To all the people who are shocked at the fraud and scandal in the corporate, brokerage, Wall street, analyst, whatever, world, all I can say is that this is nothing new and just part of the cycle. One of my longtime brokers, who is not a "company man" at 75 and a good TA guy on par with some here, was telling me that when he became a broker long ago the stock market and brokerages were reguarded with less esteem than the local cathouse. In the roaring nineties the Blodgets and Meekers were considered gods and why not, they were making people tons of money and many held on to the money. I think people were still throwing dough at the market even after the Washington Post article where Blodgets' remarks to his assistant were overheard. She asked him why he was puting a strong buy on Amazon and he replied that it was to distiguish it from all the other pieces of ____ that they had buys on. Excesses breed excessive cultures. I did not hear many complaining when they were making lots of money even though,in the back of their minds, they must have known it would end badly. It did and now we have come full circle, it appears, where many trust nothing. I for one cannot trust any numbers, government included, and thus FA has become meaningless to me as has the term "investment" in most cases. It is truely sad that the majority, blinded by greed or ignorance or gullibility or just plain apathy, were crushed when the pyramid crumbled and the myriad of scandals revealed. The cycle will continue, however, as we wash out the dirty laundry and clean house.
I am personally looking forward to a time when "investing" is relevant again and hope it is sooner and not ten years away. Someone here, don't remember who, said that maybe when there is nothing to be optimistic about it's time to be optimistic. Hmmmm........I like it.
FWIW and JMHO
Benj
AI
