If you want a stock market education, follow the people who predicted the credit crunch. Believe it or not, there were a lot of people who saw the problems build and tried to bring attention to it. The problem was that no one in authority would listen. They waved all comers away with standard "It's fine" rhetoric. How can we have in the UK a tripartite financial regulator and not see an issue as huge as this before it surfaces? No doubt, there will be many people who will pay for the oversight once everything settles down and the blame game and the lawsuits start in earnest.
Let's start at the very top. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (he could use a stock market education) for the period leading up to the credit crisis - please take a bow Mr Gordon Brown. He labelled his own time as the chancellor as "the age of irresponsibility". How those words must be haunting him now. Not only did he not oversee the banking system effectively, as the huge credit binge got underway, but neither did the FSA, his flagship regulator, or the Bank of England, who he stripped of many powers as soon as he got into Number 11.
They literally sat there are the housing bubble grew to sizes that were both unprecedented and unsustainable. They oversaw explosive growth which led to record levels of personal debt. They stood by as the banking system went on a derivatives binge that would is bringing it to its knees...and yet they said nothing. Why?
There is no answer to this, but you could argue that there was coordinated ignorance or wilful participation. Only months before the crisis began, the powers that be told us that the economy was in great shape and GDP growth was expected to continue clipping along at a decent pace. How could the people who led us in our economic destiny get something so fundamental so wrong?
The answer is simple. Either they are all incompetent to the extent that they should all be fired and personally immediately for negligence, or they are all lying to us. Either way...they have to go or get a stock market education.