Disappearing wealth...?

The media complains about how much wealth has disappeared since last summer. Oh, please. Wealth doesn't just disappear (unless it's covered by lava or nuked). All those dollars represented speculative gains (wealth as a term doesn't apply) in hopes that some greater fool will buy at a higher price. This is known as, "the greater fool theory". How apt. Real wealth requires labor. Someone digs ore from the ground and refines it or plants crops and harvests them or in some way changes natural resources into something useful in everyday life. This is wealth built on labor and is lasting. Financial wealth is often illusory. Not always but often; such as now. Our Federal Reserve System (Central Bank, also the FED) has been creating money from nothing for so long now (since 1913) that our entire financial system is like a great big soap bubble sitting on top of bedrock. The bedrock represents the real wealth of our country and the soap bubble represents claims against that wealth. Not only that, we have a derivatives market that represents claims against the soap bubble. Sheeeesh! What we see popping is the bubble not the bedrock. Like the tulip mania in Holland in 1637, the perceived value of a tulip bulb drove the prices so high that one contract sold for 10 times the average annual earnings of a craftsman. Suddenly, someone perceived that the bulb only grew flowers and sold out. Someone else sold out and in February 1637 the price collapsed. Did the wealth vanish? No, someone sold at the high and kept the wealth just like now. The stock market is a zero sum game: for every seller there has to be a buyer. Someone gets the high price when they sell. In our case, the air is being let out of our stock bubble and reality is setting in. That's all that is happening. Of course, if you were in with the money manipulaters (read the FED) you would know ahead of time and would be able to liquidate and keep your profit. When the FED sent the word out to restrict credit, which the banks have done, the collapse was inevitable. Stick with bedrock type investments: gold, silver, platinum, producers of such, producers of food.