Is Silver Ready To Hit $50 - 1/29/2026: Will It Hit $130? - Previous Milestones In First Post

Ah okay, I see, I thought when you said in your experience I was going to hear how you had some actual experiences in the market. Like maybe you had some experience with the infamous Bernie Madooff. You know the guy that ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in American history. But he only fleeced about 40,000 people or fools as sadly you call them, not millions of families. And he went to jail for 150 year's, where he died. I suppose not all good white collar fraudsters land on their feet, you just gotta look for the right ones to pick as examples. Martha Stewart went to prison for what could be viewed as a minor securities fraud incident, compared to what's happening today.

But Yes all of which you wrote has happened in the past, just ask Google. It is happening now, just wait until the hearings start next year and beyond. And it will happen again. And from what I read in your examples I saw key words like "charges", "investigations", "fraud", "fined", "violations" and a list of others that clearly indicate none of the what you call fleecing of fools is "Legal". Wether or not they got away with it is another story. I saw Teflon Don John Gotti beat many criminal cases in New York City when I was younger, it doesn't mean what he was doing was "legal". It doesn't mean fleecing fools is part of the business plan of the majority of individuals engaged in the financial industry.

Now the Hunt Brothers, these were individuals trying to enrich themselves. People want to ride along in the FOMO, in what they think are get rich quick ideas or so called investments. I'm reminded of what my old attorney used to say to me all the time when I was involved in litigation decades ago - "ignorance is not an excuse". The court does not care if you didn't know, it was your responsibility to know. The same way the market does not care if you didn't know, it was your responsibility to know, and to do your due diligence.

Don't be mad at the market if it takes your money, be mad at yourself for not understanding what your putting your money into. Which brings us back to how this conversation started. I blamed the education system. Brandmeister took it 10 levels better and explained the problem we're experiencing both on this forum and in society. People wanting simplified answer on a particular action to take in a situation where they are not an expert.

I cannot dispute that those things are terrible. Indeed, I switched my voting pattern over failed promises to prosecute the obvious cases of fraud and regulatory corruption and negligence during the financial crisis. However, I would like to offer a counterpoint on the rights of fools. I happen to believe that with rights come responsibilities.

When I was working my first job in high tech, it was in the post-2000 tech bust. My peers were college educated engineers. It is safe to assume most of them were above average IQ and that most possessed math skills considerably above the median American. During the quarterly rounds of layoffs, quite a number of those people bemoaned the short sighted or suboptimal nature of the firings, forced vacation consumption, and painful pay cuts.

Due to the odd way that our employee stock purchase program set its discount prices, we had locked in a massive discount that produced a 2-4x return for a couple years. Essentially everyone took advantage of that opportunity for easy money. Many folks had been consistently investing 10% of their salary into the stock plan for 10, 20, 30 years. As a result of these two factors, our employees owned a massive slice of company stock.

In the eight years that I worked there, I only ever met one other employee who actually voted their shares. I asked a lot of people directly, especially people who expressed anxiety or complaints. The nearly universal response was scoffing that voting our shares was irrelevant. Some people pretended to thoughtfully take the feedback and feigned an interest in voting their shares, but I very much doubt they ever did.

I sympathize with the hens. But it is hard not to judge their distress when they could vote to close the henhouse door, and instead simply leave it standing open for the fox. The board votes were split on important issues, and the elections were sometimes close. For a collection of people who regarded themselves as much smarter than the average bear, I always harbored a disillusionment at their total apathy towards the only real control they could exert over the company from the top down.

I'm not a fox apologist, but I think some of their disdain for the hens is not entirely misplaced.