Compare the above video to this one.

All right. Let's put George Green aside since he's got other strange ideas.

What do you think of the American economy today? Should the catastrophic collapse of one of the largest financial banks in the World, Lehman Brothers, be of any concern to us?

Only if I have a stake in the company. Otherwise I have little sympathy when a company goes up in smoke because of greed!

Gerry

Well I am diversified. I purchase some stocks through an online broker. Those are the ones I listed. I also have a life insurance policy that invests in stocks and appreciates depending upon how the market does. It is doing pretty well. I also have a 401K plan but I just got into that this past July and haven't gotten a statement on that yet.

Would purchasing stocks be considered gambling? I suppose everything we do in life is a gamble anyway.

The economic pitfall of Wall Street capitalism is the idea that you can make money by getting rich of someone else's borrowed capital. Any wealth that is based on such idea obviously has to get the excess capital from somewhere else. Where do you think such excess capital is coming from ? The hard working people at the bottom of course :)! In the current system, for someone to gain... someone has to loose. And it will most likely be the people who pay the interest on the long term loans.

Now we have a situation where the people at the bottom can not handle the interest payments to support the Wall street's money manipulation endeavors. So we have to pretend that we are not practicing Communism when we bail out these institutions.

Investing and gambling are not the same thing. An investment actually produces a good or service. Gambling does not. Gambling revolves around a game. When a person invests in a company, the company actually produces goods or services. There are some companies that Christian would not want to invest in because of the goods and services they produce or business practices they engage in.

If there were a mechanism to allow investment but not speculation it would be as simple as you say Shane. But there is no such control hence the problem. mel

Every investment involves speculation. When a person buys a car or a house or even a new pair of jeans there is speculation involved. We can't get away from that.

Trouble is the investors who are not happy with their dividends but are only in the game on the basis of fluctuating share value. There is a difference. mel