December 17, 2010
As a school teacher, I lived below my means to save for retirement. This nest egg has grown over the last 30 years, up and down with the market. This savings was done in addition to a state wide teacher retirement system. Today this is not the case. New teachers in Alaska have no access to a state retirement system, nor social security everything is riding on an individual retirement plan. So supervision of all these new plans as well as brokers, investment firms, banks,etc is a must. I have had dealings with both Merrill and Morgan Stanley and believe that my advisors have been honest and conservative with me.
On the other hand, I believe that the SEC has done a very,very poor in punishing many of the misdeeds of the rich who have defrauded the stock market including Point Blank body armour, who former CEO is still out of jail and his ill-gotten gains have not been returned to his former stockholders.
Former Bank of America and Countrywide CEOs should both be investigated and their Boards as well. Everyone of these people were college graduates, hold them responsible. If the SEC continues to avoid upsetting the corporate giants,then I see just more of the same-a new, high risk scam paid for by US taxpayers.