Apr 30, 2009

Forever Working Class


Back when I worked for Time Warner, I actually thought I was going to be set for life. Big ass media company with huge assets was going to take care of little ol' me.

Once TW merged with AOL, that expectation dropped along with the stock price. Here's an interesting take on how many of us got fucked without Vaseline. Yeah, he's a bit of a sour grape. However, I think there's some insight to how many people got played with being advised to buy into an "insider's game." Aint it fierce that many folks bought into a game, that they weren't given all the rules to?

"No one seemed much bothered by the move of a vast portion of Americans' retirement funds into risky securities-based funds. The Fed supported the 401(k) boom, just as it later would the housing boom, by championing deregulation and keeping interest rates low. Who would choose to invest their retirement funds in safe but low-interest bonds or T-bills when they could make 10, 15, or 20 percent in the market? In 1983, according to a survey conducted by two securities-industry groups, just 15.9 percent of American households owned equities; by 2005, the figure was 56.9 percent. More than half of households that owned stocks had first gotten into them through a 401(k) or similar account." Click here for the full article.

3 comments:

Wonder Man said...

this is scary to think about...what will happen in the years to come

Reneé said...

I came to believe rather quickly that 401Ks were a scam to get more money into Wall Street;a scam that was to be followed by the pouring of Social Security dollars into Wall Street with no security. A lot of those lower to mid-tier 401K and other private investment folks found themselves completely done in financially by mid-2008 with little more than Social Security to count on if they're close to retirement.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing...
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Julie
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