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When Wall Street sneezes, the world does catch a cold. Unfortunately, Wall Street is gravely ill and the contagion is spreading to the rest of the world. I submit that Wall Street is essentially siphoning money--not merely investing it for the good of their customers. Gone are the days when you could put your money in for a decade or two and would likely get a decent return. Day and flash trades result in short term gains/losses. Worse, one bad quarter and a stock tanks. Wall Street, in my opinion, is no longer relevant. Most of the activity - the big money - is on the sidelines in swaps, shorts, options, futures and some new products designed to give the rich an express elevator to wealth while the masses make pennies on the actual stocks which, by the way, seem unrelated to the performance of the underlying company but have more to do with market speculation on a single given day or report. I strongly believe the bailout was a mistake. We need a new financial system--not an empire of rich bankers that do quite well and leave us a pittance--if that. With today's technology, we don't need to sustain these Wall Street empires or the people who are raking in insane amounts of money from us; and I do mean us. When the pension fund of our state does poorly, we will be made to make up the difference. Either our taxes will be increased or we will feel cuts for necessary services and infrastructure. L Richards