Maggie's Farm

"Row vs Wade" --LOL --what a "tell" by this left-wing intellectual!

"Row vs Wade":

Whether to take the skiff, or just walk, across the creek.

The agencies are under the executive branch, so the public's feedback loop is pretty diffuse and muffled.

A voter can get through to 'em only by his vote for president (or legislative appeal, even clunkier).

Tough call when the pres is also responsible for vastly more urgent activities in the major policy areas.

All of which makes your beef with an agency somewhat difficult to act upon, especially if you happen to agree with the pres on the more urgent matters--which means you don't vote against a guy whose foreign policy you like, on the basis of you don't like say an FDA regulation.

And then there's the agencies own little legal system, called ''administrative law''.

Run afoul of a regulation, and the prosecutor is the agency--a citizen can't break out into the actual legal system until the agency einsatzgruppen have already damaged him and his property.

In the case of small biz, damaged usually means destroyed--meaning, usually an entire family's lifework.

And the guy at the top--the pres--sets (informally, sub-rosa) the aggressiveness level for the agencies. The nitpicking small-business-killing tortuous harassment under Bill Clinton was enormous compared to under George Bush.

This situation makes a regulated entrepreneur much like a vassal of a king. The citizen had better make the person at the contact level of an agency "like" him, or he's screwed--the regulations are sufficiently interpretive that an agency agent who say, dislikes your face, can make you miserable to the point of quitting the business. so, you learn to like boots if not outright bribe. Great case study of the effects of moral hazard. Only solution is to make enough money to keep a powerful law firm on permanent retainer--which then plays hell with your PR efforts (AKA boot-licking) to keep the agency royalty happy.

And you better hope that your business competitors aren't doling out favors under the table. If they are, all you'll ever know is that the agency is digging mighty deep into the enormous gray areas of that regulations manual and finding copious means of taking your mind off running your business and keeping it focused on how to placate the gestapo.

No thoughts other than that no one has to play with people they don't trust. One can use one's local banker, or buy treasuries directly, and stay out of the brokerage-fee game altogether.

However if one's employer is wasting cash on smelly deals, that is for a fact a horse of a different color, it's not so easy to quit when one has time invested.

As far as ''disappearing equity'', let's not fall into the selective time-frame fallacy --perspective here:

http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/spx1960.html

There's always the strictly performance-based fee-structured funds, too--but, mind the moral hazard!

delayed action recall--yes--know it well--
:-(