There’s not much good that comes out of a financial situation like the one our country (and the world) is experiencing. The slight exception might be some of the jokes or satirical analyses that emerge.
Such as an e-mail from a former co-worker at 4:40 a.m. one morning (maybe he was up worrying about his retirement funds) with new definitions for some common terms. We’ll share a few here:
- Financial planner — a guy whose phone has been disconnected
- Cash flow — the movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet
- Institutional investor — past year investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse
- Yahoo — what you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share
- Windows — what you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo at $240 per share
- P/E ratio — the percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing
Or there’s the fact that if you spent $1,000 one year ago on the following stocks, the values today would be: less than $5 for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac; $6.60 for Lehman Brothers or a whopping $42 for AIG.
In comparison, if you purchased $1,000 worth of beer, drank it and turned in all the cans for recycling, you would have $214. The drink heavily and recycle plan is also known as 401-Keg.
Remember, things will get better.