I Loved Funk! Bootsie Collins for head of the Fed, Chaka Khan for Treasury, and Sly and the Family Stone as President James Brown's (he's comin' back!) cabinet--right on!

Weren't we involved in another unwinnable war back in the 70s?

Stocks need to double to stay even with the Bush Dollar (.40 cents).

The European single currency breached 1.57 dollars on Wednesday after a buoyant reading on business sentiment in Germany, the biggest economy in the 15-nation eurozone, analysts said.

In European trading, the euro climbed to 1.5717 dollars from 1.5647 in New York late on Tuesday.

Shortly after Bush took office the Euro was around .90 cents now 1.57, yikes.

Wealth is created in an economy through "value added" processes with multiplier effects and in international trade through "comparative advantage". Almost any other activity deals in the transference of wealth, not wealth creation.


Over the last twenty plus years, our economy has become increasingly reliant on financial instruments dealing in wealth transference rather than wealth generation. This can be observed in WS activity per the WSJ article and in the banking and finance sectors. Wealth transference can also be observed in income data available from the BLS. In terms of 2000 dollars, middle class incomes have either decreased or stagnated over the past decade. Despite this, disparity with top income brackets has increased. Because approximately 2/3 rds of our economy (see definition for GDP) is based on consumer expenditures, falling incomes for a majority of consumers, not sufficiently offset by additional consumers, would indicate that GDP couldn't increase indefinitely.


The FED's actions allow the "vacuum" sector of our economy to continue sucking wealth from the pockets of both homeowners and taxpayers in order to save investments of the wealthy. While the FED's actions have temporarily prevented an economic calamity, they have not treated the root cause of our problems. Until we return to an economy that generates real wealth with increasing incomes for a majority of its members rather than wealth transference that creates income disparity, we can anticipate that economic fallout will not only continue, but increase in severity.


PRODUCTION EQUIVALENT TO CONSUMPTION.
INCOME DIVERSITY, NOT DISPARITY.

Guess wall street forgot who made it good for them, the workers in manufacturing who produced real goods...wall street shipped those jobs to foreign countries to exploit the labor there. The blowback isn't going to be pretty and it will take decades for those countries to bring 'the returns' you were hoping for.

Watch out, NY, you just might get stuck with the nickname "Funkytown" replacing "The Big Apple."

I don't remember the range of stock index extremes between 1966 and 1982, but it was very narrow. The bubble and bust and bubble chart between 1999 and today shows very wide extremes. The overall economic and investment climates were polar opposites, if I remember correctly.

If the Wall Street Journals page 1 chart that I assume this HuffPost article is based were started in January 2000 instead of January 1999, then the investor (in the index) would be well behind instead of just even. If the chart had been a full decade, the investor would have still been ahead. If the chart had covered a full 16 years similar to the flat period mentioned above or just the last 6 years, then the investor would be well ahead.

On the other hand, if we wait a few years, we may find we just finished a 16-year period with no growth. The US and world financial picture is deteriorating in plain view of those who say not to worry.

If... if... if... If pigs had wings, they probably still wouldn't be able to fly. "Buy and forget" is not an investment strategy that will work regardless of what the vaunted financial advisors and schemers would have you believe.

What did you do, HuffPo, make a phone call? This WSJ story was "for paying customers only" not even 30 minutes ago...now, its out there for everybody!

Thanks!