CNN Money.com, June 26, 2010, Consumer Confidence News:
“Economists pay close attention to measures of consumer confidence as a proxy for consumer spending, which drives the bulk of the U.S. economy.
Wikipedia, Confidence Trick (Game):
A confidence trick or confidence game (also known as a bunko, con, flim flam, gaffle, grift, hustle, scam, scheme, swindle or bamboozle) is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. The victim is known as the mark, the trickster is called a confidence man, con man, confidence trickster, or con artist, and any accomplices are known as shills. Confidence men or women exploit human characteristics such as greed and dishonesty, and have victimized individuals from all walks of life.
Shills, also known as accomplices, help manipulate the mark into accepting the con man’s plan. In a traditional confidence trick, the mark is led to believe that he will be able to win money or some other prize by doing some task. The accomplices may pretend to be strangers who have benefited from performing the task in the past.
CNN Money.com, July 7, 2010 Ask the Expert (aka Ask the Shill),
Turning $200,000 into $800,000… [I]nvolves nothing more than some simple math. The kind of gain you’re shooting for requires a 6% annualized return, assuming you’ll reinvest your gains each year and that those gains will also earn 6% a year. ]T]o earn 6% annualized you don’t have to actually get 6% year in and year out. You could earn(?) more in some years and less in others. So, for brevity’s sake, to use an example over a three-year span, earning 10% one year, -2% the following year and 10.5% the next year would also work. The key word here is “potential.” When you invest in stocks and bonds, you may do spectacularly well some years (a 50-50 mix of equities and bonds earned 17.4% in 2009), fare poorly in others (the same blend lost 16.4% in 2008) and get so-so returns in yet other years (4.3% in 2005). You’ll find that you can significantly increase your odds of reaching your goal by investing more aggressively. For example, the odds of having $800,000 in 24 years jump to 31% if you invest 70% in stocks and 30% in bonds, and your upside also climbs significantly. There’s a 10% chance that you’ll have at least $1.3 million.
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!
How to Beat the Con
A greedy or dishonest mark may attempt to out-cheat the con artist, only to discover that he or she has been manipulated into losing from the very beginning. This is such a general principle in confidence tricks that there is a saying among con men that “you can’t cheat an honest man”.
