We are definetely moving in that direction and I suspect that after the election, we will be at the end of our trip.
As to hedge funds being 2 tril, the last figure I saw that seemed reliable was 6 tril and these funds are leveraged
50-1 .. That is sufficient to take out any firm or, for that matter, any government! All with no regulation or over-sight or moral obligations for lives ruined or pensions and retirement destroyed. I predict that hedge funds will be the next calamity on the horizon. Like the financial derivities the banks used which were too complicated for the Fed to understand, the hedge funds are doing trading the Fed can't fathom so they just look the other way.
Bob
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 8:26 PM, Mark Simms
<marksimms@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
All of this government bail-out action as well as this "blame game" going on in Washington....
has a distinct "stake into the heart" of capitalism feel to it.
Could we be witnessing the end of Capitalism in America right now ?
Is this the final blow...the one that will make us become like those of our French bretheren ?
At 04:57 PM 10/7/2008, Robert Arbuckle wrote:
I believe in an open and freely operating market but no one envisioned a whole lot of wealthy people pooling their money together to push the markets where they wanted them to go to the benefit of those limited investors. Not only doing that but doing nearly everything with no public over-sight or reporting.
Last time I checked (about a year ago), hedge funds were a mere $2 trillion vs. about $60 trillion in all investments so it is hard to believe that they are causing this damage.
I suspect that the real culprit will turn out to be the public yanking their money out of the market and money market funds and I don't blame them... Who wants to go down with the ship...
Bob Fulks