All comments are simply my uneducated thoughts and might be completely wrong (I never really understood economics like I did math) - so check them with your financial advisor before acting on them. I sure many experts could show me where I am wrong.
I believe you have discovered a fundamental basis of the Keynesian "no down payment, pay as you go" plan (AKA Fabian socialism or liberal style financing) - the so called "risk free rate". Carlin said something like: it's a huge club and we're not in it! I'll bet you thought the 700 billion bailout was the plan but that was just the magician's misdirecting hand. Look in his other hand.
I'll bet you thought they meant risk free for investors! Silly boy! It gets worse though.
Like a shark, the fish system must keep moving forward or it dies. Interest payment has NO theoretical backing AT ALL (I may be wrong) in the "modern financial system" (likely tried many times) and I can't understand how that was missed by all the brilliant world economists since 1971. Wouldn't that cause constant built in inflation? (What do I know though?) What happens if deflation or a recession were to happen? I apparently missed that class and it wasn't on the test when I took it.
Nothing in this world can grow exponentially for ever that I have seen (with the possible exception of promises from politicians).
Nobody's perfect except front runners and HFT which is running really low on suckers. Why do you think the largest of largest investors have reported terrible results in the earlier quarter? When the smartest hedge funds and international bankers lose money, small traders should be out.
I think the congress has guaranteed all derivative losses (hell why not - after they can guarantee to fix the 50 times earth size dark spot on the sun with a snap of their fingers or walk on water or teleport themselves to venus etc.).
IMO the Fed doesn't just work for the US. Helping us all since 1913, the fight can be traced back to before the civil war ( and even probably beyond that to Babel-On). The first world war never ended IMO and the three major currencies are one bankrupt currency AKA a honest to goodness international banking shell game. We are just not aware of all the mis-directions. Most of us are just too busy playing the game and are easily attracted to free stuff and movements.
Recently as the bankrupt shale oil debt piled up (junk debt AKA high yield debt) on certain large bank balance sheets, rather than a bailout, according to a zerohedge article, I think, someone stopped the February 2016 market fall partly by ordering large purchases of it to be held by pension funds. (hell why not ....) I presume yet another banking bailout was needed but was deemed politically sensitive since the economy was doing so well.
So we now see the private union pension funds attacking the public ones as the public ones take over all governments as kind of debt-in-financing by running the government to boost their pension payouts but someone has to lose (hell why not ....) Two strong liberal candidates (teachers vs truckers) squaring off vs an outsider who they likely fear will let out all the secrets. The whoppers are piling up too! Have you seen what is going on in France - the beginning of liberal and socialist thoughts? A socialist leader taking on the unions directly to determine dick's size. Wow!
The US has pension obligations to retiring populations but that is all guaranteed as well. (hell why not ...) Luckily the healthcare will be looked after since there could be a few shocks coming.
But wait there's still more. The voters are waking up finally I think. That could be the worst of all. War is a racket someone said. But it is all rackets (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down) until someone wakes up.
Everybody think; we need more debt to solve the debt overdose problem. What can we do? Answer this one and win a big big big prize. I leave that to the reader. Here are some early entries:
Start a war with someone (maybe even 2 someones). Use global "warming" as a pretext for more debt and higher taxes. Martial law. Raise entitlements (Hell ....) Tax the rich (my personal favorite since rich on this planet means food and shelter.
The dumbest voters have yet to figure out who is actually doing all this to them! The first step to healing is to recognize the pain and face it.
With that said we really do need a solution fast. We built it. We can fix it too IMO. Contest closes soon so get those entries in!
smile 