in what world do you live in where you can't simply go to a website for a mutual fund, look up a fund and find out what its holdings are and how much it specifically invests in said holdings? you don't need an advisor for that. "such funds could be buying anything". i laugh at this comedy. its called a prospectus. index funds you don't even need a prospectus for - they're gonna have the same securities as the index they're following. where's the conspiracy there?

mutual funds are a great way for people to get their feet wet in the market. a much better primer to introduce one on investing than watching Kramer on Mad Money and jumping in willy nilly. municipal money market funds yields, heck, even muni bond funds, at leat at my firm, are through the roof and are a great short term place to park one's money in this market. even if you aren't at a high enough tax bracket, yields of 4%+ would turn anyone's head. they're a much better play right now than just stashing your money in a savings account.

Following on from a 'yield of 4% turning heads' ...

I personally think America's financial institutions would be hugely improved if they allowed international banks into the country, it'd definitely assist the consumer by ensuring that there was better competition.

For instance UK Banks:
* NO monthly charge for any account
* Limited charges for going over drawn and NOT per transaction (typically one £25 charge for a letter warning you that you've gone overdrawn).
* Decent savings rates on standard accounts (at least 5% APR in the majority of domestic banks rising to 10% in offshore accounts).
* An actual fraud procedure which involves the police so as to dissuade banks and criminals from commiting fraud (I've had numberous fraudulent charges on my Wachovia account but the bank officials themselves just refund the money and happily admit nothing will be done to stop the companies involved repeating the incidents on other accounts which imho is appaling).

Interesting tidbit on the Icelandic situation. I have a buddy who lives in England and apparently a large number of the local councils there have large amounts of money in Icelandic banks... money which is now frozen. Don't know what kind of impact that would have on us, but Iceland's problems could very well have a big impact in England.

some of my point about our interconnectedness. What happens in Russia, Iceland, Taiwan, China, etc etc effects us all and it all looks very very bad and I hope were able to stave off the worst case scenario, Thank you Bucc may I have another.

Yeah 'Icesave' was getting very popular before it went broke; I believe the UK goverment has indicated they'll cover losses (because the Icelandic goverment hasn't) which should limit the damage somewhat.

Iceland has a bigger impact here than people realize. The three big Icelandic banks have issued billions in dollar denominated debt that has been sold in the US. Prospects for recovery at this point...who knows?

The concept of people investing in an enterprise in order to receive a share of the profits of said enterprise is a very, very old concept that predates the stock market. And in 2000 years when StarBork Enterprises puts together an expedition to mine Fictionium from the planet Zorg in the Zoingle solar system, they will raise funds by selling "shares" in the result (profitable or otherwise).


The basic concept behind the stock market is still valid. Companies sometimes need to raise money by selling shares in their enterprise. Investors with spare liquid capital need/want to see a return on that capital by investing in an enterprise that's likely to provide that return on investment. All the stock market does is provide a vehicle for these transactions (basically).

The "problem" (and it's arguable if it's really a problem or not) is that a great number of people have realized that they can make money by exploiting short term changes in stock prices (and interest rates, and future markets, etc...). In effect, a whole industry has developed that creates money simply by "gaming" the system. No product is produced. No value is added. Money is created simply by manipulating other money.

If you invest in equities for the long term, corrections should bother you less. The question people should be asking themselves today is not whether the market will rebound in the next few years (unless you're planning to retire, of course), but whether you'll see a return in the next couple of decades.

The key argument for having a 401k, dumping you money into diversified mutual funds, and forgetting about it, is that historically the Dow & S&P 500 have averaged a 10% increase in value. As I pointed out above, we're still 5000 points over where we were in 1995. As long as you think the American-centric economy will still grow over the long term, you should continue to keep your investments in American equities and just ride out the current problems.

Personally, I'm not convinced of this. I think that "10% average return" has largely been a function of the way the American economy expanded in the 20th century. I don't think it'll expand in the same way in the 21st. The stock market, if properly diversified itself into other markets, should continue to grow, however. But my advice to people over the past 5 or so years (and advice I myself have taken) is to make sure to diversify into other markets.

Continue to buy and hold for the long term. And if you want to speculate on the short-term, feel free to do so, but keep in mind that you'll be just as well off if you were to take that speculation money to a poker table in Vegas (and in the case of some FOFCers, you might be a lot better off going to Vegas).


Absolutely. Further, as the expected time between StockPriceSell and StockPriceBuy approaches 0, the greater the likelihood that the "investor" in question is actually gambling, not investing (in the traditional sense).

I'm posting this in its entirety because it's true and everyone should read it.

The Big Picture | Fix the Credit Problem, Not its Symptoms

Two weeks ago Monday, markets traded down 300 points at the open. The sell-off seemed to be in anticipation of what was widely considered to be a poorly thought-out bailout plan. As it became clear that the $700 billion package was not going to be approved by the House, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted another 500 points. Stock jockeys had apparently decided that a bad bailout would have been better than none.
Fast-forward to the end of last week: During Friday’s House vote, the Dow rallied 300 points . . . but once the bill passed, they promptly reversed and sold off. It’s been more or less straight down ever since. Since the highs of October 2007 one year ago, the Dow has lost 39%, or about 5,500 points.


How did this happen? Why are markets reacting so negatively to a near $1 trillion bailout? The short answer is that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have been focusing on the wrong issues. They have been treating falling asset prices—houses, stocks, bonds—as well as the lack of confidence between banks, as the actual issue. This is the wrong approach. Falling asset prices and a lack of confidence are a result of the underlying problem. You don’t cure alcoholism by getting rid of a hangover; you cannot resolve confidence issues by merely cutting rates.



The primary problem is that banks are refusing to extend credit to each other. Why? Because they do not understand the liabilities of their counterparties. Translated into English, that means they don’t know if the other bank whom they are dealing with will still to be standing tomorrow.
The thing roiling markets today is not the lack of confidence; It is capital, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Thanks to a series of very poor trades—excessively leveraged and absurdly risky to boot—banks are now dramatically undercapitalized.



As we have seen in just about every historical financial crisis, the shortage of capital is the underlying cause of monetary mayhem. Too much debt, too little equity, makes any financial system cease to function.


Why is that? Consider the way fractional banking works. Depositors open accounts with banks, earning interest, along with ready access to their accounts at any branch or ATM. The bank leaves a small fraction of the money on deposit, and uses the rest for loans, either to businesses or consumers. The smaller the fraction retained on deposit by the banks, the more money they have to lend out, and in theory, the greater their potential profits.


This is a quaint, 18th-century system. It worked well—at least before the modern era of derivatives and excess leverage. In ye olden days, a bank would get a $10 deposit, keep a buck as reserve cash, and lend out the other nine. Assuming they were careful about who they made loans to, this was a profitable enterprise.


In recent years, banks ran into three kinds of trouble: They made loans to people who failed to repay them; they did not keep adequate capital on reserve; they compounded their problems by borrowing money from each other to buy back all of those loans after they had been repackaged as fancy securities.


If it sounds ridiculous, it is only because it was.
What makes the current crisis so dangerous is that all these complex financial maneuvers have left the institutions themselves shell shocked. They no longer know who to trust. When Banks cannot tell if the other bank across the street has enough money to survive through tomorrow, they cease credit operations. As long as this condition exists, banks will be reluctant to lend money to anyone but the strongest financial institutions, who of course, do not need it.



Hence, a credit freeze.



Under these circumstances, the original Paulson rescue plan is unlikely to accomplish much. Buying up risky assets from the banks, which is what Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is set to do, is like slapping a coat of paint on a house infested with termites. It may pretty up the banks for a short period of time, but it is unlikely to solve the underlying problem.
So what would solve it? The first step to accomplish this is triage. Identify the banks that cannot survive, and like Old Yeller, "gently" put them down. Euthanize the bad ones so the good ones can survive. Nationalize ’em, sell their accounts to strong banks, and prevent further liabilities to the FDIC (which insures all accounts up to $250,000).


Next, recapitalize the banks that can survive by buying preferred stock. That is what Warren Buffett did with General Electric and Goldman Sachs when he made his investments. The Treasury should announce a matching program, where any private investment into a Bank is matched by the government, dollar for dollar, and on the same terms. This fixes not merely a balance sheet issue (like TARP does) but the actual capital structure at the root of the current crisis. And it does so on terms that are good for the taxpayers too.



As this process eliminates the bad banks and recapitalizes the good banks, normal lending will resume. Defaults and insolvency will no longer paralyze the financial industry. This is how Sweden resolved its financial crisis in the nineties, and how England just started to address their problem this past week.



The good news is that the US is that there are signs the US is starting to move towards the Swedish / British / Buffett model. The bad news is that it has taken this long to even begin contemplating this.



We are a year late, a few trillion dollars short. And, its too late for firms that could have been saved had there been clear eyed leadership in Washington, instead of mindless cheerleading. As recently as a few months ago, we were being told thast the economy was sound, the problem was contained, the dangers minimal. Instead, a parade of firms such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and AIG and Fannie Mae and Washington Mutual and Freddie Mac and Wachovia and Merrill Lynch are now lost. That is going to have lasting repercussions for the national economy, and it is going to be felt especially hard in places like New York City, Connecticut and California.



It might be glib to say “Better late than never.” But that fails to capture the lasting economic damage caused by missing this opportunity for so long.


To give you an idea of how costly this delay has been, consider the S&P 500 financial sector index. It is comprised of over 80 of the biggest banks, brokers and insurers in the United States. At its peak in February 2007, it was worth almost $3 trillion dollars. Since then, it has since declined 56.5%, losing over $1.7 trillion dollars in value. And that is just one index, and not the entire US financial sector.


When banks know their counterparties are not in danger of going belly up tomorrow, they will begin lending again. Confidence will return once the underlying problem is resolved, and not a minute before.

Yes the information is out there, this is for people who are not experts themselves and are talking to an expert for help... said expert should hand over more than just a prospectus, they should explain what the companies in that list do, describe any risks associated with those companies, etc.

I'm just saying, question deeply any suggested fund the advisor is trying to put you towards... we are in this mess because investors (of all intelligence levels) are buying things they don't understand but just looking at the giant yield number and going "BUY!"... if your advisor stutters when you say "WHY?!" instead then the fund is probably not for you.

Maybe I am biased by my own experiences with seeking professional investment advice and going through a couple fools trying to sell things but unable to answer basic questions (obviously I got tired of 'experts' and did it myself). There are good people out there, you can tell if you have one if they can give you an honest and sensible breakdown of the investment they are selling. My buddy in the business admits he has worked at a place where they sell stuff with a little false advertising [usually downplaying risks], so maybe I'm just primed for paranoia by bad examples.

that was a good article.

though i love all these people who sit in the comfort of their home office and tap away on the keys of their laptop and have this "i have all the answers, its so simple" air about them. everyone other than the people in positions of power have all the answers it seems, the stupid ones are the ones currently in control. but if the stupid ones are the ones with the control and power - does that make them the stupid ones?

this is like the politician who asks "oh how can we prevent accidents on the highway from causing major traffic delays" and some smarmy know it all writes and article that goes "you know how to stop major traffic delays? you go to the root of the problem - stop having accidents! stop allowing bad drivers to drive on the same road as safe drivers! duh! it's so simple!".

i'm not going to argue the merits of the above article, only that the people writing the articles seem to be so short sighted, as if making a major change at point A will fix the problems at point B, but what now about how point C will be effected? as if there's a magic switch that can be flipped and its the people in office that are sitting on their hands willfully delaying this out of some pure selfish need. sure, i have yet to find a politician that doesn't have a "what's in it for me" attitude, but maybe the answers aren't so simple as the three-point approach the above article explains, and the lawmakers in office now are at a loss due to not wanting to compound the problems further, or taking actions now without seeing what loopholes will result.

but its easier if you just trust the article writers, who have all the answers and know everything.

the politicians have bungled this to hell and back though

my firm is overconservative to a fault, which is fortunately why you haven't seen us in the media.

i find it hard to believe that your buddy works at a place that "sells stuff with a little false advertising", being that all security ads need to be registered with the SEC. unless of course your buddy's old firm found a way to dupe the SEC, in which case that's for another thread.

of all the finance institutions, mutual funds are easily one of the more transparent. this isn't because i'm in the industry. you do not need to have expert advice to understand the aim of what a particular fund is, and a simple internet connection is the only thing standing in the way of finding out just what exactly the fund is invested in. there are predators and people with bad advice in any sector, as you may know. the only thing you need to watch out for is excessive trading in discretionary accts or advice to constantly buy/sell. there is minimal damage or avenues for shaddyness with regards to getting advice on mutual funds. i'm sure this is across the board, but in my firm to send out a prospectus there needs to be a Customer Profile on file which stands to show why a particular fund was recommended and shows how suitability was determined. everything on paper and documented, and for wrap accts that carry more fees a prospective shareholder would have to fill out numerous docs which would illustrate they're aware of what they're being invested in and are aware of all the fees that are attached.

no, the people in the finance industry have bungled this to hell and back. it's the politicians that have created an environment where such bungling could take place.

i don't disupte the article, again, it's just funny reading them and the image or underlying theme they project - everyone in Washington is clueless, we have the answers. lol

aka "they've both bungled it" - because the politicians never should have created this environment, or allowed it to persist.

also, i meant that in regards to the handling of the current situation the politicians have bungled it. everything has been reactive, there's been no proactive action.

and take for example the idea of government partially nationalizing some of the banks - did they do it swiftly like the UK, or close the markets and do it then (like Iceland), or do it over the weekend? Nope...they let the news leak out before they were ready to do anything, while the markets were open. That's just plain sloppy.

If you were an economist, you'd say that too. :) Hell I'd bet almost anyone that works in finance could come up with better solutions than Congress, assuming they gave a shit.

Nothing illegal, false advertising to me is:
- Mentioning the yield a lot, but not going into detail on the risk
- Pointing to historical returns excessively
- Not pointing out if a particular fund is over-invested in a certain industry or field.
- Inability to explain in detail the difference between a 10% fund and a 15% fund, and explain the relative increase.
- Will not discuss anything more detailed than what I can see in the basic summary of the fund.

I don't think it is necessarilly shady, I just think the quality of advice is pretty poor, sometimes knowingly (person knows they are selling a rotten turkey), often not (person is merely incompetent or too pressed for time to care about you).

Buddy left that firm because they basically didn't do anything he thought was real finance, they just sort of acted as a middleman between consumers and funds... and they biased too much towards bigger returns because they thought thats what customers wanted (and there was a real ignorance about the market being perfectly all right).

the only funds that have yields are money markets and bond funds. these aren't the riskiest investments. equity funds, the most aggressive/volatile of the 3 funds types, don't have yields.


once you disclose that the figures assume divs and cap gains were reinvested, and past performance is no guarantee of future results, you are free to "sell".


that isn't a requirement to point out. that falls under the realm of "info to check out in a prospectus".


a Wharton School of Business degree is not needed to understand that the higher the yield, the (generally) higher the risk. that's the rule of thumb. when comparing like investments, the only diff being yields, by and large the reason is the one with the higher yield has a larger portion of non-investment grade quality securities. hence the reason why High Yield funds (a nice way of saying "funds that invest in junk bonds") yield more than Muni Bond funds (traditionally), and why Muni Bond funds yield more than money markets.


hi, i'm a prospectus. if you require detailed information in addition to what may be some general bullet points your advisor discussed, request me and i'll give you a lot more information. if you're still starved for info, i suggest you inquire about my brother, his name is Statement of Additional Information.


that has absolutely nothing to do with the mutual fund industry on the whole. that's an isolated company, and a bad one at that.

i believe you may be severely misinformed about the mutual fund industry, to the point where i don't have the time to further debate this with you.

I give this round to Anthony 10-7. What SportsDino described is not false advertising. False advertising is illegal in most states or at the very least a civil cause of action. Being bad at your job isn't.

thank you very much.

one last point to make to Dino - the SEC does not concern itself with the quality of the investment itself. they were established to ensure that the investor was informed as to their investment. a firm could be selling one of the riskiest and likely to fail funds ever, but as long as all proper disclosures have been passed along to the s/h as to the risk of the investment, and that the data given to the investor is not misleading, that firm is free to sell that horrible fund.

SEC is concerned with the quality of the data given, not the quality of the investment.

also, unlike the mortgage industry where if you were sold an unsuitable mortgage by a predator lender and you have no recourse (other than the BBB), in the securities industry you have the option of Arbitration if you feel you were wronged by a broker dealer/advisor/rep.

remember my commentary about confidence? I stand by it and feel vindicated to no end. Fine, now that I feel vindicated you may let the markets release the pressure.

-thank you

I concede defeat, besides mangling terminology and overfitting to personal examples, my original point was "buyer beware" and I think you are only furthering that by pointing out how you can get access to more information. So my only addition then is to say "Look at all this easily available information before you buy anything".

Uh oh... this recession is worse than I thought!



:D

As someone not trading stock but who has a 401K through my company, I have to agree more with this than HA. We get our 401K through Fidelity (I'm just using them as an example) and while I can easily see what each of the funds are invested in, I have no idea specifically what I am looking at. Yes, I can look up all the numbers I want but that doesn't mean I know how to interpret them. Hell, if I'm not in finance, how would I even know how to interpret them?

Now, if you counter this by saying, well, it's your money so make it your time. You could spend an entire work week per week looking at this stuff. In fact, that's why the heck Fidelity is being paid to manage it!

Read the prospectus is great. But let's not pretend the summary with a few bullet points and some dumbed down "This is A) High Risk, B) Medium Risk, C) Low Risk" is all that useful. Or that the average consumer knows what they are looking at when the view the entire prospectus.

SI

Did all of the Chicken Little'ing by Bush, Paulsen, et al a couple of weeks ago to get the bill passed worsen the eventual panic at all or was this just inevitably this bad and nothing they could have said would have made it any worse or better?

SI

IMO, it was the bungling of the bill's handling that exacerbated this. When the rhetoric leading up to the first vote was solidly that the bill would pass only to have chinks in that thought show up only a few hours prior to it, we were in for an issue and NOT an issue of whether or not the bill passed but an issue of confidence.

I have hung my hat on that fact for a long time, that it is confidence that is exacerbating the issue.

Are the credit markets frozen(er)? yes
Are some companies having a hard time rolling over paper? yes
(put your questions here)

However the fact that that 10 day period showed how ignorant our leadership was in planning the handling of this wind down made an unwind turn into a panic. The confidence in the markets (not just equities) and in some ways the capitalist structure has been damaged, but not permanently. I believe that the government(s) will save us from a depression but I believe the pain has been exacerbated going forward and possibly the unwind couldve been much more orderly.

The above is just my opinion though.

I am thinking of beginning my dollar cost averaging again however I am way down this year....HOWEVER I take solace in the fact that I missed out on the bubble(s) pop and have hope that NoSkillz got out of his positions in advance of the destruction. I had no idea that shutting down my Financials thread would be shutting down the possible thread of the year :)

You know the economic world is screwy when some of the most seemingly erudite financial information in a thread is provided by a man who once rogered a sandwich.

That captures it perfectly in one succinct sentence.

Which number shoe is this dropping now, eleven or twelve?

Reports: Chrysler, GM discuss merger, acquisition - Yahoo! News

SI

Dug their own hole with poor quality vehicles for years and slow to shift to the market. This is from 2007:

Yeah, it is pretty amazing Chrysler has survived as long as it has. If GM doesn't take it, it'll be out of business in a couple more years.

And yet there are candidates/parties willing to prop up unionization in order to dig a deeper hole.

You seriously think unionization is the only/biggest problem of the American car industry? It is a part of the problem, but very poor car designs/future planning for decades has hurt them far more the the unions.

Don't claim to be an expert on these things and I don't have any studies to back it up, however my suspicions are:

1. Yes, some cars had poor designs and materials.
2. Some cars had okay designs/materials that were poorly put together due to the unionized environment.
3. The unionized benefits/negotiations have hampered the domestic car companies to compete globally.

This is not to say there is not a role for unions, I think the pendulum had swung too far the other direction.

Not only or biggest, I didn't say it was - just one more way of digger a deeper hole. Here's a post from someone I respect


With the Dems rise to power and their strong connections to the union special interests and lobbyists, it will only be a matter a time before the Employee Free Choice Act gets enacted, which could put more workers/companies in the same boat as the auto industry - giving them a false sense of security that comes at a high cost.

Picked up elsewhere. Doubt if the numbers are 100% true:

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000. With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left. If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left. If you had purchased United Airlines, you would have nothing left. But, if you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, and then turned in the cans for recycling, you would have $214.00. Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. This is called the 401-Keg Plan.

It is not just design, but their complete unwillingness to make more fuel efficient cars, and their short-sighted greed thinking that flooding the market with SUV's was never going to come back and bite them. Toyota and Honda continued to gain market-share on them over the last decade with less SUV offerings, but producing a much higher quality product. American automakers have been poorly run for over 30 years, and have always been behind the trend on the needs/desires of the consumer.

Everyone is still in shock about the economy right now. However, once that wears off, there's one issue that I think is set to explode and that's illegal immigration.

From a purely macro point of view, it does supress pay of workers both illegal and legal by having a cheaper alternative. In our consumer based economy, making minimum wage gets you a roof over your head, food, and that's about it. That doesn't help the economy go. Making even less does even less.

But, really, the cries of "they took our jobs" are going to look a lot more real and get a lot uglier if unemployment starts creeping up towards 7 or, god forbid, 10%.

There have already been 2 big raids this year, one in Iowa and one in Alabama, with 400 and 600 arrested. This is going to get a lot worse if the employment situation turns south like it appears it will.

SI

I'll bet you good money a very large percentage of Americans still won't want to do those jobs.

Yeah, I'd have to say that cranking out gas-guzzling SUVs is something that is really biting the American carmakers in the ass right now.

good times - boss just came in and said that essentially over the weekend we lost like 165k of revenue...not happy times here. we can still be okay if we can land some business to replace it, but it's do-or-die time.

fortunately i had seen the winds blowing that way and my name is out there looking for new positions.

It would seem that the time would be ripe for a new american automaker to emerge. They wouldn't have the legacy benefits to pay, nor the crippling pay structure of the current companies. Of course the initial outlay would be extremely expensive, but they could tailor their lines to producing the fuel efficient low emmisions cars that need to be built going forward.

once things settle down here (we've had a lot of parties and engagements to attend this year), like around December, we'll be leasing a gas guzzler SUV. it'd be our 2nd car, we've already paid off our 1st car, a suddenly very tiny Hyundai Elantra now that we have a baby. i don't think SUVs are all that bad if they're gonna be your 2nd car. for commuting to work i'd still use my Elantra, its just for transporting our baby i don't feel safe driving in a small car anymore. the only way you start to make money on a hybrid is if you plan on having it longer than 5 years. there's some excellent deals to be had on leasing SUVs, and for the short term they're better buys. i don't want to commit to buying a second car cuz i think 2010 is gonna be a huge year for alternative energy and/or extremely fuel efficient cars so i don't want to pigeonhole myself into what may be an outdated car in 2-3 years time.

i've never had a big, powerful car before so i want to treat myself. all in all i don't see myself driving an SUV more than 3 times a week, even with 17 mpg give or take you aren't gonna be constantly buying gas. if the SUV is gonna be your only car then that's a different story.

Yeah, totally agreed HA.

It's one thing to have to drive the Hummer to work and back every day. But if you're planning on putting around 100 miles per week on it, it's pretty ideal.

Plus, if you plan on taking a vacation or something, it'd be great to have the larger vehicle.

Check out the Mazda 5, we have 2 kids and it's perfect, and still gets pretty good gas mileage, it rates at 27mpg on the highway, i've gotten 32 on a trip before. We traded in our Ford Escape on one in May, and love it, it's like a good sized car with two sliding doors.

I don't have a problem with people owning SUV's if they feel they need the space or ground clearance or whatever. That said, there is no vehicle more obnoxious than a Hummer.

sliding doors? i don't do caravans! lol

to be honest since any SUV i get will essentially be a weekend car i'm not even looking at mpg as a factor. probably would use it as a tie breaker if i'm stuck between 2 cars, but as i mentioned i don't plan on using it frequently enough to make it a big priority. my wife wants a crossover type of SUV, i'm more interested in a big ole american gas wasting truck. we've both agreed on 3rd row seating as a requirement.

anything in moderation isn't so bad, i wouldn't be one to just jump on a bandwagon to preach SUV=evil.

Minivans generally have much more usable interior space than SUVs, which can be important if you're hauling crap from Home Depot.

Be careful with SUVs & ground clearance, as many of the more popular models don't really have that much ground clearance.

As far as safety, minivans are probably the safest vehicles on the road (a combination of size and standard safety features). Some of the safety testing results from large SUVs are pretty horrific.

Although it never got off the ground and the final proposal not created, I was in favor of some sort of SSN privatization.

In retrospect, if that did happen, I would think this period would have been much more painful.

Interested in hearing if you were for/against and what your thoughts are now.

If its optional (and that means fully optional, no pressure to privatize it), I'd have no problems with it now.

I like Obama's proposal to allow retirees to tap IRA's early w/o penalty for a short window.