January 21, 2008
World Financial Markets Fall Over U.S. Worries
The U.S. financial markets may have been closed due to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance, but stock markets around the world tumbled as worries over the U.S. economy took hold. Johan Stein, who manages about $14 billion at an asset management firm in Stockholm told Bloomberg, "It's the worst I've ever seen. The financial system is in terrible shape, and no one knows where this will end.''
Many investors are doubtful that President Bush's proposed growth package will help and many do believe a "recession is widespread". The NY Tmes also notes how some international economies which thought they were insulated from the U.S. woes are feeling otherwise, plus how some analysts are "beginning to make comparisons to Japan’s long stagnation of the 1990s."
Expect the stock market to decline a lot tomorrow. Morgan Stanley has been advising clients to "stay in cash"; according to Marketwatch, the firm said, "Our themes continue to be: patience, earnings recession, U.S. recession spreading global, bear market regime, don't be lured into value stocks as most are likely to be value traps, much more monetary easing. We expect flat but volatile markets just as in the 1989-92 period -- a real whipsaw environment for the market."
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When I get my refund check, I'm going to cash it and stuff it under my mattress. Take THAT President Bush! Your Growth Package has been rendered useless!
heh, i've been out of the market for a while now. however, i'm glad i put a little bit of money into an ultrashort on the djia. should be making myself a tidy little profit tomorrow...
I am currently short everything: Mom, apple pie, representative democracy, two parent families, and hope. I am going to plow my earnings into a diversified portfolio of canned food, shotgun shells, and radio batteries.
price of Lead will rise.
that's either good or bad.
Just a victim myself of the dismal exchange rate after having used Euros for the past two weeks (no wonder Europeans and other foreigners go apeshit when visiting here)...this may be a simple question, but why can't our administration and whichever financial professionals we count on to keep our econony afloat get it right?
From someone uneducated about such matters as myself, I see all these financial people living in luxury apartments, and expensing booze and strippers yet with such amenities can't seem to do their jobs properly. I barely tolerate these people in the hopes that I can maybe open a cd or invest my modest savings, or get a decent exchange rate during my rare international vacations. So, WTF??
To clarify, I think the latter paragraph above was in response to two major recent bank plunges, both of which declared there would be no job losses despite all the tomfoolery that got them in trouble in the first place. Generally it seems to me that when a company suffers, there are mass layoffs.
it's usually not the one's making >100k who's getting laid off. yes, I know that's a big generalization.
shovel, there have been massive layoffs at Citi (near 20K I think), Merrill, Bear Stearns (10% of the workforce), and there will be more. And, to correct a misconception, the past fifty years have been unprecedented in human history. Life for large sections of the population is relatively easy, food is plentiful, and you, personally, seem to be jet-setting around the world. For a little perspective, ask the oldest member of your family what they got for Christmas or its equivalent non-Christian holiday when they were young. My father ( a baby boomer) received merichino cherries and sweetened condensed milk till he was 16, and thereafter got work clothes. Keep that in mind the next time you moan about the exchange rate you get whilst in the euro zone. Bankers do live the high life, and it is distasteful. However, they know what you seem to be blissfully unaware of: good times only last so long, and winter will be longer than you think.
Isn't the US economy due for a recession anyway? Like the old saying goes what goes up must come down.
The biggest problem now is everyone in this country wants to be millionaire and will do whatever it takes to get there. GREED.GREED.GREED.
Jet setting? Hardly. I rarely get a vacation, and saved a long time for this one (which is why the exchange rate is more troubling). Even though it's rare, seeing other parts of the world is important to me. I think when traveling takes a low priority to HDTVs and SUVs (given a choice), people have limited perspective, and candidates like Dubya are elected into office. Twice.
Why would you compare the present to 50 years ago? How about asking the previous generation what they received in comparison BEYOND their teen years? Oh right, they received job security with benefits and not the new standard, permalancing. Children are, in theory, supposed to have the opportunity to do at least as well, provided they put in the work. If you want to shame people into remembering the old days, how about instead putting the energy into feeling shame that our so-called first world country can't even get their shit together? You'd think they'd have learned a thing or two since the Great Depression.
I guess I'm an idiot if I choose not to squander my money on the "high life" since I guess we don't have to be concerned about what comes later. Maybe your dad can spot me some cherries.
i think the point is that quite a few people would make the case that Americans have been living above their means for decades. And that Americans and Westerners use more of the world's resources relative to their population. It is not logical to assume that out standard of living is always going to increase if the emerging economies are going to aspire to the same lifestyle as Western nations and if we hope to preserve the environment. But keep whining about how the dollar is crimping your lifestyle.
Please, everyone, panic, and sell everything you own!! All stocks, all bonds, EVERYTHING!! I need to profit off of the back of the amateurs.....
No, shovel, you're an idiot because you believe that you are entitled to a high standard of living. Further, you believe that someone else is ultimately responsible for your financial condition, some straw man whom you can blame when things go badly. I compare 50 years ago to today precisely for the fifty years in between. The rest of the developed world was world was decimated by a war that involved saturation bombing of commercial and industrial centers. Spared only were those insulated from the conflict by two very strategically placed oceans. In the intervening years we have come to expect travel, HDTVs, and McMansions. The difference between bankers and you, the consumer, is that when they're out playing Dorian Grey their 401Ks are fully funded. Is yours?
Who said anything about expecting my standard of living to increase, or anything else for that matter? When you have a population working their collective fingers to the bone, it's hardly constructive to admonish them about the West living beyond their means. Most of us are trying to scrape by and build lives for ourselves. So yeah, if we do get the opportunity to get out of the country on the rare occasion, we might bitch about the exchange rate. Apparently, wanting to fully enjoy the fruits of our labor is part of a bad attitude, even when we see the same people from abroad barely able to carry all the packages they have acquired on their visits here, since their currency goes infinitely further.
Any expectations of increased wealth is the general hope of parents regarding their children's futures. I'm just wondering why the proper people aren't being held fully accountable for their share of the situation, when the others will be suffering more.
It seems to me the only "idiots" here are those with the inexplicable hard-on for defending those who did get us into this mess; you can't run a global economy on the finance sector alone. Who will serve you burgers and fries, or fold your tighty-whiteys, or pick your cherries?