Market crash: are we there yet ?

[Rickm505]

I know.. a double post. However, I find this relevant as this guy is one of the few to quickly explain exactly how bad things are and how bad they will get.

Bio

Joseph Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University. He was chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers and Cabinet member in the Clinton Administration. A former chief economist of the World Bank, 1997-2000, he won the Nobel Prize for Economics ...

Article from the UK , Times Online
Day of reckoning in the US glasshouse

[xort]

Heeee's Baaack
Beezer was right.

[Rickm505]

He's back?? You should have typed that "he's been right all along"

We are looking at a possible lock limit down open on Tuesday's market opening unless Bernanke pulls a magic rabbit out of his hat.... I wouldn't count on it.

Next:

• A forced unwind of hedge fund leverage is coming.
• A forced unwind of the carry trade is coming.
• A forced unwind of anti-dollar bets is coming.
• Bankruptcies will soar.
• Some small banks will fail.
• Massive layoffs are coming.

So how solid is our economy right now??

Three cheers for the Neocons who brought this on. I figure the Bushies will try and slap a few bandaids on this mess and try and ride it out until he leaves office. Then they get to point the finger at the next guy in office.

Deplorable...

Anybody need 2000 shares of Motorola at $17.00 ?

[Valiente]

That Stiglitz! What a nay-sayer! Probably works in Hillary's skunk works! Or maybe he's just a defeatist crypto-Commie! Everything's fine! Ignore the man behind the curtain!

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/serv.../Business/home

600 points? I'm glad I put a third of my portfolio in cash before Christmas, because this'll hurt you guys more than it'll hurt me.

[Rickm505]

Hey, the guy did win a Nobel prize.

Think of what this will do to all the pension funds. Unemployment rate is going to climb big time now. The only bright spot is if no one has any money to spend, it should limit inflation this year.

[cardiacpaul]

"The retail industry appears to be skidding toward its first big wreck in 17 years."

holy smokes sell the farm, buy a chain saw, head for the hills and build a log cabin.

One would think that after 17 years of growth, one might have to slow down for a bit. (just looking at my 17 year old kid laying on the couch, feet up snoozing away, empty box of ho-ho's and a dead two-liter of coke discarded like dirty socks on the floor.)
Thats got to be bushs fault.

[cardiacpaul]

not so long ago...
That Crazy Stock Market
Monday, Feb. 02, 1987 By GEORGE RUSSELL
Hair-raising, unpredictable, frighteningly volatile --
just about every scary term imaginable was being used last week to describe the outlandish behavior of the stock market.
Friday was the day to beat all days, the wildest and woolliest in the market's history.
First the Dow Jones average of 30 industrial stocks zoomed up 64 points in the space of five hours of trading,
to a high of 2210. Then, just as suddenly, the Dow nose-dived, swinging down an amazing 115 points in 71 minutes.
At times there literally were no buyers on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange,
just as earlier in the day there were sometimes no sellers.
Said Michael Antolini, a trader with Cantor Fitzgerald Securities: "Everyone went nuts. It was sheer insanity."

By the time the trading frenzy was over, the Dow had dropped 44.15 points, & closing at 2101.52,
still up 24.88 points for the week. It was only the second time since the new year began that the index
had fallen by the end of a day's trading. In the process, the highly computerized N.Y.S.E. smashed yet another record by trading a phenomenal 302 million shares, bettering the mark of 253 million shares set on Jan. 15.
Complicating things even further for record keepers,
Friday's spectacular Dow reversal came only 24 hours after the index had registered its biggest single-day rise ever, 51.60 points.

[xort]

Originally Posted by Rickm505

Hey, the guy did win a Nobel prize.

Well you got me there, put him right up there with algore, jimma carter & arrafat.

[sailaway21]

For those who've opened their desk drawers to check for postage stamps in an effort to round out their portfolio's, or just to get an idea on whether or not they should re-do the family room this spring, I'd offer some common sense wisdom from a non-economist who's old enough to have seen these things come and go.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/96369/page/1

Fot those readers still hoping to catch wisdom from this thread, I'd offer the following observation. Never trust a man with two hulls on the same boat. No, that's not what I meant to say. It just sorta slipped out. Sorry. Rick was repeating, repeatedly, the mantra that the CPI was corrupt and did not reflect gas and fuel oil costs. That was shown to be demonstrably not true by two seperate readers, citing the US government's web site on the CPI. Rick then, and only then, modified his position that he'd meant "core inflation". He probably had to go back for a refresher on the matter at the Village Voice web-site. That Cockburn can be difficult for even his admirers to figure out.

Now our oracle of matters economic tells us that we should sell our stocks. His reasoning is that the market is going to open sharply down. My non-economist intuition says that the fundamental strengths of the stocks I own have not changed, at least not to the point where I think that they'll not rebound in short order. And, if the market is truly in major decline, I'd think that it would be a time to buy. But that's just me. All I know is that I'm supposed to buy low and sell high. I think I got that part right. And given Rick's ostensible position in the real estate business, I'm really surprised that he has not pointed out that it's a good time to buy a house, and it may be getting even better. Of course, if you're a seller, you have one of two choices; have a fire sale or wait for the market to stabilize and rebound. Rick doesn't mention any of these things. He cites a ludicrous postage stamp evaluation, whose prices by the way are determined by politicians, and asks us to believe that the White House actually has some form of control over the economy. The totalitarian Soviet Union did not have control over it's economy, and I'm supposed to believe George Bush does?

This entire screed, as ably predicted by pbeezer, is just a long-running econbabble against what is essentially a political argument. Rick isn't rich anymore, the Florida real estate market is going through one of it's periodic readjustments due to over-building, and Rick's prospects for a quick rebound aren't looking too good. I'd renew my suggestion that he consider applying for a job with Deere or Cat selling heavy equipment overseas. It's nice and dry during the monsoon this time of year.

Reality is that no one really knows what the economy is doing or is going to do. We're even in some conflict about what it did in the past. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably either an economist or is selling something. In neither case are they telling the truth. The only really bad news is that their guess about things is about as good as mine. I'd like to think I'm a bit better because, at least I'll tell you it's a guess. In the meantime, I'd give a read to Mr. Will's column above and get a good night's sleep. The alternative, listening to Rick, makes about as much sense as arguing about the weather. You can, but what good is it?

[Valiente]

Originally Posted by cardiacpaul

Thats got to be bushs fault.

OK, I'm just a goddamned snow Mexican to most of you, but the reason most of these threads are unproductive to the point of sterility is that the baselines are way too close together (at least from an evil furriner perspective). Democrats, Republicans...who cares? Both are enslaved to PACs, corporate tits, lobbyists and the river of pork that flows beside the Potomac. Getting all defensive about the merits of the puppet figurehead ignores the fact that the whole Punch and Judy show is rotten: Disliking Bush's rhetoric does not mean Hillary's equally bogus blather gets an endorsement. She's just less failed than GW. Give her time: she'll suck in her own way, which won't be historically exceptional, given the system currently in charge.

It is an axiom of history that when the crap hits the fan, everyone wears brown. The only worthy option is to batten down the hatches (obligatory nautical reference).

EDIT: Pardon my frankness, but I lost about ten large today, as my country's market fried 90 billion dollars because American banks decided that greed was the better part of fiscal prudence.