Dollars and Jens
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
yield-chasing
I started reading this article because it was about the GM bankruptcy, but I noted an interesting passage on a familiar financial foible toward the end:
Until early this decade, she said, most her savings was in CDs. But with interest rates low, she sought advice on a prudent way to eek out more interest from savings pieced together from decades of work and some inheritance from family members.There are very much times and places in which the ability even to store value is a good deal, and there are even times and places where you can do little better than to store dollars, even if they're losing value. It is absolutely worth taking risk to increase returns if the extra return is commensurate with the risk, but an action taken out of frustration with what's available for safe returns on capital or wishful thinking about what "should be" available has created a lot of pain for investors throughout the centuries.
