Investing Your Money

When you put aside some money from every paycheck for your eventual old-age retirement, this is called saving your money. If you use this money to buy small portions of companies it is called investing. That is a good thing.

When a Wall Street gambler who makes many millions of dollars each year shorts a stock, buys or sells credit default swaps, or deals in derivatives that is gambling or speculation. Which is clearly a bad thing.

These exotic speculative financial transactions were deemed gambling, and were regulated and mostly treated as illegal for many years. Now thanks to the almost religious fervor of the market fundamentalists and the Republicans, we have gotten rid of a great many laws and regulations which were intended to protect the common investor from fraud and theft. The market fundamentalists are very proud of this, and they have named it Deregulation.

Unless all of this damaging speculative activity is stopped, America is doomed. Look at Italy if you want to see a good example. Except in Italy at least all of the people have health care.
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