The Myth of the Populist Stock Market

[EVDebs]

"The Myth of the populist stock market"

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0108/p09s01-coop.html

tells us that "At the height of the boom, however, the bottom three-quarters of American households owned less than 15 percent of all stock. Barely a third of households hold more than $5,000 in stock. Most Americans have more debt on their credit cards than money in their mutual funds."

Yet these neocon swindlers are about to push the country into a Social Security experiment that is both unwise as it is unnecessary. The budget deficit and the current accounts (trade) deficit are both made WORSE by what the administration is doing with SS, yet they continue on with this populist rationale for private accounts...I've even heard some of this 'over 50% of the country owns stocks' b.s. all over again, and you'd swear to yourself these guys believe we're where we were in 1999 pre-recession.

Maybe I ought to add the preface to the quote from above...

"Can Americans possibly fall once more for this nonsense? Maybe. The scandals of recent years, most lately in the mutual-fund industry, have done little to debunk the notion that Wall Street is geared toward ordinary investors and that stocks offer a universal path to wealth creation."

The answer is YES, we can fall victim AGAIN.