bud wants to talk about the stock market today, so here you go:
NEW YORK — Despair over the economy sent Wall Street plunging again Wednesday, propelling the Dow Jones industrials down 733 points to their second-largest point loss ever. Stocks fell on a combination of disheartening economic data, including a big drop in retail sales and a Federal Reserve report that said tight credit conditions are hurting businesses across the country.
The government’s report that retail sales plunged in September by 1.2 percent – almost double the 0.7 percent drop analysts expected – made it clear that consumers are reluctant to spend amid a shaky economy and a punishing stock market.
The Commerce Department report was sobering because consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. The reading came as Wall Street was refocusing its attention on the faltering economy following stepped up government efforts to revive the stagnant credit markets…
Me, I just get tired of the same stuff over and over. Stock traders must have the attention span of goldfish. Seems to me we already decided there was going to be a bad recession, and that the unemployment rate was going to go up, and consumers were unlikely to spend (because, if they’re like me, they ain’t got no money, not because they’re "reluctant"), and credit would be really tight at least until the rescue money started circulating around.
But the guys on the stock market seem to wake up every morning and go, "What? Bad financial news? I had no idea! Let’s all panic!"
And that gets tiresome.
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The Dow has to fall another 2300 points to bring share prices in line with low earnings.
The best way to raise stock prices is to reduce corporate tax rates.
The quickest way to reduce stock prices further is for Obama to raise corporate tax rates, further depressing dividends.
Lee, don’t fall for Limbaugh lie #438.
There is a difference between the tax rate and ammount of taxes actually paid. On paper the US has the highest tax rate, but due to loopholes and poor code & enforcement the ammount of taxes actually paid by companies is one of the lowest in the world. Literally pennies on the dollar.
The difference is that other countries have their act together and actually collect the taxes they levy.
Obama never claimed to raise taxes, only to collect the rightful and legal ammount that is due.
That body armor and rifle for our troops ain’t paying for themselves.
Brad, while it may be tiresome to continue seeing the same bad news day in and day out it is critically important. But I’m still not seeing much tangible evidence of a recession. Everyone I know is planning some big spending event such as an expensive trip to Williams-Brice Stadium or the fair. There was an article in the State (or was it USA Today) about casual dining sales down by 1.4%. 1.4%? That doesn’t sound alarming to me. Those place have gotten really expensive. Seems like if times were really tough we’d be reading about sales declines of 30-40%.
Obama’s hollow promise to “tax the rich” is mere pandering to his followers, who thrive on envy and hate. Most of them long ago gave up trying to do any better than a government check.
The economic reality is that Obama cannot raise taxes without decreasing economic activity and reducing net tax revenues.
All Obama can do is print more money and run bigger deficits, just like FDR, Carter, and the Democrats when they controlled Congress under Reagan, George Bush, and the last 2 years.
Smart money is fleeing stocks and will flee the USA if Obama Racist Socialism becomes a reality.
Please consider that which could be a product of arrogance and also shameful behavior.
Our lexicon of business activities is being expanded daily, thanks to the “wonder boys” on Wall Street. We are learning about derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, recapitalization, puts, short selling and so on. We are gaining a new vocabulary from the recent meltdown of the financial system and expected slowdown of the real economy worldwide.
Where did this debacle begin? Well, it began in the center of human community’s banking and investment houses in the financial district of NYC. Supposedly, the “brightest and best” among us go to Wall Street, know what they are doing and do the right thing. Unfortunately, such assumptions turn out to be colossal mistakes.
How did this calamity occur and why is the human family in such dire economic straits? It appears that grotesque greed and a culture of corruption have come to dominate significant operating systems of the global political economy.
Powerful people in high offices within huge business institutions with access to great wealth are recklessly and deleteriously manipulating the unbridled expansion of the global economy in the small, finite planetary home God blesses us to inhabit.
Self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe have surreptitiously “manufactured” a sub prime “asset bubble” and perversely fostered its uneconomic growth within the world economy. Not unexpectedly, this asset bubble did what bubbles do. The sub prime bubble burst and made a mess. Global credit markets have frozen, stock prices are tumbling and the value of the dollar is gyrating.
Evidently organizers, managers and whiz kids overseeing the global economy, and the unraveling {ie, deleveraging} of the worldwide sub prime swindle, are running the artificially designed financial system of the global economy as a pyramid scheme. This is to say that the international financial system is being operated so that most of the wealth funneled pyramidally into the hands of a small minority of people at the top of the world economy where this wealth is accumulated and consolidated. Note that thirty percent of annual corporate profits end up in the accounts of a tiny number of people. At the same time, the vast majority of people on Earth, near the bottom of the global economic pyramid, are left with very little wealth. Does the economy of the family of humanity exist primarily to provide wealth to the already stupendously wealthy? The “bankstas” among us evidently think so.
In the 1980s, this extremely inequitable method of distributing wealth and arranging business activities was called a “trickle down” economy. We have been repeatedly told how this ‘rational’ economic scheme is good because it “raises all ships.” And yet, from my limited scope of observation, the billion people living on resources valued at less than one dollar per day and the additional 2.7 billion people being sustained on two dollars per day of resources now appear to be stuck in squalid conditions. The ‘ships’ carrying these billions of less fortunate people {ie, more people than lived on Earth in the year of my birth} do not appear to be lifting them out of poverty.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
I find this interesting I do not agree with everything here but I do like the way you have given me thanks to think about