I got an interesting email from my sister this morning and she could not have summed up the pain and frustration everyone is feeling any better. So with her permission, I am putting up her email on my blog. So here goes.....
Are'nt we all getting tired of this recession? Yeah yeah there are a bunch of you out there who are still in denial about the country being in recession, but whatever you'd like to call it, are'nt we just beat, bored, broken down, burned out, distressed, drained, exhausted, fed up, pooped, worn out and just dog-tired of what’s going on? Yes the down turn is in its peak, yes the government has no money, yes people are losing their jobs and yes we're scared to spend in the fear of losing our jobs. 2008 saw the fall of the bank and 2009 is going to see how this translates into core industry. A couple of weeks back there was a surge of hope when the American folk went and voted for the the golden boy .... but the stock market has accomplished stripping us of all traces of elevated spirits after that.
The DOW closed under 8000 yesterday and while it sounds about right, there’s a part of me that wants the DOW to plummet to its lowest ....TODAY! At least we can move on after that. But the other part of me knows that we can’t drop too fast either. We need to feel every pang of misery, slowly and painfully, so that we rid ourselves of all our sins and make for a fresh start.
The dot com bust and the govt surplus during the Clinton administration was reason enough for the recession to set in (its a zero sum game people - surplus with the govt means no money circulating amongst the public - well more or less), but that recession was one that should have been worse than it was. The super hero of the moment was Alan - Visionary - Greenspan. When Clinton shouted 'Affordable Homes for all Americans' Greenspan should have stepped down and let the monkey run the Fed in the hope of a random lucky move that monkey might have made. Instead he sealed the fate of the economy with his monetary policies. Affordable homes indeed.... all for about 2 seconds.. then they became unaffordable again when the 'visionary' raised interest rates and forced the American to default. Lets not forget the banks.. now now how could we forget the greed that this industry so beautifully camouflages into helpful stances for all common man! You're worried about Wall Street - HA! Main Street feeds Wall Street's avarice!!
So where are we now? The American man cant pay back his home loan - so banks don’t have any money - so corporations cant borrow money - so corporations cant start new projects - so corporations have to let go of workers - so workers cant pay their mortgages... what a cycle!.. and once started we cant stop the downward spiral. And not to forget the derivative markets that have exploited every single portion of this cycle. Now with everything failing, is there a floor? We thought banks might see their write-off floors when the government proposed the buying of troubled assets. Banks could sell their troubled assets for eg. 40 cents on the dollar (whatever the amount - we don’t know) and they would not have to write off more than the left over 60 cents. Banks would rake in the 40 cents as capital and life was supposed to move forward. The $700B bill struggled initially but finally went through both the Senate and the House and Henry Paulson took possession of the first $350B to start his clean up work... We've seen the stock markets rally and spiral a few times since then and we've also seen the new president-elect create waves.. but we haven’t seen the buying of troubled assets. From his statements, it seems like Hank's changed his mind. Bank stocks are plunging again and we have no idea what the floor is. Whatever it turns out to be, lets hope we don’t see it higher or sooner than it should be. From the policies during the last recession, Greenspan created a huger monster that is the down turn now.. With all the bailouts and the bandaging and caretaking the Feds are doing, lets hope we're not creating an even bigger mess.
1 comment:
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