Why Wall Street Matters

Briefly, Wall Street is the only place to store your money. Savings accounts pay less than even the official inflation rate. The official rate is calculated on a few commodities - most of which are subsidized by the government to make it look like inflation is low. Note that a car I could buy brand new in 1977 for $2900 now goes for 20K. That is not 2% a year, no matter what my government tells me. Ditto houses. Ditto most everything you can name.

So you can't put the money in savings. Where then? The stock market via 401 K's and the like. And if the stock market implodes? Where will all that retirement money go? There isn't anyplace safe other than maybe land. But with the fall in the housing market, it will fall also, but you will still have the land.

Our monetary policy has positioned us for hyper-inflation, just like Germany between wars. Our money is not backed by anything thanks to FDR and Nixon. We don't really even have a national bank, the Federal Reserve (often called the Fed) is a private bank that simply steals public money for its "services". Out trade policy has allowed China, our avowed enemy, to control our economy because if we try to limit them, they will sell off our dollars. Plus our multi-nationals have so much equity in China that the threat of taking it will crash all of our big companies. We have no industry left to fall back on.

In the end, Wall Street is the only place you could even hope to have a chance of keeping the purchase value of your money. And if it goes, so will we. Foreign stocks?