I've come to believe the following:
- The time is long gone for Joe/Jane Average with 401K investments in the market to expect to make any real returns. The big insurance companies,
investment houses have one thing on their mind. Make money for themselves and they have the sophisticated means to do that. The big players can
move money in seconds. Most of us cannot move our funds any quicker than 1 day.
- Allowing puts and calls is simply WRONG. Money is manipulated using these tools, and all to often like the OP posted, there are inside illegal
actions taking place using these tools for greed at the expense of others
- Trading in oil, food commodities should never be allowed. Greed drove the oil prices sky high through oil commodity trading. These are basic essentials
we need to operate as a nation and when greed kicks in, Joe and Jane average gets screwed.
- Make a statement next election and vote out the long term incumbents. These F'ers are stealing your money every paycheck, have given themselves quite
the benefit and retirement packages, and continually make laws that benefit the major corporations that work to screw us. I'd like to find a way for
example to change all the benefits for our senators and house reps. Make them chip in for their healthcare. Give them the SAME healthcare insurance
and HMO options we get to choose from. Pension? Sorry, many of us got F'd years ago on this. In my case at Digital Equipment corp, the pension
plan was disbanded, and you were given a lump sum based upon pay and years of service and your current age. That money could be invested in a
"401K". Do you think most made out on this? Since pensions are in the past, and congress as made laws that allow corporations to play these games,
they should get the same treatment. We look at their years of service and pay, deposit amounts that are in line with the common guy and let them
build their retirement nest egg like we all have to.
May I remind us all of this excerpt from the US declaration of independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.