Comments on: We are all widows and orphans now

By: DavidMerkel

DavidMerkel — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:25:43 +0000

Maybe they can get the law changed, and bring something back like the Americus Trusts. Split stocks into their dividends and their capital appreciation.

Last time (mid-80s), the capital appreciation won; it might be different this time.

By: misdelivery

misdelivery — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:36:48 +0000

Maybe when we are all humbled by where our egos got us, men can be men and women can be women again. I for one am over this career women crap. I’d much rather focus on the meaningful things in life.

By: Har

Har — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:33:56 +0000

Fully agree with your statements. A shortage of yield, not enough to go around, will make funding pensions very difficult. Glancing off and on deflation means secure dividend flows will be harder to find. Big pharma, utilities, pipelines can have the rules changed quite easily so dividend security is not assured similar to liquidity.

By: gramps

gramps — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:58:44 +0000

nice article..thanks

By: yr2009

yr2009 — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:47:38 +0000

Brilliant piece, James.

“This generates lots of fees and helped to drive a growing share of GDP for financial services but has not served the interests of investors well.”

Financial services, including banks, have lost much of their main raison d’etre, which is to be to provide efficient capital allocation tools and decisions, and thereby effectively contribute to the real economy.
One may argue that their overall economic contribution in the past 10 years has been negative.

By: fred5407

fred5407 — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:24:23 +0000

Smoke and Mirrors is not working very well. After while even the foolish ones are wary of having their money taken away. We, as a country are hooked on instant profits and round and round trading to raise prices. It will fail, just like a myriad of other previous schemes. I do hope it takes Wall Street with it and we rebuild on another site.