Didn't the market just go up 400 + points today? (insurance, capitalism, real estate)
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I have been on this forum for a little while reading a lot of people's opinions. Some have very good insight on what is going on, but as with everything there are a lot of alarmist(i.e love the doom gloomers thread).
But not one thread about todays 400+ gain on the Dow. That nearly erased yesterdays bad day.
Now I am not blind enough to say things are good, they are not. Subprime, housing, gas prices, etc. These are tough times in the American economy, but I do not believe the world is ending.
With the information age I think I have seen thousands of posts on how 2007 would be the great depression. Well we are in 2008, no depression. Now thousands of posts on this year will be the one.
Again, things are bad, but let's at least acknowledge that they are not that bad.
And hey, have some optimism, capitalism is great! It has it's problems(with greed), but in my opinion there is no better way to have an economy ran.
You better study the events leading up to the Great Depression. Such gains alternating with losses happened before the market crashed in 1929. We're not safe yet by any stretch of the imagination.
I browse this forum often. Lots of doom and gloomers on here. The Dow could raise by 4,000 points tomorrow morning, and half of the posters on here would still be predicting a stock market crash by Tuesday morning.
Maybe this economic crisis is a wake up call that America has needed. Over the past 20 years or so, our mentality has been, "More, more,more" and we have forgotten how to live within our means. Our greed and materialism has is finally catching up to us.
Like you, I'm not blind to what's going on. Things are bad right now, and they could get easily worse, but worrying about the future certainly doesn't change the future. Just watch your money closely, make smart financial decisions, and elect leaders who have good economic policy. That's all we can do right now.
Many that come here have no life, and predicting the end of the world will hopefully bring everyone down to their level of unhappness.
If they were smart and were republicans, they life would be much happier and we would never hear from them...
You have to do a bit more reasearch instead of acting smug. Anybody can be uninformed and be smug. If everything was in as good a shape as you claim, we wouldn't have the governments throwing trillions of dollars into the banking system to keep it afloat. A major run on the money market funds had started this week and threatened the system. Nearly 200 billion dollars had been pulled in the first four days of the week. That's why the governments injected 250 billion dollars into the system today.
I would say I see more doom and gloom but I am not blind... people think, wow, the DOW is up 400 points but don't look at the reason its up or even understand the reason why it is crashing... to me the reasons (i.e. the FUNDAMENTALS) is more important than any way the stocks swing, whether its up or down... if the stock shot up 4k points, I would be the same because there is absolutely no reason for it to go that high which also means its going to crash a LOT the next day... yes, the stocks shot up 400 points which coincide with governments injecting nearly 200 BILLION dollars into the system... 2 days ago it was up 100+ points after the Fed injected 50 BILLION into the system... ANY other day that the Fed did not inject money into the system was also a day of heavy losses... so to me, that is not a cause for "celebration".... do you feel better knowing that billions of dollars was spent to keep the market artificially elevated? Do you plan on injecting with billions more everyday just so we don't have a loss? You might say I am a doom and gloom person... I just think I am realistic about what's going on... The government is proposing a massive bailout possibly into the trillions of dollars... I guess instead of a national debt of 10 trillion, we can have 18 trillion... but who cares right? The sun is shining, stocks are doing well... its just an extra $8 trillion dollars and the FUNDAMENTALS haven't change.. good times are here again..... I think not..
There's one standout guy in the business world I like to pay attention to, Warren Buffet. Yesterday when the blood was flowing on the trading floors and brokerage houses were posting guards at the upper floor balconies to stop people from jumping, Warren (Berkshire Hathaway) moves in and snaps up a natural gas company in Maryland at a bargain price compared to it's year ago price. Those wise guys running the gas co in Maryland brought most of the problems onto themselves by playing around in the energy trading schemes instead of focusing on their core business as a local nat gas supplier, but you can bet Warren will quickly toss out the riff raff and bring them under the wing of his other gas company cash cow called Mid Continent.
Yes, it's bad and risky out there. But there are still 300 million people in the USA, and 90+ percent of the workforce still has a job and buys stuff. It will take a few years to get out of the mess we are in, and some areas of the economy will take longer. Many of the tech companies that were leveled in the dot com bust about 7 years ago have never returned anywhere close to their former market cap glory days. But some areas of our economy will still chug along, albeit without stellar growth or financial results for awhile, but they will still chug along. Most European countries only dream of having unemployment of 7 percent or less, when they are stuck at 10 to 12 percent.
As to those who claim I am smug or not seeing the bad things I disagree. Sorry if I did come off smug, not my intention and I did say there are a lot of bad problems going on right now.
But, go to a shopping mall, go to movie theatre friday night, go out to dinner on the weekends, etc. etc.
The majority of citizens still live in a high quality of life and that includes me, the middle class.
I have always lived through the philosphy that things are never as good as they seem, nor as bad as they seem.
There were some stupid stupid stupid investment banks, insurance companies out there who made horrible decisions, I will not deny that.
I realize the market could be down big time tomorrow and things could get worse.
I wonder how the companies would stay in business if the government buys their bad securities for pennies on the dollar BECAUSE that is a loss for the company which has stayed solvent because of the "paper" worth of the property... if they sell, then they obviously would not have the assets to still be in business... Business are losing money more than from "just" bad securities and they have used those securities as collateral for their continued business... if they lose that collateral, how will they stay in business? Unless the government offers them a way overinflated price for these bad securities... Doesn't anyone ask questions anymore?
Its like I own a hardware store and sold defective hammers for $5 but nobody is buying and I used the hammers as collateral "assets" to stay in business (say I claim its worth $7 on paper). The government comes in and buys the hammer for cheap $0.10 a piece... that would put me out of business... if the government offers me $4.50... I am ripping off the taxpayers BIG time but the problems are STILL there... the true worth is probably around $1.50 which would still put me out business.. so what the heck is going on with the government? Now we've done bailouts throughout history before to the tune of billions of dollars... we aren't talking billions of dollars... we are talking about TRILLIONS of bad securities.... It took us decades to amass that kind of debt and the government is asking us to shoulder TRILLIONS of dollars in a span of 2 days? WTH is going on? This is NOT the same as the previoius RTC or anything like it... this is RTC times a 100... its a lot worse then Paulson is trying to make it appear...
Look at how high inflation is. Look at the price of commodities. What is the price of gold? This is an unprecedented inflationary depression. These bailouts are only delaying the inevitable. The only way to fix this is to write down the real estate values and get money into infrastructure. You cannot fix the economy if you produce less that you consume.
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