Reply #75: You're not only not stupid, you're probably not hanging with

[Warpy]

people who are as prosperous as they want you to think they are. Oh, they sit in their mortgaged McMansions, watching their credit card plasma TV from their credit card furniture while their GAO financed SUVs sit in the driveway and discussing their next credit card cruise, but if you start looking at net worth, the whole picture changes.

I know I've been surrounded by these folks for the past couple of decades, wondering who was crazy, them or me. However, I had enough in the bank to survive on for 3 years until my dad died and I inherited (gave up on having SSD come through, you know how that is when the GOP is in charge). If I'd been one of them, I'd have lost everything and ended up on state public assistance or worse, been out in the street.

O'Neil's fat severance package came from the company he looted, and they in turn looted it in the form of jacked up fees from their stockholders, one reason I dumped them. The only wonder is that somebody else hired that thief. I suppose he's going to teach them how to loot their own victims.

As for the derivatives market, "casino on steroids" is probably the best way to describe it. Very few people actually understand the game, which is why it's left to only a few derivative jockeys in the rarefied atmosphere of the few hedge funds that are actually successful at playing them. As I understand it, derivatives are bets traded on whether or not a stock will increase or decrease in value over a set period of time. They are traded as though they actually represent value. It's just funny money, nothing to support it but hot air and wishful thinking, but there's enough real money tied up in it to bring this whole financial house of cards down eventually.

There is a very good reason so many hedge funds are registered in the Caymans.