Thursday was not good; what will Friday bring? The Times recaps the day's events:
As a new bout of fear gripped the financial markets, stocks fell sharply again on Thursday, continuing a months-long plunge that has wiped out the gains of the last decade.The credit markets seized up as confidence in the nation's financial system ebbed and people rushed to put money in Treasuries, the safest of investments. Some markets are now back to where they were before Congress approved the $700 billion financial rescue in October.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 445 points, or 5.6 percent. The broad market sank to its lowest level since 1997 -- before the dot-com boom, the Nasdaq market bust and the ensuing bull market that drove stocks to record heights.
With Thursday's rout, $8.3 trillion in stock market wealth has been erased in the last 13 months.
And:
"Where the credit markets are trading, it's all but implying a 1929 scenario," said Joe Balestrino, fixed income strategist at Federated Investors, who added that he thought prices had fallen too far in many cases.
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Erasmus, you missed the point. There simply isn't a majority in the country that supports Baldy's economic world view. And without support the rest is irrelevant.
Sorry. The spam filter scrubbed my name from the 10:40 AM post.
Baldy:
I am not defeated; I am pessimistic. In the present condition, I believe that is rational.
Perhaps my point was unclear. In any case you did not address it. You recommended that conservatives should take this moment to descend upon Washington and demand, more or less, the repeal of the progressive agenda. I see a few obvious downsides, and a truly miniscule possibility of success. What you describe is barely civilization, and certainly not conservative.
In addition, the repeal of the progressive agenda will not stop what is coming, because the progressive agenda is not what caused this. You write that we are not yet impoverished. I contend that we do not yet know how impoverished we are, and that the recent troubles are due to our finally getting a peek behind the curtain.
The progressive agenda, and the response of Washington, may prolong the present downturn, but you would have to be ignorant of economic history to pretend that de-regulation and right-wing economics does not create the boom-and-bust cycle. During the bust, economic populism is a virtual certainty.
If you think that your opportunistic march on Washington will not be met in far greater numbers by laid-off auto-workers clamoring for government to do something, you are simply wrong. There is a good reason why our government works the way it does, and that is to prevent the situation you hope to create. Far, far better to have a prolonged depression under a reasonable amount of law and order, than government by riot.
Yours is mere demagoguery, and no part of a conservative solution. Your policies may be sound, but your preferred methods are very dangerous.
Warm regards,
Adam
EPA madness... GONE
God forbid my neighbor be unable to operate an independent car repair business because EPA regulations won't let him drain used motor oil, gasoline, antifreeze, transmission fluid, and other assorted nasty chemicals and heavy metals onto the ground of his property.
DOWN WITH THAT HORRIBLE EPA!
Why are we not gathering on the lawn of the White House, demanding that the shackles of federal idiocy be loosened? Why are us conservatives not preparing to have a multi-million march on DC absolutely DEMANDING that the morass of mass stupidity we've been saddled with as far as industry mandates, regulation, enviromental gross stupidity, tax stupidity, etc, be repealed AT ONCE????
How about: because conservatives are already regarded as gorged parasites on the national wealth and wellbeing?
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