Dow Plunges as Economic Fears Remain

Well, that's all settled. Next issue.

You boys not being able to play nice is yet another example of the endemic "us vs them" mentality in this country right now... it's so tiring. Not to sound all Rodney King, but honestly, what the eff? You are (presumably) grown-ass (presumably) men, can't we act like adults?

"Us vs. them" is a part of it, but there's more to it than that. It's also about uninformed people who have far more ax to grind than informed perspective to offer trying to dominate the debate. That's how some giant percentage of right-wingers still believe the president wasn't born in the U.S. That's how a bunch of left-wingers get so spun-up in their hatred of George W. Bush that they subscribe to the "Truther" movement.

So yeah, in a way I suppose it is "us vs. them". It's just that the "them" might not be who you meant in your comment. And I, for one, am tired of watching people pretend that the "them" in this situation is as deserving of a place in intelligent debate as anyone else. They're not, and personally, I'm inclined to point it out whenever I see it.

It is Us vs Them. It's just that who "us" and "them" are changes constantly. I don't mean (only) GOP vs Democrat or liberal vs conservative. I mean this constant division of society into fractious groups who do nothing but snipe at each other. Informed vs uninformed. Men vs women. Tea party vs moderate Republicans. North vs South. Etc., etc.

I agree that there seem to be a lot of misinformed or uninformed people around but just slapping them with a label and dismissing them (or arguing endlessly) does nothing to help that problem -- it just perpetuates "us vs them".

Look, I wish they'd choose to be better informed before vomiting their ignorant screeds into otherwise intelligent conversations. Or I wish that they'd at least sit on the sidelines and listen to the debate, and use it as an opportunity to find questions that need answering. Or I wish they'd just... go away. But they haven't.

Trying to politely point out that their perspective is either entirely baseless in fact or entirely based in factual falsehoods doesn't work. Trying to demonstrate the contradictions, hypocrisies, and utter incoherence of their ignorant points doesn't work, no matter how obvious they are. If anything, trying to actually meaningfully engage them seems to tend to just make them more convinced of whatever nonsense it is they're spewing in the worst case, or encourages them to wrap you up in some endless, nonsensical dance of childish, inane bullshit. It's just a waste of time and effort and itself just serves to up the volume of their idiocy.

That doesn't leave many options. So, I figure, just shame 'em. Hopefully, maybe someone similarly inclined will watch them being berated, realize that outside whatever echo chamber they're used to screaming in, people won't countenance their shrill, autonomic, demagogic dogma recitation, and think twice about trying to pollute otherwise informed dialogue. It's ugly and impolitic and, itself, almost as bad as the crap they pull, but these people need to know that their act won't fly. If they think even for a moment that silence equals even the tiniest bit of assent, that's a notion of which they need to be quite thoroughly disabused.

I suspect you may disagree, and I can understand the sentiment. But that's where I'm coming from.

I do disagree. I do understand your sentiment, as well, but I wish that this country was in a place where we didn't stoop to each other's levels. Wishful thinking I guess, but at least we as individuals can do our part to be more inclusive and less divisive.

I wish that too. But you can only give a person so many opportunities to have an adult debate, only to have them call you some variation on the theme of "racist, fascist, plunderer, corrupt, pedophile, rapist, etc." before it's time to make sure everybody knows exactly the kind of person they're dealing with.

Sure, but do you really expect that from people calling themselves "ChicagoD," "BlueFairlaine," "Navin," and "ReverendSlappy" are going to lead us to the paradise of inclusion? This isn't real life. This is a diversion.

I think it's dangerous to assume that the internet is not real life. I mean, I know what you're saying, but this (the internet) is a tool that's fully integrated into my real life. I know most people are hiding behind fake names, and I was posting under a username previous to the disqus switchover, but ... it's still real. It should be treated as such.

I know, I know, there I go again...

Krugman agrees:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08...

Another student activist?

Yes. Because Krugman's erudite variation of the "the stimulus didn't include enough direct spending" argument is the exact same as your sniveling blah blah blah the cabal of "Obama and his Wall St. corrupt advisers, Geithner, Summers, Sperling etc." blew up the economy blah blah blah bullshit. Mmmhmm.

You're favorably comparing yourself and your moronic nonsense to Krugman, and I'm guilty of "delusional narcissism"? Riiiiiight.

Idiot.

So what we've learned:  Underwater  homeowners are responsible for crashing the economy, while the elite financial sector that controls the economy (and the White House) was just playing the game?  Some twisted "don't hate the playa", fealty to the elite type trip?  Or simple delusional narcissism?  Someday we'll all be that rich too?  Maybe?

Reminds me of a saying regarding this kind of ingrained defense of tyrants:

The slave loves his master, but the master despises his slave.

A question you'll never think through: How did these underwater homeowners get underwater? Fix it and flip it, baby.

Or how about this mantra of the millennium: A home isn't a place to live, it's an investment, and if you leave your equity in your home you're missing out. Take out a home equity loan, dump it into the stock market (or buy an SUV and a Caribbean cruise) and watch the dough roll in.

Or maybe: Credit is as cheap and easy as it's ever been, and real estate never loses value, so if you don't buy this million-dollar house in Boca Raton, you'll miss the ride!

These sentiments weren't invented by some IMF goon in the break between sexual assaults of hotel staff. The idea largely came from soccer moms in the yellow jackets they got when they passed their real estate exams, and from the heavyset guys with cheap ties sitting in mini-mall brokerage firms in places like Davenport, Iowa, and they were wholeheartedly embraced by a middle class hungry to park jet skis in the driveways of their 20,000-square-foot homes made of cheap brick.

This. One can blame The Smartest Guys In The Room for doing what they basically always do: finding a novel way to turn a bubble into a catastrophe. But it's the height of ignorance to claim that a lot of middle class power buyers aren't at least almost as big a part of the equation.

The simple reality is that the one phenomenon can't exist without the other. The "Wall Street villains" don't have any bad debt to repackage and con people into buying unless there are a lot of middle class consumers out there willing to giddily assume debt they can't afford. And middle class consumers can't giddily assume debt they can't afford without some "Wall Street villain" being ready to sell it to them. Everyone's accountable. Everyone's to blame.

That doesn't make for a good comic book, but it's the way it is.

Life is much simpler to understand when one can break it down into "this is the Good Guy, and that's the Bad Guy" and that's why so many try to frame every single issue as some epic Manichean struggle. One can find simple answers to complicated problems when there's someone on whom to pin all the blame. 

But of course, it's only simple people who prefer simple answers.

Just to repeat: At least you honestly try Blue, some people here won't even attempt to argue in good faith.

Doctor heal thyself.

We're sorry. The delay you're experiencing with the Navin_Johnson Idiotic Comment 3000 system is due to a lack of interest in substantive debate, no factual familiarity with the events being discussed, zero expertise in the topic at hand, and the abject dearth of general intellect.

Please stand by while the system retrieves blog posts and platitudes from FireDogLake, DailyKos, and other dogma repositories. We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience. We hope to shortly be serving you the same Navin_Johnson brand idiocy you've come to know and expect.

That's especially funny as you named sites that I have never really visited at all.  Firedoglake, I've heard of but never even seen.  I'd be happy to own up to it if it was true.  I'm sure they could only be less creepy than the places you probably lurk at.

#stormfront #sailorstud  #boatrape

#stormfront #sailorstud  #boatrape

Stay classy, idiot.

All your "Seagram's Ice" couldn't cajole the teens to get on your yacht huh?

#jimmybuffettplaying #cubsgolfvisor  #parentstaughthemwell

All your "Seagram's Ice" couldn't cajole the teens to get on your yacht huh?

#jimmybuffettplaying #cubsgolfvisor  #parentstaughthemwell

Like I said, keep proving my point, idiot.

Not tonight thankfully! Beware of idle rich parrotheads bearing gifts.

A better question:  Maybe you two can explain how Obama's current triangulation (no revenues, outrageous military spending, and cuts that hurt the actual economic drivers of the economy: the real citizens) will fix this ever crashing economy? Quantitative easing? Buy some more bad Wall St. debt vs. helping citizens? Too bad he chose Wall St. over the consumers then too....

You miss my point. Obama's current triangulation won't fix anything. The problem's not fixable.

I'll return the question, though. What, in your estimation, will fix this ever-crashing economy?

People like Navin aren't interested in actually fixing things and discussing detailed means for doing so. They're just interested in blaming their bogeymen and scapegoats and bitching like little children. And the only real possible reasons for that are that they're just not very bright, or they're cowards. Or both.

This exchange right here, in which you at least tried to have a substantive debate and Navin, true to form, just danced around it with his typically naive and ignorant platitudes, is perfectly demonstrative of that.

How would you fix things slappy?  I answered Blue's questions.  Actual substantive stimulus, real progressive tax revenues etc.  Blue said there's nothing that can and should be done.  As I was saying earlier, you can't argue a point in good faith, so you just come in and make insults, and *you* always are the one take things in that direction *first*.  You talk and talk and talk, but you *never* actually dispute anything I say in any substantive way.  Daddy's money can buy sailboats, but not common sense eh?   Not one of you has been able to dispute what I've said about Obama in any kind of meaningful way.

How would you fix things slappy?

Anyone reading this can click my profile or yours and go back and see how much time I and others have utterly wasted trying to have substantive conversations with you. And in the course of those conversations, the only reasonable conclusion that one can reach is that you're too childish, too angry, too mindlessly indoctrinated, too cowardly, or just plain too stupid -- or all of the above -- to be worth the time of people like me and a number of others. All of that is beautifully encapsulated right here: 

Daddy's money can buy sailboats, but not common sense eh?

Idiot.

Anyone reading this can click my profile or yours and go back and see how much time I and others have utterly wasted ...

I think you guys are literally keeping Chicagoist afloat. Without these long arguments, there'd only be about five or six comments a week on this blog.

so apparently angry at the prospect of a moderately successful person thinking you're stupid (which I do)

What started off as a totally over the top joke at your expense, has ended up revealing a true case of some delusional narcissism.  

Yeah. The fact that I grew up in pretty modest circumstances, have worked very hard, have achieved a modicum of professional success yielding a very middle middle class lifestyle, and own an old, inexpensive sailboat all adds up to "delusional narcissism". Mmmhmm.

Idiot.

Translation:  shucks, I don't know....

Um, no. Translation: You're an idiot.

Oh, fair dues!

That's quite a cop out. 

I'll answer yours in very basic way:  Real spending on the real economy and increasing taxes on the wealthy to the levels they were when we were most prosperous.

If facing up to a painful reality is a cop-out, then I admit to copping out.

I'm with you on increasing taxes on the wealthy, though that doesn't really address the underlying problem.

Real spending on a real economy, though. Now there's a nifty plan, with words even Sarah Palin can understand. Care to enlighten us with something that means something? Something concrete?

Real stimulus on government works, not banker/tax-cut stimulus.

So if you think nothing's to be done, what are your plans for the future?  Slow grind to poverty?  Getting guns? Rural compound? Why even vote?

Real stimulus on government works, ...

Another fine Palinism. But what does it mean? What is "real stimulus"? How does this phrase that trips off the tongue as easily as "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" translate into a return to 4% unemployment? Spell it out.

Real stimulus on government works, not banker/tax-cut stimulus.

You betcha!

::rolls eyes::

These are the acts of a dude who seriously doesn't know a thing about the economic crisis.  I mean really, you can't even add anything can you?  You honestly don't even understand what we're talking about do you?

BTW, what time does the double feature aboard your yacht start?

#birthofanation #wallstreet

Keep making my point for me, idiot.

Michael Hudson explains the sham economy:

The jobless recovery

We call that a depression – in this case, caused mainly by debt
deflation. Just because the stock market is being inflated by the
Federal Reserve doesn’t mean that the economy itself is growing. It’s
shrinking – from a combination of families and businesses having to pay
off debts rather than spend their income on goods and services, and the
government’s shift of taxes off finance, insurance and real estate
(FIRE) onto labor and industry.

The economy is getting worse and worse – deeper negative equity
(mortgage debts in excess of property prices), shrinking markets, stores
going out of business, rising defaults and foreclosures, job layoffs –
with new graduates having to pay student loans but not having a job.

That’s why the stock market is down 160 points today. The financial
sector realizes that the game is over. From America to Ireland, Greece
and the rest of Europe, financial interests are insisting that
governments take responsibility for paying off the bad bank debts to
their bondholders and other bankers in cross-deals and gambles on
derivatives that have gone bad. The problem is that these banks have
made bad real estate loans and other gambles. In Ireland, the collateral
backing these loans is only about 20 percent of the face value of the
mortgages.

Somebody has to lose when loans go bad. In this case, it is
taxpayers. Governments have taken these bad loans onto their own balance
sheet, so that bondholders and big creditors to these banks (typically
foreigners) would not lose. But it is very expensive for governments to
take on obligations to pay bad debts – that is, negative equity where
the debt is higher than the collateral assets are worth. So now, having
spent enormous sums to make sure that bankers and bondholders don’t lose
a penny, governments are trying to balance their budgets by cutting off
spending throughout the “real” economy. In other words, governments
have sacrificed the economy so that the financial sector won’t take a
loss. And even worse, the governments have left the bad real estate
debts, personal debts, education debts and credit card debts on the
books. So the “real” economy is being shrunk by debt deflation, while
tax policy is being steered to benefit the financial sector.

http://michael-hudson.com/2011...

Well, I don't know why this is a shock to anyone. One, you can't take the world's largest economy to the brink of default for no reason other than because you feel like it and not expect people to get skittish. It's kind of like going on a high-speed police chase joyride, getting away with it and then being surprised when your girlfriend gets nervous about getting in the car with you again.

Two, we live in an era when news that Warren Buffet might sneeze or that the Emir of Abu Dhabi has a head cold can cause a 300-point plunge. A 300-point plunge is nothing. It'll jump 500 points tomorrow.

Meanwhile, another result of all the uncertainty is that oil has dropped from over a hundred bucks a barrel to $87. Wonder if Fox will give Obama credit for that?

(To be clear, it'd be a silly thing to give anyone credit for, but it you blame a guy for causing bad stuff he didn't cause, you should credit him for causing good stuff he didn't cause.)

Obama and his Wall St. corrupt advisers, Geithner, Summers, Sperling etc. are certainly due much credit, along with the ECB, IMF and the rest of the world's financial elite.

If you want to list everybody due much credit for the current financial situation, you have to list ... um ... everybody. We are in the midst of the inevitable end-game of the path we started down and willingly followed for at least 40 years.

In that case you *really* have to blame Obama for continuing and accelerating such poor neoliberal economic policy.

People have not 'willingly' followed anything, they've had predatory economic policies forced on them.

If willingly means that we haven't taken to the streets like the citizens of Greece, than you're right about that.

Yes, the poor, stupid, innocent little people who didn't have wise men such as you to protect them. Greed is a trait exclusive to the wealthy and powerful, I guess.

As for Obama, he came into the game way too late to have any real effect, good or bad. He might have been able to slow it down, but we're on the course we're on, and we won't be the first species to follow our instincts until it kills us.

But we've had this conversation before. 

Translation:  "Leave Barry aloooooooneee!!!!!"

He's continued the course we're on right down to hiring the very same Wall St. Clinton/Bush era advisers:  Bailouts with no strings or fraud convictions, tax cuts for the wealthy, toothless, window dressing "stimulus", putting cuts on the table for vital programs, making citizens pay the cost for the elite financial sector's bad investments,  and so on.

Yes, the poor, stupid, innocent little people who didn't have wise men such as you to protect them.

Yes the same majority that said:  End tax cuts to the wealthy.
Obama gives in to the wealthy.

The same majority that said: Raise revenues through the extremely wealthy, no by dismantling our government programs.
Obama once again gives in to his wealthy narrow interests instead of governing for the larger citizenry that voted for him.

So much for "willingly"..

Mr. Obama has bought this position. To save bondholders and speculators
from taking losses on their bad bets, consumers and the rest of the
“real economy” needs to pay. They have to pay via higher Social Security
taxes and other regressive tax policies, instead of making the higher
brackets pay as occurs under progressive taxation. Mr. Obama is willing
to cut back Medicare. We can’t charge the pharmaceutical companies by
bargaining with them for bulk discounts as Canada’s government does. We
have to let them set the prices with no argument – as if this is the
“free market.” So Mr. Obama has made an accommodation with the
Republicans to pursue what really are Bush Administration policies, and
now even Tea Party policies.

Translation: Blah de blah de blah ... see text from any one of a dozen random comments six months or two or five years ago, and attach something in italics.

Here's my summary of the problem, which isn't so complicated that you need a bunch of international acronyms. Postwar boom, everybody has money and is happy for a generation because we can make stuff and sell it to Europe. Then some executive realizes it costs 37 cents to make a Chevy Nova in Mexico. Car factory people grumble, but the rest of the nation doesn't really care, because that means they can get a Nova cheap, and they don't want their kids working in some smelly factory, anyway. Pretty soon, all the industries are doing that, and you start getting talk of making a more educated workforce so that all the grease monkeys can work on the 75th floor of the Sears Tower. And that's all fine and good, but the 75th floor of the Sears Tower only has so much space, and the computers can do more and more of the work, so you have to invent jobs for people on other floors of other buildings. So you come up with all this bureaucratic crap that doesn't mean anything and go with that for a while.

Along about 1990, people start realizing that paying people for bureaucratic crap that doesn't mean anything doesn't bring in nearly as much cash as making cars and widgets, but all the cars and widgets are made in Mexico for 37 cents, and there's no getting that genie back. If people make less, they buy less, so in order to get people to make more, you give them "free" money that they have to pay back. Someday. Maybe, unless they take out a loan to cover the loan. And people, being stupid, take the free money. They're happy to have it, and they build their lives around it, buy giant houses and giant cars made in Mexico and all kinds of Wal-Mart crap they can get really cheap. You can suddenly get a Chinese blender made of lead for $10, and who doesn't want a $10 lead blender? Can't afford a $10 lead blender? Buy it on credit!

See, here's where we'll always part ways. You ignore all the millions upon millions of people who looked at all this mess, who believed the idiots and thought it would last forever, and who went ahead with third third and fourth mortgages and home equity loans and the stacks of credit cards fifty feet thick. You say these people were victims. I say these people were humans, and that they were simply following the very human instinct to eat as much and horde as much as they possibly could. They were gaming the system as much as any executive from any international acronym, only unlike the executives they numbered in the hundreds of millions.

But hey, it doesn't matter. It's 4:50 on a Thursday afternoon, and I have a Taiwanese bike to ride home.

lmfao. 

Here's my summary of the problem, which isn't so complicated that you need a bunch of international acronyms.

Yeah, is the IMF and ECB important or something?  Don't they have something to do with debt and countries or something?,,,,,,,,, wow.

Anyway, your description of the decline of labor, the increase of "free trade", and financial industry deregulation is pretty funny in it's weird, allegoric, kind of way.  It would take hours to describe how wrong it is, and what it leaves out, besides the fact that it lacks even a mention of actual policy.  Policy that has nothing to do with consumers.  At least you honestly try Blue, some people here won't even attempt to argue in good faith.

Anyway, I do find your blaming of consumers for the financial crisis pretty rotten, as do many, I'm sure.  You talk about "gaming the system", but people were just working within the system that has been deregulated to take advantage of them.  They didn't distort it, they didn't create the insane swaps, and debt instruments, and they didn't set up the economy for failure.

Consumers?  Uh no.  This is a bit more simple, and it's even in an annoying broadway style song"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Good morning, love. I'll be busy most of the day, so don't expect a lot of back-and-forth.

I would expect you to lyfao at my weird allegory, because that's what you do. Your threshold for humor is unusually low. Of course my summary leaves out stuff. That's what makes it summary. But your world view involves a massive collection of little, arcane stuff that ultimately cancels itself out and doesn't make much difference on the scale of decades. Most policy of the postwar era boils down to "Let's stop making stuff and come up with some stupid way of inventing money from air instead," and that same motivation has played on all levels, from the Impossible Missions Force all the way down to the guy at the buy-here/pay-here car lot.

Your problem is that you think too short term. You look at the world in terms of the last few years, the last administration or two, and because of this you don't see the long-term progression. You talk of "insane swaps and debt instruments" as if these are what brought about the downfall. And sure, these were the immediate trigger, but if it hadn't been those, it would have been something. These instruments are the manifestation of the philosophy we've all bought into, every one of us. Consider why these things came into being. First, we generated wealth through making stuff. Then we generated wealth through borrowing stuff. Then when we had borrowed as much as we could and the bills came due, we generated wealth through borrowing on the borrowing. These insane instruments were the inevitable outcome of an insane system. If these insane instruments hadn't been invented, the economy would have collapsed a decade or more ago. (And yes, we would have been better for it.)

And here's the surprising revelation! When it comes down to it, I'm more radical than you are. You, the great socialist-communist-Neowhateverist, still believe that while parts of the capitalist system are broken, proper regulation can still fix it. I believe the capitalist system was fucked from the start. Any capitalist economy has a finite lifespan. In the industrial era, that's worked out to about 80 years. Sooner or later, this is where we always end up.

Uh, no sorry you're a bore.  You still blame regular citizens for deregulation and complex debt instruments.  You talk in movie cliches:  "socialist"  "communist" when I'm none of those.  You  feel like you can undermine what I'm saying by *jokingly* calling me a "communist" or a "socialist" and it's really pathetic.  It speaks volumes to how you have little faith in your own views, so insecure that you have to engage in a '50s style "red" attack.  Pathetic.  

I have to disagree with one of the main thrusts of your point. 

The "we used to make stuff and now we don't" is a common argument, but just isn't really accurate. Except for some temporary declines during wider recessions, manufacturing has, by every empirical measure (except one... I'll address that below), continually increased in real terms. In fact, up until the most recent recession, the manufacturing sector was setting real dollar records in revenue, profits, output, ROI, exports, etc. year upon year upon year. It's a common misconception, perpetuated by more than a few hyperbolists in Washington and elsewhere, who'd like to see government drop some incentives on the sector. And it's helped along in the public mind by the accumulation of cheap Chinese imported products all over retail stores everywhere. But in the wider view, it's just not really true: we make a whole helluva lot in this country -- and most of it is high-value stuff like airplanes, pharmaceuticals/biotech, robotics, etc. In fact, the United States is the world's biggest single value-add manufacturer... I could look up the numbers, but in terms of total manufactured value, at least as of the most recent pre-recession data, we rank at the top, followed by China -- and we output almost one and a half times of the world's manufacturing value-add that they do. I want to say the United States outputs something like 22% of the world's manufacturing value, to China's 15%.

(Attached are some charts just summarizing what I'm talking about.)

Now, it is true that as a share of US GDP, manufacturing peaked sometime in the early 50s. But that's the result of comparatively huge growth in other sectors, not a decline in manufacturing. But excluding this and other recessions, the reality is that in real terms, manufacturing output just keeps on growing.

Where things get dicier, and what does help your point a little, is that while manufacturing output has increased continuously, manufacturing employment has dropped every year since the late 70's. But that's attributable mostly to increased productivity -- not, in my opinion, some shift towards focusing on "some stupid way of inventing money from air instead". And it's occurring in every economy around the world, not just ours.

So your point, on its surface, is a compelling one. But it's based on some very, very flawed assumptions.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EvJi...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ae-A...

Yes. This. Three things perpetuate this myth: (1) the media; (2) consumer goods (i.e. what you  buy at Target or Wal-Mart) are rarely made in the US, and (3) employment is WAY down. I have been to many factories in which there are only four or five people on the manufacturing floor. Just seeing an array of welding robots is shocking, and every one represents at LEAST one job, and in many cases more.

"At least you honestly try Blue, some people here won't even attempt to argue in good faith."

Doctor, heal thyself.

I wasn't really talking about you either tbh.

I, for one, was unable to identify any *issues* when I was preapproved for a mortgage that was four times my annual salary and would have generated a monthly payment that I could have bought a medium sized car with. Seemed like everything was legit to me.

You think that the people that took out your outrageous loan are:

a) responsible for the economic crisis?
b) not operating in a financial environment that was shaped and manipulated by the financial and real estate sectors?  

It's a funny attempt at a diversion.

P.S. The preapproval described above really did happen. I also got a "talking to" from the mortgage clown when we capped the top of our search at less than half the approved amount. We were missing a historic opportunity. That was truer than he knew . . .

Yes. Because the manipulation of the financial and real estate sectors made people decide that they could pay a mortgage that was 60% of what they made. Mind you, I know some people well outside of your favored demographics who did exactly that. Clearly they bore absolutely no responsibility whatsoever.

That being said, the history books will very likely describe a system in which real estate bubbles were pumped around the world, with "risk" sold back to many of the same people making poor real estate investments through their 401(k) and pension funds. That is not the fault (for the most part) of the "little people."

OK, I'm done now. For God's sake don't write 17,000 words I'm going to ignore anyway.

It's pretty stark, the similarities between Navin and your average Tea Partier: They both default to the "Blame Obama First" argument -- facts, reason, common sense, historical fact, math, and reality be damned. Maybe sprinkle on top some rote populist scorn for "Wall Street" and "bankers" and "fat cats" for good measure. But no matter what, because it takes so little brain power to split the world into "These people are The Good Guys and those people are The Bad Guys", just hammer whoever you self-righteously decide to be The Bad Guys, and completely ignore any possible culpability of The Good Guys. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And, of course, they're both idiots.

As usual, the trust fund yachter-dandy has nothing to add to the argument, save jumping up and down behind Chicago D and squealing: "yeah! yeah!"

"Trust fund yachter-dandy" -- yep, that's me! And you're right, when you're involved in the conversation, I don't have anything to add. Everybody already can plainly see my main point: you're an idiot.

Everybody already can plainly see my main point: you're an idiot.

Cleverness, not your strong suit eh?  Can't buy it.

It's the gambling on derivatives and fantasy debt instruments:

Obama's advisers are the same architects of financial deregulation.  The government could buy up all the toxic debt of the wealthy 1% or help real citizens in trouble with their homes.  They choose Wall St. again:

Last weekend’s New York Times magazine had an interview with Sheila
Bair, whose five-year term heading the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
(FDIC) expired last week. Now she can begin to tell what happened. She
said that Mr. Obama promised her that he would try to prevent the
mortgage frauds that were occurring, especially in subprime mortgages,
and support better bank regulation. But then she would learn, just an
hour before he gave a speech, that he would have changed the draft that
she had seen, and took out what he’d promised her. The rewrites
apparently were done mainly by Tim Geithner, who acts as a lobby for the
big bank contributors. Instead of running the Treasury to benefit the
U.S. economy, he’s benefiting his Wall Street constituency.
Significantly, he was a protégé of Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert
Rubin, who gave the name “Rubinomics” to pro-Wall Street opposition to
bank regulation and a dismantling of public control over the banking
system.

Ms. Bair said that that when she opposed giveaways to banks, Obama’s
officials would say that there would be a meltdown if they didn’t save
Citibank, AIG and other financial institutions that had acted
recklessly. She pointed out that the FDIC had successfully wound down
Washington Mutual and other insolvent institutions. This was the FDIC’s
business, after all. Even Citibank had enough assets to cover insured
depositors. The problem was its gambles on derivatives and junk
mortgages. The government could have taken it over and made normal
insured depositors whole. But there weren’t enough assets in Citibank
and AIG to pay the gamblers and the big players. She complained that in
every case she was told the big gambling institutions – basically, the
nation’s wealthiest one percent – couldn’t lose a penny.

Probably more of a reaction to all the lovely economic reports coming out lately (GDP, consumer confidence, manufacturing, etc.).

Some part of it, meanwhile Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece.....

Meh. More of a reaction of lemmings to seeing lemmings run off a cliff. Same basis as the Dow being about 12,000 was (except the lemmings were running up hill).

The Dow is not very closely related to what is actually happening in the economy. Remember, the numbers they are reacting to already happened. In other words, the economic activity that makes it worthwhile to sell everything you own on August 4 took place up to a full quarter ago. Not that it seems so much better today than it did two months ago, but it also doesn't seem so much worse.

Looks like you probably got ripped off by whoever gave you your diploma in economics/finance.

I think it's nice that you are sticking up for furytrader, although you may very well be he. Oh well.

Glad you think the lemmings are actually reacting to data. Doesn't explain the 12,000 plateau we were at very well, but what the hell, right?

Wasn't really sticking up for him... just
thought your comment was particularly snooty.

Lemmings huh…  Would that be the
hedge fund guys, the bulge bracket traders or mutual fund managers?