Posts by Dayuhan,

Somehow I can't convince myself that the economic problems in the US come down to insufficient regulation. Possibly this comes a bit from my 3rd world perspective, but the American populace at large seems to me less exploited than soft, pampered, overprotected, overentitled. Individually and institutionally, Americans seem to have forgotten that they need to compete. Reducing executive salaries or regulating deal-making isn't going to change that.
That is the great myth we tend to perpetuate. First you can't accurately classify the American populace at large, but there is a large segment of our population that is far from soft. Both adults work to make ends meet (the reality is they choose a lifestyle that requires this). Many adults have two or more jobs and work well over 60 hours a week. That isn't the norm in most parts of the world. In many parts of the world people have a culture that still values quality of life as defined by time spent with family and friends, not how many toys one has. Is there a soft and over entitled element of our society? Obviously the answer is yes, but they don't define our society. Forgetting the need to compete? I think our inability to compete in some areas is due to government regulations and in some cases lack of government incentatives (some will decry this as socialism, but we're competing in a world where other countries enable their businesses to be competitive globally, if we don't we'll continue to lose jobs), and of course it is a fact that our public schools have failed at least three generations (again government policies driven by political corrrectness).

As an investor, if you're holding shares in a company you don't think is managed well, you have two options. One is to go to a shareholder's meeting and make your opinion known, which is realistically pretty pointless. Another is to pull your money out and put it somewhere you think is better... no shortage of options. Demanding that the government do something about it... why bother, really?
So you're making an argument that only the big boys with automated investing tools that move money from one stock to another based on algorithyms (which sure as hell isn't investing, its gambling) is O.K.? The individual investor should quit whinning and accept a 1-2% return on his savings to prepare for retirement? There is also a considerable lack of transparency due to the lack of oversight, which frankly I don't think can be fixed without forming a large government bureaucracy that will only make things worse. It can only be fixed by corporations and the financial sectors embracing business ethics as the norm, versus the exception.

Again, this is admittedly from a 3rd world perspective, but the idea of a nurse or a cop making 100k+ a year makes the rage seem a bit superfluous. Have you any idea what people in most of the world think of that? Or of the idea of a country where people statistically classified as "poor" own cars, refrigerators, TV sets, etc...
Having been to the Philippines many times over the past 30 years, we both know a $100,000.00 goes a lot further in there than in the U.S., so even comparing our situation to the Philippines is an exercise in futility. I sure as heck hope we don't think it is O.K. to allow our society to get reduced to that level. Of course poverty in Africa, South Asia, Latin America and Southeast Asia is much more extreme than it is in the U.S., so what? We built a better system that is now in danger of collapsing due to some structural issues, ethical issues, and a failure to adapt to modern realities. We have thousands of American families who are homeless now, and while you may not see that from your seat, I see them camping under highways, crammed into cheap hotel rooms, or just parked on the street living out of their car. Their kids will be trapped in the poverty cycle if we don't fix our schools, and then soon enough we'll be able to draw parallels between the Philippines and the U.S. which will be pretty darn sad if we let this happen.

They also aren't hurting because executives are overpaid, or even because of "Wall Street", or "the bankers". Not that part of the responsibility doesn't lie there, but it's only part, and you don't get a clear handle of the problem without looking at the other parts.
You're wrong about this, it goes back to the culture of corruption where CEOs are rewarding for non-performance and those who had value to the company are punished with salary reductions or layoffs to increase the bottom line. I have listened to numerous interviews with CEOs, and some of them are quite frank about this. One example was a furniture company in NC that is doing well, but due to the challenging times everyone including the CEO agreed to pay reductions. The CEO is loyal to his employees and shares the profits and losses. They interviewed another CEO about how he is doing business, and he said if he could run the company he would lay off up to 30% of the work force so he could increase the profit margin and drive up the stock price, making money is the name of game. There was at least one study that stated these CEOs who get hired to reduce costs (reduce the workforce) to increase the bottom line were effective in the short term, but over the long term (and they never stayed for more than 3 years) the Company actually produced less value because the work force was decimated. Technology also plays a role, but it isn't just technology that is leading to these layoffs. It is about the big dogs who own 51% or more of company's stock that are driving these decisions. Does this system really serve America's best interests?