And I’m really shocked at the black-and-white notion that executives are at war with shareholders… this is simply not at all the behavior I see in the brass at the Fortune 150 corporation where I work. In fact it’s just the opposite: they give employees stock purchase plans and options to make us want to build the company’s value (and thus their own finances). Maybe that thinly disguised class warfare stuff is what gets taught in some B-schools these days, but it doesn’t jibe with practical observation over many years in the trenches.

The notion of share dilution is technically correct and utterly irrelevant. Paper valuations go up and down without regard to the relatively small number of shares (what some call obscenity I call free market assessment of value) issued to executives (unless there is such a massive selloff by an executive that the market is spooked – something most executives would avoid religiously).

None of which is to say you’re wrong about your assessment of the difference between crashing equity markets and crashing economy. (Personally, I’m hard at work trying to make sure the two aren’t the same, by trying to sell as much product as I can.) This may surprise you, but even those of us who didn’t get an MBA really do understand that the stock market and the economy aren’t the same thing. But in this era of IRAs and 401Ks as our savings vehicles, many of us tend to equate the markets in which we’re invested with the economy… because as Rex said, we see those vehicles dwindle in size and that corresponds to the questions of where, or whether, our children will go to college; when, or if, we’re going to retire; and what, if any, we’re going to own when we get there. Macroeconomics goes right out the window when it’s my stuff we’re talking about; I agree with Rex that citizenship is all about deciding that safeguarding “my stuff,” while still “my stuff” (i.e., no socialism here!), is not as vital as investing “my stuff” in the nation’s success – and that’s true in humanitarianism, public service (including military service), or, in this case, equity.

But I’m no economist, so I probably shouldn’t have bothered to respond either.

Rex, this is indeed what someone should have said. Unfortunately there’s a significant portion of the voting public who would have seen such comments as weak or pandering, I think. Politics are more about the party now, and “crushing the competition” has become the mantra of divisiveness plaguing our country. Until WE as a populace understand that disagreements are healthy, natural and acceptable (in fact, they are what helped make our country strong) and quit demonizing the “other guy” we’re never going to see the kind of solidarity needed to rise above this mess.

Instead, you’ll see more political quagmire, bickering, inaction and pathetic excuses like “we’ll be fine, the markets are only secondary indicators.” Yeesh, what a mess.

You have no clue about what you are asserting, and you should study a few things before you mouth off. Primarily, the Dow-Jones doesn’t even represent the stock market, much less the economy. It is simply idiotic to claim that if the financial markets tank, that is the same as the economy tanking. The markets have tanked many times prior, without any noticeable effect on the economy.

The first thing you need to learn is that trading on the stock market is secondary trading — the companies who originally issued the stock have little interest (apart from the obscene options offered to their executives) in the current market price, because they got all the money that they will ever get when they issued the stock in the first place. The second thing you need to learn is that the management of companies (executives) is constantly at war with the stockholders, because whatever the stockholders get detracts from what the management will get. Might you see a pattern in all this? The third thing you need to learn is that when an executive exercises a stock option, all the original shareholders are diluted.

I could go on, but I’ll leave it there.