As I am viewing our retirement accounts

[question everything]

as of yesterday, and comparing them to the first quarter statements that we received just yesterday, I can't help but thinking that all those "captains of the industry" that gave millions to Bush must have suffered paper loss of millions of dollars. Perhaps even billions.

[Cleita]

1. I have often wondered about that.

Back in the seventies when we voted in rent control in Santa Monica, landlords preferred to leave their buildings empty rather than rent at
less than the going market rate. It seems to me that such a loss of rent income would have dire effects like defaulting on their mortgages and such, yet many apartment buildings went empty for decades.

I came to the conclusion that they were being funded behind the scenes by groups of corporations to create a housing shortage and therefore get rent control abolished. It was something no one set out to prove but I have my suspicions.

I wonder about this too. Who is behind them covering their backs with money? Somewhere, somehow they are benefitting in the long run from any temporary losses they may incur.

[Tux]

2. Why else

Give tax cuts to the wealthy? That may help make up the difference.

[K-W]

7. No, its a little simpler than that.

I dont understand why you think the rich need someone to cover thier backs with money, they are rich.

[Cleita]

9. Apparently you have never worked for the ultra-rich like I have.

If you ever saw the movie "Trading Places", there is a scene where the two rich brothers make a 50 cent bet to turn the homeless Eddie Murphy into a commodities trader. After they proceed to ruin lives, and turn them upside down to prove a point, the one brother pays the other one off with fifty cents.

This is how rich people think. They will go to extreme lengths to get a better deal on a plastic mat or better yet to get it for free. No penny goes unpinched. If there is a better deal waiting if you let another one go, they will jump on it. Ethics are about not getting caught.

[Nite Owl]

3. They cut and run.

'Investing', the 'buy and hold' strategy does not apply to them just to the little people who own stock.

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=10154&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported



NEW YORK - Talk about a double standard. While corporate leaders tout the benefits of investors owning their stocks, many executives seem to be running for the doors themselves.
Selling of shares by insiders — which includes executives and other top officers and directors at a company — has been rampant in recent months, with sales rising to their highest level in more than four years in November.

<snip>

Take, for instance, the surge in shares of homebuilder NVR Inc., which has seen its stock jump from just over $432 a share at the start of the year to now trade about $730 apiece. That rise has come despite expectations for a slowdown in the housing market as interest rates begin to climb.

Also troublesome with that giant stock run-up is that NVR's insiders have been bailing out of the stock big time. They have sold more than $220 million in shares this year alone.

[leftofthedial]

4. no

insiders profit whether the market goes up or down, provided there is enough volatility to exploit

the mutual fund 401K investor who "sits pat" suffers the effects fo the market trending down or stagnant onger term.

[Zenlitened]

5. Negative numbers on three of my four accounts, too.

Small potatoes, in my case. But you're right -- someone with more digits ahead of the decimal point must have really gotten whacked.

I vividly remember the last time the markets tumbled. I -- like most people -- dutifully followed the expert advice that says "don't lock in your losses." That phrase was usually followed by "the market fluctuates" and "you have to look at the long term."

Then we all rode it straight to the bottom. Yes, most people have recovered by now, several years later. But where would we be if we had listened to our guts and gotten out of stocks when the slide began? We could have held our money in a safe place, then actually made some money when the markets began to recover, instead of simply climbing back to break-even.

So the question I'm debating now is whether to get out of stocks, and put my retirement dough into guaranteed funds, like money-markets. Not sure what I'll do yet, but the alarm bells are certainly beginning to ring.

[elehhhhna]

6. Markets dropping now becasue they realized the infusion of Soc Sec $$

is NOT going to prop it up. Wahhh.

[natrat]

8. yea that's what i think too

big brokerages bought stock in a deal w/ * thinking they could dump it off on private account holders. In the last few years much fewer individuals versus program/institutional interest.