The financial world

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Okay...I will admit it...I am virtually ignorant regarding the world of high finance and economic theory...of Laffer curves and trickle down theory, of how we can NOT be on the gold standard.
I have been rerading the last part of Phillips' "American Thoeocracy" and am completely confounded.

Silly me...I guess I cannot understand how it is NOT obvious that there is "x" amount of wealth in the world and that the more one person or country owns, the less another person or country has. It seems obvious to me that the administration's claims that the economy is much better are based on faulty assumptions and statistics...that they completely ignore where the wealth lies and why so many Americans do NOT consider their personal financial situations to have appreciably improved.

The theory of wealth thru debt also confounds me. I was taught that the road to financial security was thru saving, not deficit spending (not that this girl has saved a penny!!).

One thing I can intuit, however...when financial empires are built on the exchange of wealth and not on the actual creation of goods...be they grown or manufactured...that financial empire is a deck of cards waiting to collapse. That is exactly the nature of finance and the stock market in this country. That wealth is on paper and can evaporate in a New York minute!! In my humble opinion, those folks fleecing the public through financial shenanigans are nothing more than modern day con men.

Another scam...the insurance racket. The premise is totally convoluted. You are betting that something WILL go wrong..that is the only way for the bet to pay out...so...these scammers are playing upon our fears because we have no sense of community and if our neighbor goes down...well...tough...it was about time they learned the lesson that life is not fair.

But...even worse...these insurance scammers threaten to drop coverage if you ever need to collect on your bet because tragedy has come to visit. Oh the nerve of these people...promising security (that is what they are in business to sell) lest the worst case scenario befall you and then either pulling the rug out from beneath you or jacking the rates so high that they become prohibitively expensive and unaffordable.

I seem to always find myself with the "doom forecaster's" hat on...but...there will come a day when out cavalier attitudes will come back to bite us unless we learn PDQ!!!

trickster108