONE does.
Wall Street have some of the best and brightest, and all that proved to me is, PhD and MBAs aren't smarter than the masses and are probably twice as greedy. Moreover, they don't care about people, they care about adherence to a system, versus people. They may have "people" skills with regard to manipulation and sales, but they don't have a compassionate nature that puts PEOPLE over IDEAS and PROFITS.
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I hope Generation Y wakes up. READ. READ. READ. Disbelieve all schooling. ****, the government owns it. They are effectively telling you WHAT you should know. The founding father's had no place for that, since the founding father's were largely self taught and more responsible at younger ages than our current generation.
Work to being entirely self sufficient. Unplug from the schooling, government, and corporate matrix which makes everything disposable and puts you in constant competition to keep up with the joneses. Advertising using optimal women in their child rearing years to delude people into thinking ALL women should be this way. Then porn degrades women into 3 holes and a pile of pleasurable flesh, not a living, breathing, thing, capable of far greater activities than simple sexual pleasure (sex with a good, healthy confident woman is incomparable).
Dump thought systems. All they do is preclude the spontaneity of life. They make your decision for you, before anything has taken root or action. We are better than this. Thought systems are for robots, not FREE THINKERS.
Save. Save. Save. I know RDPD espouses not being cheap, but that doesn't mean you have to be a voracious consumer, who buys new crap he/she won't fully use. Not being cheap means, not skimping when you fly, if the difference means a better flight over long distances. Or skimping where the opportunity cost is great. He doesn't mean buy doodads you won't ever use.
I'm preaching, but I've been around the block, and consulted with hundreds of our country folk through finance.
Our generation is being lead astray because they are asleep, and so are their parents.
