This is the title of a recent editorial in the New York Times. It asks an extremely important question, one the gets right to the heart of our economic future.
For ‘the system’ to operate well, the game must go on, and a big part of that game requires individual investors, either directly or indirectly via their pensions, to continue to contribute their hard-earned savings into the stock market casino.
For a very long time, stocks have been viewed by many as the path to building wealth. Recently it has become clear to many that stocks are little more than a way for well-connected Wall Street and corporate insiders to enrich themselves at everybody else’s expense. Stocks are a confidence game and all but a privileged few are the suckers, is how one prominent line of thinking goes.
The New York Times editorial addresses a very important topic, and even gets close to the core issues, but misses the mark by failing to go far enough and connect all the dots.
Here’s how it begins:
The stock market was up in the first week of 2011 — following rallies in 2009 and 2010 — but many investors are still wary. According to the Investment Company Institute, a mutual funds trade group, 2010 was the fourth year in a row that individual investors withdrew more money than they added to funds that invest in American stocks.
by helix 
