Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Capitalism and wars

In a capitalist country where defense equipment manufacturing and innovation are privatized, we need periodic wars to keep those companies afloat. For example, in US, Raytheon, Lockhead_martin and other defense manufactures rely heavily on Govt's consumption of military equipment for survival.

Periodic wars like Vietnam, Afghanistan(1980), Gulf war, Sep_11 response and Iraq war were essential in keeping these companies afloat.

Capitalism buys us freedom and "wars" is the cost of it. I am willing to pay taxes for my freedom.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

No risk = No return holds for 401(k)s as well

People are feeling the pain that their 401(k)s have lost a ton of money in last year. Some are questioning if 401(k) plans with privately managed funds is even a good idea.

There are certain types of funds in 401(k) that never (almost never) lose money. They are called money market funds. They are no different than your savings accounts. But, who wants them? No one.. Everyone wants to invest in stocks (or) bonds..

In the long run, holding on your mutual funds, which probably lost more than 30% value in last year, is still a good idea.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Were banks really selfish?

In past year, dozens of banks became extinct and few others were acquired by larger banks. CDOs were largely the reason for that. Biased radio programs and political newstalk blame that CDOs were by-product of selfishness of bank management. I beg to differ. Think for a second... Do you really beleive dozens of banks which existed for a long time suddenly started becoming selfish ? And that too, all at the same time?.. That just can't be true and is not true at all. What really happened was that new financial products fundamentally changed the way banks lend money. Free market proved that sometimes they don't work.

People these days look at big banks like Bank of America, Citigroup and other financial companies like AIG and Lehman brothers as evil entities. Reality is that it's only remote divisions in these banks which were involved in subprime lending. However, these small divisions burned down the whole companies.

Bail the banks out and we'll all be better off. (or) At least keep the banks afloat for a long time to come. I don't want to go to a Govt office to collect my check. Do you remember the last time you went to a Driver's license office... Did u like that experience?