Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Market madness

Last night I made the depressing decision to go online and look at my mutual fund account. I rolled over my CNMI retirement contribution in July, and since then, I've seen that money, in a very broad array of mutual funds, crash to the tune of 22 percent -- 11 percent in September alone. I just saw a yahoo story that says retirement accounts have decreased by $2 trillion. That decrease doesn't even factor in today's five percent fall. Finally it seems President Numbnuts has run everything into the ground. He'll leave office with an expensive, endless, unpopular war, an even wider gap between rich and poor aided by his crony capitalism, absolutely no progress on health care, global warming or education, trillions more in debt, an attack on the American homefront on his watch, Bin Laden still at large and a crippled economy, but he went to church and didn't approve of gay people kissing, so no problem. Bill Maher is right, we're too stupid to be governed.

Between the stock market crash, the price of gas -- better but still bad -- the housing crash, which was inflated from the previous years truth be told, I'm not sure I've ever seen the American economy this bad. I also don't see this country having much ability to cope with these problems, either. This country as a whole seems very past its prime and incapable of doing anything other than creating more debt and heading further in the wrong direction -- appealing to the dumbest, most base instincts. Our movies are bad, our music is bad, disgusting fast food abounds, an absolute ditz could end up vice president -- don't get me started on the state of parenting or the raging anti-intellectual attitudes of the youth. It's starting to feel like I'm in Saipan five years ago.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

You must be a fan of Mike Judge's "Idiocracy". It's all coming true! But far too soon!

KAP said...

That's just a new definition of rollover

KAP said...

Seriously, you're young enough that the panic shouldn't hurt your investments long-term

Anonymous said...

that is what happens when Lawmakers think with their hearts instead of their heads.. as stated so many times, when you give a person who makes $30,000 an approved mortgage of $300,000 or more, this kind of thing is bound to hit the ceiling, especially when they start delaying payment on mortgages because their commute costs are more.. not to hit Obama, but he wants to do the same thing with healthcare... push Insurance companies to take on individuals despite pre-conditions that may exist... you want to sink more insurance companies and send them into bankruptcy.. whereby Government becomes the healthcare provider, someone at the end of the day is going to have to pay.. and most likely it will be taxpayers through higher taxes.. I think many should be more responsible and not believe it is their right and the responsibility of the government to give everything to them on a silver platter.. I have to agree with McCain in that the American Public needs to start being more responsible and not expect other taxpayers to clean up their mess..

Anonymous said...

I think it also important to reflect on what some of the Economists are saying about Obamas plan:

Economists Statement on Barack Obama's Risky Economic Proposals

KAP said...

Except... McCain now wants to bail out the bad mortgages too

SteeleOnSaipan said...

Here here. Jeff, you really are a good, critical analyst. I agree 98% and would only add that despite Bush being the absolute worst ever in his job category, he's had plenty of help in running the country into a brick wall.

Anonymous said...

the gears are about to stop.. lending has come to almost a complete stop... an infusion of cash to get lending moving again has to happen.. bad mortgages are terrible.. and as Mccain said, this should have never happened..but if we sit idly by, it ain't going to fix itself... to avoid mass job loss and continued decline in the economy something had to be done... I hope all have learned from what has happened..

KAP said...

The U.S. has been kiting checks for years. Now we're paying the penalty-- with kited checks.

This whole mess opened the bigger can of worms and we're hoping we can get the lid back on.

What is the full faith and credit of the U.S. these days?