To me, this post by Thom Hartmann really strikes the core of GOP Trump sham slogan "Take America Back". Where exactly? Backwards.
Take America back to a time when rules and regulations didn't exist to protect average people from having their lives destroyed by the predator class.
Take America back to a time when the "invisible" hand of the so-called free market was so deep in their pocket it could've been charged with a sex crime.
Take America back to the wild west, when nobody except the most vile and ruthless hustlers knew a life of stability and security.
Take them back to slavery and 16-hour work days and child labor! If there aren't enough jobs just let them suffer. All the rich need to do is to police the poor to kill the poor.
About 35 years ago I was a litigation attorney in the securities area. The scamming of elderly and less sophisticated investors was alive and well already then.
I learned in investing to follow the Warren Buffet rule, downsized to my portoflio. The rule is that if you cannot understand the business model of the investment, it's a bad idea and don't invest.
Unfortunately some of our pension funds don't seem to get it and are making speculative investments with private equity groups. A sure current return of 5% on T-bills may be much better than the opaqueness of many of these investments.
I agree Doug, and as I'm sure you know a big part of this problem is that the Depression Era rules separating investments from commercial banks were killed over several administrations. The Savings and Loan disaster of the Reagan years was only the first of this. (A collateral problem is that now the focus is on next quarter's bottom line rather than long-term investments. This is something not helped by stock buy backs, as Thom has pointed out elsewhere.) We really need a new Glass-Steagall Act, but don't expect it from any administration.
You read my lips!!! Adam Smith explains why our system has failed in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. The Wealth of Nations is useless without "moral sentiments." Outside of property and other hard assets, over 90% of my wealth is invested in T Bills. The worst they can do is pay me back with dollars that won't buy anything. They still have a printing press.
NASD and other groups have arbitration clauses re securities fraud which is an everyday event. DOL proposed a fiduciary rule in 2010, when I was still working. ERISA was written before 401 k's existed.
The practice Thom described where unethical financial advisors are paid by the number of transactions when a broker excessively trades in a customer's account to earn more commissions is called "churning." It can be a crime. 18 U.S.C. § 1348 securities fraud is the unlawful practice of using manipulative or deceptive tactics to purchase or sell a security. Fraud is a commonly prosecuted federal crime in the United States and securities fraud charges have made news headlines in the prosecution of Bernie Madoff. E.G. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-ceo-publicly-traded-company-convicted-securities-fraud-scheme
Once upon a time there was a three legged stool ( symbolically) for retirement . One was your pension ( a defined benefit- not a
401K defined contribution) , the second was social security, the third was your own savings . Then greed became good and
pensions morphed into 401 K’s - unions
especially in the private sector almost
vanished along with union benefits.
Republicans have been attacking Social Security since its inception. Failing that ,
so far, they have allowed the so called investment advisors to rob people blind as today’s post indicates. That three legged stool ain’t what it used to be - no wonder so many of us are down on our knees.
The new corporate business model is clear. It is neo serfdom.
In serfdom a serf was bound to the land, when the land changed hands, the serf changed masters, The serf lived and died at the will of the master. If he got sick,a local would apply poultices and administer home brewed toxins. There was no health care, no education beyond that of the local priest in his sermons, and health care was slap dashery.
Neo serfdom replaces land with job, and education, health care and middle class is being phased out. A middle class is a threat to the upper class, the the Powell memo..
Here is where serfdom and Marxism meet.
When Marx wrote his screeds, there was no such thing as a middle class, the words did yet exist, what we call middle class is what he called bourgeoisie . He has nothing to say about the ruling class, for good reason it was they that funded him via ht League of Just Men.
The middle class (bourgeoisie) was a threat to the ruling class in Marx's era, and it is a threat to the ruling class in this era.
By the way Marx was no champion of the proletariat (the lower working class). He would chastise editors of southern papers to free the slaves and hire them back at market wages.
Slave produced cotton was too expensive for his partner Frederick Engels,who had inherited a textile mill, and because of cost, to make a profit, he had to buy the inferior and cheaper Egyptian cotton.
Slave owning was expensive, first the capital investment, then overseers, horses for overseers,feed for the horses, food, clothing and housing for the slaves, paying a preacher to teach them to obey their masters and that Jesus loved them, if no one else did, "Praise Jesus")
and even entertainment, instruments get togethers, entertainment is an outlet, a pressure relief valve. All work and no play...
Another astounding immoral adventure by the lawless Republican scoundrels.
Who care not one whit about the people of this country.
Unless of course, you are in the top % of the wealthiest Americans.
And as we know they need their cut to support sleazy Politicians , who continue this monumental rip off of the American majority. That's us.
This group of criminals lead by the chief criminal, the ex president Trump, take their orders from the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society and of course ,Trumps owner , Vladimir Putin . The Supreme Court Maga judges, the twisted six, appointed by Donald Trump to carry out this Maga Doctrine will carry on until they are impeached or diluted by the Democrats, hopefully sooner rather than later , disallowing any further intrusion into our hoped for way of life .
Clark Howard had excellent financial/travel/consumer advice on his show. He would play his "alarm" every time someone called in about annuities. Fiduciaries do not recommend them either.
Of course the Republicans will throw the workers and old people to the wolves. They simply do not get it---there is no such thing as a free and fair market. No regulations leads to rip-offs, Ponzi schemes, monopolies, and dangerous products. All of that can lead to working your ass off all your life but retiring poor.
President Biden absolutely got this right! Vice President Harris may be a particular kind of capitalist, but this is just one more area where she will try to protect Americans in the Harris/Walz administration. Just like she said, she knows these fraudsters and criminals.
The entire right wing organization are a bunch of criminals. They will rob the poor, then send them to extermination camps for being poor. Almost all the right wing voters are the same way, that is why our prisons are so full. So much dishonesty and lack of a conscience, thanks to phony faith-based religions and crazy parenting and unlimited greed!
As we focus on the upcoming election, we must remember that the election for president is minimized without a Congress to implement her policies. As successful as Biden has been, most of it came during his first two years when Democrats had majorities in both houses.
Back when terms like moderate or liberal Republicans were not oxymorons, mixed congresses were still able to pass progressive legislation. But with today’s congress a significant party plurality of just the starting point of a successful progressive agenda.
You got this right again, Thom. We have an excellent fiduciary who looks at the long term--no panic churning trades and chasing the market during up or downturns while pocketing commissions. He charges clear, fixed and reasonable fees no matter how much work is done In fact, one of the first things he did with our new assets was consolidate mutual funds so we weren't paying multiple fees for the same level of service from different companies.
But as Thomas Garrett notes in this thread, the same caution is true in many fields. "Buy the book before the coin" is the mantra for serious numismatists versus those who are stampeded into buying the junk flogged on late night TV. Do your research, ask questions and protect yourself first. Unless there is blatant fraud, like Trump U., nobody else will do that for you. And even then good luck on getting your assets back.
Fox News viewers are suckered out of their hard or ill earned money. The crap that they advertise, pay $20 for a$2 bill overprinted with a colorized photo of Trumps mug shot
I don't watchMSNBC anymore, don't learn anything that I haven't learned from my inbox, but the car has XM, wife's doing, and it is tuned to MSNBC, I heard an advertisement for gold. I couldn't believe my ears They have really degenerated, scraping the bottom of the barrel for revenue.
It seems like a lot of people are suckered into these get rich quick schemes. I always ask if the deals are so good then why aren’t the sellers keeping this stuff for themselves. (Or to put it another way, big casinos aren’t constructed to give money away.) I saw exactly the same kind of advertisements in China too, so it is not just here. People buy this junk silver (which has no numismatic value as unlikely what is shown on TV it typically consists of worn coins with common dates) or overpriced gold that you can buy directly from the mint or at least from a reputable dealer for less. Then likely as not they’ll mishandle it as polishing wrecks the value of coins. Several coins dealers have told me how angry people are when they stashes are worth far less than they paid for them. As for the Trump “money”, gold foil stamped envelopes, thinly plated "gold coins", even U.S. mint commemorative products in base metals and the like, maybe they are nice mementos for those who care, but they’ll have to wait a few hundred years to get their investments back.
Gold and silver, when you buy it you pay a premium, and when you sell it you pay again. It is a racket. Remember Beanie Babes, my MIL lost a fortune and has a closet full of them. My mother, a child of the depression (as was I) wasted money on paper money she saw in a magazine and thought valuable, as well as dishes that hang on the wall.
Occasionally someone will strike it rich with a Hummel or a collectible, I would rather not.
There is a simple solution. Avoid the scam advisors and invest in an index fund. Through a site like schwab you will not be charges fees. Many of these so called advisors are nothing more than salesmen, people who have a following in their community such as retired college athletes. Warren Buffet once made a million dollar bet with a financial advisor that his index fund could outperform the advisor's picks. Buffett won.
The stock market is a glorified casino. Picking individual stocks is risky and they are often manipulated by people with inside information. Illegal but it happens.
financial advisors, a couple of them might hit the jackpot at one time or another. That doesn’t prove that they can do it again ( after you give them your money). Of course , when they act upon inside information, they may well have an exceptionally high hit ratio . Sure that’s illegal. R defund the Security & Exchange Commission
and often perpetrators go unpunished while too many continue to worship $ $ $ .
You remind me of the people who foolishly made a lawyer the administrator of their estate.
In the 18th and 19th Century, a father who died,intestate, and had a decent estate and left minor children. created a problem, If he had a son of age (16 in colonial south) then the rules of primogeniture applied, and the eldest son inherited the estate, but if the children were minors they were considered orphans, even though the mother lived,
and the estate would devolve to the oldest orphan.
Then people would line up to be made guardian. After posting a a bond, the guardian would then have access to the estate, and would use it as an ATM. I've perused probate records in Alabama, Georgia and Virginia and have seen copies of bills levied against an estate by a guardian for a variety of goods, most of them obviously specious.
My 3rd great grandfather became guardian of his brothers orphaned (youngest) child a girl of seven who inherited her fathers female slave and child, he subsequently married his brothers widow.
Monetizing everything seems to be the goal of the GOP to put the economy in a position for generating unearned millionaires by mudsill. When taxes are below 50% it generates cheap money that has no place to be put except in stock market commodities which raises prices on things people need lowering the standard of living for all. FDR proved that higher taxes changes business behavior in ways that raises the standard of living for all. Europe does this and their middle class is the majority of their people unlike America where the majority of the people are out of middle class. We do not need fees and an economy that sucks everybody dry.
Excellent article Mr. Hartmann. Forty years ago my widowed mother was scammed out of $22K by Lehman Brothers who declared to be bankrupt shortly after. Needless to say the company never responded to our requests for an explanation about what happened to the money my mother left in their care. My mother was forced to work as a nurse almost up to the time of her death at 84 yrs. because of this loss. $22K was a lot of money forty years ago. The nursing home my mother worked in is another depressing story about death, abuse of the elderly and money.
I have a Masters, majored in finance and accounting,undergraduate was economics, My son, then working on his PhD in Linguistics, asked me investing advice. I told him to go to the nearest casino and sit at a one armed bandit or roll dice That the only way to make it in the stock market is with insider information otherwise it is a crap shoot. Now they have algorithms, but what an algorithm doesn't have is insider information.
For those of you who are old enough, remember ENRON, what a hot commodity it was it's CEO Ken La,y Over the years, as chairman of Enron, he built a team of highly aggressive business and financial executives who were willing to skirt financial reporting requirements by developing off-balance sheet entities to hide Enron's massive debt load from investors and regulators.
Employees had no choice but to invest their retirement in ENRON, then in 2000 it went bust, and thousands lost not only their jobs, but their retirements.There were, and probably are still, corporate raiders, Merger and Acquisition (M&A) specialists who look for vulnerable corporations, to take over to aquire their assets, especially their pension funds, to gobble them up, and sell off their assets.
They even take out loans using the assets of the company they are going to acquire to pay off the loans.
My wife was employed by three municipalities that bought into a Social Security Replacement program. Instead of FICA and employer contribution going into the Social Security Trust fund, it, after tax, was placed into what is in essence a Mutual fund, and investment program, where the investor could choose a smorgasbord of risks,either safe (government securities) or high risk (corporate bonds and stocks) She also selected to set aside 2,000 a month before tax income, which reduced her taxable income (a 507) program. she could do this, because we lived well on my income and her after tax income.
She hasn't withdrawn anything yet, and has to withdraw by age 72 1/2, or otherwise the whole pot is taxes at goring personal tax rate.
I am worried, because it is a corporation managed by a corporation, and has already been sold once, that when the time comes the money won't be there.
If you want a guaranteed retirement income,then work for a local, county, state or federal government., get back those taxes you have paid.
With the addition of micro trades available because of computing expansion, the average investor is DOUBLE screwed as far as the risk.
And speaking of tax and micro, there should be a very small tax paid on each trade. Rep. DeFazio tried and Wall Street DUMPED money into his opponent's war-chest.
Alis, the fact that votes can be bought by ads, does not speak well to the facilites and faculties of humans, does it.
will not buy anything advertised on TV, and if I am already using it, I find a substitute.
TV ads are lies.
I saw my PCP last week for an annual Wellness check up. I control my diabetes and weight with a disciplined routine of diet and exercise. I dropped 40 lbs in 10 months, then hit a plateau, my weight hovers around 180, and the only way to lose more is to starve, but then my body wastes what little muscle I have left, and holds onto the fat. And starvation damages my kidney's and liver, and is hell on the endocrine system.
My PCP recommended Ozempic. I told him that Ozempic will shorten my life, it is hell on the kidney's and I also monitormy kidney function with a semi annual metabolic panel.
My PCP is a good guy, a D.O.,but like all doctors they are pill pushers today.
James Tobin proposed this tax many years ago . He was way ahead of his time because it might have been beneficial in controlling some of the irrational exuberance that precipitated the financial meltdown of 2007-8.
Tobin was a giant in the field of Economics. Now we are paying the price of the greedy small minded elite business class .
Rather than trying to drag new regulations past a partisan SCOTUS (which would surely scuttle any Democratic efforts on this issue), why not create a public-private cooperative that would be required to act with fiduciary responsibility? We've done similar with the ACA, and with the CFPB. It could receive partial funding from the government, and allow tax breaks for advisers subject to their effectiveness. Make sure every retiree knows about it, with public ads like we do with the ACA. We could also rank investment firms based on their performance for their clients, and offer rewards and tax breaks for them also. Trying to force greedy companies and unscrupulous advisers to behave is a fool's errand.
To me, this post by Thom Hartmann really strikes the core of GOP Trump sham slogan "Take America Back". Where exactly? Backwards.
Take America back to a time when rules and regulations didn't exist to protect average people from having their lives destroyed by the predator class.
Take America back to a time when the "invisible" hand of the so-called free market was so deep in their pocket it could've been charged with a sex crime.
Take America back to the wild west, when nobody except the most vile and ruthless hustlers knew a life of stability and security.
Take them back to slavery and 16-hour work days and child labor! If there aren't enough jobs just let them suffer. All the rich need to do is to police the poor to kill the poor.
Bob!… and the “cult”… cannot see this?… or is it they don’t want to see this!!
Jon!… excellent commentary!!!
About 35 years ago I was a litigation attorney in the securities area. The scamming of elderly and less sophisticated investors was alive and well already then.
I learned in investing to follow the Warren Buffet rule, downsized to my portoflio. The rule is that if you cannot understand the business model of the investment, it's a bad idea and don't invest.
Unfortunately some of our pension funds don't seem to get it and are making speculative investments with private equity groups. A sure current return of 5% on T-bills may be much better than the opaqueness of many of these investments.
I agree Doug, and as I'm sure you know a big part of this problem is that the Depression Era rules separating investments from commercial banks were killed over several administrations. The Savings and Loan disaster of the Reagan years was only the first of this. (A collateral problem is that now the focus is on next quarter's bottom line rather than long-term investments. This is something not helped by stock buy backs, as Thom has pointed out elsewhere.) We really need a new Glass-Steagall Act, but don't expect it from any administration.
You read my lips!!! Adam Smith explains why our system has failed in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. The Wealth of Nations is useless without "moral sentiments." Outside of property and other hard assets, over 90% of my wealth is invested in T Bills. The worst they can do is pay me back with dollars that won't buy anything. They still have a printing press.
This stuff doesn't just apply to seniors.
NASD and other groups have arbitration clauses re securities fraud which is an everyday event. DOL proposed a fiduciary rule in 2010, when I was still working. ERISA was written before 401 k's existed.
The practice Thom described where unethical financial advisors are paid by the number of transactions when a broker excessively trades in a customer's account to earn more commissions is called "churning." It can be a crime. 18 U.S.C. § 1348 securities fraud is the unlawful practice of using manipulative or deceptive tactics to purchase or sell a security. Fraud is a commonly prosecuted federal crime in the United States and securities fraud charges have made news headlines in the prosecution of Bernie Madoff. E.G. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-ceo-publicly-traded-company-convicted-securities-fraud-scheme
But hard to investigate, harder to prove, and even harder to enforce.
I have about 60% of my portfolio in treasuries and CDs at over 5%.
Once upon a time there was a three legged stool ( symbolically) for retirement . One was your pension ( a defined benefit- not a
401K defined contribution) , the second was social security, the third was your own savings . Then greed became good and
pensions morphed into 401 K’s - unions
especially in the private sector almost
vanished along with union benefits.
Republicans have been attacking Social Security since its inception. Failing that ,
so far, they have allowed the so called investment advisors to rob people blind as today’s post indicates. That three legged stool ain’t what it used to be - no wonder so many of us are down on our knees.
Paul!… excellent commentary!!
The new corporate business model is clear. It is neo serfdom.
In serfdom a serf was bound to the land, when the land changed hands, the serf changed masters, The serf lived and died at the will of the master. If he got sick,a local would apply poultices and administer home brewed toxins. There was no health care, no education beyond that of the local priest in his sermons, and health care was slap dashery.
Neo serfdom replaces land with job, and education, health care and middle class is being phased out. A middle class is a threat to the upper class, the the Powell memo..
Here is where serfdom and Marxism meet.
When Marx wrote his screeds, there was no such thing as a middle class, the words did yet exist, what we call middle class is what he called bourgeoisie . He has nothing to say about the ruling class, for good reason it was they that funded him via ht League of Just Men.
The middle class (bourgeoisie) was a threat to the ruling class in Marx's era, and it is a threat to the ruling class in this era.
By the way Marx was no champion of the proletariat (the lower working class). He would chastise editors of southern papers to free the slaves and hire them back at market wages.
Slave produced cotton was too expensive for his partner Frederick Engels,who had inherited a textile mill, and because of cost, to make a profit, he had to buy the inferior and cheaper Egyptian cotton.
Slave owning was expensive, first the capital investment, then overseers, horses for overseers,feed for the horses, food, clothing and housing for the slaves, paying a preacher to teach them to obey their masters and that Jesus loved them, if no one else did, "Praise Jesus")
and even entertainment, instruments get togethers, entertainment is an outlet, a pressure relief valve. All work and no play...
But wait! Weren't we told when they came up with the 401K scheme to replace pensions that we would actually get higher returns because of it?
The GOP? They seem intent on fleecing Americans by using the "Mushroom Treatment."
To wit: Keep them in the dark. And — most importantly — Feed them sh–t.
Easy money. (Beats working to make ends meet.)
Another astounding immoral adventure by the lawless Republican scoundrels.
Who care not one whit about the people of this country.
Unless of course, you are in the top % of the wealthiest Americans.
And as we know they need their cut to support sleazy Politicians , who continue this monumental rip off of the American majority. That's us.
This group of criminals lead by the chief criminal, the ex president Trump, take their orders from the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society and of course ,Trumps owner , Vladimir Putin . The Supreme Court Maga judges, the twisted six, appointed by Donald Trump to carry out this Maga Doctrine will carry on until they are impeached or diluted by the Democrats, hopefully sooner rather than later , disallowing any further intrusion into our hoped for way of life .
Patricia… you hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head!!
Clark Howard had excellent financial/travel/consumer advice on his show. He would play his "alarm" every time someone called in about annuities. Fiduciaries do not recommend them either.
Of course the Republicans will throw the workers and old people to the wolves. They simply do not get it---there is no such thing as a free and fair market. No regulations leads to rip-offs, Ponzi schemes, monopolies, and dangerous products. All of that can lead to working your ass off all your life but retiring poor.
President Biden absolutely got this right! Vice President Harris may be a particular kind of capitalist, but this is just one more area where she will try to protect Americans in the Harris/Walz administration. Just like she said, she knows these fraudsters and criminals.
Thanks for sounding the alarm today, Thom.
The entire right wing organization are a bunch of criminals. They will rob the poor, then send them to extermination camps for being poor. Almost all the right wing voters are the same way, that is why our prisons are so full. So much dishonesty and lack of a conscience, thanks to phony faith-based religions and crazy parenting and unlimited greed!
Bob… you are 100% correct… thanks for your intelligent comments!!
As we focus on the upcoming election, we must remember that the election for president is minimized without a Congress to implement her policies. As successful as Biden has been, most of it came during his first two years when Democrats had majorities in both houses.
Back when terms like moderate or liberal Republicans were not oxymorons, mixed congresses were still able to pass progressive legislation. But with today’s congress a significant party plurality of just the starting point of a successful progressive agenda.
And the budget standoff is coming up again.
You got this right again, Thom. We have an excellent fiduciary who looks at the long term--no panic churning trades and chasing the market during up or downturns while pocketing commissions. He charges clear, fixed and reasonable fees no matter how much work is done In fact, one of the first things he did with our new assets was consolidate mutual funds so we weren't paying multiple fees for the same level of service from different companies.
But as Thomas Garrett notes in this thread, the same caution is true in many fields. "Buy the book before the coin" is the mantra for serious numismatists versus those who are stampeded into buying the junk flogged on late night TV. Do your research, ask questions and protect yourself first. Unless there is blatant fraud, like Trump U., nobody else will do that for you. And even then good luck on getting your assets back.
Fox News viewers are suckered out of their hard or ill earned money. The crap that they advertise, pay $20 for a$2 bill overprinted with a colorized photo of Trumps mug shot
I don't watchMSNBC anymore, don't learn anything that I haven't learned from my inbox, but the car has XM, wife's doing, and it is tuned to MSNBC, I heard an advertisement for gold. I couldn't believe my ears They have really degenerated, scraping the bottom of the barrel for revenue.
It seems like a lot of people are suckered into these get rich quick schemes. I always ask if the deals are so good then why aren’t the sellers keeping this stuff for themselves. (Or to put it another way, big casinos aren’t constructed to give money away.) I saw exactly the same kind of advertisements in China too, so it is not just here. People buy this junk silver (which has no numismatic value as unlikely what is shown on TV it typically consists of worn coins with common dates) or overpriced gold that you can buy directly from the mint or at least from a reputable dealer for less. Then likely as not they’ll mishandle it as polishing wrecks the value of coins. Several coins dealers have told me how angry people are when they stashes are worth far less than they paid for them. As for the Trump “money”, gold foil stamped envelopes, thinly plated "gold coins", even U.S. mint commemorative products in base metals and the like, maybe they are nice mementos for those who care, but they’ll have to wait a few hundred years to get their investments back.
Gold and silver, when you buy it you pay a premium, and when you sell it you pay again. It is a racket. Remember Beanie Babes, my MIL lost a fortune and has a closet full of them. My mother, a child of the depression (as was I) wasted money on paper money she saw in a magazine and thought valuable, as well as dishes that hang on the wall.
Occasionally someone will strike it rich with a Hummel or a collectible, I would rather not.
There is a simple solution. Avoid the scam advisors and invest in an index fund. Through a site like schwab you will not be charges fees. Many of these so called advisors are nothing more than salesmen, people who have a following in their community such as retired college athletes. Warren Buffet once made a million dollar bet with a financial advisor that his index fund could outperform the advisor's picks. Buffett won.
The stock market is a glorified casino. Picking individual stocks is risky and they are often manipulated by people with inside information. Illegal but it happens.
A blindfolded monkey tossing darts
at a list of publicly traded companies
might do as well picking the stocks
as some of the financial advisors .
But , given the large number of
financial advisors, a couple of them might hit the jackpot at one time or another. That doesn’t prove that they can do it again ( after you give them your money). Of course , when they act upon inside information, they may well have an exceptionally high hit ratio . Sure that’s illegal. R defund the Security & Exchange Commission
and often perpetrators go unpunished while too many continue to worship $ $ $ .
You remind me of the people who foolishly made a lawyer the administrator of their estate.
In the 18th and 19th Century, a father who died,intestate, and had a decent estate and left minor children. created a problem, If he had a son of age (16 in colonial south) then the rules of primogeniture applied, and the eldest son inherited the estate, but if the children were minors they were considered orphans, even though the mother lived,
and the estate would devolve to the oldest orphan.
Then people would line up to be made guardian. After posting a a bond, the guardian would then have access to the estate, and would use it as an ATM. I've perused probate records in Alabama, Georgia and Virginia and have seen copies of bills levied against an estate by a guardian for a variety of goods, most of them obviously specious.
My 3rd great grandfather became guardian of his brothers orphaned (youngest) child a girl of seven who inherited her fathers female slave and child, he subsequently married his brothers widow.
Monetizing everything seems to be the goal of the GOP to put the economy in a position for generating unearned millionaires by mudsill. When taxes are below 50% it generates cheap money that has no place to be put except in stock market commodities which raises prices on things people need lowering the standard of living for all. FDR proved that higher taxes changes business behavior in ways that raises the standard of living for all. Europe does this and their middle class is the majority of their people unlike America where the majority of the people are out of middle class. We do not need fees and an economy that sucks everybody dry.
Excellent article Mr. Hartmann. Forty years ago my widowed mother was scammed out of $22K by Lehman Brothers who declared to be bankrupt shortly after. Needless to say the company never responded to our requests for an explanation about what happened to the money my mother left in their care. My mother was forced to work as a nurse almost up to the time of her death at 84 yrs. because of this loss. $22K was a lot of money forty years ago. The nursing home my mother worked in is another depressing story about death, abuse of the elderly and money.
Let the buyer beware???
I have a Masters, majored in finance and accounting,undergraduate was economics, My son, then working on his PhD in Linguistics, asked me investing advice. I told him to go to the nearest casino and sit at a one armed bandit or roll dice That the only way to make it in the stock market is with insider information otherwise it is a crap shoot. Now they have algorithms, but what an algorithm doesn't have is insider information.
For those of you who are old enough, remember ENRON, what a hot commodity it was it's CEO Ken La,y Over the years, as chairman of Enron, he built a team of highly aggressive business and financial executives who were willing to skirt financial reporting requirements by developing off-balance sheet entities to hide Enron's massive debt load from investors and regulators.
Employees had no choice but to invest their retirement in ENRON, then in 2000 it went bust, and thousands lost not only their jobs, but their retirements.There were, and probably are still, corporate raiders, Merger and Acquisition (M&A) specialists who look for vulnerable corporations, to take over to aquire their assets, especially their pension funds, to gobble them up, and sell off their assets.
They even take out loans using the assets of the company they are going to acquire to pay off the loans.
My wife was employed by three municipalities that bought into a Social Security Replacement program. Instead of FICA and employer contribution going into the Social Security Trust fund, it, after tax, was placed into what is in essence a Mutual fund, and investment program, where the investor could choose a smorgasbord of risks,either safe (government securities) or high risk (corporate bonds and stocks) She also selected to set aside 2,000 a month before tax income, which reduced her taxable income (a 507) program. she could do this, because we lived well on my income and her after tax income.
She hasn't withdrawn anything yet, and has to withdraw by age 72 1/2, or otherwise the whole pot is taxes at goring personal tax rate.
I am worried, because it is a corporation managed by a corporation, and has already been sold once, that when the time comes the money won't be there.
If you want a guaranteed retirement income,then work for a local, county, state or federal government., get back those taxes you have paid.
Preach Brother William!
With the addition of micro trades available because of computing expansion, the average investor is DOUBLE screwed as far as the risk.
And speaking of tax and micro, there should be a very small tax paid on each trade. Rep. DeFazio tried and Wall Street DUMPED money into his opponent's war-chest.
Alis, the fact that votes can be bought by ads, does not speak well to the facilites and faculties of humans, does it.
will not buy anything advertised on TV, and if I am already using it, I find a substitute.
TV ads are lies.
I saw my PCP last week for an annual Wellness check up. I control my diabetes and weight with a disciplined routine of diet and exercise. I dropped 40 lbs in 10 months, then hit a plateau, my weight hovers around 180, and the only way to lose more is to starve, but then my body wastes what little muscle I have left, and holds onto the fat. And starvation damages my kidney's and liver, and is hell on the endocrine system.
My PCP recommended Ozempic. I told him that Ozempic will shorten my life, it is hell on the kidney's and I also monitormy kidney function with a semi annual metabolic panel.
My PCP is a good guy, a D.O.,but like all doctors they are pill pushers today.
Although the Tobin Tax centered on foreign currency trades ,
Its design was to reduce excessive speculation.
Currency derivatives play a large role along those lines .
Alis ,
Nobel Prize winner in Economics
James Tobin proposed this tax many years ago . He was way ahead of his time because it might have been beneficial in controlling some of the irrational exuberance that precipitated the financial meltdown of 2007-8.
Tobin was a giant in the field of Economics. Now we are paying the price of the greedy small minded elite business class .
Rather than trying to drag new regulations past a partisan SCOTUS (which would surely scuttle any Democratic efforts on this issue), why not create a public-private cooperative that would be required to act with fiduciary responsibility? We've done similar with the ACA, and with the CFPB. It could receive partial funding from the government, and allow tax breaks for advisers subject to their effectiveness. Make sure every retiree knows about it, with public ads like we do with the ACA. We could also rank investment firms based on their performance for their clients, and offer rewards and tax breaks for them also. Trying to force greedy companies and unscrupulous advisers to behave is a fool's errand.