Common wisdom (that is, recommendations of just about any financial advisor) at the moment is that you want about $1 million to comfortably provide for yourself in retirement. Which is right at your sweet spot for the ol’ chop chop treatment.
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And I should add - that $1 million is to provide for a very boring middle class annual retirement income of $45k (in today’s dollars).
I guess we’re all doomed then. Well, almost all… and yet we still have vociferous defenses of monopoly/crony capitalism all around us.
I don’t even know where to start in refuting that site. It’s a paranoid fantasy, not reality.
I’ve worked in about 10 different banking positions. This isn’t idle speculation on my part. The regulations are real and have to be adhered to. It takes a lot of time to prove compliance to the multiple federal regulatory agencies. Yes, some regulations were rescinded, which instigated a major component of the financial meltdown, but fortunately most of the old standards are still in place.
No, of course not. I referenced it as a positive thing.
Pretty sure he can afford nice clean virgins for his harem.
Yeah, just like the porn industry does… what could possibly go AIDS wrong.
NakedCapitalism is one of the most respected alternative finance/banking sites on the net. I’m not sure what is paranoid about the piece really. Its just an attempt to describe, at the macro level, the way large banks make overall lending decisions. The fact that banks you have worked at must follow specific regulations as to its balance of mortgage loans to deposits doesn’t really contradict overall lending practices, nor does it preclude the reality that overall lending is not constrained by deposits. I’m not sure what size or type of banks you worked at. As far as I understand, this piece is discussing the workings of large banks that have access to the Fed “discount window” and other Fed facilities. Its not clear to me whether all banks have such access, or all banks work the same way. Its also not clear that the “street level” view, where things like the CRA apply, are at all relevant at the higher levels of banking being discussed in the linked piece.
Looks like any way you look at it, I’ve got over 200 years of working left to do before I can retire. Most people I know fall into the same category. Maybe a few of them could retire in 100 years but if it really takes a million to retire, isn’t that pretty damning of capitalism? Most of us would have to work over twice the length of the current life expectancy in order to comfortably retire.
And, of course, it is extremely expensive to live poor and so much the more difficult to save a substantial portion of your income. Letting things go on the way they are now would be appalling.
According to Geoffrey Stewart, Prince Jefri is appealing.
I can’t say I share Mr. Stewart’s taste.
Well, the harems aren’t a surprise. I’ve read a couple of accounts by former members of the harem; they were beauty queens and nude models who got paid a lot of money, but had little freedom (I think one of them said that her passport was held by the Prince’s staff) and were just expected to hang around. (I think that these may be the cases that are mentioned on the second page.)
As much as these eye-glazing lists of excesses are weirdly compelling, I’m more interested in how Vanity Fair presents these scandals of the rich and famous. Graydon Carter used to be the co-publisher of Spy magazine, and while Spy used to tear into the privileged elite with the same assiduousness that VF usually builds them up, they’re two sides of a pretty thin coin. Articles like this seem to serve the purpose of pretending to disapprove of the excesses that VF otherwise is perfectly happy to celebrate; so much the more convenient if it’s someone who isn’t American or British, right?
What are the people of Brunei doing about all of this?
Oh nothing much really. We do live in blissful ignorance because we have so much thrown our way that complaining about things aren’t really any of our business. Much like that the saying, “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”. Most citizens aren’t outspoken or curious about the goings on around the world as long as they aren’t disturbed in any way.
The few effects that can be felt and seen after Prince Jefri’s involvement in BIA and Amadeo were that we’ve had no more concerts, our formerly free amusement park is slowly being sold off and is no longer free and the rapid/careless development we had then has come to a dead halt.
But like I mentioned earlier, the vast majority of citizens are very reluctant to say anything or bring to light the scandals of the royal family. I’m not entirely sure if you actually DO get thrown in prison but you do tend to lose respect for saying anything bad about the royal family.I used to joke that there were eyes and ears everywhere (in a country with roughly 400000 people where everyone knows someone, this can be true) so you had to be careful of what you say but now that I’m overseas, I’m not that paranoid someone is going to throw me behind bars on trumped up charges or something.
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