Just because speculation can distort the market at times doesn't mean it can't be a sound investment. Speculation is just as rampant in the real estate market as in the stock market, but that doesn't make owning a home a gamble.

The stock market is functioning exactly as it should. It is a *market* that brings together people who want to buy and sell ownership shares of public companies. That's it's entire purpose and stocks are trading just fine. The reason the market exists in the first place is companies need a way to raise capital besides incurring debt. There is the implicit promise of dividends, even for companies like Dell that claim they will never declare one. Most investors also hope to make a return on their investment through capital gains, but this is not guaranteed. Owning stock is not a game of hot potato - there is no arbitrary end point. It also is not a gamble. If you make bad investments, you might be holding a company's stock (e.g. GM) when it fails. But chances are pretty good that your average investment (especially if you use mutual funds) will be close to market returns. Public sentiment is against stock ownership at the moment because overall market prices are down following a long period of over-valuation. Unfortunately, the bubble always has to burst. Just the way it is. Give it 5 years and everyone will be back on the wagon....

Networking is the best way to go. But you can get an interview based solely on a good resume / cover letter. But you have to really sell yourself. Make sure your resume is formatted good, has no typos, highlights the right things (internships, big school projects), and doesn't duplicate the same buzz-word bullshit that everyone else applying for the job is saying about themselves ("self-starter", "team-player", etc). Good luck.

Completely agree with you. The problem with insurance companies is that they distort the natural market for healthcare through collusion. If we eliminated health insurance completely, individual consumers would be much better off.

You are basing an awful lot off of the phenomenon of deja vu. I once read a psychology article that gave a very simple explanation for deja vu. It involved an experience being directly stored into long term memory at the same time that it was being loaded into short term memory. And voila, when you compare your current experience to your memory, the two match exactly. I am not opposed to the idea of time travel, but your particular brand of it seems based more on mysticism than scientific understanding.

While taxpayer funds are being used in the "bailout", this is not free money. There are a few strings attached related to executive compensation and raising dividend rates on common stock. And also, it is not free money. The bailout is closer to being a loan than a gift. (Actually the bailout is the government purchases preferred stock at a specified price that pays a nice interest rate - 5% initially but this later raises to 9%.) I personally disagree with Government intervention in the market, but the bailout has been misrepresented in the press. It is not free money and the taxpayers are not out 700 Billion dollars.