Stock Market

After the big shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, nonprofits across the country want you to spend more - on Giving Tuesday. This is a fundraising initiative in which nonprofits and even big corporations will encourage people to make a charitable donation on Tuesday. Promoters hope Giving Tuesday will become an annual event as popular as those two post-Thanksgiving shopping days. "It's an opportunity to redirect the conversation and narrative at this time of year," said Daniel Lee, vice president for external relations for Baltimore-based Lutheran World Relief, which is participating in Giving Tuesday.

I read the recent article by Alison Knezevich regarding the Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz's proposal to invest county pension funds in the stock market with disbelief and aggravation ("Baltimore County weighs pension bonds," Oct. 14). Why are these politicians allowed to "borrow" funds that affect so many pensioners without actually allowing those pensioners the opportunity to say no? If this very risky venture should fail in 30 years, the proponents will be out of office and someone else will be blamed for the lack of funds remaining.

If a politician rose in the well of Congress to urge his colleagues to take action to repel the recent Martian attack, he'd be laughed out of office and strongly encouraged to get his head examined. Pondering solutions to imaginary problems is public policy insanity. So I ask: Given that the threat of socialism swallowing America is as imaginary as a Martian invasion, why aren't politicians and television pundits who warn that something must be done to reverse redistributive welfare in the United States also treated with dismissive ridicule?

In her column, Marta Mossburg ("Kamenetz's risky bet," Sept. 26) asks, "Would you borrow money to pay off your mortgage and instead risk it in the market?" (I assume that she actually means "borrow money and increase your mortgage, risking the proceeds in the stock market. ") She then uses the answer to attack Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamentz's proposal to sell bonds and to use the proceeds to invest in assets that will be placed in the county pension fund. The attack is unfounded because Ms. Mossburg doesn't seem to understand the difference an individual faces when making an investment decision and the calculus that governmental entities make.

Would you borrow money to pay off your mortgage and instead risk it in the market? That is in essence what Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz would like to do by floating $255 million of pension obligation bonds to fill the official hole in the county's $2 billion pension system. Because of accounting gimmicks, the real hole is much deeper, and the county soon will sink billions of dollars more into debt because of Gov. Martin O'Malley's shift of teacher pension costs and tougher accounting standards.

I was not surprised that die hard Democrat Mel Mintz is supporting the re-election of President Obama ("Romney is this year's Dewey," Sept. 5), but the reasons he gives for his support are amusing. He must be living in some other country. First, he correctly states that Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is doing well. The military and intelligence people found this terrorist and killed him. All this president did was give the OK. Any rational American would have done the same. General Motors is still alive today only because the taxpayer has given the company billions of dollars of borrowed money.

I would like to respond to "No amount of spin can explain Obama's abundant failures" (letter, Aug. 2). The letter states that the country is not better off than it was four years ago. Now, I know telling people that things are really, really bad and that it's all President Obama's fault is Fox News 101 mantra, but if you examine the facts, things are gradually getting better. If we can step into the "way-back" machine and return to the Fall of 2008, the economy was hemorrhaging jobs, financial institutions were reeling with bad debt, foreclosures were running in the millions.

Your editorial ("Doing better than 'fine,'" June 12) was correct in mildly chastising President Barack Obama for not being upbeat enough about the record of the private sector during his administration. You correctly cited the mess he inherited form the Republicans. You also pointed out Ronald Reagan as an example. The Republicans, including Mitt Romney, always say this president is doing a terrible job on the economy and long for the days of Ronald Reagan's performance in this area.

Graduating Randallstown High School senior Brian McNair was wary of the Facebook IPO hype. Though he saw his fellow students buying into it, he had a gut feeling the risk was too high. McNair, 17, steered clear of the social media giant's stock and avoided one of the biggest letdowns in stock market history. Some of his classmates weren't so lucky. Fortunately for them, their tradings were virtual, part of a classroom simulation intended to teach them about the stock market. Randallstown officially unveiled Friday its Academy of Finance Stock Exchange Classroom, a computer lab with 32 computers, two flat-screen televisions, a data board and a live NASDAQ stock ticker.

There will be investigations and already there are lawsuits over the rollout of Facebook's overhyped IPO last week, but no investigation is necessary into the reason for the outrage over the stock's rapid fall. It's called human nature. It is the same characteristic that causes people to believe against staggering odds that they can win the lottery, or score big in Atlantic City or discover a foolproof "system" for playing the stock market. It is the familiar get-rich-quick notion that somehow one can bypass hard work, sound financial planning and win The Big One, retiring to a life of ease.