RE: Here's hoping you didn't miss the bottom of the market...

Sagarin wrote:

Let's just get back to the topic at hand. Any guesses as to why the market always sells off in the wake of "stimulus" and spending and foreclosure plans and why the pundits on CNBC were all giddy yesterday?

Investors, who deal in money, see where this leads. Eventually plans like the stimulus package will lead to the death of our monetary currency as we know it. Hence, drop in stock.

So you are Carl Rose. Thanks for the post, but it's irrelevant now. It appeared to me, probably erroneously, that Flagpole outted you on another thread, and, in so doing, revealed the true status of who he actually is, especially as my immediate accusation was deleted almost instantaneously on that thread. I admitted that I was probably reading too much into it, and only brought it up in response to his false accusation leveled at me. But this is silly. Let's move on, really...

I didn't even see the other thread Flagpole would have 'outted' me on or what premise he would have based it upon. He can email me if he wishes to. When I read it I didn't think it was Flagpole who started the thread "exposing" me.

It was strange but it didn't affect my evening much. Slept like a rock. Cheers to you and I'll be moving on now...

No prob, let's forget about it.

whatever man wrote:

I am Carl Rose and someone started an oddly National Enquierer-esque thread accusing me of 'stalking' Flagpole with the "real man" citation. I might post here 5-10 times a week and tend to be critical of USATF and NIKE cronyism so I would imagine that ticks someone off in their world. I responded to this silly thread in the evening and when I logged back on in the morning the thread was deleted. I don't know what comments from Flagpole, Sagarin or anyone else ensued--I was off-line for 12 hours. If you want to discuss anything feel free to email me, otherwise, carry on.

Carl Rose. You outed yourself when you inadvertently left your email exposed for all to see. Grow the f*** up.

That was someone ELSE trolling and using my email address in the address box. Perhaps it was you.

Sagarin wrote:

Let's just get back to the topic at hand. Any guesses as to why the market always sells off in the wake of "stimulus" and spending and foreclosure plans and why the pundits on CNBC were all giddy yesterday?

Sure (don't agree that they were ALL "giddy" yesterday though) -- people are afraid right now, many have lost their jobs, those who still have jobs have had salary cuts or 401k matching cut or stopped. It leads to less money going into the market, but the main thing is fear.

So many are quick to say that bull markets aren't based on earnings and that it's emotion gone amok (which I agree with sometimes) but then they are not willing to say that emotion drives the market in the other direction below where it should go. That's bogus -- of course it works both ways, and in fact investor sentiment (often based on nothing more than what the national news tells them) is the #1 biggest thing that affects the movement of the market, not the only thing, but the biggest thing. Bottom line is that investors are emotional. Some of you say I know nothing about the market and the economy, well, with all the reading I do about international business and economies (because that knowledge is central to the job I do), I know a LOT more than the vast majority of investors. The investors who don't know anything get giddy when the market goes up and run like scared cockroaches when the going gets tough. The market isn't going down because all the investors know the ins and outs of macroeconomics. It is going down because JoAnne and Bob lost their jobs at the company and so Loretta got scared because she hears another Depression is coming so she sells at 7000 hoping not to lose it all, because she has history with people like her losing it all. Then, criminals like Madoff and Stanford make people leery of investing at all.

With all the federal agents who USED to investigate white collar crime being moved over to national security, the white collar criminal felt they could do anything they wanted...and they did for years. People have lost faith in the system. I'm not saying it's all justified, but there it is.

Then on top of all that, you have lots of conservatives who are pissed that they lost the election, and they aren't willing to do anything that will help Obama out at all -- Dave Ramsey said he has been behaving that way -- just last week on his show. He's surely not the only wealthy Republican to behave that way.

And yes, there are fundamental reasons for why we are where we are, but I believe that based on those fundamentals alone that the market is over sold. I do also believe though that it will be sold even more because too many people are afraid -- afraid of Obama, afraid of big business, afraid of financial people who steal money, and on and on. That fear will NOT last forever, and when the fear leaves, an oversold market snaps back north in a hurry -- not saying it will get quickly back to October 2007 levels, but it WILL get quickly decently far away from whatever the ultimate bottom of this mess turns out to be.

Ultra - the market is selling off because it is reacting to a collective fear inspired by Obama's budget that Government will rise to an unprecedented percentage of GDP and that taxes will be raised at just the time when they actually need to be lowered - as we pull up out of the trough of the recession. There are attractive elements to Obama's vision but it has the hazards of bridges too far in a very sick economy.

I have listened to some of Obama's advisors, and they disagree with this conclusion, and in fact make some good rebuttals, but it is clear they have not persuaded the markets. They should find a way to do so quickly, and it doesn't help Geithner is struggling with a banking fix (to be fair, Paulson clearly punted it to the Obama administration and it is one of the gnarliest problems to solve).

They have a bit of creditability problem. They have to find a way to quietly revise downward their GDP growth estimates which are wildly more optimistic than even the most bullish investors out there (and they are hardly a responsible bunch). And worse yet they need to keep folks who should know better like Christine Roemer from substantiating such statistics because "she has inside information". Good lord, its our entire economy, not a stock tip. You are at the top of the White House. If there is great data, let us know about it!! Statements like that erode confidence like crazy and make her appear like a political hack, and she clearly is capable of better. I suspect they are making these rosy assumptions because it is the only viable way to pay for the new large statist structure reflected by their budget. As I have said, I hope they correct themselves soon.

Again, let's be fair - this is the start of the Administration and they can't be expected to have a grooved swing right away. But they need to come across as focused, goal directed, and non-political as possible. If Obama can listen to his economists and budgeteers and put the politicians at the margin, I think you will see the markets react differently. And we all need risk capital back into the markets - it keeps us all employed.

And please don't take this as a political diatribe against Obama. The voters elected him and some of the sea changes he seeks are sensible. But the economy is a patient in ICU - lets get it out of there first.

Sagarin wrote:

Let's just get back to the topic at hand. Any guesses as to why the market always sells off in the wake of "stimulus" and spending and foreclosure plans and why the pundits on CNBC were all giddy yesterday?

Because the bankers are flooding the market with stimulus (theft) money that they've stolen from us, driving stock prices down and diluting the equities. The networks are owned by the bankers, they are paid to be giddy about this.

So far this has been dealt with strickly politically, with attempts at political solutions. Those putting forth these ideas seem to be theorists, ecomomists, and politicians. Perhaps business solutions articulating by folks with actual business experience would be helpful. Then again, that assumes we're looking for a fix rather than fixating on an agenda.

If you go back and look at Obama's upbringing, his early mentors, and later his associates, you see things clearly. He is what he we thought he was and this is his attempt to redistribute wealth. He truly believes his mission is to return the wealth of the nation back to the "people"....the rightful owners. The rest is just window dressing. We're screwed.

mez wrote:

So far this has been dealt with strickly politically, with attempts at political solutions. Those putting forth these ideas seem to be theorists, ecomomists, and politicians. Perhaps business solutions articulating by folks with actual business experience would be helpful. Then again, that assumes we're looking for a fix rather than fixating on an agenda.

If you go back and look at Obama's upbringing, his early mentors, and later his associates, you see things clearly. He is what he we thought he was and this is his attempt to redistribute wealth. He truly believes his mission is to return the wealth of the nation back to the "people"....the rightful owners. The rest is just window dressing. We're screwed.

Just what they said about Clinton -- remember that he was the "first black President". Businesses did pretty well for themselves while he was in office (and yes I'm aware of the differences between now and then, so no need to point them all out).

Sorry, his mission is to kill the economy and start a "do over". He is intent on destroying America. His policies are proving this to be the case.

wildernessvoice wrote:

Sorry, his mission is to kill the economy and start a "do over". He is intent on destroying America. His policies are proving this to be the case.

What do you expect? He is a black, Muslim, Marxist-Leninist terrorist.

New low for the Dow.

Clinton was riding the coattails of a macroeconomic structural foundation cultivated long before he was in office, going back to when Volker broke the back of inflation, really. He enjoyed the unprecedented tailwinds of credit bubble one and the commensurate technology/productivity boom, not of his own making. Moreover, he was more centrist and shrewdly cut taxes on capital, and this is back when Congress was, IN FACT, fiscally conservative. Clinton understood the landscape, and he was not unfriendly to Wall Street, at the behest of his own constituency. Eventually, the jig was up and credit bubble I blew up, resulting in a reflationary wave that brought us credit bubble II. This has been decades in the making, and systemically, we are in a very different place than during the LTCM crisis or the Asian currecny crisis or the savings and loan crisis.

I don't need to write on this anymore. mez redux is doing an awfully good job here. Obama inherited an unbelieveably challenging situation, but what the market is plainly telling you is that we simply cannot devote what little credibility and debt availability we have left to anything BUT getting this nuclear waste of balance sheets once and for all. We are no longer in a position to borrow our way out of a crisis. Insurance on sovereign debt is telling you that, gold has been telling you that, debt and equity markets are telling you that. The extreme right hijacked the Republican party and now the extreme left is holding sway with the Democrats. And Obama, for all his gesturing about moving toward the center is doing anything but.

We need a government that understands belt-tightening every bit as much as its citizens now do. Obama does, IN FACT, own this problem now. Markets look ahead to policies of the future, not of the past. And the market is telling you that if we proceed along these lines of implementing a social bonanza instead of OR along with futiley attempting to put a band aid on the financial system, it's game over. I'm not sure we're not there. Continuing to borrow and misallocating capital, raising taxes on capital, productivity, and job creation, and ultimately printing money to monetize debt that we never could accommodate will put the final nail in the coffin.

Obama isn't an economist. He's not going to solve this on his own. He has good advisers.

Bush didn't have a clue.

What gives you great confidence that any of them have a clue? Geithner and Bernanke have been at the wheel for awhile now. And Pelosi? Pelosi is Obama's chief problem, not that Obama isn't a kindred spirit as his political upbringing poignantly suggests. This was my concern all along. An inexperienced, if articulate, young man who didn't have a legislative branch to anchor him.

You're making my point for me. We need a fiscally conservative government that does have a clue. We have not had one in decades. What good is universal healthcare, if one out of every four people are unemployed? What good is arguing over splitting up the pie, when all we have are crumbs left?

mez wrote:

So far this has been dealt with strickly politically, with attempts at political solutions. Those putting forth these ideas seem to be theorists, ecomomists, and politicians. Perhaps business solutions articulating by folks with actual business experience would be helpful. Then again, that assumes we're looking for a fix rather than fixating on an agenda.

If you go back and look at Obama's upbringing, his early mentors, and later his associates, you see things clearly. He is what he we thought he was and this is his attempt to redistribute wealth. He truly believes his mission is to return the wealth of the nation back to the "people"....the rightful owners. The rest is just window dressing. We're screwed.

I believe there's a lot of truth in what you say. Indeed, Obama inherited a mess, but he has used it well to further his agenda of social changes. Lance-a-lot and others, if you don't believe that, please explain why only 50% of the so-called Stimulus Package will be spent in the first two years, and why the rest of it will go to long range social programs, with no provision to remove them and the bloated spending that accompanies them after the ship is righted.

Sagarin, you are so pompous and ignorant.

Where were you the last ten years? Why didn't you tell the men in charge, the SEC, the Fed, the banks, etc. what to do?

Pompous perhaps. I'll ask you the same question. Where were you over a year ago, when I warned you of the impending doom and moved to a short-bias against the market? And ten years ago is not what matters. What matters is NOW. What matters are the blunders we are making NOW. As I said, you have the privilege of not listening to me or responding to me. That's the one great thing left about this country. You also have the privilege of ignoring what the market is plainly telling you, because it somehow undermines your ideological thesis.