Dow plummets 500+ points, Nasdaq down over 5%

• Belly35

  

  Todays plummeted Dow is worse that 2008 that destroyes a 5 1/2 gain and that lead to a resession..... Where is this going.... I ask.
• gut

  Belly35;852561 wrote:Todays plummeted Dow is worse that 2008 that destroyes a 5 1/2 gain and that lead to a resession..... Where is this going.... I ask.

  I've resisted putting money into the market earlier this summer for a variety of reasons. Good time to buy now, of course timing is always tough and you don't want to catch a falling knife but you also don't want to miss the bounce. And regardless, my 401 has taken a beating.
  
  This is actually a very interesting past week or two that I admittedly haven't dove into to examine. Markets globally are getting hammered, nearly all asset classes (save US treasuries, inexplicably) and even gold has taken a hit. Doesn't make any sense. The only explanation I might offer is there's a giant withdrawl from markets over economic fears of credit drying up in another global recession. And for that we'll just have to wait and see what global asset flows have been the past few weeks.
  
  MARKETS are definitely oversold, I can't say which ones are and which aren't (maybe the US is oversold, maybe not if the economy sinks) but i don't think a bad time to buy the dip here in global markets, just stick with very broad indices.
• Footwedge

  sleeper;852543 wrote:Bush started office in 2000 with an unemployment rate of 4.1%. He ended Jan 2008 with an unemployment rate of 5%. Obama has caused unemployment rates to nearly DOUBLE since he's been in office.

  False....way false.
• sleeper

  

  Footwedge;852578 wrote:False....way false.

  
  http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rates#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:S&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=state&ifdim=state&tdim=true&hl=en&dl=en
• Ty Webb

  

  LJ;852553 wrote:How can you ask for proof for something that has not happened yet?

  
  He said it WILL happen....he should have to provide proof
• sleeper

  

  Ty Webb;852589 wrote:He said it WILL happen....he should have to provide proof

  
  Did you not see his link?
• Footwedge

  Belly35;852561 wrote:Todays plummeted Dow is worse that 2008 that destroyes a 5 1/2 gain and that lead to a resession..... Where is this going.... I ask.

  I remember the market dipping under 7000 when the last guy was in power. To me...this news is a big yawn. The market is one big bubble anyhow. It should be a lot less than what it is. The big money is being channeled overseas.
  
  Those that snub their noses at unfettered globalization...deserve to lose their asses....as the American economy continues to tank.
• LJ

  

  Ty Webb;852589 wrote:He said it WILL happen....he should have to provide proof

  
  No he shouldn't. Deal with it.
• Footwedge

  sleeper;852585 wrote:http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rates#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:S&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=state&ifdim=state&tdim=true&hl=en&dl=en

  5.8% is a lot different than 5.0%. Secondly....and much more importantly, the economic collapse at the end of Bush's term in 08 directly led to the huge drop in employment. Obama had nothing to do with that.
• BGFalcons82

  

  Damnit Sleeper....never forget that Bush is to blame for all ills. Forever. And Ever.
• Footwedge

  BGFalcons82;852597 wrote:Damnit Sleeper....never forget that Bush is to blame for all ills. Forever. And Ever.

  Are you suggesting that the housing collapse and the subsequent effects from that had no affect on unemployment? Partisan politics at it's finest, dude. Take a bow.
• sleeper

  

  Footwedge;852594 wrote:5.8% is a lot different than 5.0%. Secondly....and much more importantly, the economic collapse at the end of Bush's term in 08 directly led to the huge drop in employment. Obama had nothing to do with that.

  
  Obama was in the senate. If Obama is so competent, he's had 2+ years to fix all of Bush's policies that he disagrees with.
• sleeper

  

  Footwedge;852601 wrote:Are you suggesting that the housing collapse and the subsequent effects from that had no affect on unemployment? Partisan politics at it's finest, dude. Take a bow.

  
  Can you name specifically the policies Bush implemented that produced the housing collapse?
• Footwedge

  sleeper;852604 wrote:Can you name specifically the policies Bush implemented that produced the housing collapse?

  None. That was done by Clinton when he signed into law the repeal of Glass Steagle....although Republicans wrote the law. Clinton gets blamed...and rightly so...because he did not veto it. You see, I don't play the partisan hack game like most do here.
• BoatShoes

  sleeper;852543 wrote:Bush started office in 2000 with an unemployment rate of 4.1%. He ended Jan 2008 with an unemployment rate of 5%. Obama has caused unemployment rates to nearly DOUBLE since he's been in office.

  
  First of all, if it is true that President Obama has made unemployment worse it is because he has been focusing on the deficit just like Conservatives want and did not create and adequate stimulus because he wanted to court Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe, Joe Lieberman, etc. Perhaps you say that you are unsatisfied with the deficit deal because it does not cut enough, well if that is your argument, as it is many conservatives, you are arguing for a higher unemployment rate because contractionary government policies in a depressed economy make things worse. Just look at Europe! Thus, you and several other conservatives are lambasting Obama and pinning it on him (and rightfully so IMO) but if you had your way, it would be even worse.
  
  So that is our choices in this country now. Obama who is at best a moderate conservative, choosing "deficit, deficit" when even someone like Richard Posner of Free Market law and economics fame points out "the medium-term problem is the depression that the economy is still wallowing in..." and calls for fiscal stimulus and a raise in the debt ceiling, and Tea Party Conservatives (or people pretending to be like Romney and Pawlenty) who would harm the economy even worse if they did what they're saying in Iowa and New Hampshire.
  
  It is a repeat of 1937 all over again when FDR on the advice of his Classical Economist Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau started focusing on debt and deficits thinking the depression was over and made it last longer. And BHO's gonna get kicked out of office by independents and moderates voting for Rick Perry, who would have made it even worse! BHO better hope that Iran attacks Israel or Aliens Invade or he's likely doomed. As Larry Summers put it on Charlie Rose:
  
  "Never forget, never forget, and I think it’s very important for Democrats especially to remember this, that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed."
  
  And as to BHO's conservatism here's Former Reagan and Ron Paul adviser explaining how BHO is a moderate conservative: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/07/22/Barack-Obama-The-Democrats-Richard-Nixon.aspx#page1. This is the author of Reaganomics folks.
  
  
  Conservatives have been wrong about everything. The market is still running to our debt despite our long term healthcare inflation problems with medicare and medicaid and our deficit. Even with the commodity inflation headline and core inflation has remained very low. Conservatives decry the deficit yet repudiate the easiest way to close the deficit which would be to repeal the bush tax cuts and we'd have >20% GDP in revenue according to the CBO, the Tax Policy Center and other experts (at least in the short to medium term....has happened a lot in a deviation from the 18.4% average) saying that it would harm the economy even though direct cuts in appropriations spending contract adequate demand even more than tax raises. (Shouldn't do either yet but it is Conservatives who want to go "deficit" instead of "Unemployment"). Even their patron saint repudiated this position when it came time to deal with deficits. Mitch McConnel says "I don't see how raising taxes on job creators" is good in a bad economy...well neither is cutting off checks being sent to job creators! Now, I don't think that's a great idea but I'm not calling for deficit reduction in the near term!
  
  It has been nearly half a decade since Ron Paul stood on the House Floor declaring the end of the dollar and the inevitable spike in interest rates on our debt. Both could not have been more wrong. For heaven's sake people even left Gold for our treasuries yesterday. We heard all about how the crowding out of private investment but as the stimulus and QE II dissipates the job creators sit tight awash in cash as demand is ineffective and inadequate.
  
  I've never seen anything like this. Conservatives complaining endlessly about Obama's handling of the economy when it's nothing but a poor man's version of what they want. The man is the largest tax cutter in history according to the Tax Policy Center and the Tax Foundation. I mean, when Art Laffer is on CNBC saying the Debt Ceiling Crisis is wholly self inflicted, Marty Feldstein is saying that spending cuts increase the odds of a double-dip and should be avoided and Bruce Bartlett is arguing to the world that Barack Obama is a Moderate Republican...and the majority of the Republican party disagrees with all of this and continues to have such utter disdain for BHO believing him to be a socialist prince because the facts cause too much cognitive dissonance, you have to wonder what happened to what was once the party of ideas. But I dunno, I guess everybody to the left of Robert Nozick is Bloody Commie These days. Hell he'd probably even be called a Marxist since he defended the minimal state against anarchy...
• gut

  Footwedge;852613 wrote:None. That was done by Clinton when he signed into law the repeal of Glass Steagle....although Republicans wrote the law. Clinton gets blames...and rightly so...because he did not veto it. You see, I don't play the partisan hack game like most do here.

  
  The economy never truly recovered from the internet bubble. It was artificially propped-up for the better part of 7-8 years by extremely low interest rates along with massive expansion of the money supply, essentially a bunch of paper stimulus that went up in smoke once we got a few sparks from some short-circuits. The housing bubble was the biggest casualty, but hardly the only asset to suffer a deep correction and one much tougher to bounce back because of the illiquid nature of that particular asset.
  
  My biggest beef is we wasted a great opportunity to invest and upgrade in infrastructure long-term, thinking specifically of the electric grid, and I would have liked to see the govt get behind coal-to-gas tech (which will never happen for obvious reasons). But there's a couple examples of where we could have created jobs and valued-added infrastructure longer-term but instead we basically just handed-out money to anyone who could put an idea on paper, no matter how wasteful the emphasis was WAYYYYY too heavy on "shovel-ready" (itself a joke) instead of projects with good ROI.
  
  I think the market has finally gotten extremely alarmed over govt deficits (not just the US, Italy, Greece and most of Europe are being hammered). Perhaps that will prove temporary, but what we are dealing with now is a debt-overhang issue that we've seen in the past destroy stock values of individual companies only now we are seeing that over the entire broad market index. What we are seeing now - and I pray it's temporary/"irrational" fear - is the market increasing it's discount for the risk of default. That is very real and very valid, the only question is if the implied risk level is justified or not.
• believer

  

  gut;852633 wrote:Perhaps that will prove temporary, but what we are dealing with now is a debt-overhang issue that we've seen in the past destroy stock values of individual companies only now we are seeing that over the entire broad market index. What we are seeing now - and I pray it's temporary/"irrational" fear - is the market increasing it's discount for the risk of default. That is very real and very valid, the only question is if the implied risk level is justified or not.

  Maybe now we need some "irrational exuberance"?
• gut

  believer;852636 wrote:Maybe now we need some "irrational exuberance"?

  There's certainly been a reluctance to buy into the sustainability of a fragile economy. By rights, you had all the ingredients - market rebound leading a recovery, business profitability returning...and we never got the last leg with higher employment and wages.
• Footwedge

  How about a little fire there, scarecrow!!!!
  
  Scoreboard watch.....
  
  When George W Bush gave his first inaugural speech on January 20th, 2001, the DWIA read 10,587. When he limped out of office on Jan 19, 2009, the DJIA closed at 8218. His 8 year run ended with investors losing about 21%. Ouch. The performance of NASDEQ was decidedly worse...a lot worse. Without looking it up, 35% loss seems about right.
  
  Today, the DJIA is at 11444, a full 24% higher close than when Obama came to power.
  
  "But....but...but...I heard Rush say......" Lawlzy, lawlzy.
  
  Now who exactly deliberately wrecked the economy again?
  
  PS....the president has very little to do with what Wall Street does.
• Tobias Fünke

  

  Judging in-office and out-of-office dates and figures is absolutely retarded.
  
  Bush inherited an economy that was on the brink of a recession from the dot-com bubble burst, Obama inherited an economy mid-burst.
  
  I think the situations Bush and Obama inherited are somewhat similar and we should be judging them on how well they lead us out. Obama clearly thinks the American economy can rebound while he installs the liberal agenda, that much is fact.
  
  I was listening to an economist from Dartmouth give a presentation at Ohio State about the future of the economy. He showed us a ton of figured about how, ironically, the private sector is creating jobs (they created 150k last month) and that the public sector cuts on the local and state level are what the high unemployment number reflects in large part. Plus, we should all know that unemployment recedes after the recovery has begun, not precisely when.
  
  I think Obama is a massive failure, but the picture at this time is brighter than the GOP wants to admit. I think the big issue is clearly the deficit at this point and that can derail the whole damn operation. Obama will soon have to pick between ideology and pragmatism.
• jhay78

  

  BoatShoes;852631 wrote: And as to BHO's conservatism here's Former Reagan and Ron Paul adviser explaining how BHO is a moderate conservative: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/07/22/Barack-Obama-The-Democrats-Richard-Nixon.aspx#page1. This is the author of Reaganomics folks.

  
  Gotta disagree with some of his main arguments:
  

  Here are a few examples of Obama's effective conservatism:
  His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;

  Bad logic. So if his advisers thought a $10 Trillion dollar stimulus bill was necessary, and he only opted for $5 Trill, would that still make him a conservative. So he's not as whacked out as his advisers, but that doesn't make him a conservative.
  

  He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;

  Ehhh, maybe. If he had his way Gitmo would be nonexistent.
  

  He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;

  Stop it. His plan was similar to Mitt Romney's, therefore he's leaning conservative? Yikes.
  

  He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
  And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans

  I chalk that up to politics. Dealing with the other party who has a majority in Congress is different from how he acts with his own party holding majorities. Key word is "caved", meaning he didn't get what he wanted, meaning he's not really the conservative Bartlett thinks he is.
• Footwedge

  The link to Mr. Bartlett's article was greatly appreciated, Boat. What a well written article. People that engulf the diarrhea spewed by Rush Limbaugh actually beieve that Clinton was a flaming liberal. Clinton was always moderate right....even during his reign in Arkansas.
  
  Now the same crowd has annointed the "annointed one" as a flaming liberal as well...and who's goal is to "wreck the economy". Kudos to Mr. Bartlett for showing Obama for what he really is.....a war mongering, yet political moderate.
• QuakerOats

  The factual analysis is rather simple:
  
  Unemployment under obama: worse, much worse
  
  Deficits under obama: worse, much worse
  
  Debt under obama: worse, much worse
  
  Dependency under obama: worse, much worse
  
  Regulation under obama: worse, much worse
  
  Dollar under obama: worse, much worse
  
  GDP under obama: worse, much worse
  
  Gas prices under obama: worse, much worse
  
  Unemployment among blacks: worse, much worse
  
  Poverty rate: worse, much worse
  
  
  The only things he has been good at are creating debt and printing record amounts of food stamps.
  
  Change we can believe in ......
• Footwedge

  ccrunner609;852675 wrote:Bush didnt directly spend a trillion dollars to try to improve anything either

  Um...yes he did. Well, 800 billion to be exact. (September, 2008) Bailouts and stimulus packages are really one and the same. Government spending with money you don't have...and invoiced to future generations to deal with. Bush...same as Obama.
• gut

  Footwedge;852688 wrote:Bailouts and stimulus packages are really one and the same.

  
  No, they're really not. Bailouts are more of a loan, and one where the govt got almost all of its money back (more, actually, if you consider the tax revenues that would have been lost and taking on GM's pension in the PBGC if you let GM go under). The stimulus literally flushed a bunch of money down the toilet.