Truth is: Ch slaves are funding Western overindulgences?
Brits know how to do this empire creaming off of resources stuff so very well?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed more than 1,000 points in the first few minutes of trading on Monday, as the effects of China's economic woes spilled over onto Wall Street. China's Shanghai Composite index plummeted by 8.7 per cent – its biggest one-day drop since the global financial crisis of 2007 – sending waves into …
The Opium Wars were a shameful part in the UK's history.
Indeed, as was the quashing of the boxer rebellion, and a great many other less savoury events. No country is without its skeletons, but I think glossing over or hiding away from these past events denies us the best opportunity to learn from them.
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Brits know how to do this empire creaming off of resources stuff so very well?
No they don't. Malaya and Singapore were profitable; India and China were not, despite (or because of) enormous projects to remake the economies of both places, at great human cost. Elsewhere in Asia and in Africa things didn't turn out so terribly well either. (There's a reason Britain kept declining James Brookes' offer to make Sarawak a Crown Colony - they'd finally learned their lesson.) Britain's North American adventures were a wash.
Australia turned out all right, as long as you weren't native, but I don't know that Britain made much money off it.
Ultimately, British Malaya was the standout profit center for the British empire (all that tin). Singapore (which was basically uninhabited when Raffles got there) turned out to be a sweet spot for trade, but it wasn't established on the standard colonial model.
Upvote for the best description ever of the interaction of modern economies!
What really bugs me though is that the super slick traders dumping the stock are effectively making the prices fall, and then they will buy it all back again at the bottom of the slump, bringing prices back up again and making a fortune in the process, for them and all the other bloodsuckers hanging onto their coat tails, who buy and sell in smaller amounts, but amounts much larger than anything any of us could afford of course, while the people running our pension funds try and second guess the well planned "crash" and whether to hold on or sell in order to not lose too much of our bloody penison pots to said bloodsuckers.
When it is all over, the world for normal people who trade in *actual* things and services, will, as usual, be much the same place as it was before, but their future pensions will be smaller, their savings if they have any will be worth a bit less, and the the rich guys will be even richer as the money once again moves from poor to rich. Marvellous.
the super slick traders dumping the stock are effectively making the prices fall, and then they will buy it all back again at the bottom of the slump, bringing prices back up again and making a fortune in the process
That's hardly "super slick". I'd go with "obvious", perhaps. Your description doesn't even reach the level of basic hedging.
the world for normal people who trade in *actual* things and services
That world, as you know it, owes its existence to capitalism, and in particular financial markets. We would not have had an Industrial Revolution without an assortment of financial products made available through a liberal (in the economic sense) market. Feudal and mercantile economics would have kept "Western" (European and European-derived) civilizations progressing but at a very slow rate. Things might have been a bit better in Asia, and the sub-Saharan African civilizations would eventually have rebounded too, but on the whole we'd still have a largely agrarian economy where the vast majority of the population had very low purchasing power and little opportunity to do anything in their lives beyond subsistence labor and local entertainments.
I'm no unalloyed fan of capitalism, particularly unrestrained; and it's clear that it led to both the Enlightenment's good side and its very bad side (European imperialism, institutional slavery, wage slavery, cultural destruction, some particularly horrendous wars, etc). But there was no prelapsarian condition of peaceful and pleasant existence for all. On the whole standards of living are up tremendously since the rise of capitalism, and financial markets - abuses and all - are an inextricable part of that.
Though I'm sure it is all very serious for people that enjoy wearing nice suits and sitting in the corner office, to me it is like a roller coaster at a fun park.
(since I'm not invested) - well apart from retirement thingies handled by third party so I have no idea or care - in fact super an seems a bit like taxes - they may bring about good or not, you won't know till your too old to do anything about it...
Anyway, of course all those companies are worth a fraction of what they were 30 mins ago. In the time that half the staff have read the paper and had a coffee, the fundamentals have clearly changed. I think they should make the market trading even faster - faster than light with those fancy new laser techniques. Then they truly might disappear up their own black hole, and we'd be all richer for it!
"retirement thingies"
If that is truly your situation then you should really invest some time in talking to a financial adviser. Pensions are very important unless you plan on taking a trip to dignitas when you reach 60 and you have a right to know exactly what you are paying into, how much is in it and if it sucks, to transfer somewhere better. Leaving it until you are too old to fix any problems is insane.
you should really invest some time in talking to a financial adviser
Often entirely unnecessary. If you have a sufficiently broad portfolio in your retirement account, and a balance appropriate to the amount of time you are likely to continue contributing to it, and you contribute and leave it alone, a financial adviser can't tell you anything worth hearing (at least about your retirement account).
In the medium-to-long-term, you'll either rise with the market or everyone will fall, and your purchasing power will remain in the same relative position. In the US, that means you'll be better off than most, because an outrageously high proportion of US workers have little or no retirement savings.
And, unless you're close to retirement, a market correction is good, since it lets your funds acquire equities cheaply, which can then rise in value. Buy low and all that. Corrections are bad for day traders and other types who are exposed to short-term fluctuations. The key with a retirement account is to insulate yourself from them.
If you followed the link in the article, you would read a good one :
"Rule 48 speeds up the opening by suspending the requirement that stock prices be announced at the market open"
In other words, to prevent disaster, they let things go faster.
This is the world where removing safeguards is considered a viable solution.
#Deity help us all.
@Graham
Generally agree with that, however there is a third reason.
It may be you have more than enough put away to get by on the dividends and state pension or other income, in which case leaving the money invested in stocks (part or all) can produce decent long term gains while leaving a pot to pass to decendants.
The FTSE yields about 3.5%ish, so a £1M pot would knock out up to about £35k, which is possibly more than the person requires - especially if their spouse also has pension provision. Staying in stocks may make sense (you pays your money you takes your choice).
In which case you've probably got other pension provision than a basic 401k. Most people won't.
If you amend your original note to say "retirement savings" rather than "pension" specifically (and, at least in the US, a 401(k) or other contribution-based retirement account isn't a "pension" anyway), then your original observation remains true. Someone who has other, lower-volatility savings has by definition moved their retirement savings as a whole away from excessive exposure to short-term volatility.
The FTSE/mutual funds etc would net you 3.5% a year. What's real inflation? 10% lets say, if you're indicators take into account food, fuel + anything relevant for life. Currency != money, and having a private central bank running the world it means that no country can ever get out of debt (having to pay those who print the currency interest). It's a simple scam, but a good one. It's like people who say " I bought my house x number of years ago and now it's worth x", no dear friend, you need to take inflation into account (printing currency - expanding the currency supply). What is " real money"? I'll stick to gold, silver and agro land thanks. I can eat what i grow and the gold will always retain x amount of worth, way more than trying to buy into the fuct banking system. Bail ins anyone?