In the immortal words of Peter Finch in the movie “Network,” Are you mad as hell and not going to take it any more?

I hope so because I am. My rage has been building for a few weeks now but it is about ready to explode. Especially considering the news that the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to pursue allegations of wrongdoing against good ol’ Bernie Madoff, the financial wizard who has managed to squander an estimated $50 billion (that’s BILLION, folks, with 10 zeroes) of other people’s money in what now appears to be a Ponzi scheme of gigantic magnitude.

That is the key right there. Other people’s money. It seems that a lot of folks — elected officials, financial planners, corporate CEOs, almost anyone in a position of authority — have been doing a lot of that lately: playing loose with OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY! OUR MONEY! MINE AND YOURS!

Add to that the revelation that much of the $700 billion (there is that BILLION dollar figure again) bailout that WE are paying for to help the ailing mortgage and banking industries, is not being used as Congress and/or the White House intended: TO HELP US with our mortgage problems.

I have long been accused (and I agreed with the premise) of being a pollyanna who believed what my elected and appointed government officials told me. They wouldn’t lie to us, would they? Nooooo, I told myself, as evidence to the contrary piled up on a local, state, national and international level. I have come to believe that that is what politicians and high-level executives do: THEY LIE TO US BECAUSE THEY CAN. (Let me amend that; those that do lie, do so because they can. I don’t want to make a blanket indictment against all politicians and executives— yet.)

What to do? Well, we could bury our heads in the sand and continue to believe what we are being fed on a daily basis, or we could become skeptical, disbelieving naysayers who demand straight answers from anyone in a position of authority.

I have become convinced it is a healthy attitude to question legal authority at all levels. Just because a politician received more votes than the other guy doesn’t make him or her any more apt to be right about anything. All this just when I was beginning to try to have a lot of faith in Barack Obama; not that he had anything to do with any of these problems, or did he?

Obama, John McCain, Hilary Clinton, Barney Frank, and just about any of the members of the Senate or House of Representatives that have been in power for the past 10 to 20 years should have been aware of what was happening to our financial house of cards but they did nothing. Why? Probably because they didn’t want to rain on their own gravy train. And even now that the president and Congress has orchestrated a massive governmental bailout, even the bailout is failing to do what it was intended to. 

I am not happy that the company that managed my 401k plan (not my employer, but the company that was hired to manage the plan and help employees “target” their investments) allowed me to lose (on paper, at least) $65,000 over the last year, despite the fact that I had listed preservation of principal as my chief goal on a form they had me fill out. I know that a lot of people lost money in that firestorm of a market collapse but that is not an excuse. That company KNEW that I was near retirement and I was anxious to save as much of that principal as I could. I told them that in my “targeted” plans for retirement. (There is a clue in there somewhere for some savvy snoop-meister.)

Of course, the lesson to be learned in all this is multifold:
1. Buyer beware
2. Look before you leap
3. Be responsible for yourself
4. Take nothing for granted.

5. Read the fine print.

6. There is probably another one in there somewhere that I will probably think of at about 4 a.m. (Ah, ha! I knew it would come: Trust but verify.)

Whew! I’m glad I got that off my chest. Thank you for reading.