President Obama mentioned the daunting task ahead for him—and the rest of the country—in his Inaugural Address. And Wall Street emphasized the point, with what Reuters called a "record Inauguration Day slide."
The Dow Jones lost 332.13 points (-4%), ending under 8,000 points at 7,949.09. The S&P 500 fell 5.28% while the Nasdaq fell 5.78%. Bloomberg News reports, "U.S. financial losses from the credit crisis may reach $3.6 trillion, according to New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini, who predicted last year’s economic and stock-market meltdowns."
Roubini said, “If that’s true, it means the U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent because it starts with a capital of $1.4 trillion. This is a systemic banking crisis.”





When you promise to raise the capital gains tax, don't be surprized when people pull their capital out of the markets and start to hide it.
Marxism doesn't work.
Looks like Capitalism laid a big goose egg here.
Capitalism is the worst economic system invented....except for all the others. - Churchill
Even a capitalist economy needs to be managed properly. It doesn't help when your leaders sell out your manufacturing base to China and insist on buying oil from the middle east instead of domestically.
Ides, you'll be eating your words in 3 years when everyone in America has a gold toilet.
Ides, you really are an idiot.This market is being dragged down by the ongoing financial collapse worldwide that is now claiming some of the largest banks in England and is driving Citigroup towards nationalization or bankruptcy and the Bank of america towards technical insolvency. The markets were closed yesterday due to MLK's birthday but that holiday was not observed in Europe and Asia where the markets are being hammered by an endless string of bad news. Telling a broke nation that they are eating out of the garbage because of capital gains taxes is like telling a homeless guy that his property taxes will go up if he doesn't vote republican. Out of touch, out of ideas, and out of power. Anything else, Republican?
Ides is so happy a relative liberal is in the White House - now he can blame every bit of pain for the next several years on the liberals, Democrats, etc.
Since they now hold the White House and both houses of Congress for the last two years, I would think they should be held accountable for once. The media are certainly too busy smooching Obama's butt to point out any democrat failures.
(sigh)
Apparently, I.O.M. is still sulking that President Obama won...
Democrats and their sycophants sure know how how to dish out the criticism and abuse but can't take it very well.
Free speech, it's not just for left wingers.
Hardly. No one is denying you your Free Speech and despite your apparent delusions: you certainly know it.
You want to continue to Sulk about President Obama's Win, Hey, knock yourself out.
He's not a "Socialist" or a "Marxist" despite your nonsensical rantings.
I'm an Obama supporter but I'm going to agree with Ides on this. To try to dismiss the idea that today's market numbers has nothing to do with Obama being sworn in would be silly. Of course people that invest a lot of money are worried with a Democratic president.
And I also agree that the Dems have had control of both houses for 2 YEARS...it's time to stop blaming the Republicans/Bush for everything. These guys have been helping the ship sink for a while now.
Thanks for the refreshing even handedness. I sure have given the GOP hell when I thought they deserved it over the years on immigration, and rampant spending and other issues. This bail-out fiasco is a bipartisan disgrace for sure. I may have voted McCain this time but only while holding my nose.
is this like whenever steve jobs has blood in his stool, apple stock drops?
the market is full of voodoo anyway, it's like Vegas in manhattan. some win, some lose but lately we all lose.
I still blame the republicans, though.
Candidate Obama on the campaign trail: "Yes, we can."
President Obama in his inaugural address: "No, we can't"
And people are confused by the market dropping?
It is pretty dumb to attribute market movement to the Inauguration. Obviously, people who were disturbed about Obama's becoming president would have started selling last November and would have fully worked out their financial anxieties in a week or two. True, there might be a few people for whom the fact that a Democrat was elected two months ago will be news, but there are not going to be enough of them to affect the market.
If you're worried about the financial news of the future, here it is: for the time being, Obama will continue the Bush plan of creating money and giving it to rich people. When this doesn't work, he will create more money and give it to middle-class people. These two moves will lead to rapid inflation, which will force interest rates up. The U.S. will then be functionally bankrupt because it won't be able to pay the interest or borrow more money. Times will become very interesting -- but this will take a year or two. Meanwhile stock prices should take a nice ride up, and then down, or maybe not down because the dollar will be so fluffy it will float in air. But before that you wise guys will have sold out and bought gold bricks which you will hide under the bed along with the AK-47.
Idiotic to say the inauguration had anything to do with the drop. What, didn't the market know we elected a new president a couple months ago? Expected a last minute change of mind at 9 am and we would get someone else? The market was already down before the speech and would have done the same crap had it just been any other day. It isn't like the market wasn't having 300 point swings at any other point in the last 6 months. The economy sucks, its getting worse, will continue most likely until we have another depression, and will continue to suck for the another 5-10 years after that because it will take that long to recover what the damned greedy bankers and brokers have done for the past 10 years with zero regulation. Whoever is to blame for all that isn't in office anymore - George, Bill, Ronald, whoever, so the point is moot. Repair isn't going to come anytime soon whether it would have been another reugnican or democrat. Houses have to fall to affordability for the average Joe, even in Manhattan, so that they can actually pay back their mortgage without having to have a million dollar bonus, and the credit wreck that happened because of the easy money no job required fiasco in housing and everything else that got us to this point isn't going to be fixed by tomorrow. So blame it all on whomever you want, but its not one person's fault, and certainly had nothing to do with Obama since he wasn't even in power when this all began.
Markets have always reacted to day to day events.
No. Markets react to unexpected events, like terrorist attacks. Unless a ton of investors made bets that Obama wouldn't live to see inauguration day, all the trading done based on the fact that he was becoming president was done shortly after the election, 2 1/2 months ago.
Gynx Starry lol I think we hit send at the same time. You just went into very good detail. I mostly just ranted. :-)
For Ides on Accountability and Hypocrisy
Yes Ides, Obama and the Democrats should be held accountable for things they have control over. We can do a nice evaluation of that a few years out from that.
But it's straight up hypocrisy (or stupidity) to blame the market drop yesterday on that group. It's part of the ongoing financial collapse that happened on Bush's watch. So if you want to not be hypocrite, place blame where blame is due.
Or keep being yourself and saying nonsense.