Maybe I already look like him. I have old birds at my mom's retirement community hitting on me all the time. Scary.
I agree, the Federal Reserve has lost all its credibility, and some. All we hear in the news is that the oil speculators are running the price of oil, its their fault. This is not so, it is the weak dollar, supply/demand, fundamentals, and geo-political issues that have brought oil to the current price. The head of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet has it correct. We need a Fed that will stop cooking the numbers and take action! They are lying to us, its plain to see every time the economic numbers come out. We are in for trouble, that's for sure. They have rapidly cut rates and inflation is out of control. Inflation is something that has to be foreseen and dealt with accordingly or it will spiral out of control, so I totally agree with the comment about the Fed having to rapidly increase rates at some point. Interest rates will swing in the opposite direction due to the inflation problem. Get ready for 1980's style interest rates in the not to far future.
You must be managing your assets well. I "appreciate" the comments. How about bonds and cash always lag equities long term? Would that work for you to get the point across?
I think it is relative. Some women that are in their 50's could still be considered hot so they would remain cougars. But the ones that do not grow old gracefully enter the wolf or she wolf stage. It is also relative to your own age when I was 18 a 27-35 year old would be a cougar. Now that age is higher. that is probaly why I now think 50 year olds could still be one.
No, that still wouldn't pass the accuracy test, sorry. You might say, historically there has never been a period covering X years where stocks have underperformed bonds and cash. The key being any statement made pretaining to a variable event containing the word "always", must be incorrect. That's why those prospectus' you give out say past performance does not guarantee future results. You may think this is being nitpicky, but people who bought C or GM or a lot of other stocks 10 years ago know it's important. As does someone who bought SPY 8 years ago. Never and always are two words that clearly shouldn't be used when attempting to predict the future. Unless one wants to say "you never know". or something to that effect.
If a person believes that there is going to be more meltdown in the financial sector, well beyond what we have had so far, than perhaps gold is the place to be. While i think it is fair to be critical of the Greenspan Fed for ignoring the mortgage mess that they were warned about in plenty of time to act, and also taking rates way too low, too late in the business cycle, but in plenty of time to help re-elect Mr. Bush, it is a bit unfair to be so hard on the Bernanke Fed whose hands are largely tied by the fiscal mess created by rather idiotic Bush administration policies that were rubber stamped by a legislative branch that apparently feel asleep for 4 years. And even worse, when the weren't snoozing, they were working evil. Because of this mismanagement of the public trust we added a gargantuan sum to the public debt, an amount so large as to make it a political necessity that it be, in Argentinian style, monetized. Hence the weak currency, and high prices we see today. It is an unwritten rule that politicians, and especially Treasury Secretaries, never speak of this in direct terms, so the average citizen goes to bed thinking his taxes have been reduced when in fact they have been raised by a clever ruse. We will get out of this. A brighter, more capable, and pragmatic administration will take over come January. The troops sent by lies, and asked to die in the wrong cause for the wrong reason, will come home. The fiscal problems that got us into this mess will get fixed. In the meantime i expect to pick up bank stocks for 10 to 20 cents on the dollar that will eventually make me a very happy man. At the price they will be trading at, I can afford to wait a very long time!