Introduction:
The pirates of Manhattan, Barry James Dyke expounds and gives a clear and vivid 10 year extensive research insight on the various concerning the American consumer. He clearly brings the general aspect of Systematically Plundering the American Consumer and How to protect against it. The knowledge of well extensive research is backed by the detailed statistics presented. This is based on the fact that if most guarantees are absent, consequently most financial products fade away. Hence, in the expanded form of analysis, the book clearly brings the aspect of the liquidity of money. In addition, the behavior of money in its unpredictable form not even known by the professionals, highlight the fact that no one knows the stock market.
This continues to give an insight of absolute hallucination that is given by mutual funds. This is effected in the nature that the funds offer a surefire to the open road of wealth in masses. This book serves as an eye opener to the people planning to invest in the mutual funds. This is both to give one an oversight of what an individual is doing and also how much capital to invest.
According to the author, the primary fundamental purpose of the book is to give the consumer meaningful and factual background information as to why they should consider taking their hard-earned money and invest at least one insurance company. They should consider doing this, instead of investing the funds in a bank, mutual fund or other financial intermediaries.
In the chapter: The Casino Age, the author brings in the various aspects.
- Gambling has always been a part of American culture- this brings in the aspect of how money has been used in the American cultural aspects. Hence, gambling as being put as key and important practice in the daily activities of the Americans.
- Everybody in these gambling casinos is trying to get something for nothing. This clearly brings the point that the essence of these Casinos is that no individual ultimately does invest in the long run.
- The media lathers up at the behest of Wall Street. This highlights the impact and influence the media is putting in terms of the advertisement of these casinos. It clearly highlights the fact that, the media is one spot that brings in the money spending issues. Hence, through the large outreach of a bigger crowd, many people are cheated and influenced into these Casinos.
- Like casino gambling, the only consistent winners in the end are the casino owners. The point brings in the concept that Casinos are there to launder money and consequently leads to the view of extravagancy and misuse of money. Hence, the mentality impacted on the gamblers in these Casinos is that they have heavily gained, but the contrary happens. This highlights the fact that the owners of these Casinos gain heavily on a daily basis.
- Wall Street does not need informed people, capable of thinking critically. This highlights the aspect of people thinking about their savings. In addition, the Wall Street people are mainly old men who believe they are prudent and rather wise checking for other people’s money.
- These old people in the Casinos embrace their optimism on a larger view. In this view, they highlight the concept of the stock market being always efficient. In the real sense, not even professionals can predict the performance of the stock markets; hence this remains defined to be a lie.
- Wall Street is many individual retirement accounts for other’s gain. This means that, many people after retirements channel the funds to these Casinos that bring in the various negative effects to the gamblers as a lot is lost and never invested. In addition, these individuals do not use these funds for their own benefits after retirement.
- The pirates are hijacking the America’s savings. This is through targeting to the present date mutual funds. This is a direct translation that Wall Street is after people’s retirement accounts for their gain and control of the economy. This is brought by the fact that few individuals’ gains control of the individual funds in the sense that helps them monitor key aspects of the economy. Hence, these people do not use these funds for their own retirement.
- Government sanctions, asset managers and Wall Street have been given the big mandate of an annuity income stream for life. This has enabled these bodies to manage trillions of funds by gaining full control. This is through giving mutual funds through value gifts.
- The Casino gambling culture in the American culture has evolved with time. This makes it hard to remember when the culture was so prevalent in the society. This means through the various behaviors and customs the gambling has become part of the American lifestyle.
Deregulation, De-supervision, and Plenty of Subsidies:
This chapter summarizes the deregulation of the financial industry, especially in relation to the securities and banking industries. The author elaborates the history of the financial deregulation practices over the past twenty years by separating the owners of wealth from their wealth through interest rates. This is shown by the way investment and commercial banks colluded in order to exploit the owners of wealth through differentiated interest rates. This consequently led to the great depression in America making the owners of wealth, lose greatly from such unfavorable economic conditions. The insurance, securities and banking industries also colluded to create wall streets that separated the owners of the wealth from their wealth through unfavorable interest rates. This led to overexploitation of the consumers at the favor of such industries. The collisions are illegal, but such industries still breaks the regulations in order to take advantage of the consumers as well as separating them from their wealth.
It is also clearly elaborated in this chapter that various acts like Glass Steagall Act were passed in order to separate interest rates of the investment banking industry from those of commercial banks at the expense of the consumers of the banking industry. This contributed to the Great Depression in America that was very severe to the consumers who lost their wealth to inflation. This practice is against the laws leading to the marketing strategies which are unfavorable to the customers because they are separated from their wealth. The manipulation of the markets through subsidies also led to exploitation of the wealth of the consumers in an unfavorable manner.
Never Met a Man Who Made His Millions in Mutual Funds:
This chapter criticizes the mutual funds by showing that the operators of the mutual separate the owners from their wealth. The author states that the mutual fund benefits from the money without working for such wealth. The owners of wealth earn low amounts of interest from the money they invest or deposit with the mutual funds, thereby making them slaves of such mutual funds. The fluctuations in the markets greatly affect the mutual funds, making the investors in such funds to make terrible losses. This risks and uncertainty associated with mutual funds are very high making the industry not worth to invest in due to losses attached. The mutual funds also create wall streets between the owners and their wealth. The wealth of the owners is used to benefit the operators or owners of such mutual funds in the industry. The author shows that it is very difficult or even impossible for someone to make high returns of the mutual funds to the uncertainties involved in the management and investment of such funds. The money for the owners or customers only benefits the mutual funds’ operators, therefore, it makes it impossible for the owners to make high returns. The mutual funds are, therefore, very unfavorable alternatives for people to invest their money because they give very low returns.
The mutual funds also manipulates the retirement benefit schemes in order to make investments that will only benefit the owners and operators of such fund projects. Some retirement benefit schemes of mutual funds does not guarantee the owners the returns at their old age, therefore, leading very high risks and uncertainty. Mutual funds should, therefore, be avoided because they cannot help investors to maximize their wealth or money.
Life insurance and the human live value concept:
This chapter is solely a description of the main economic goal of any organization or investor of profit making as the main asset. However, most people currently spend most of their incomes in insuring their belongings instead of their lives. It discusses the procedure followed by the courts when coming to an agreement regarding the value of a person’s life as well as reaffirms it. This is by agreeing payment of 6 billion dollars to the beneficiaries of the victims of the 9/11 world’s trace Centre tragedy. On the contrary, the compensation fund project of the 9/11 world’s traces centre tragedy led to the emergence of two other advantaged businesses. These are the New York finance as well as the airlines. These aids came up as a result of an act that was passed by authorities immediately after the 9/11 tragedy. It was mainly aimed at helping out the victims of such occurrences start off a fresh after these happenings. The main source of this funding was from the taxes imposed on citizens through the government, as opposed to the insurance companies. Feinberg was appointed as the special master of the 9/11 compensation fund. He criticized the life insurance that was in existence for its harsh punishments on the willing people who wanted the cover. It punished the people who had a clear vision as well as the self-control to take a good care of their families. In contrast to his efforts, most of the rich people who passed away had no life insurance as well as their families.
Bank-owned Life Insurance:
This chapter shows the fact that the aspect of permanent life insurance is not fully utilized in the American financial sector. Permanent life insurance also has very little information in the market making it underutilized. The customers and investors also do not fully understand such aspects of permanent life insurance in the American financial sector. The economic consequences of life insurance are not even comprehensible to the employees working in the offices dealing with such insurance services due to the complexities attached. The important information relating to the permanent life insurance is only available to a few people or a small segment of the economy that is the commercial banking. This leads to unfair returns since the commercial banks capitalize in this sector, creating a wall street between the owners and their money. This also makes a small segment of the population benefit from the larger segment of the customers or population. The banks, therefore, take the role of insurance due to the high value of cash they possess. This is very unfavorable to the larger segment of the population because they end up manipulating and exploiting the wealth of the consumers without giving them the reasonable returns. The banks are endowed with a lot of skilled professionals, thereby ensuring optimal use of available resources as well as ensuring the stability of their financial securities in the financial industry. The banks are also advantaged due to their high levels of financial safety giving grounds to create wall streets between the owners and their wealth.
The aspects of tier capital in banks also gives them an upper hand in the insurance and the whole financial sector. The banks can, therefore, facilitate their investments due to their stability and security. The banks are also guaranteed and protected from the risks attached to the investment projects.
Corporate owned life insurance (includes sec proxy disclosures):
This chapter elaborates the nature of life insurance services that are owned and controlled by corporate entities and the way they treat their customers. Life insurance owned by corporate bodies are also monopolized in the sense that the customers have little or negligible influence on the returns of their own wealth that they pay in the form of premiums. The money of the customers is controlled by such corporate bodies so as to benefit themselves while the customers gets only a small proportion of their wealth in the event of death of the insured individual. The corporate bodies also collude with other financial sectors in the industry in order to create a great rift the customers and their money. These corporate bodies, pools the funds of the customers and put them at their own investment projects while the customer only gets a small proportion of the returns on their wealth. This amounts to overexploitation of the customers and unfair treatment in the financial industry of America.
Corporate owned life insurance is also one of the players in the financial industry of America leading to the separation of money from the owners through means that are mostly beyond the control of the owners. The persons who are insured invests their money in such corporate bodies that tend to make supernormal profits from such money. The customers do not derive full utilization of their money leading to unbalanced sharing of the resources. The insured persons cannot fully make the best use of their money due to manipulation of the corporate owned life insurance facilities in the American financial industry. The corporate life insurance is not very suitable in the American financial industry due to such high levels of uncertainty and risks related to their operations.
Life insurance is something good for the consumer:
This chapter brings out the way in which life insurance is portrayed as a very important aspect of the financial industry in America. This aspect gives much emphasis due to the cash value they bear. The encouragement of individuals or consumers to invest heavily in their life insurance is a form of separating them from their wealth. This makes the customers not able to manage their wealth on their own. The life insurance firms or companies, therefore, make optimal use of such funds, leaving the owners poor and underutilized. The separation of owners from their wealth is a tactic used in the American financial industry to benefit the few segments of the population at the expense of the large number of customers who invest in the life insurance scheme.
This aspect involves collection of money from many customers in order to create a pool of funds that are further used to invest in other assets with higher rates of return. The money may also be invested in other savings projects where interest is earned easily and faster. The operators of the life insurance schemes or firms make supernormal profits while the owners of funds receive lower returns on their amounts they pay as premiums.
In relation to the practical everyday applications, the aspect of reverse mortgages is clearly elaborated and its impact on the financial industry in America. The reverse mortgages are used in the day to day operations to separate the owners from their funds. Pension maximization is also used commonly in a manner that creates wall streets that led to the loss of economic value by consumers whole the operators of such pension schemes makes huge amounts of money from such pension funds. The aspects relating to life insurance, especially in the qualified retirement plans which are often financed by permanent life insurance. The settlement of costs and estate taxes are also done with the help of life insurance funds.
Conclusively, this book elaborates the way in which the banks, mutual funds, investment banks and securities are controlling the money of the people while the people are getting very low benefits from such pirates or institutions. The people running these institutions seem to be making a lot of money while the real owners of the funds are not getting reasonable benefits from their money. These institutions are, therefore, taking advantage of people, and they do not advise the owners of the funds accordingly on projects that will yield high returns. The book also entails the exploitation of the consumers in America and how to protect the consumer against such exploitation by the financial intermediaries. The book also gives an analysis of how the banks source their capital. The corruption in the financial industry is also analyzed in detail in relation to payments of taxes on dividends. The long term investment projects are also fully elaborated in the book. The retirement and pension schemes were also used to take advantage and exploit the owners of funds in the name of wise decision making and security of such funds. The issues relating to asset and debt management are also important concepts illustrated in this book in order to show the failure of the financial industry in serving the consumers. The corruption of the financial industry is very clear in this book and the way in which it can be reduced in order to take care of the consumers.
Works Cited
Dyke, Barry J. The Pirates of Manhattan Ii: Highway to Serfdom : the Hijacking of America's Savings with Target-Date Mutual Funds and What to Do About It. Hampton, N.H: Castle Asset Management, LLC, 2012. Print.
