still work out there - MN

Glad that your son was able to rapidly gain another job. I hope he took reflection on how his choices and obligations require a fairly constant stream of income.

Ask him how long he could have lasted if the economy was totally down and he had to rely on unemployement and savings.

Your son has good marketable skills but he needs to always keep in mind what would happen if... If you get hurt outside of work, most places don't keep you on for long and poof goes the health insurance unless you can make the cobra payments.

He needs to have a reserve fund in liquid funds. Hopefully he has it but I bet he doesn't.

Wes

He should press the F1 key A LOT. If he's proficient in Mastercam, it will take him just a couple of weeks to learn Surfcam well enough to function. F1 accesses the online manual, and it is context- sensitive. If I were closer he would be welcome to stop over for some one-on-one pointers, but it's about a 26 hour haul from me to Minnesota.

Later,

Charlie

That Bear Sterns thing gave me the willies. Notice how fast government can move on approvals when it has to?

There is something rotten in our psychic when we believe in ez money over just plain hard effort and work to get a head. Flipping properties, buying over your ability to pay and believing the road a head is bright and pothole free. The character of our citizens is declining for the most part.

Mining equity for temporary pleasure has to be the most brainless acts of consumption.

noun

1. the act of consuming, as by use, decay, or destruction.

Wes

He would have been in trouble by Wednesday. (day after tommorrow)

I tells him and tells him. He don't listen. I didn't listen to my dad either when I was a young buck. What goes around comes around.

Karl

I agree with you, but this character decline was caused by willingness of lenders to make loans that were too risky. No doubt this was caused by mortgage securitization that allowed "dumb money" to participate in mortgage lending.

Biggest issue for him, is urgent upskilling in fiscal management.

Mick

The other part is not teaching the realities of finance to those young heads of mush. Look at how schools of higher education cut deals with the credit card companies. That sure is teaching the kids something usefull.

You feeling good about your gold investments atm?

Wes

"Karl Townsend" wrote in news:47de950b$0$17914$ snipped-for-privacy@auth.newsreader.octanews.com:

He might want to start with and see if there's a reseller near him that offers courses.

The shop may also be in need of updates to their copy of the software.

You don't think the corruption of the stock market from a long term investment where you expected to take income from the dividends to a market timing short term game to extract virtual wealth had anything to do with it? I think our economy is still in doo doo and will continue to be until this issue is addressed as well.

We do seem to get our smarts after we tried the other way a few times first.

Wes

Tell that to the government.

The FED had been reluctant to even reconize the problem back in August, they just played around with interest rate bumps when all along this crisis screamed for major intervention, Remember Prez Bush reassuring us that government needs to leave the markets alone yada yada. And again last week he says the same,..he's an idiot.

It's really a tragady of historic proportions to see BSC go under the way it did.

There was a huge amount of pension money that just went poof... and this is far from over. If the fed had acted last week in the manor it did yesterday BSC would have survived IMO Stay tuned we haven't seen anything yet...ED

That's true. People who borrowed too much relative to their income, definitely are responsible for their downfall. However, investors who lent money based on lax criteria, have themselves to blame for this.

I never owned any gold, but I have Euros.

I am not feeling too good about these developments, as both most of my assets and all my income and life in general is based on the US economy, so my Euro investment means that I lost somewhat less than I could. Ideally, I would much prefer my euro investment to wither due to a more responsible fiscal policy.

If I understand you right, this issue of greed and fear periodically overtaking each other, is very hard to solve.

Ultimately I think it all comes down to a global short attention span. The knowledge gained from any particular bad event, be it a world war, genocide, great depression, etc. pretty much never sinks in to the next generations psyche and is further lost on subsequent generations so the mistakes that lead to the problem will inevitably be repeated.

Belief in easy money is easy, because it's real.

My son, who is an economics student at a very small, fairly conservative Southern university that turns out an exceptional number of Wall Street tycoons, attended a Morgan Stanley presentation last week. With 1,750 total students on campus, one of the largest halls was packed to standing-room only.

These kids are interested because that's where the action is. It's a lively business; there's huge money floating all around you, and the action is hot. If you look good and you're personable -- and if you're good at calculus -- the analyst's jobs are not that hard to get. And they pay more to start, in some cases, than I've ever made in my life.

What's not to like? Working hard is highly overrated as a way to make money. It's not a bad way to live, but its connection to money-making has grown pretty remote. Right?

-- Ed Huntress

e.

Getting hired in NYC in the financial district is just the first step. Most of the folks (I know a few) I know who work there put in very long hours. Seriously. 7-9 is average, that's 14 hrs 6-7 days a week the new kids really have no life other than work. And the higher you get the harder you have to work...

But if you are talented, driven, well educated, and a bit lucky and like the NYC lifestyle it's great.

ED

Yeah, I know they work like dogs, and my son does, too. I think that most of the interest from these kids is the excitement and glamour.

Still, on an income/effort basis, it beats most work all to hell.

-- Ed Huntress

Thats why it's called work, I suppose, and yep they make some serious dough. But I also have it on good authority that a life out west on a ranch or some such is not necessiarly a bad thing....I agree.. ED