henarl

Do You Believe Borrowing Leads to Prosperity? (Part 2)

Come on guys, quit picking on Cetin. We all need a little comic relief in these tough times.

Do You Believe Borrowing Leads to Prosperity? (Part 2)

A great article! The mindset of living as high on the material hog as possible and never mind the consequences is somewhat of a generational thing. This thinking was prevalent during the roaring 20s but the depression of the 30s brought people back to reality and the next couple of generations lived pretty much within their means as a result. As the memories of depression hardship faded, later generations began to believe that living big today was more important than being concerned about tomorrow. This attitude culminated the early 2000s with young and middle aged people borrowing to the limit to support a lifestyle that only existed for the very rich previously. Now we are heading into a new depression and can expect the next couple of generations to revert to living within their means again, if not volutarily then by necessity.
Economic lifestyle appears to be a cyclic generational thing.

10 Highest Paid CEOs for 2008: Unbelievable

What grabs me is not so much a comparison of CEO compensation with stock price movement. After all, the entire market, and almost every company within it, goes up and down much more with general economic conditions and investor sentiment than with the efforts of any CEO.
The statistic that really stands out is that the average corporate CEO in the U.S. makes about 400 times what the average American worker makes. In Canada that figure is 20 and in Japan that figure is 11. American CEOs are not THAT much better !!
The reason our executives are paid so much more than their foreign equivalents is because they are members of an elite good old boys club. The CEO of company A is on the board of company B and company B's CEO is on company A;s board. You reward me extravagently and I will reciprocate. It's more about financial payback than about talent and ability. These incestuous corporate oligarchies aparently don't exist so outrageously in other countries.

Government's New Credit Approach: Does the End Justify the Means?

It would appear that destruction of an overreaching credit card industry is inevitable. Either the government will destroy the industry thru limiting their interest and fee income or the industry will destroy itself by charging amounts nobody can afford and creating an avalanche of defaults.
In either event, a retrenchment of credit cards is probably a good thing as society can no longer continue to live beyond it's means much longer.

Stocks on the Verge of... Something

Corporate CEOs need to undergo a lie-detector test before being allowed to make public statements.
Members of Congress too!

Five Laws That Government Should Pass

The elite run the country (and the world) to suit themselves and the rest of us just suck along as best we can. So it has always been and so it will always be. If this really upsets you, then your best solution is to try to become one of the elite, as the above order wont ever change.