[427TJ]

Oh we have the abiltiy to control this, we just didn't want to exert that control. It's called regulation. Carefully applied and vigorously enforced regulation is the key to any successful system. You don't over-rev your race engine (unless you don't care if it explodes) because you regulate how high you take the rpm. You regulate the rpm so as to preserve the life of the engine. I think the engine of our financial system was revved well past its redline and it just grenaded in our face.

Somewhere between unrestrained free-market forces and an over-bearing smothering federal government lies the acceptable manageable middle ground. That middle ground has been pushed aside in favor of free-market forces over the past 28 years and here we are.

In the 1987 movie "Wall Street," Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, said the famous line, "Greed is good, greed works." Well, until it doesn't work anymore. It's like saying, "Cancer is good, cancer works." Well, the human body can survive certain levels of cancer, beyond which the body dies. Same with unrestrained greed. The system supported it, with minor ups and downs, since 1981 but is now succumbing to cancerous greed allowed to thrive because of ignored, unenforced and abolished federal regulation.

Hey, I love to make money and I love watching my investments make money but the power players in our system have run it head-on into the iceberg and all of them took the cash-filled lifeboats and paddled away from the sinking ship, not ever looking back at the rest of us. (See: F--K YOU!)

But we Americans don't show outrage at the things that truly deserve our outrage. We tend to show our outrage at things that are "safe" to be outraged about, "popular" to be outraged about. Okay, so we showed a little outrage a few weeks ago when Henry Paulson tried to shove a no-limits, no oversight, no-questions-asked (ever) POS Wall Street bail-out* bill quickly down Congress's throat but the rest of us found out and put the brakes on...for a few days anyway.

We should have let the free-market work itself out. We should not have dumped yet more taxpayer money (pork-laden by both parties) down the Wall Street black hole. If the unrestrained free-market is so Go*-damn great then let's back-off and let it work! Let's let the sick and weak businesses and investments be eaten by the healthy strong free-market beast! Hey, that's how it works for 99% of us. If I stop paying my bills they sick the beast on me and take all my stuff away from me! Those are the rules that 99% of us know we have to play by in the American system. I love making money and I love paying my bills--and I love sleeping soundly at night. It's part of being a true American and a responsible American.

We have been assured and reassured that Wall Street was led by (mostly) responsible people and regulated and watched over by (mostly) responsible government servants but once again we are learning that the opposite is the case. Fool us twice, fool us three times, fool us four times...

Greed is good as long as it's smartly regulated and those regulations are enforced. If you don't believe in that then you put money in the stock market at your peril.

For future reference, whenever there is a change in presidential administrations the wealthy gradually pull out of the stock market in a long practiced "wait-and-see" manner. Gradually so that they don't spook the rest of us into causing a stock market and/or banking collapse. They wait and see which political party will be elected and thus which financial playbook will be put into use. Once that new (or same) playbook is in place they carfully re-invest accordingly. That's why the wealthy rarely lose money on the stock market while the rest of us take it in the shorts every time. The tech bubble burst at the end of the Clinton years as the wealthy got out of over-valued tech stocks and thus the market tanked. The bubble was so large that as the wealthy pulled out the bubble burst. Much the same thing has been happening as Bush nears the end of his term, only this time the system is collapsing under the immense weight of incredibly bad financial policy decisions such as sub-prime mortgages and a total lack of federal regulatory oversight, not to mention the massive amount of debt we Americans have too-easily run-up in the past decade. Money has been too cheap for too long. (I wanted to borrow against my house to buy a sweet '66 427/390 Vette five years ago but I decided not to. I couldn't afford it and it would have put a huge strain on the family budget. Two years later I took a 33% pay cut. Dodged a bullet there.)

Let's pray to God that there are very, very smart people hard at work trying to stop the massive bleeding that has stricken the global financial system.

"The fatter the pig the more danger he is in." Seems like a good rule to use when investing in the stock market. Another rule I use is whenever there is money involved NOBODY can be trusted 100%. As Ronald Reagan said, "Trust but verify." We didn't verify that Wall Street was being watched by regulators and our engine went KABOOM.

*Socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else.