Now, here's the plan...

Sort of weird. I was listening to a financial ‘expert’ yesterday as he was doing a sales pitch for his services. He noted that he had 40 years of experience in banking and investments…and that he had no idea as to what was going to happen on Wall Street. Funny! But honest. And then I had to think about the 14,000 Bear Stearns employees and the fact that they had just seen their retirement nest eggs disappear. Oops! Sure, there are some in that 14,000 that may not deserve any sympathy, but it usually takes a whole lot of underpaid staff to support one overpaid executive. If I were to guess, I would say that there are probably 10,000 ‘ordinary’ folks among the 14,000.

The only good news for those employees is the fact that they didn’t lose their Social Security. But, what if? Take that same scenario and instead of having Social Security, ALL of their retirement options were tied up in the stock market and since they would have a choice as to where it was invested, it might have all been invested in their employers stock. After all, Bear Stearns was the ‘high flyer’, and their stock was bullet proof. And we all know that banks don’t fail. Never! Except when they do and this one did.

And the Republican Party wants us to scrap Social Security and invest in the market? Sounds like a plan!