Grateful About a $30,000 Loss

Since late December I have had control over my mother's finances. For quite some time, I have been a bit concerned by the fact that all her investments are in mortgage-backed securities, aka Countrywide, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae. A month ago, I decided to enlist a broker to sell her mortgage bundles and put the proceeds into something safer.

I should have acted back in January, but at least the sales took place before the Fed took over Freddie and Fannie last week. I sold just in the nick of time. Yes, the bailout may of saved the world from an economic apocalypse, but those who were holding mortgage bundles, like my mother had been, are no longer being paid a dividend. A dividend that my mother was withdrawing each month to cover her mounting medical and care expenses. And the financial throes of the housing market have not yet subsided, and some feel that we have not yet even seen the worst of it yet, so I am glad she's out of that game.

Getting out cost her $30,000, or approximately 18 percent of her investment--what she has to live off for the rest of her days. Yes, she has Social Security and two pensions, but these don't even pay half her fixed expenses. She lost 30 grand, but she stood to lose much more. Isn't it a crazy world that I live in when I'm happy that I ONLY lost $30,000--a full year's salary in some years.

This is a dramatic case in point of the folly of getting rid of Social Security and, as many Republicans are pushing for, let the individual consumer make decisions about his or her retirement funding! Yes, I'm sure there would be winners in that scenario, but I suspect most of them would be brokers and CEOs. And the losers? Plenty of people like you and me.