The Cynic's Guide to Business and Investing Terms
AND BANKRUPT WILL ALWAYS MEAN BANKRUPT
BILL FEDERMAN Section: Opinion, Page: A13
Date: Thursday, April 2, 2009
The world of investing and business is a dark and scary place. It's also more confusing because the meanings of previously familiar words have been changed by the new realities brought about by personal financial destruction and the collapse of national economies. Here, then, is a cynic's guide to business and investing terms to enlighten the naive.
Assets: The value of a person's money and property calculated to allow the maximum tax levy.
Bailout: Free government-backed insurance for businesses run by incompetent or dishonest executives with proven records of failure that allows them to repeat their mistakes.
Budget: An unrealistic spending plan based solely on good intentions.
Budget deficit: The difference between a spending plan's good intentions and reality.
Dividend: A token pittance paid to an investor by a company to give the illusion of sharing profits.
Golden parachute: A severance package of cash and benefits given to a business executive about to be fired or indicted that will ensure he can maintain an opulent lifestyle.
Investment: Money that is lost, spent or confiscated after being given to a person or business with the expectation of making a profit.
Investor: A gullible individual whose money is lost, spent or confiscated after he gives it to a person or business with the expectation of making a profit.
Liabilities: Anything, such as friends, family, government regulations and bad luck, that keeps a person from accumulating wealth.
Loss: What a person has after others profit from his investment.
Meltdown: A nebulous term used by the media to describe the simultaneous precipitous decline in the elements underpinning a nation's economy caused by greed, ignorance, incompetence and malfeasance.
Pension: Minimal payments made by a business to employees too old to continue working or enjoy life. A relic of the last century.
Profit: What others make through business dealings.
Recession: A contraction in national economic growth resulting in a financial disaster that adversely affects many because of the mismanagement of a few.
Return on investment: Money due to an investor after a company pays expenses such as attorneys' fees, fines, bribes and executive bonuses.
Risk: The certainty, expressed in degrees of severity, that an investment will incur a loss.
Stimulus package: A massive injection of public money into insolvent businesses used to pay executive bonuses and to artificially extend the life of fatally flawed business models.
Stock: An imaginary piece of a publicly traded company bought and sold for an arbitrarily set price. Buying stock allows individuals to participate in a company's losses while institutional investors profit.
Stock market: A mechanism for the orderly transfer of your losses and others' profits from buying a company's shares.
Tax: Penalties levied on low-income earners by various government entities to subsidize the wealthy.
Bill Federman is a Times Union editor. His e-mail address is bfederman@timesunion.com
http://archives.timesunion.com/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=7751555
BILL FEDERMAN Section: Opinion, Page: A13
Date: Thursday, April 2, 2009
The world of investing and business is a dark and scary place. It's also more confusing because the meanings of previously familiar words have been changed by the new realities brought about by personal financial destruction and the collapse of national economies. Here, then, is a cynic's guide to business and investing terms to enlighten the naive.
Assets: The value of a person's money and property calculated to allow the maximum tax levy.
Bailout: Free government-backed insurance for businesses run by incompetent or dishonest executives with proven records of failure that allows them to repeat their mistakes.
Budget: An unrealistic spending plan based solely on good intentions.
Budget deficit: The difference between a spending plan's good intentions and reality.
Dividend: A token pittance paid to an investor by a company to give the illusion of sharing profits.
Golden parachute: A severance package of cash and benefits given to a business executive about to be fired or indicted that will ensure he can maintain an opulent lifestyle.
Investment: Money that is lost, spent or confiscated after being given to a person or business with the expectation of making a profit.
Investor: A gullible individual whose money is lost, spent or confiscated after he gives it to a person or business with the expectation of making a profit.
Liabilities: Anything, such as friends, family, government regulations and bad luck, that keeps a person from accumulating wealth.
Loss: What a person has after others profit from his investment.
Meltdown: A nebulous term used by the media to describe the simultaneous precipitous decline in the elements underpinning a nation's economy caused by greed, ignorance, incompetence and malfeasance.
Pension: Minimal payments made by a business to employees too old to continue working or enjoy life. A relic of the last century.
Profit: What others make through business dealings.
Recession: A contraction in national economic growth resulting in a financial disaster that adversely affects many because of the mismanagement of a few.
Return on investment: Money due to an investor after a company pays expenses such as attorneys' fees, fines, bribes and executive bonuses.
Risk: The certainty, expressed in degrees of severity, that an investment will incur a loss.
Stimulus package: A massive injection of public money into insolvent businesses used to pay executive bonuses and to artificially extend the life of fatally flawed business models.
Stock: An imaginary piece of a publicly traded company bought and sold for an arbitrarily set price. Buying stock allows individuals to participate in a company's losses while institutional investors profit.
Stock market: A mechanism for the orderly transfer of your losses and others' profits from buying a company's shares.
Tax: Penalties levied on low-income earners by various government entities to subsidize the wealthy.
Bill Federman is a Times Union editor. His e-mail address is bfederman@timesunion.com
http://archives.timesunion.com/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=7751555