hammer on screw-facts from front

by Moe White –

In the Republican primary race Senator Ted Cruz and serial bankrupt developer Donald Trump have continued to dominate the polls.

With, collectively, around 50% of Republican primary voters behind them, they attract people angry about jobs going overseas, big banks getting special treatment, and, of course, nonwhite and poor people, and women, and immigrants, reaching for crumbs from the American dream. In other words, poor, angry, white racists, most of them well over 50.

These same voters don’t care, or don’t understand, or don’t have the mental acuity to realize, that Trump has outsourced jobs to China, hired illegal immigrants to build his buildings (and reputedly stiffed them of their paychecks, knowing they couldn’t complain), and generally screwed the American worker. They don’t care that the “successful businessman” has declared bankruptcy four times, enabling him to stiff his creditors as well. Nor do they get that Cruz is married to a Wall Street Banker and that virtually every vote he’s taken in the Senate has been against those same voters’ best interests.

Fortunately, registered Republican voters make up less than 25% of the electorate, and conservative Tea-Party voters about 30% of Republicans; so 50% of 25% of 30% is about 4% of the American population. Cruz and Trump are just two big, loud, dishonest, angry fish in a very very tiny pond.

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The stock market had a really bad first week of the new year, falling 911 points, or 5%, between Jan. 4 and Jan. 8. It’s “the worst four-day percentage loss to start a year on record,” according to FactSet stats. But as I continually remind friends who panic that “I’ve lost so much of my investment,” they really haven’t lost a dime unless they join the panic and sell!

If you have stocks worth $1,000 one day and the market price goes up by 20%, you haven’t made a profit of $200; you’ve only increased your temporary net worth. If you sell the stocks, THEN you have a profit and have to pay taxes on it. The same holds for a decline in the market price: you lose money ONLY if you sell at a loss. If you simply sit back and wait for the market price to go back up, you haven’t lost a dime.

And if you’re really smart, and have a few extra dollars in your pocket, this is the perfect time to BUY stocks, when everybody else is foolishly selling at a loss.

That’s another fact from the front!

 


Facts From The Front is a monthly column by copy editor Moe White in which America’s Constitutional democracy is defended against ongoing assaults by those who prefer less palatable alternatives: oligarchy, autocracy, theocracy, feudalism, fascism, and other nondemocratic methods of government. Among the qualifications for White’s commentary and ridicule are hypocrisy, dishonesty, corruption, unbridled greed, flat-out lies, and sheer idiocy on the part of public figures.