Course 2:17
Job Growth or Casino?
Capitalism is based on converting savings into investment. Since 1974, federally mandated pension funding provided an enormous savings-investment opportunity with as much as $100 billion a year looking either for investment in equity capital for growth companies or for purchase of bonds for infrastructural needs.
Most of the money, instead, went to the stock market, inflating prices, causing a feeding frenzy in executive compensation while whipping managers into being one-trick ponies: Fire! Over a trillion dollars was wasted in a quarter century on stock buy-backs and acquire-and-fire deals to shrink the supply of stock for the benefit of short-term earnings instead of adding stock by new equity investment.
The media loves to report on this casino and report every few minutes with silly reasons for market movement, including futures, when the real reason is that more gamblers are buying than selling, or the opposite.
Wage earners, ask your managers two questions: How much pension money is actually invested in the job-growth economy? How much did “managers,” brokers, and specialists take off the top pushing your money around?
Ray Carey