Well, those whacky folks on Wall Street had another bad day, with the Dow as much as 800 points down at one point, and the close below 10,000. Here’s the AP version:
NEW YORK — Wall Street suffered through another extraordinary and traumatic session Monday, with the Dow Jones industrials plunging as much as 800 points – their largest one-day point drop – before recovering to close with a loss of 370. The catalyst for the selling, which also took the Dow below 10,000 for the first time in four years, was investors’ growing despair that the spreading credit crisis will take a heavy toll around the world.
Investors have come to the realization that the Bush administration’s $700 billion rescue plan and steps taken by other governments won’t work quickly to unfreeze the credit markets.
That sent stocks spiraling downward in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and drove investors to sink money into the relative safety of U.S. government debt. Fears about a global recession also caused oil to drop below $90 a barrel….
Guess we can’t blame this one on Gresham Barrett and the other naysayers on the rescue plan, huh?
Everyone seems to be settling in for a long, tough time, regardless of what Washington does or doesn’t do.
We’re used to business not being good in the newspaper biz. Looks like a lot of other folks are going to be joining us, which I assure you gives me no joy.
Harris Pastides spoke to Rotary today and talked about the budget cutbacks he’s had to do since he became USC president two months back. He noted that more cuts are coming unless retailers have a bang-up Christmas season, which he indicated he doubted would happen — and no one in that room full of business types offered to disagree with him.
Related Posts
After the vote on Friday, Nancy Pelosi said, “This is only the beginning.”
Then, Barney Frank said, “We’ll be back for something more extensive after the election.”
What more reason does a smart man need to sell out now?
Those who like to live dangerously can wait and see if Obama gets elected, then try to sell out.
Warren Buffet gave a nice interview last week explaining the need for the bailout… and also pointing out that what it will do is stop things from getting even worse. He said best case scenario it would get better in 6 months… realistically 2 years or longer before it was back to business as usual.
Hey, it’s always a good time to be Warren Buffett.
I had a conversation with someone connected with BMW over the weekend. Folks who buy BMWs are still buying BMWs. All economies are good ones to have money in.
If I had the money, I’d be buying stock left and right now, and hang onto it for years before selling. Good time for bargains.
But I don’t. Have the money, that is. So I won’t be buying stock. And certainly not a Beamer.
The old saying that it takes money to make money proves true yet again.
Problem is that it has become harder for average folks to get just a little bit of money to try to make a little money and better themselves.
Now, no one is saying that we all have to be winners and finish the race for wealth tied as there will always be the Warren Buffett’s and Bush/Kennedy families of the world who finish further ahead wheter it be with good luck, hard work, financial head-start or combinations of all three. However, everyone deserves to start at the starting line on even footing.
That equal starting point is gone and until it returns, America will continue flounder. People no longer think that hard work alone will allow your kids to have it better than you did. We are facing the first time in our country’s history that younger generations are having it worse than their parents or gran-parents.
There will never be Bill Gates or Mark Cuban stories again otherwise and with out those folk heroes, the American Dream dies.
For me, the way the democrat controlled congress and senate dithered with and the larded up the “emergency” bailout bill with completely unrelated pork projects put the lie to this entire thing. I don’t deny that there is a definite problem on Wall Street and in the banking industry, but what I’ve observed these charlatan senators and congressmen doing makes me firmly believe that these jokers have no idea what is wrong and have no idea how to fix it.
Lack of leadership and meaningful oversight by these a-holes had a lot todo with getting us into this, and I am sure now that there won’t be any leadership to get us out. Pelosi and Reid standing on the Capitol steps assuring us they are fixing the problem is to akin to having Colonel Sanders standing in front of KFC and telling us the chickens are gonna be OK.
I don’t know much about market liquidity and bank exposure to sub-prime loans, but I know congress: If they are “fixing” this, we’re in trouble.
David
The radicals who run the Democratic Party are socialists. They don’t understand how even the simplest markets work, and they don’t care to know. Who in the world expects ignorant socialists to fix overnight a complex economic mess which ignorant socialists created over a period of 70 years?
Lee, don’t let a little thing like the facts get in your way of your delusions.
It was your Conservative President & your GOP Presidental candidate who begged and pleaded with the members of their party to fix the problems that happened due to the economy that their failed policies of de-regulations & lack of enforcement caused.
It’s funny. The Democrats controlled the Congress for over 40 years, and even during tough times like the gas shortages in the ’70s, and with record defecits under 12 consecutive years of a GOP President (Reagan/Bush) the economy survived and grew.
Now, the GOP takes total control for 6 years and it all turns to hell in record time with failures not seen in 80 years.
The GOP wants the credit for the budget surplus’s under Clinton, even though they only controlled the House for the last two years of his term and that there had been surplus’s posted BEFORE they gained power. But that doesn’t stop them from saying that its Congress and not the President who did it right.
When the GOP fanboys try to apply the same logic to the current state of affairs they backpedal and claim it’s not the GOP Congress or Bush who were responsible for the failures in the economy that happened on their watch. They just inherited it.
So lets recap. 40 years under Democrat controlled Congress, no issues and constant economic growth. 6 years under Republicans, and the economy litterally grinds to a halt and for the first time ever, a generation will earn and have less money that their parents.
That’s some pretty strong kool-aid you be drinking Lee.
The total irony is that while trying to make Reagan a saint, the GOP totally crush his philosophy and turned Conservatives into Socialists with their need for bailouts.
Bush just turned Reagan into your Karl Marx. Bravo.
wtf, W has been the great socialist of our time. Consider the massive increase in the size and spending of the federal government under his rein BEFORE this massive bailout.
“Now, the GOP takes total control for 6 years and it all turns to hell in record time with failures not seen in 80 years.” – wtf
Pardon me, but is not Nancy Pelosi the Speaker of the House? Is not Barney Frank chairman of the Finance Committee? Is not James Clyburn the House whip? Aren’t all those people Democrats?
Pardon me, wtf, but wth are you talking about? Bush asked the Democrat-controlled House to head this deregulation crisis off, but your Democrat cronies declined to do so.
There’s plenty of blame to spread on both parties, but pretending the House is controlled by Republicans is a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime.
From yesterday. Here’s the most comprehensive summary of what happened with the minimum of partisan finger-pointing. She accounts well for the homeowners’ psychology, leaving out only the home sale exclusions that played a big role in high-value areas, encouraging folks to take a really big bite in hopes of a $500K gain several years down the road.
The economic meltdown we’re living right now is, indeed, very complex and I’ll concede it’s not entirely the GOP’s fault. Frankly, most of the blame stems from simple greed on the part of the American people. Everyone wants a bigger house, nicer car and a TV with higher resolution. Folks wanted a cell phone for every member of the family plus a home phone with call waiting, caller id and all the other bells and whistles. We eat out too much. 18 year olds have credit cards but no job. People move further and further away from home then drive that hulking SUV 25 miles to work alone. Instead of a family sit down dinner we eat fast food in front of our own personal TV. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t enjoy the nicer things in life. But we should do so in a responsible manner within our means, not through credit cards.
I’m not preaching here, rather I’m speaking from experience. Personally, I plan to change some things. I’d rather drive a smaller car than suffer through $500 month payments to feed the thing $4/gallon gasoline to go 14 miles. I’d rather bring my lunch to work rather than spend $8 for a sandwich, chips and a drink.
The problem is if everyone becomes more frugal the economy will continue to slump. Spending is the engine that will eventually get us out of this mess once the credit markets become unclogged. But whatever spending we do should be done with a greater sense of responsibility than we’ve shown in the past. Otherwise we’ll end up in this situation all over again.
All this excess is now catching up with us.
bud, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with you. The only problem, will the greedy become less greedy? Everyone is greedy to a certain extent, but the really greedy, well, they just can’t help themselves. Their like a wild animal, once they smell blood, or money, they will kill their own mother. Enough is never enough.
Bud, I don’t believe for a solitary second that this mess is the fault of the average American citizen…the guy who wants to drive a comfortable car or to buy the nicest house he can afford or who wants a cell phone for each of his three teenage daughters. How ridiculous can you be? The vast majority of average Americans know exactly what they can afford and responsibly pursue a lifestyle that stays within those boundaries.
Now, to be sure there have been many greedy people who got into mortgages they could not afford and who are now losing everything. This outcome is a symptom however, and not a cause. These people have only been able to get mortgages because liberals in government forced banks to make loans to them, where they would not have done so if left alone. This government manipulation of lending standards has resulted in bank over-exposure to bad loans, and this monkey business has largely been the work of monkeys like Barney Frank, or the alpha male gorilla: Bill Clinton.
I’m not saying that there hasn’t been some corporate malfeasance and greed at play as well, but to attempt to blame the average US citizen for our present problems and then make the case that everyone just needs to “cut back” is a remarkably silly and wrong position to take.
Dave
Part of the problem is that our state institutions have cut back so much that, there’s not much further they can go. We already have the mentally ill wandering our streets, do we want the profoundly mentally retarded, the helplessly crippled, as well as vicious criminals out there too? Many (not all) of the ones (the very rich) who have been rewarded the most by this administration, have squirreled a lot of it away in questionable investments, trying to make even more money. Now they are running for cover and trying to cut their losses (that’s why the Dow has gone so far south). Job salaries have not risen much lately, at least not for those in the middle or further down the economic scale. When too many people can’t afford to buy things, it really begins to hurt, and most middle class people can’t buy stuff without credit. We are all going to have to work hard to get through this.
No government has been “cut back”, Karen.
SC received $3.0 BILLION in extra tax revenue in the last 5 years, thanks to a robust economy, and they blew every cent, and raised the spending quotas for every agency.
The federal government received enough extra money to have a balance budget even running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Instead, they ran $400 BILLION DEFICITS to fund social welfare expansion.
Causes from the bottom up:
* People with low income and poor credit want to own homes, rather than rent.
* Builders and realtors want to sell anyone a home, as long as they don’t hold the mortgage.
* Politicians with low-income, unqualified potential home buyers, mostly black and Latino, want to create another vote-buying program. They know the amount of money involved will attract a lot of lobbyist and PAC money from builders, mortgage brokers, bankers, bond packagers, etc.
* Politicians create new legislation to subvert FNMA and FMAC to assume risks of new high-risk mortgages, called “subprime”.
* SEC buys into new bond packages for sub-prime mortgages. Just as market saturates in US, political worries in the rest of the world drives investors into these junk bonds.
* Lobbyist money flows to Barney Frank, John Spratt, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, along with some discounted mortgages to Dodd and Frank.
* Janet Reno issues public threat to banks not to use “discriminatory profiling” by asking for proof of income, employment history or repayment history.
* Boards of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac become loaded with political cronies lacking expertise, 60% of them from Clinton, like Harold Raines, Johnson, Louis Freeh, Jamie Gorelick, Rahm Emmanuel. They don’t know the business, and are easily manipulated from Wall Street above and bureaucracy below. They are paid $577,000 salaries and $700,000 bonuses to do nothing.
* During Clinton years, sub-prime mortgages increase from 2% to 20% of all new mortgages.
* Big mortgage producers like Golden West, WaMu, Countrywide and others begin to have problems. FNMA and FMAC boards issue fraudulent reports of profits of $5 BILLION to $6.9 BILLION, when they are actually losing money. Boards collect huge bonuses.
* Politicians spin to protect FNMA and FMAC, and block reforms proposed by President Bush in 2002 through 2006. Democrats block every reform. Voting is along party lines to block bills in committee.
* Finally, at the 11th hour, Congress is forced to respond before the election. Without any hearings, meetings, analysis or debate, they give a blank check to the Treasury Department for $350 B, then $500 BILLION, then 600, 700, 710, 810, and then $850 BILLION.
* Pelosi and Frank announce late Friday Oct 3 that, “This is just the beginning”, and there will be more after the elections. On Monday, the Dow responds with an 800 point drop.
Given the complexity and difficulty of the current economic crisis the campaigns should be talking about what they will do. Obama is doing that, or at least trying too. But what does the McCain/Palin ticket do? Basically they’re accussing Obama of being a terrorist and whipping their supporters into a frenzy. In recent political events Sarah Palin has once again tried to link Obama to Bill Ayers. And her supportes yell out “kill Obama”. But she remains silent. How pathetic. It’s time to get behind Obama so he can work with the new Democratic congress to get us out of this mess. McCain, in true Republican fashion, only offers fear and slander. Disgusting. Some maverick he is. He’s become the worst sort of political hack. His hatchet woman needs to calm down before someone does something really horrific. Unless McCain tones down the rhetoric he will forever lose all respect from me and the American people.
Lee lives in a fantasy land where only the poor, black, Latino and Democrats are ever to blame for any problem. Fact is the GOP controlled congress during the time frame suggested by Lee. They could have easily pushed through reforms given the propensity for many Democrats in congress to support government oversight. But the president and his GOP allies in congress did nothing to work across the aisle. They used bullying tactics to get their way on a host of ill-conceived legislation. Those tactics were eventually thier undoing. At the end of the day the Democrats never had any real power to control the agenda during the last decade. To suggest they, and they alone are responsible for this mess is nothing short of slanderous. Bush failed to gain the oversight needed to prevent the crisis. His failure was one of style. Perhaps with a bit more diplomicy and a bit less demogogary his presidency would not be in taters right now.
No, I live a a real world where crooked liberals and socialists beome wealthy by deceiving the poor, and ignorant. Millions of poor people were sold houses they couldn’t afford, and Democrats go re-elected and got rich off the scam.
I resent the agressive ignorance and dishonesty of apologists like “bud”, who enable scum like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd to exploit blacks and Latinos who are kept in a state of dependency on a corrupt state.
As long as you all keep electing Democrats and Republicans, the problems will continue.
Why not try something new this time? Vote for a Libertarian or Green Party member. Send a message. Could it be any worse?
This is off topic but I thought it was hilarious how Saturday’s headline in The State was “Carolinas Key in Presidential Race” when it’s only North Carolina that will matter.
That’s like saying “Carolinas Key In NCAA 2009 Basketball Tournament”.
When Hugh McColl and Warren Buffet endorse Obama, the socialist accusation seems to lose credibility. As do the extremist, radical, unpatriotic, inexperienced labels. I’ll take advise from Hugh and Warren over Lee any day.
“Sarah Palin has once again tried to link Obama to Bill Ayers.” – bud
Tried? No more than the sun tries to rise, bud, or you try to breathe. It’s all autonomic. Palin simply described the Ayers-Obama link and emphasized it, like you might describe the setting Democratic sun in anguish come November.
Obama’s campaign, conversely, tried to link Mark Sanford and Bill Ayers simply because Ayers is, or has been, a distinguished scholar at the University of New Jersey at Columbia, S.C., and Sanford is an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees at UNJCSC.
That’s like trying to shoot an arrow around a corner — typical Democrat archery.
The problem with the McCain campaign right now is that any slanders they through Obama’s why, like the discredited Ayers nonsense, is easily countered with truthful accusations about McCain and Palin. For instance:
McCain was censured for his role in the Keating 5 incident.
McCain did go on the G. Gordan Liddy program in order to shore up his right wing base.
McCain has and continues to association himself with the despicable Phil Gramm, a man who calls people who lose their houses “whiners”.
McCain did say the fundementals of the economy are strong.
McCain did not know how many houses he owns.
McCain did cheat on his wife while claiming that he was a changed man following his time at the Hanoi Hilton.
McCain did flip-flop on the torture issue.
McCain did claim he knows little about economic issues. What a claim to make while the economy melts down.
McCain does enjoy high stakes gambling. That propensity shows as he continues to gamble with the lives of millions of Americans.
McCain does have a serious temper issue.
McCain has told a number of distasteful jokes over the years like this one: “Why is Chelsea Clinton so Ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.”
McCain did choose the utterly unqualified governor of Alaska to be his running mate.
Sarah Palin did attend meetings of the Alaska Independence movement, an organization that her husband was a member.
Palin.
Palin and her husband have refused subpoenas to testify in the ongoing “troopergate” scandal in which she is the central character.
Palin did support the bridge to nowhere before she was against it, yet still took the money for other wasteful projects.
Palin did attend a church where the pastor spouted off antisemetic vitriol.
The McCain/Palin axis of evil continues with it’s demogogery while the nation’s economy melts down. Funny how people aren’t paying this stuff much attention. Obama is now seen as the safer choice in this election. It’s about time. The voters are not likely to gamble on their future with a gambling, hot-headed old fool that doesn’t know how to use e-mail.
Our Founding Fathers were each a genius. They thought that all who were qualified to vote would certainly have the same goals for America, just different methods of achieving them. What is going to happen to this country when the ignorant, the greedy, America haters, the socialists, and all the other anti American types out number the ones for America? I’m thinking I have four more years, at least, before I need an answer.
You may just have 4 more weeks until the greedy riff raff elect Obama.
These people are so stupid that they actually think they are making real arguments, when they try to equate McCain being “censured” by a Democrat Congress for not getting a thing from Charles Keating, with
* Obama getting a $2,000,000 mansion from Rezko,
* his wife getting a $327,000 do-nothing job from a hospital in Chicago,
* Chris Dodd getting a sweet mortage from Countrywide
* Barney Frank getting money from FMAC swindlers
* Barney Frank having a homosexual relationship for 10 years with a board member of FMAC
Discredited Ayers nonsense, bud?
Proven, not discredited.
Do some research. Don’t just listen to you messiah’s lies.
Pardon me. That’s your messiah’s lies.
Shalom.
Obama LIE: “Obama barely knew Bill Ayers, only serving on a board with him.”
TRUTH: Bill Ayers is only one of many communists who played major roles in Obama’s formulation of his hate for America, hate for business, hate for Jews and white people.
Obama has associated with Bill Ayers since 1987. Obama, whose father, brothers, and his mother’s boy friends were all hard-core members of the Communist Party, knew exactly how to find people like Bill Ayers in Chicago.
Bill Ayers got Obama appointed to the board of the Woods Foundation. Obama voted to illegally misdirect funds from that foundation into ACORN and more radical groups also run by Bill Ayers.
Bill Ayers home was the site of Obama’s announcement for his campaign for Senate.
Obama gave a speech at two banquets in 2005, held to honor major American communists. Bill Ayers sat beside him at both dinners.
Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dorn and Michael Klonsky, all Weathermen from the 1960s, worked on Obama’s campaign for President, starting in 2005.