On 10/22/2011 10:45 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
So why did we in the middle class been so stalwart in our defense of
wall street for the last 40 years?
The answer, it seems to me, is that we are all stockholders.
[..]
Over the years CREF, which started out as a sturdy conservative fund,
became a "family of funds", and you could invest your retirement
money in any crap you felt like. In short, many academics lost a
large proportion of their retirement.
Thus, the gradual erosion of our retirement institutions in the 50's
into INVESTMENT institutions has turned us all from people trying to
guarantee a minimum dignified retirement income to people trying to
make a stock-market killing.
As Doug has pointed out many times, a large chunk of the `99%' create
the problem and won't take responsibility for it.
TIAA-CREF has a number of funds and lets one move between them with the
latency of a few days. It's not like a retiree's financial security is
held hostage to a particular fund. For example, there's this option:
http://www.tiaa-cref.org/public/about/how-we-invest/sri/social-screening/
Marcus
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