This is scary. At first blush this sounds like a massive “everyone will be invested in one big mutual fund” Ponzi scheme extravaganza. Here is more from the Department of Labor. An excerpt that caught my eye:

“Mutual funds pool and invest the money of many people. Each investor owns shares in the mutual fund that represent a part of the mutual fund’s holdings. The portfolio of securities held by a mutual fund is managed by a professional investment adviser following a specific investment policy.”

Isn’t that special…a government bureaucrat educating us all.

My questions:

1. What does “professional” mean exactly?
2. What does “follow” mean exactly?
2. What does “specific investment policy” mean exactly?

I just called the Goldline guys:

First thing I asked, “If I buy gold from you when do I ever sell?”

The punk on the phone (and that is being charitable) said:

“Gold has never crashed.”

“If gold was to go again from $800 to $200 you would have plenty of warning to sell.”

I asked who was going to give me that warning. He said, drum roll please….they would. Everyone should call and have this conversation. Block your number and only give them your first name. Ask them the same questions I did before they get any details from you. It’s an experience!

Jeff Zucker offers:

“CNBC is a network for those who are wealthy and those who want to be wealthy, and that’s what we stay focused on every day.”

How do they do this?

Stephanie Loiacono writes a little love poem to Warren Buffett here… Um, Stephanie, where is the part about the big W.’s massive bailout? Is that part of the value investing equation now too? Or do we just forget that happened and head back to fantasy land…

Dear Mister Fantasy play us a tune,
Something to make us all happy,
Do anything take us out of this gloom,

From Matt Taibbi:

“The nation’s six largest banks set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007. The question everyone should be asking, as one bailout recipient after another posts massive profits — Goldman reported $13.4 billion in profits last year, after paying out that $16.2 billion in bonuses and compensation — is this: In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street’s eye-popping profits come from, exactly? Did Goldman go from bailout city to $13.4 billion in the black because, as Blankfein suggests, its ‘performance’ was just that awesome? A year and a half after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these assholes not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble? The answer to that question is basically twofold: They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients.”

Shout to Ritholtz.

To watch the financial news today, to see attempts by talking heads at offering investment advice, is pure comedy. I paraphrase a few of my favorite lines caught today:

“The markets are down today what should you do?”

“We see the markets going lower stay away!”

“Greece might default, be nervous!”

“Investors seek safe haves!”