How Tze 浩知

What should worry you now -- if you can spare a neuron or two from worrying about the economy, your job, your retirement savings, your mortgage and the meltdown of the global financial system -- is that the looters aren't in retreat. If anything, they're getting more brazen. For example, in the early days of the AIG crisis, Goldman Sachs Group (GS, news, msgs) denied it had any "material" exposure to AIG's troubles. It wasn't until months after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, organized a bailout of AIG that taxpayers found out the biggest recipient of taxpayer money, pocketing $12.9 billion of the $170 billion bailout, was -- ta-da! -- Goldman Sachs. The next round of looting is likely to come in the name of reform. I'm just as skeptical about calls to give the Federal Reserve more power, turning it into a superregulator for the financial system. More power to the same Fed that could find only three examples of predato...

Stage 3: By mid-2009, pessimism deepens Investors haven't reached the stage called capitulation, which will finally put the bottom in this bear. In that stage, the last optimist throws in the towel. Everybody says he'll never buy a stock again. Comparing certificate-of-deposit yields passes as cocktail-party conversation. The hot topic on financial-magazine covers is how little to put into your 401(k). What would I do at this stage of my road map? Collect my dividends. Count myself lucky that I moved enough money into cash so that I don't face margin calls on my portfolio from either Wall Street or the accidents of life. Hang on to what I still own by remembering that I did my homework on these stocks early on, and the profit will indeed outweigh the pain. Stage 5: Recovery after 2010 You know what this stage looks like: It's the economy and stock market of the 1990s before the dot-com boom turned into a bubble, or the economy and market before the housing boom turned i...