Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Income Inequality? Americans Savers Treated Like Dogs

One of the hot political topics these days is income inequality, but one of the groups of Americans that’s the most mistreated by Washington DC is the millions of Americans who have responsibly saved for their retirement.
When I entered the investment business as a stock broker at Merrill Lynch in the 1980s, savers could routinely get 7-9% on their money with riskless CDs and short-term Treasury bonds.

In fact, I sold multimillions of dollars’ worth of 16-year zero-coupon Treasury bonds at the time. Zero-coupon bonds are debt instruments that don’t pay interest (a coupon) but is instead traded at a deep discount, rendering profit at maturity when the bond is redeemed for its full face value.
At the time, long-term interest rates were at 8%, so the zero-coupon Treasury bonds that I sold cost $250 each but matured at $1,000 in 16 years. A government-guaranteed quadruple!

http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/01/income-inequality-americans-savers-treated-like-dogs/ 

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