Winners or losers by Barbora Misakova

I don't know who said it, but I know he was right: “When you are poor, you are lucky. Cos you have nothing what could be stolen.” It is sometimes funny for me when I realize that we are looking at beggars and homeless people with such a pity, like they were the most unhappy and unlucky people in the world. Like the fact they don't have a flat or house, good car, pretty and clean clothes make them less worthy. The problem is that we have never been on their side of a bridge. We are still looking at our life from our point of view and then we can never understand it clearly. Only a man without single penny knows it is not such a catastrophe (especially these days) to live without money. You really never know who and when will relieve you of them. Financial crisis in the U.S. came and spread on the rest of the world just like the plague. We weren't prepared because we were just used we and our money are safe. And what about today? Well, today we are counting our money every day, just to verify none of our precious dollars didn't disappear. We are thinking twice what to do with our last dollar, where to invest it – we don't want to end up on the street at the end of a month, do we? We are just worried about everything, even about the weather. Homeless don't have such a problems. They have nothing to lose, and even though it sounds a bit cliché and creepy, they are free.

When we are talking about money, it is necessary to realize there are always two types of players – winners and losers. Into the first group we can include especially big banks and corporations such as Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or Wachovia Corp. These companies are working with big bucks of money, they are investing them, they are just playing with various kind of securities which cover really big values. And then there are losers – usually the small bank clients which are stupid enough to believe the bank clerks more than their wives. And even though these two groups are totally different they have one thing in common – they want more money. After the economic break down in the U.S. everyone was loosing and everyone was trying to get out of this mud. And it seems that banks found again a good way how to do it. Already mentioned corporations were selling some of their securities to the investors in big nominal values, but now they have to face investigation whether they misled investors in the auction-rate securities market or not. While there is a big threat they will have to face NY lawsuit they are promising to repurchase auction-rate securities from their customers. The attorney general's office thinks it is “woefully inadequate” plan though. Wachovia promised to buy back $8.5 billion of the securities, Citigroup, UBS AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley agreed to repurchase $32.6 billion in auction-rate securities. Money are spinning and changing its owner constantly and you can never be sure when you will loose all of them.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080815/ap_on_bi_ge/banks_auction_rate_securities;_ylt=AizqLbdrGJBUsaT_TpKr1yis0NUE

by Barbora Misakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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