Have you peeked at your monthly 401k, IRA, or mutual fund investment portfolio recently? Pretty dreadful, huh? As this is being written, the stock market doesn't seem to have yet reached the bottom of its pit, even though President Obama signed the new stimulus bill and the money faucet is a-flowing. As the old carnival barker used to yell, "Round and round it goes, and where it stops, nobody knows." Well, of course he knew. It certainly wasn't going to stop on the number you had selected so you could win the Kewpie doll for your girlfriend.

After watching the market go either up or down 200 or 300 points a day, one begins to suspect that the stock market is much like that carnival game in the sense that it's rigged. The only ones getting rich were those CEOs and traders with their multi-million dollar bonuses that Congress and Obama are trying to trim down to size. "Oh, but we need big bonuses to keep our talent," cry the investment banking firms that have done us in. "They might go elsewhere!" Where, you ask? Iceland? Well, it's broke too.

There is a lesson in all of this for those of us in the claim industry. Too much latitude — laissez faire, if you will — is not always a good thing. We need to beware of the line of malarkey our bosses might sell us. If we are cautious, then there may be a bright future in being a knowledgeable, well educated, multi-line, high-value claim adjuster.