One of the most gratifying things about Cobbloviate, is that as it has limped along over the last few years, it has a attracted a small but loyal following who not only tolerate the Ol’ Bloviator’s tirades and his erratic posting habits but provide some hellaciously good feedback, too good, in fact, to languish down in the “Comments” section. No one has been more stellar in this regard than ol’ JL, who describes himself as a “Linthead Emeritus” and hangs out over there in Huguley, Alabama. Here’s a very rich addendum to my last post regarding the vagaries of the stock market. It comes from someone who knows firsthand whereof he speaks, and, I think it should show those of us who might think we’ve been handled pretty roughly of late what it’s like to be totally 2X4’ed by the market and its would-be meisters.
It seems that JL’s lottery-addicted co-worker “Johnny B.” suddenly got very excited after hearing him telling his insurance agent via phone that his birthday was “1/7/40.”
He went on to say that if a person listened and watched for the signs, God would give you the numbers to play. Johnny B. said that God didn't communicate like we did, in a loud clear voice, but laid things out where we could see them, if we kept our eyes opened.
He called his brother on the cellphone and excitedly told him to hurry and buy a ticket for 1740. He told his brother that the numbers had just jumped up for him.
As he was punching in his brother's phone number, Johnny B. said, "If dis here hits, J, I'm gonna buy you a case of beer." … but the numbers didn't even come close.
When I asked him if he won everyday. He said, "No. Most of the time I read the signs wrong."
I've always felt that the way Wall St. picks stocks is akin to Johnny B.'s voodoo numerology. A hoot owl slips off a limb in the North Woods, and the lumber business stock takes a tumble, not to mention a down turn in the feather-duster industry.
If a corporation lays off 20,000 employees, the investment guys get a hard-on and pimp that company's stock to every horny customer they know.
When those smooth talking Yankees took over West Point Stevens employee retirement plan in 2000, they steered us in the direction of moving all our employee savings into company stock.
Oh, they off-handedly offered some diversity of investment, but most of us old codgers, who could see retirement from our front porch, decided to let our retirement funds remain in company stock.
While we knew various corporate raiders had been gang-raping the company since 1986, and there were troubling questions about WPS's health, we thought we could make it several more years okay.
Bad, bad, bad move. When WPS went bankrupt a few years later, our retirement and savings went up in smoke. Or should I say, lint.
Compared to the trillions Washington is pumping into Wall St. and Detroit, we lost a pittance. However, when you lose everything you had, that mounts up to a heap.
The mega-scavenger, Carl Icahn, who picked the bones of WPS and carried the rotted meat to Pakistan and China, canceled our retirees insurance and defaulted on our "vested" pensions, which were under the old-time West Point Mfg. retirement plan and separate from the new, slick, modern, sophisticated stock retirement accounts.
Be advised, "vested" doesn't mean what you think it does; not if a career swindler, who is lauded by the Wall St. Journal, and gets blow jobs from "60 Minutes", grabs a-holt of the money.
The Pension Guarantee folks took over the old mill pensions, which were cut off in 1968, and we get maybe a third of what we were entitled to under that ancient plan. People who came to work after 1968 got zero.
So basically, we old lintheads are living entirely on Social Security. Which leads me to the point I've been trying to reach through the dark back alleys of this email:
Can you imagine what a fix we would be in if people had listened to that retarded bastard from Texas who tried his damndest to deliver Social Security, bound and blindfolded, into the sweaty palms of Wall Street?
I heard that JL! I and the Missus are very fortunate to have an extremely able and honest advisor who puts his clients’ interests first. It’s good thing, too, because neither the market itself nor most of the folks constantly trying to manipulate it have any more conscience than a teen-aged boy looking for a good time after the prom.
