Goodbye and good riddance Mr Friedman

Feet up!, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Well, I was going to be gloating, but seeing as many shares already went UP 20% today maybe I can't gloat as much as I would otherwise. As usual, too slow to get in while the prices were low. Still, this could be the beginning of the end of the neo-liberal Chicago School economic system, which has done so much harm to the world in the last thirty years or so, breaking up societies, creating poverty and obscene wealth whilst building up one big speculative bubble. And this while the Financial Times and the Economist were telling us there is no alternative. Governments were all taken in by it, Labour in UK wined and dined with the city fat cats and the Dutch government through away its welfare state in order to embrace liberalism. Share prices went up, people borrowed money to chase the prices up further and those borrowings were used to create even more loans, from which book profits could be calculated and paid in mnoney as bonuses to the people lucky enough to be working in those banks, who spent that money forcing up the prices of houses so no ordinary people could afford them. They spent money in fancy restaurants and created the celebrity chef culture, where less is sold as more and nothing tastes any more...OK, I am losing my way here, but you know what I mean...

I have never been comfortable owning shares as I cannot resist looking at the prices and I never sell them at a profit always waiting for that moment to pass and end up minimising my losses. So, at least I have no investment products and my pension from Metron is (or WAS) all based 100% on bonds and not on shares and the mortgage was a straight pay back mortgage and my savings are on a safe bank account earning very little interest. Safe all the way... if one is going to have money (and I am lucky to be in that position) it is best not to have any worries about that money, even if it just the little worry that you could be doing slightly better..... such feelings which disappear so quickly when yet another bank collapses...