A really great article by journalist Jill Singer.
Filled with honesty.
Humility.
And humanity.
From the Herald Sun:
Experts did nothing to prevent fall
It’s not so very long ago that only the wealthy invested in shares.
Nowadays, though, it seems even the lowest-paid workers must monitor the All-Ordinaries Index if they want to know how their final years will play out.
Will their super funds provide them with enough to live out their allotted years without relying on the kindness of strangers or the vagaries of government largesse?
Or will they work for as long as their bodies and minds allow before succumbing to a lesser life of niggling poverty, insecurity and guilt over being a “burden” on others?
Little wonder that the world seems engulfed by fear and greed.
In this age of compulsory super and self-managed funds, life has become a terrifying gamble.
Having money tied up in superannuation has become akin to being caught in a high-rise building during a bomb scare.
You know that if everyone starts running for the lifts the odds are that people will get crushed. Then again, wouldn’t it be nice to be the first one out of the door?
If we earn an income, we have no choice but to invest in super. But how on earth are ordinary folk expected to manage it when we know that if you have two economists, you’ll get five opinions?
I was like most small investors when the proverbial hit the global economic fan yet again last week – torn between the squirrel-like urge to shift my rapidly dwindling super into cash or to swallow the Government’s line that we are a privileged and robust economy.
In the end I chose the path of least resistance and did nothing.
I’m just not going to look at the damage and will only uncover my eyes when the fire has finally passed …
There are lessons for us all in this.
I should have listened to Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce when, in 2009, he warned about the potential (and then unthinkable) dangers of the US coming close to defaulting on its debt.
I should also have listened to Kenny Rogers: “You’ve got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Know when to walk away and know when to run.”
Sure beats listening to the advice of “experts”.
UPDATE:
One wonders whether Jill might now begin to reconsider her murderous devotion to the “experts” of the global warming cargo cult:
Then there’s David Murray, chair of Australia’s $71 billion Future Fund and recipient of a $28 million golden parachute from his time running the Commonwealth Bank. Murray states there’s no link between global warming and carbon dioxide emissions because carbon dioxide is necessary for life, colourless and odourless – and therefore can’t be considered a pollutant. It’s a popularly held view.
Andy Semple of the Menzies Institute claims it’s “refreshing” for someone with Murray’s standing to take on the global warming “scam” by expressing such views.
Really? I’m prepared to keep an open mind and propose another stunt for climate sceptics – put your strong views to the test by exposing yourselves to high concentrations of either carbon dioxide or some other colourless, odourless gas – say, carbon monoxide.
You wouldn’t see or smell anything. Nor would your anti-science nonsense be heard of again. How very refreshing.
Barnaby Is Right 
And we should not have listened to “post-modern” consensus science, personal attacks and smear tactics that were used as propaganda tools after 1971 to promote the global climate scam.
The decision was apparently made during Kissinger’s secret visit to China in 1971 to use “Anthropologic Global Climate Change” as the “common enemy” to:
a.) Unite Nations;
b.) End the Cold War, the Space Race; and
c.) The threat of Mutual Nuclear Annihilation.
To negate the Sun’s obvious control over Earth’s climate, the model [1] of a “homogeneous Sun in hydrostatic equilibrium” became official government dogma after 1971.
Precise experimental data from studies of meteorites, the 1969 Apollo Mission to the Moon, the 1995 Galileo probe of Jupiter, and even nuclear rest mass data have been ignored, manipulated or hidden.
1. “The Bilderberg Model of the Photosphere and Low Chromosphere”
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1968SoPh….3….5G
Regretfully,
Oliver K. Manuel
“put your strong views to the test by exposing yourselves to high concentrations of either carbon dioxide or some other colourless, odourless gas – say, carbon monoxide.”
Yeah right. A Phd friend of mine told me to try standing in a room,100% filled with CO2 and see how well I’d fare.
I told her to try the same thing with H20 and see how well she’d fare…..
Doesn’t make water a planet destroying pollutant.
It certainly wasn’t unthinkable in 2009 – warnings were given YEARS before, in 2001 in fact.