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Triple A
You put a big chunk of your nest egg in a life insurance policy with an A+ company. You invest another sizable amount in a portfolio of high-rated corporate bonds and tax-free municipal bonds. Then, feeling safe and secure with most of your funds, you take a flyer on a few stocks that a half-dozen separate research analysts have unanimously rated as a "buy" or at least a "hold."
You assume you've made informed decisions based on the best research the world has to offer. The reality: Even in the absence of bubbles or busts, you could suffer wipeout losses.
Hard to believe this could actually happen? Actually, it already has happened. It is a paramount goal to make absolutely certain you don't get caught in
Wall Street deceptions like these in the future. So in this article, I tell you what they are, how they emerged, and how to avoid them.
Their primary cause: Legalized payola and massive conflicts of interest.
The primary result: Distorted research and inflated ratings on hundreds of thousands of companies, bonds, stocks, and investments of all kinds.
The threat to you: Far fewer profits (or bigger losses) in your investments than you would have anticipated otherwise.
Indeed, Wall Street's
inflated ratings are, themselves, a kind of bubble, which, when fully exposed, could suffer a great bust of its own — deepening the price decline, hurting the chances of each company's survival, and aggravating any economic crisis.
Wall Street's ratings are the brains and nervous system of the global financial markets, and those markets, in turn, are the heartbeat of the global economy. So when the integrity of the ratings is severely compromised, it places everyone in danger, whether an investor or not, whether rich or poor.
Comment: More precisely, the debt is not owned by the Greek people, it never was. Bankers and international "money market" gamblers lost it all and had to be "bailed out". Now, the Greek people are expected to repay, having already been robbed blind over the past 5 years.
As we all know, this show is far from over. But the idea that the IMF could be coming to the "rescue" is the last thing anyone might have imagined. So, is it possible? Or is something else going on here? The IMF is Washington dominated, so what's THEIR game? The US government is hardly the type of regime to actually care about the welfare of Greek citizens... unless there's something in it for them.
Perhaps what we are looking at here is the fact that Greece is an important NATO member and if they drift out of the Eurozone, and later the EU, and drift towards Russia and China, that would put their NATO membership at risk. Although, no one is ever allowed to leave NATO, so one way or another that is unlikely to happen.
We also suspect the U.S. would like to take Germany down a peg or two. Perhaps they don't want Germany to get too strong?
See Joe Quinn and Pierre Lescaudron's articles for the background and unvarnished truth of the 'Greek debt crisis'.