70 Stock Market

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It's been said so often nobody listens anymore but the most honest description of the Stock Market is a casino. Even a cursory look at the numbers underline that fact: an investment should be worth the amount of money it returned over its holding but a share of stock is priced much, much higher than that, way more than the stock would ever return. If you get caught holding it when the music stops, your money is gone, but its even worse than that: the value of the underlying company the stock is supposedly based on, that too is almost whimsy, and will evaporate quickly.<br /><br />This stocks deception is accepted without criticism because everyone else seems to be ignoring it, and there's the constant drumbeat of investment “advice” from an entire industry that makes its living from it. Because the Stock Market seems to make money for some people, it is touted as an investment, but it is more a Ponzi scheme, and acts like one. Casinos are mathematically constructed to skim a small percentage off the gross with the rest of the customer's money returned as winnings, a zero sum gain reshuffling with the winners equaling the losers, but Ponzi schemes give most of the customer's money to the insiders. At least Vegas offers entertainment while you're getting fleeced.<br /><br />The vast majority of people have no stocks except in the form of Retirement. In fact, the entire stock Ponzi scheme leverages off the trillions of dollars of retirement money that is basically hidden from view. Promised benefits to existing retirees are way over what the funds can sustain so the fund must get income somewhere but nothing pays the 10% they need except the Ponzi scheme junk bonds & hedge funds. And there lies the truth of the entire market: some time in the future those promised pensions you were depending on, well that money's gone to create the empire of the Nouveau Aristocracy.</p>