Below The Beltway

A group of labor union advocates want to nationalize every 401(k) account in the country:
U.S. lawmakers should reform retirement plans after 401(k) and Individual Retirement Accounts lost more than $2 trillion in value since October 2007, a group of consumer and labor groups said.
The new consumer-labor group, “Retirement USA,” backed by the Pension Rights Center, [...]

As one New York Times write notes, there was an appalling lack of basic common sense displayed by those people who got taken in by the biggest Ponzi scheme in history:
[J]ust about anybody who actually took the time to kick the tires of Mr. Madoff’s operation tended to run in the other direction. James R. [...]

I’m involved in a fairly interesting discussion over at Donklephant in the comment threat to Justin Gardner’s post about the Cramer vs. Stewart showdown last night.
The basic question is this — to what extent are individual investors responsible for their depleted portfolios if they weren’t following basic smart investing rules ?
Here’s my basic point:
[T]here’s something [...]

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reports a record year for bankruptcy filings:
Dec 15, 2008 — Bankruptcy cases filed in federal courts totaled 1,042,993 for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2008, up more than 30 percent when compared to the 801,269 filings in Fiscal Year 2007, according to statistics released today by the [...]

As George Will points out so well in a column published this morning, the fault, dear voters, lies not in the market, but in ourselves:
We are waist deep in evasions because one cannot talk sense about the cultural roots of the financial crisis without transgressing this cardinal principle of politics: Never shall be heard a [...]

Not only did the Dow Jones Average pass 13,000, it positively shattered it:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Dow industrials jumped 136 points Wednesday afternoon to close above 13,000 for the first time as investors hailed upbeat earnings from Amazon.com, possible asset sales by Alcoa and a strong reading on the economy.
The gain in the Dow [...]

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is far from the best indicator of what’s happening on Wall Street. For that you’d do better to look at the S&P 500 or Wilshire 5000. Nonetheless, it is the one everyone pays attention to, so today’s news that it passed 13,000 for the first time is getting alot of [...]

There are several stories in the news today which provide further evidence in support of the idea that the days of rapidly rising real estate prices are gone.
First, the Washington Post reports that sales of existing homes fell again in June:
In Loudoun County, for example, 515 existing single-family homes and condominiums were sold last month, [...]

One stock market analyst speculates on the reason that the Dow has dropped 400 points in three days:
“I think the selling we’ve seen since Wednesday is mostly in response to the Mideast situation,” said Ron Kiddoo, chief investment officer at Cozad Asset Management.
Duh
         

Back on August 28th I wrote about the issue of the increased use of credit cards to pay for gasoline and what it means. Now, via CNN, comes this news.
There was a record number of delinquent credit-card accounts reported in the second quarter, according to data released Wednesday from the American Bankers Association.
A key reason [...]