In defense of the stock market

Re: “Think local: Time to divest from Wall Street,” June 14 column

The article written by Larry Dansinger suggesting divestment of corporate stocks and bonds was quite a hoot. Such lack of knowledge and corporate animus displayed in a single article. The corporate stock and bond markets somehow “transfer money to the wealthiest one percent” while at the same time are unstable and ”not a safe bet” for the 99 percent? Do stocks prices only go up for the 1 percent? How can Mr. Dansinger be credible when he lumps stocks and bonds together as if they are similar investments?

Mr. Dansinger then claims “Wall Street” is to blame for high rates of teen pregnancies, obesity, mental illness and levels of incarceration. He suggests that an environmental group’s fossil free funds have taken money out of oil and gas (I believe that for every seller of a stock there is a buyer; so hard to understand his point there).

And finally, he suggests we ordinary Americans avoid the trials and tribulations of that finicky stock market and invest solely in municipal bonds (yielding maybe 2.5% annually), municipal bonds being one of the most thinly and least transparently traded investments.

Mr. Dansinger is described as not owning any stock. If so, he should hope that some fix for Social Security occurs soon to ensure it remains available to him in his retirement years. For everyone else, hedge your bets and put some money in the stock market and benefit from some of those corporate dividends that Mr. Dansinger so decries. Kevin Fletcher, Golden