Obama’s High School Yearbook Surfaces… Who He Thanked is Sickening!

Because sobriety is a horrible state of existence.

Same difference ! The lesser of two Evils is still Evil ! No loss,no gain.

Same here. Im in Australia but was still interested with his promising the world to everyone. He said execute and stopped, with a grin.

This might surprise you, but I’m a financial conservative and I feel that most derivatives should simply be outlawed. All except for futures, which actually do serve a useful purpose where the speculation aspect is not central to their function, namely to stabilise prices for both primary producers and their buyers. Also, futures have been traded in New York since the 1600s, and they’ve withstood the test of time for their usefulness.
Consider, as an example, the typical mortgage-backed security tranche. What these banks and finance companies do is they bundle say 100 mortgage loans into one product, and then sell, for instance, 100 shares of that bundle. When a customer buys a share like that, he’s theoretically buying 1% of that whole bundle, but at the same time, he doesn’t actually own any of it. If you held a mortgage loan outright, and the homeowner of record defaulted, you could at least get the house, but in the case of a typical MBS, you can’t do that. Your only recourse is with the bank that bundled the loans, and you can’t sell your share on the open market. It’s a scam.
It’s the same thing like buying an index, where you’re buying a bundled and weighed average of all the companies in that index, without actually owning any one of those shares.
Another thing I’m very much against is margin of any kind, and that includes FOREX trading, where you got margin anywhere from 20x to 450x your equity. That is extremely dangerous. Since I was the director I could see all my clients’ trading activity and I’d estimate that about 95% of all people who try doing day trading actually lose money. If you got margin on that, any unsuccessful trading strategy is magnified by that amount, and you can lose your shirt in a couple of minutes. If, on the other hand, you’re going for dividends, or long-term investing, any kind of margin is a burden because you’re paying interest on that. If you have a balanced portfolio and you’re 100% vested equity wise, and going for the long haul then you really can’t lose a whole lot of money unless you’re really stupid. This is even more so when you stick to the blue chips, and don’t try to outwit the market because you CAN’T. People think they’re so smart, and then they jump on some bandwagon and lose everything. I remember 1979 when all them smart-alecs were buying Silver. Sure, I did a whole metastudy on Silver that was hushed up by the bank where I proved that Silver should be worth USD 550/oz in 2009. But those people who bought Silver in 79 are still going to have to wait to get their money back. But again, if they bought it with their own money, they’re not technically losing anything because they still have the Silver. And it’s not that Silver is priced in Dollars. Silver and Gold are the uber-currency that all currency is based on, and should be priced in.
In other words, I’m pretty much against any kind of willy-nilly speculation for the sake of it because it’s so far removed from its original function. Stocks are supposed to represent shares of a company you buy because you believe in that company’s ability to perform. I’m sick and tired of seeing people who have absolutely no knowledge of accounting who can’t even read an income statement or a balance sheet. I took 4 years of accounting and even I’ve been fooled when I bought 3000 shares of a blue-chip real estate company that later got de-listed. Went from blue-chip to de-listed in 3 months, even though their financial statements were OK because they changed the law regarding mark-to-market valuations on commercial real estate. I would’ve done better had I simply bought commercial real estate outright using my own money, which is what I would up doing later anyway.
Back when I was still employed by the bank, neither I nor anyone else was allowed to trade on their own account, but everyone did so using accounts in the names of family members, etc. ALL of my employees were following our most successful clients and following their trades, myself included. We’d even hold regular meetings to talk strategy because when you get a block of investors doing the same thing (especially people like bankers) it can actually move markets, especially in a small country. Anyway, I had this one young whippersnapper straight out of college who could recite every formula, knew all the laws by heart, and all that. Well, this kid somehow got 19 million Dollars and and proceeded to day-trade financial stocks. I says to him: “are you kookoo? That was back in 08. Anyway, he’d buy these 2 banks when they were high, then sell low. This kid lost 18 out of his 19 million Dollars in about 6 weeks, and you want to know what I did? I fired him. Nobody that stupid should be working for the stock exchange and potentially giving customers some toxic advice. And he’s not the only dimwit I fired.
I can tell you that most bankers and such are very intelligent people and most of us are of the opinion that most of the newfangled derivatives should just be banned. I’d frequently make the joke, back when I was a CS representative that in the future, every customer who sets up a brokerage account gets a playstation console, a joystick, and a laser gun so they can play a game consisting of shooting at a quickly-moving graph. Because that’s what it’s coming to, where it’s all about speculation, versus actual investing, with hordes of people trying to get rich quick because they heard about so-and-so who made a killing. Well, again, that’s psychology. If that person was doing crazy things like FOREX, they may have had a good run, and of course they’ll talk about it, but the minute they start losing money is when the stop talking about it.
So in all my career, I approved a grand total of ONE margin loan because the guy was my girlfriend’s boss at a different bank, and yes, he was a dirtbag and that’s the only reason I approved him for it. He wound up losing 6 million Dollars [cackle, cackle!] and served him right for being that big for his britches. The only “loans” I’d commonly approve were FC loans when someone wanted to let’s say use local currency as a security on a foreign currency deposit held in the bank’s name to trade let’s say British stocks, or on Euronext or whatever.
It was a great job, but I had been thinking about quitting for years because of the stress, and constantly being in the limelight. I could literally not walk 200 meters to my favourite restaurant without being constantly accosted by people who wanted to know my opinion on all kinds of issues. Strangely enough, when I went out dressed in regular street clothes, nobody would notice me, which was great. Then in May of 2011 I suffered a stroke and had to quit. Couldn’t talk without sounding like a retart, couldn’t dress myself, etc. Since then, I’ve made an excellent recovery and got back everything I had lost, except for balance. I’ve been offered the position of financial analyst for a major TV station back in Eastern Europe but I was like what, I’m perfectly happy here in Germany where I don’t have to worry about getting robbed, having my car stolen, or whatever.