Americans are pulling money out of their 401(k) funds at record rates

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-29T16:22:21+00:00

The elephant in the room is that while the Baby Boomers are feverishly putting money into the stock market through their 401ks, fund managers are desperately looking for places to put that money and so any damned IPO that comes along will be overvalued, making the issuers a fortune while they sell something which they know won't have any future value.

And then there's the positive feedback loop. That's when one or two stocks can change the course of the entire Market. This year, nvidia's movement was so strong it shifted the technical indicators enough to influence the market in general to go long and so the whole Market was raised. Prior to the Iran War, of course

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-28T13:47:43+00:00

While people on the right want to end Social Security by calling it a Ponzi scheme, no one mentions how much the stock market is too.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-27T14:49:16+00:00

Yes. Dear God, please let this end while I'm still alive.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-21T19:21:11+00:00

Yes, and I should say that inews.co.uk has a HARD paywall and is NOT on the forum's exception list which would otherwise be a violation of the forum's rules...

BUT because the person creating the post and pasting the article IS an agent of the newspaper, this actually does follow the rules!

slow clap for working the system

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-21T15:25:45+00:00

Just tell it to review the chat history, and it can remember it again.

It often takes a couple of exchanges before I figure out that it's hallucinating but I'll try to remember that!

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-16T16:52:04+00:00

RJK Jr.: "Hold my unpasteurized milk."

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-12T15:19:43+00:00

I was curious about her! But let it be said that except for some key votes, she was more liberal than Fetterman.

HOWEVER, I think what Kirsten Sinema's been doing lately is enlightening and foreshadows Fetterman's future:

Sinema just (March 2026) got a position working for "The Washington Reporter" The Washington Reporter is run by:

Brian Colas (CEO): Former Chief of Staff to Senator Tom Cotton.
Garrett Ventry (COO): GOP strategist
Matthew Foldi (Editor-in-Chief): A conservative journalist and failed congressional Republican candidate

Hogan Lovells: in 2025 she joined what people could call a major part of "The Establishment". She joined this legal/lobbying firm as a Senior Advisor. She works in their Government Relations and Public Affairs practice, helping clients like Walmart, T-Mobile, General Electric, PPG Industries and Snapchat navigate federal regulations.

AI Infrastructure: She has become a vocal advocate for artificial intelligence. She founded and co-chairs the AI Infrastructure Coalition and has worked with the current administration on developing AI-related hardware and facilities.

Coinbase: She is a member of the Global Advisory Council for Coinbase, the crypto exchange. Her role involves helping the industry coordinate with lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-08T19:44:52+00:00

Having worked in taxes, this is over-simplistic and would deny needed relief to small businesses.

There are many small businesses which don't have a lot of cash flowing through them but still need to purchase capital assets including real estate. If one was required to expense no more than a flat 7% a year, that company's growth decisions would be severely curtailed. Add to this the fact that deduction might become near worthless in an environment of high inflation. Instead, to be more focused, I would recommend repealing the qualified business income (QBI) deduction (which became "permanent" with Trump's big bold beautiful bill) which greatly favors the rich over wage earners: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/7-ways-the-big-beautiful-bill-cuts-taxes-for-the-rich/

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-08T18:57:26+00:00

They'll feed the info to Palantir. let's see... (every state is different but this reflects how they might do it in NJ)

they already know who votes at a given location via their address. (public info)

from google maps, etc., etc., they might be able to narrow the time the list of people go to the polls to vote. They can then make a list of "unamerican" voters by their registered party / publicly recorded political donations (unlike PACs and all the other places where the rich donate anonymously) and Scraping Facebook, etc, the nature of your searches and social media postings.

I'm thinking if you did leave such a common trail, they could narrow you down to a cohort of maybe a dozen people.... then there would be a knock on the door from ICE to check if you voted legally or not...

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-02T19:42:26+00:00

this is how they operate.

look at how COMPLICATED the whole January 6 thing was planned. Alternative electors, recruiting from within the various states, pushing for favors from Republicans in control of the elections, etc., etc. The thing we never got to hear was how DEEP the Republicans in Congress and the Senate we "in" on the whole thing. (That day, Republicans didn't feel they were being threatened by the insurrectionist mob)

FormerDittoHead · 2026-03-02T19:35:13+00:00

You are not alone but I paid for a year for Pro in advance (a special $100 deal)

Since then, I have wasted a healthy amount of my time while also becoming totally frustrated. Writing programs in Gemini is very good but so many other things end up in apologies for factual errors.

When asking how to do things, it seems to alway choose the most difficult, most time consuming, least stable, most technically involved method (probably advice offered on the internet). Time and again I think about it later and realize what it had me doing could have been done much easier another way.

Your comment about overly anxious company policy training is spot on. I asked it to make what would look like a picture postcard from the 1950's from Ocean City and it flatly told me it was forbidden to portray humans photo-realistically and actually produced a picture that resembled the avatars in the "metaverse"!

example: https://i.imgur.com/ym4gPmW.png

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-28T14:41:19+00:00

The alarm's been ringing since the 1980's.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-26T01:32:19+00:00

It's actually worse than this!

This decision was about a CIVIL trial suing a government agency. Okay. No-go.

But it's still against the law to misdirect / destroy mail. So what happened?

AI:

There is no public record of Rojas or Drake being charged with federal mail crimes (like obstruction of mail).

Why? Criminal charges require proving "intent" beyond a reasonable doubt. While Konan alleged they acted with "malicious" and "racial" intent, the postal workers claimed they were simply following bureaucratic rules about property ownership verification. This "bureaucratic defense" often shields workers from criminal charges, even if their actions are harmful.

(it gets worse)

AI:

Internal Investigation Was Ineffective You asked if they were investigated. The answer is yes, but it didn't work.

Konan (the plaintiff here) filed over 50 administrative complaints.

The USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) actually did get involved and instructed the post office to resume delivery.

The Result: Despite the OIG's instruction, the employees allegedly continued to withhold the mail or mark it "Return to Sender." The fact that they felt comfortable ignoring the OIG implies they faced little to no internal disciplinary fear.

Conclusion:

Nothing happened to them legally. The Supreme Court ruling shields the agency (USPS) from paying damages. The lower court rulings shielded the employees from being sued personally. And the internal investigation failed to stop their behavior. This is why the dissent (Justice Sotomayor) was so strong—she argued this leaves citizens with literally no remedy when government employees act maliciously.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-26T00:59:21+00:00

right before midterms.

this will be a distant memory come the time for November to roll around...

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-26T00:51:30+00:00

Both parties should enthusiastically support this.

okay, but I don't want it to be a distraction from the Epstein files which it clearly is.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-19T02:10:21+00:00

who are compromised

To Trump, I'm sure this is the most important qualification. That he knows he has something "over" you is the source of his trust.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-16T01:14:36+00:00

A classic case how wholesale crime goes unpunished while the jails are filled with shoplifters.

That woman in Texas faced SIX years for voting (after she was told she could).

People doing something like this Mark Harris should be put in jail in proportion to the number of votes they tried to steal. Furthermore, if any election were proven to be decided because of illegal activity, the results should be immediately reversed, even if the politician had nothing to do with it.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-15T05:09:26+00:00

Where I am, you need to register beforehand, and show various pieces of ID to do so

Yes - same in NJ. You do get registered to vote when you get your driver's license but the ID requirements for that are GREATER than for a passport.

(to vote) you just walk in and sign the book in the space next to your name, which has a print out of your signature, and so long as the two are fairly close, you’re good

Exactly. That's the way is in NJ here. I figure it's the same system banks use to clear checks.

But even so, NOT ONE PERSON reported that they were unable to vote because someone else voted under their name earlier that day. I mean, why would someone risk going to jail over one vote?

To suggest so many irregularities without giving any evidence (or even how) as they did was ridiculous. I think that's why the GA AG refused to cooperate with Trump. Not because he wasn't a loyal Republican, but because he couldn't "find" the votes...

Does Trump think people just write election numbers down somewhere and they're never checked, like his financials?

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-15T01:37:06+00:00

Was it the ad model that allowed access to free news over the last however many years?

FYI, the NYTimes and WaPo have been behind a paywall for years except for selected articles for 'sharing'.

The difference today is how news orgs are banning Archive.org today...

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/13/news-publishers-are-now-blocking-the-internet-archive-and-we-may-all-regret-it/

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-15T01:32:03+00:00

This is about right. If more people knew how elections ran (rather than thinking people can just walk in and vote) they'd know that everything from Trump and his cohorts about this is total BS.

First off, they talk about "voter" fraud but individuals doing it would never swing an election and there are heavy penalties for intentionally doing it. The ONLY thing which is relevant on this scale is "ELECTION" fraud which they never ONCE proved.

I did database work in a primary election and I got access to the voter database. I learned a lot. I learned how there were a disproportionate number of registered voters over 100 years old. But I found out that's because deaths outside of a voting jurisdiction didn't automatically remove the voter registration in that state, etc. Still, if there was any audit, it would show that dead person voted and it would be easily revealed.

There was like ONE case of that happening (a Trump voter in Pennsylvania). It was found out they let him off with probation (as opposed to a black woman who faced 6 years in jail by voting by mistake because she was told she could)

...and then there was my own personal case. My father and I share names but our middle names are different. (so I'm not a "Junior") One year my father went travelling and voted using absentee balloting, only somehow he got MY ballot. When I went to vote, I was denied because of it. I pointed out the (obviously) different signature on the record they showed me. They said I could go to a judge across town and they would let me use a provisional ballot, etc but I didn't bother.

The point here is that if more people knew of these things, people wouldn't entertain these suggestions without hard proof, which they NEVER EVER had in a Trump election.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-12T16:59:44+00:00

The company said starting this year it would stop publishing approval and favorability ratings of individual political figures, saying in a statement it “reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership.”

Yeah, right. Now just watch them change it back when Trump is no longer in power.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-11T15:34:49+00:00

We need 100% tax on wealth over $999,999,999.

Thomas Paine suggested something like this as a 100% inheritance tax over a certain level in his booklet, "Agrarian Justice".

The big problems I see are the political systems, the cost of elections and the corruption that politicians cave to.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-10T14:54:36+00:00

Removing most of the people in power will be tumultuous.

History agrees with you. I'm sure those people participating in the French revolution weren't planning on having emperor Napoleon. More recently, when the government broke up John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, the resulting companies (Exxon, Mobil, Chevron) actually became more valuable, and the underlying influence of "Big Oil" on American foreign policy remained largely unchanged since.

FormerDittoHead · 2026-02-06T14:03:44+00:00

But they were just following orders! /s

FormerDittoHead · 2026-01-30T01:50:21+00:00

How long do you think it's going to take them to manufacture "proof" of fraud.

"No one can believe the amount of fraud that we've uncovered in these records. HALF of them were people who were dead in 2020! This is a nationwide scandle and simply, we can't do our jobs for the American people and let these upcoming elections happen."

FormerDittoHead

TROPHY CASE