[pertinazzio]

I don’t have a 401K but rather a 402B (or so I think). I never sold during the dot com bubble and, stupid me, I never sold in the more recent crisis despite receiving warnings in this very forum. So I was stupid but not doubly stupid. 90% of my account is in a single fund: Oppenheimer Emerging Markets (odmax) which is up 74% year to date and 82% going a full year back. It’s nothing to crow about though since I am still about 20% off being back to even. On the other hand I never dreamed in March that six months later I’d be singing to my wife this little ditty every morning: “bUBBLE days are here again”. Nothing like feeling ruined to depress me or feeling flush to cheer me up. The whole thing is unnerving being constantly on this see-saw rocking between greed and fear (I’m in greed mode right now which might be a good sign for everyone else to exit equities).

I am not moving that money soon unless I sense a another collapse and hope I have the sense to act rather than just stew in my own fear and ignorance. Aside from those retirement funds we have a small cash pile sitting in CDs making nothing and have been thinking of alternative investments that won’t further expose me to equities. Fixed income, bonds, etc are all new to me. Here are some of my ideas

1. An ETF that invests in foreign currencies money markets. Supposedly you can make money both on the enhanced interest of foreign money markets and on the possible further decline of KING Dollar as Kudlo calls it. Wisdom tree offers these ETFs for the yuan, brazilian real, euro, indian rupee, S.A. rand, yen and more. Of course if the dollar strengthens (in another crisis) I could be screwed.

2. ETFs investing in foreign government bonds / corporations or even us junk bonds.

If one wanted to buy a corporate bond (say for CAT) how would one go about doing that?

Any thoughts; on these investment ideas?

[pertinazzio]

I don’t have a 401K but rather a 402B (or so I think). I never sold during the dot com bubble and, stupid me, I never sold in the more recent crisis despite receiving warnings in this very forum. So I was stupid but not doubly stupid. 90% of my account is in a single fund: Oppenheimer Emerging Markets (odmax) which is up 74% year to date and 82% going a full year back. It’s nothing to crow about though since I am still about 20% off being back to even. On the other hand I never dreamed in March that six months later I’d be singing to my wife this little ditty every morning: “bUBBLE days are here again”. Nothing like feeling ruined to depress me or feeling flush to cheer me up. The whole thing is unnerving being constantly on this see-saw rocking between greed and fear (I’m in greed mode right now which might be a good sign for everyone else to exit equities).

I am not moving that money soon unless I sense a another collapse and hope I have the sense to act rather than just stew in my own fear and ignorance. Aside from those retirement funds we have a small cash pile sitting in CDs making nothing and have been thinking of alternative investments that won’t further expose me to equities. Fixed income, bonds, etc are all new to me. Here are some of my ideas

1. An ETF that invests in foreign currencies money markets. Supposedly you can make money both on the enhanced interest of foreign money markets and on the possible further decline of KING Dollar as Kudlo calls it. Wisdom tree offers these ETFs for the yuan, brazilian real, euro, indian rupee, S.A. rand, yen and more. Of course if the dollar strengthens (in another crisis) I could be screwed.

2. ETFs investing in foreign government bonds / corporations or even us junk bonds.

If one wanted to buy a corporate bond (say for CAT) how would one go about doing that?

Any thoughts; on these investment ideas?

[pertinazzio]

I don’t have a 401K but rather a 402B (or so I think). I never sold during the dot com bubble and, stupid me, I never sold in the more recent crisis despite receiving warnings in this very forum. So I was stupid but not doubly stupid. 90% of my account is in a single fund: Oppenheimer Emerging Markets (odmax) which is up 74% year to date and 82% going a full year back. It’s nothing to crow about though since I am still about 20% off being back to even. On the other hand I never dreamed in March that six months later I’d be singing to my wife this little ditty every morning: “bUBBLE days are here again”. Nothing like feeling ruined to depress me or feeling flush to cheer me up. The whole thing is unnerving being constantly on this see-saw rocking between greed and fear (I’m in greed mode right now which might be a good sign for everyone else to exit equities).

I am not moving that money soon unless I sense a another collapse and hope I have the sense to act rather than just stew in my own fear and ignorance. Aside from those retirement funds we have a small cash pile sitting in CDs making nothing and have been thinking of alternative investments that won’t further expose me to equities. Fixed income, bonds, etc are all new to me. Here are some of my ideas

1. An ETF that invests in foreign currencies money markets. Supposedly you can make money both on the enhanced interest of foreign money markets and on the possible further decline of KING Dollar as Kudlo calls it. Wisdom tree offers these ETFs for the yuan, brazilian real, euro, indian rupee, S.A. rand, yen and more. Of course if the dollar strengthens (in another crisis) I could be screwed.

2. ETFs investing in foreign government bonds / corporations or even us junk bonds.

If one wanted to buy a corporate bond (say for CAT) how would one go about doing that?

Any thoughts; on these investment ideas?

[pertinazzio]

I don’t have a 401K but rather a 402B (or so I think). I never sold during the dot com bubble and, stupid me, I never sold in the more recent crisis despite receiving warnings in this very forum. So I was stupid but not doubly stupid. 90% of my account is in a single fund: Oppenheimer Emerging Markets (odmax) which is up 74% year to date and 82% going a full year back. It’s nothing to crow about though since I am still about 20% off being back to even. On the other hand I never dreamed in March that six months later I’d be singing to my wife this little ditty every morning: “bUBBLE days are here again”. Nothing like feeling ruined to depress me or feeling flush to cheer me up. The whole thing is unnerving being constantly on this see-saw rocking between greed and fear (I’m in greed mode right now which might be a good sign for everyone else to exit equities).

I am not moving that money soon unless I sense a another collapse and hope I have the sense to act rather than just stew in my own fear and ignorance. Aside from those retirement funds we have a small cash pile sitting in CDs making nothing and have been thinking of alternative investments that won’t further expose me to equities. Fixed income, bonds, etc are all new to me. Here are some of my ideas

1. An ETF that invests in foreign currencies money markets. Supposedly you can make money both on the enhanced interest of foreign money markets and on the possible further decline of KING Dollar as Kudlo calls it. Wisdom tree offers these ETFs for the yuan, brazilian real, euro, indian rupee, S.A. rand, yen and more. Of course if the dollar strengthens (in another crisis) I could be screwed.

2. ETFs investing in foreign government bonds / corporations or even us junk bonds.

If one wanted to buy a corporate bond (say for CAT) how would one go about doing that?

Any thoughts; on these investment ideas?

[pertinazzio]

I don’t have a 401K but rather a 402B (or so I think). I never sold during the dot com bubble and, stupid me, I never sold in the more recent crisis despite receiving warnings in this very forum. So I was stupid but not doubly stupid. 90% of my account is in a single fund: Oppenheimer Emerging Markets (odmax) which is up 74% year to date and 82% going a full year back. It’s nothing to crow about though since I am still about 20% off being back to even. On the other hand I never dreamed in March that six months later I’d be singing to my wife this little ditty every morning: “bUBBLE days are here again”. Nothing like feeling ruined to depress me or feeling flush to cheer me up. The whole thing is unnerving being constantly on this see-saw rocking between greed and fear (I’m in greed mode right now which might be a good sign for everyone else to exit equities).

I am not moving that money soon unless I sense a another collapse and hope I have the sense to act rather than just stew in my own fear and ignorance. Aside from those retirement funds we have a small cash pile sitting in CDs making nothing and have been thinking of alternative investments that won’t further expose me to equities. Fixed income, bonds, etc are all new to me. Here are some of my ideas

1. An ETF that invests in foreign currencies money markets. Supposedly you can make money both on the enhanced interest of foreign money markets and on the possible further decline of KING Dollar as Kudlo calls it. Wisdom tree offers these ETFs for the yuan, brazilian real, euro, indian rupee, S.A. rand, yen and more. Of course if the dollar strengthens (in another crisis) I could be screwed.

2. ETFs investing in foreign government bonds / corporations or even us junk bonds.

If one wanted to buy a corporate bond (say for CAT) how would one go about doing that?

Any thoughts; on these investment ideas?

[pertinazzio]

HLS

You wrote:

“Barney Frank, Up-Chuck Schumer, Carolyn Baloney, Christopher Dodd, Maxine Muddy-Waters all have blood on their hands in the housing bubble yet nobody confronts them.”

Could you please elaborate on this a little? I’ll be grateful. What did they do to bloody their hands?

Thanx

[pertinazzio]

HLS

You wrote:

“Barney Frank, Up-Chuck Schumer, Carolyn Baloney, Christopher Dodd, Maxine Muddy-Waters all have blood on their hands in the housing bubble yet nobody confronts them.”

Could you please elaborate on this a little? I’ll be grateful. What did they do to bloody their hands?

Thanx

[pertinazzio]

HLS

You wrote:

“Barney Frank, Up-Chuck Schumer, Carolyn Baloney, Christopher Dodd, Maxine Muddy-Waters all have blood on their hands in the housing bubble yet nobody confronts them.”

Could you please elaborate on this a little? I’ll be grateful. What did they do to bloody their hands?

Thanx

[pertinazzio]

HLS

You wrote:

“Barney Frank, Up-Chuck Schumer, Carolyn Baloney, Christopher Dodd, Maxine Muddy-Waters all have blood on their hands in the housing bubble yet nobody confronts them.”

Could you please elaborate on this a little? I’ll be grateful. What did they do to bloody their hands?

Thanx

[pertinazzio]

HLS

You wrote:

“Barney Frank, Up-Chuck Schumer, Carolyn Baloney, Christopher Dodd, Maxine Muddy-Waters all have blood on their hands in the housing bubble yet nobody confronts them.”

Could you please elaborate on this a little? I’ll be grateful. What did they do to bloody their hands?

Thanx

[pertinazzio]

If we can pay public safety people less and still attract qualified applicants we should do so. However much F & P personnel are worth, it seems we just can’t afford them at current benefit levels. As it is they and public service employees in general have evolved into a privileged section of the working class. I suspect that very few public employees would leave service if given a take it or leave it salary and benefit reduction. And even if they did, that would present an opportunity to test the hypothesis that only cadilliac compensation packages can attract qualified applicants to public service. Speaking of which whatever happened to the idea of public service? My hunch is that qualified applicants can be found at much lower wage levels for many public service jobs. Just as families need to be thrifty to prosper so do municipalities and other levels of government. Being thrifty means not paying more than you have to! As it is I believe we are getting royally screwed blued and tattooed by the public service unions.

One participant wrote:

“While those other jobs are important, they are not a matter of life-and-death, nor do they provide society with the same overall benefits that public safety personnel do.”

While agreeing that manicurists are probably not as important as cops and firemen there are many professions and economic sectors equally important to our way of life. Consider the U.S. with no professional educators or truckdrivers or miners or store employees. Economically things would be such a shambles that we would indeed be forced to revert to voluntary public security. Are cops more important than the workers involved in maintaining telecommunication and electrical systems? More important than folks who work in meat packing plants? By the way thats pretty damn dangerous work too.

Just as we are considering universal health insurance I believe it is time to begin consider having some sort of universal retirement program beyond the peanuts provided by SS. Many countries do that are at our wealth level. Under such a system most participants could make out a little better and the public sector employees would probably make out a little worse.

To conclude, this will continue to grow as a political issue and yes there are resentments brewing among the working stiffs who pay the taxes when they learn how much these folks (Cops and Fire) are getting.

Just one guy’s opinion.

[pertinazzio]

If we can pay public safety people less and still attract qualified applicants we should do so. However much F & P personnel are worth, it seems we just can’t afford them at current benefit levels. As it is they and public service employees in general have evolved into a privileged section of the working class. I suspect that very few public employees would leave service if given a take it or leave it salary and benefit reduction. And even if they did, that would present an opportunity to test the hypothesis that only cadilliac compensation packages can attract qualified applicants to public service. Speaking of which whatever happened to the idea of public service? My hunch is that qualified applicants can be found at much lower wage levels for many public service jobs. Just as families need to be thrifty to prosper so do municipalities and other levels of government. Being thrifty means not paying more than you have to! As it is I believe we are getting royally screwed blued and tattooed by the public service unions.

One participant wrote:

“While those other jobs are important, they are not a matter of life-and-death, nor do they provide society with the same overall benefits that public safety personnel do.”

While agreeing that manicurists are probably not as important as cops and firemen there are many professions and economic sectors equally important to our way of life. Consider the U.S. with no professional educators or truckdrivers or miners or store employees. Economically things would be such a shambles that we would indeed be forced to revert to voluntary public security. Are cops more important than the workers involved in maintaining telecommunication and electrical systems? More important than folks who work in meat packing plants? By the way thats pretty damn dangerous work too.

Just as we are considering universal health insurance I believe it is time to begin consider having some sort of universal retirement program beyond the peanuts provided by SS. Many countries do that are at our wealth level. Under such a system most participants could make out a little better and the public sector employees would probably make out a little worse.

To conclude, this will continue to grow as a political issue and yes there are resentments brewing among the working stiffs who pay the taxes when they learn how much these folks (Cops and Fire) are getting.

Just one guy’s opinion.

[pertinazzio]

If we can pay public safety people less and still attract qualified applicants we should do so. However much F & P personnel are worth, it seems we just can’t afford them at current benefit levels. As it is they and public service employees in general have evolved into a privileged section of the working class. I suspect that very few public employees would leave service if given a take it or leave it salary and benefit reduction. And even if they did, that would present an opportunity to test the hypothesis that only cadilliac compensation packages can attract qualified applicants to public service. Speaking of which whatever happened to the idea of public service? My hunch is that qualified applicants can be found at much lower wage levels for many public service jobs. Just as families need to be thrifty to prosper so do municipalities and other levels of government. Being thrifty means not paying more than you have to! As it is I believe we are getting royally screwed blued and tattooed by the public service unions.

One participant wrote:

“While those other jobs are important, they are not a matter of life-and-death, nor do they provide society with the same overall benefits that public safety personnel do.”

While agreeing that manicurists are probably not as important as cops and firemen there are many professions and economic sectors equally important to our way of life. Consider the U.S. with no professional educators or truckdrivers or miners or store employees. Economically things would be such a shambles that we would indeed be forced to revert to voluntary public security. Are cops more important than the workers involved in maintaining telecommunication and electrical systems? More important than folks who work in meat packing plants? By the way thats pretty damn dangerous work too.

Just as we are considering universal health insurance I believe it is time to begin consider having some sort of universal retirement program beyond the peanuts provided by SS. Many countries do that are at our wealth level. Under such a system most participants could make out a little better and the public sector employees would probably make out a little worse.

To conclude, this will continue to grow as a political issue and yes there are resentments brewing among the working stiffs who pay the taxes when they learn how much these folks (Cops and Fire) are getting.

Just one guy’s opinion.

[pertinazzio]

If we can pay public safety people less and still attract qualified applicants we should do so. However much F & P personnel are worth, it seems we just can’t afford them at current benefit levels. As it is they and public service employees in general have evolved into a privileged section of the working class. I suspect that very few public employees would leave service if given a take it or leave it salary and benefit reduction. And even if they did, that would present an opportunity to test the hypothesis that only cadilliac compensation packages can attract qualified applicants to public service. Speaking of which whatever happened to the idea of public service? My hunch is that qualified applicants can be found at much lower wage levels for many public service jobs. Just as families need to be thrifty to prosper so do municipalities and other levels of government. Being thrifty means not paying more than you have to! As it is I believe we are getting royally screwed blued and tattooed by the public service unions.

One participant wrote:

“While those other jobs are important, they are not a matter of life-and-death, nor do they provide society with the same overall benefits that public safety personnel do.”

While agreeing that manicurists are probably not as important as cops and firemen there are many professions and economic sectors equally important to our way of life. Consider the U.S. with no professional educators or truckdrivers or miners or store employees. Economically things would be such a shambles that we would indeed be forced to revert to voluntary public security. Are cops more important than the workers involved in maintaining telecommunication and electrical systems? More important than folks who work in meat packing plants? By the way thats pretty damn dangerous work too.

Just as we are considering universal health insurance I believe it is time to begin consider having some sort of universal retirement program beyond the peanuts provided by SS. Many countries do that are at our wealth level. Under such a system most participants could make out a little better and the public sector employees would probably make out a little worse.

To conclude, this will continue to grow as a political issue and yes there are resentments brewing among the working stiffs who pay the taxes when they learn how much these folks (Cops and Fire) are getting.

Just one guy’s opinion.

[pertinazzio]

If we can pay public safety people less and still attract qualified applicants we should do so. However much F & P personnel are worth, it seems we just can’t afford them at current benefit levels. As it is they and public service employees in general have evolved into a privileged section of the working class. I suspect that very few public employees would leave service if given a take it or leave it salary and benefit reduction. And even if they did, that would present an opportunity to test the hypothesis that only cadilliac compensation packages can attract qualified applicants to public service. Speaking of which whatever happened to the idea of public service? My hunch is that qualified applicants can be found at much lower wage levels for many public service jobs. Just as families need to be thrifty to prosper so do municipalities and other levels of government. Being thrifty means not paying more than you have to! As it is I believe we are getting royally screwed blued and tattooed by the public service unions.

One participant wrote:

“While those other jobs are important, they are not a matter of life-and-death, nor do they provide society with the same overall benefits that public safety personnel do.”

While agreeing that manicurists are probably not as important as cops and firemen there are many professions and economic sectors equally important to our way of life. Consider the U.S. with no professional educators or truckdrivers or miners or store employees. Economically things would be such a shambles that we would indeed be forced to revert to voluntary public security. Are cops more important than the workers involved in maintaining telecommunication and electrical systems? More important than folks who work in meat packing plants? By the way thats pretty damn dangerous work too.

Just as we are considering universal health insurance I believe it is time to begin consider having some sort of universal retirement program beyond the peanuts provided by SS. Many countries do that are at our wealth level. Under such a system most participants could make out a little better and the public sector employees would probably make out a little worse.

To conclude, this will continue to grow as a political issue and yes there are resentments brewing among the working stiffs who pay the taxes when they learn how much these folks (Cops and Fire) are getting.

Just one guy’s opinion.

[Author]

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