That doesn't answer it because I'm an American too and I feel differently. There's nothing wrong with money per se. Or wanting success. Or capitalism - which is the greatest system humankind has managed to come up with after millennia of literally bloody trial and error. It's not perfect but it's pretty damn good. But the concepts of right and wrong remain. Money did not cancel them. Ethics and morals remain. Wrong is still wrong. You can go after money without being a piece of shit. LOL, I'm not even religious. You don't need to be religious to have ethics and morals. And you're right, maybe you shouldn't respond to me you might miss out on making whatever huge amount of money you're making per hour - hopefully, ethically.
A simple solution to end trade room con-artistry is for the CFTC to implem As long as federal agencies permit this kind of con-artistry, nothing will ever change.
Well, there are the finger pointing folks. A scammer doesn't make a dime when there aren't enough lazy dreamers to shake the money out of. Selling snake oil and doing it well is an art in itself and it's serious work. I'm not quite sure who I despise more. The scammers or the lazy ass whiners who expect something for nothing and rather pay serious money to some guy from the internet just because they don't want to put in the hours. I don't want to defend the scam, especially not when it's illegal but when you pay thousands for education, marketing schemes and books that promiss easy money instead of sitting down and do some excel work or even read exchange rules...I feel everything else but sorry for you.
Blame the scammers but also blame the greedy newbeis. I know of couple of fully legit education vendors who are very good but get little business because they do not make unrealistic promises.
Many of them are not necessarily trying to scam people; what they are teaching are just not useful. And those who are scamming don't feel they are scamming at all as they considered those who signed up with them as "willing buyers" like that Mr. Toad in that movie Margin Call (FANTASTIC movie btw for those of you who haven't seen it) said when he was trying to convince Kevin Spacey's character Sam to dump all the worthless MBS to everyone else KNOWING full well they are worthless so they can stay in the green. So no, overall, they don't feel guilty.
CFTC and SEC do enforce but lack resources to do so on any meaningful scale. It's a low priority. And honestly, they're probably right to have it as low priority because there are bigger, more dangerous frauds such as telemarketers raiding senile senior citizen life savings for fake funds, fraudulent non-existent company penny stock pumping, etc. Fraud that leads to much bigger monetary losses for victims than hustling fraudulent "trading education" for a grand or two here or a couple of hundred bucks there. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution. Maybe increase regulatory penalties that CFTC and SEC can impose for offenders? Prison time for top offenders? Anyone have ideas?
Of course you're free to feel however you feel. Yes, some victims are lazy. Some are dumb. And some are both. Yet, some are neither. But they are all still victims. And personally, I feel sorry for every single one and I feel no one deserves to be scammed.
I really don't get the logic of blaming the victim. A victim who's not a perfect human being (however you happen to define it) is still a victim.
@pursuit, look, I think we've all been ripped off one way or the other. We bought a book, visited a seminar, some paid a ridiculous fee for a mentor. That's ok, at that point we did not know any better. But I find that there's always hopes and dreams attached to the purchase in question, so in my opinion you don't get scammed, you scam yourself. This business is about reinventing the wheel and being on top of the competition...which more or less implies that you have to conquer unchartered territorry. This can be so frustrating that you want help, you want to put your faith into someones hands, you want the decisions being made for you...by a system, by a signal service, by a guru. My point here is. If you get fooled, you MUST learn your lesson asap. There will never be somebody to hold your hand and you never will make money by following another man's advice. Some people just facepalm, realise their mistake, learn and make the best out of it. The majority, however, rages and whines and curses the "scammer"...while signing up for the next course. Thing is, the entire economy works just because the majority are morons. People get "scammed" everyday and don't even realise it. You don't fork out 1000$ for a fucking smartphone, because you need it. You do because of the hopes and dreams attached to it.