You're wrong. The government is now run by corporations. This is true capitalism, a true power grab. It's the corporations creating laws to benefit themselves, as to make more profit, that is what capitalism is all about. About creating advantages for your own company, with a single goal in mind, to make more money. You are looking probably at the ideal state of capitalism ,which can never and will never exist, like the ideal state of communism which is just a mirage. Real communism, real capitalism doesnt work like that
Yes. He talks his book. Who doesn't. Yes. He cheer leaded the bailout. Are you sad that we didn't fall into Great Depression 2? Okay, so he got 1 trade wrong. His track record is 30%/year for 40 years. I'm betting yours isn't. And to call him a crony, means you don't fully understand what his value to his friends really is. He get's favorable deals because he's built a reputation for being an astute investor and for backing current management. That has economic value.
I think he is trying to tranfer his bags of bad option trades to others. He is under water right now, he needs to pump up the stock market. If he pumps the stock market for his bad option trades, he is just a normal "investor." But coming out repeatedly on TV to pump just makes him look bad. He shouldn't over do it, because we all know he is under water, it exposes his desperation. If his is Corzine and runs a broker firm, he probably will use customers' money to buy more options. The old man is a harm to himself.
If i recall he rolled his options down and out. So he's probably up on the new position with losses taken on the old position. Anyway the options are small potatos. Only 10Bn in notional on major indices. He probably has a 100Bn stock portfolio.
I don't understand this sort of view. You realize that dividends come out of the market's capitalization, right? It therefore makes no fundamental difference whether you're paid a dividend or not. If you're paid a dividend and reinvest the proceeds back into the shares, your account value is the same as if the company had simply retained the earnings. If you sell 5% of your non-dividend-paying shares every year, it's equivalent (not accounting for taxes) to receiving a 5% yearly dividend payout from the company. Dividends are 1) a means for large shareholders to extract wealth from the business without diluting their ownership interest (not relevant unless you're a billionaire), and 2) a way for mature businesses to dispose of excess funds in the absence of worthwhile investment opportunities. Dividend-paying stocks are not automatically better or worse investments than non-dividend-payers.
The earnings that derive those dividends are generally though to be stable which is good. Also, dividends prevent companies (especially non growing ones) from over investing in pointless projects.
...and to repeat, in actual practice, dividend payments are not magically taken "off the table" once paid - at least not if you're going for compound returns. You've just received a dividend payment; great, now it can sit in your account as cash earning 0.25%, or you can re-invest it back into stock. Which leads you to precisely the same place you'd be if you'd never received a dividend in the first place.
I agree with almost all of your posts and respect that you are consistent with a long term view of the bottom line, piezoe. That is why it is upsetting that a guy with your obvious good sense could possibly be pro crony capitalism? Of course there is a bit of "crony" edge in every system. But the extent to which this once great nation has sold itself to every special interest is disgusting. Bad enough it has become a whorehouse but at this point it's not even a well run whorehouse. I do not think you have it right on this one.