Reply #18: Agreed, but those that knew what they were doing are [View All]

[Blue Meany]

the most culpable.

When everything is going up, many people feel richer and smarter than they are. My mother-in-law, at 87, has started to play the stock market for the first time in her life and has been doing so since the beginning of the latest upswing. Every time she is on the phone she talks about how much money she has made and she is convinced she is a brilliant investor. I keep telling her that it's easy to make money when the market is going up, but it will go down, and then you have to be smart and/or lucky not to lose money. She won't hear any of this, and now that she is "rich," she spending money like never before.

I supppose that some of those in banks--certainly the brokers I dealt with over the years--must have succumbed to this mentality. But those who were creative credit default swaps had to know what they wee doing.