Painful as it is, the market may have needed a correction or a reality check.  It had become a gold mine for Fat Cats.  I wonder if investors are voting with their feet, so to speak, queries Mrs. M. Is the fact that the market isn't bouncing back, (au contraire it keeps falling) an indicator that investors like moi have lost faith and belief in the market.  We don't believe it's the best place for our money any more.

The market profits a narrow group of Fat Cats:  traders, bankers, hedge funds, and CEOs with grotesque rewards.  But for the rest of us, at the best of times we make a small percentage, and at the worst of times, we lose Big Time.  And those who profit with bonuses and the likes of £250m annual wages don't seem to suffer.  It isn't a winning formula, at least not for the likes of me.

We haven't seen the perpetrators of this crisis express any sign of regret.  The same old abuses seem to still be in place.  It's as though the very practices that created the crisis will spring back the minute we look away.  And the old system of a few Fat Cats milking the economy will be right back in full swing.

I haven't heard a single CEO offer to give back his bonus or his golden handshake or even agree that his compensation should be limited.  The German government have announced they will cap CEO pay, and eliminate golden parachutes.  They say they do not believe that the brightest company leaders will simply flee to greener pastures, the excuse we hear in the US and the UK for keeping the CEOs in Beluga.

I think many small investors don't want to hand over their hard-earned funds to be plundered by bankers and corporate pirates.  Many of us have been listening to hear that the old practices will be corrected and regulated.  But we don't hear that.  Too many of the policy makers come from the industry that ruined the market place anyway.

I've been in the market my whole life, but I don't want to hand money over the Greedy Ones to profit and leave me holding the bag...empty.  I'm sure a lot of investors feel like me.  They want to hear that the market will be reformed and made more equitable.  We want to hear that our funds are not just thrown to the City's ‘pigs at the trough,' as Tom Wolfe put it in Bonfire of the Vanities.

We're fed up with putting our money into a gold mine for a few billionaires and oligarchs to plunder. The corporate pirates are in the market for themselves and to turn a quick profit. They are exploiting our investments to award themselves wealth beyond our wildest imaginations.  They've had time to say, ‘Mea Culpa,' but they haven't uttered a word.  The silence is deafening.  And the market is responding accordingly.  And still the Fat Cats don't listen.