Oct 09 2008

Happy Anniversary!

14,164.53, 10/9/07.

Let me take you on a quick trip back to the halcyon days of our youth, way back Friday before last.

The Dow stood at a sunny and proud 11,143.13 having gained 121.07 points that very day!

Then came the bad old politicians and they didn’t approve Wall St.’s $700 Billion Blank Check.  A number simply made up to be big enough.

Not so big now are you?

Monday the 29th of September Wall St. threw their -777.68 hissy fit.  Maria Bartiromo was particularly outraged that these mere Representatives could thwart her Saks shopping people’s will.  See, this is what you get when you don’t kiss butt!

Now that changed their Capitol Hill water carriers mind for sure.  What’s good for GM is good for the nation.  The business of America is business.

So the next day we had our dead cat bounce, +485.21, Dow at 10,850.66 a whole +263.07 for W‘s entire tenure.

Thanks for nothing.

Now hold on to your socks folks because we’re going to take one of those big shoots-

10/1 Wednesday -19.59 10,831.07
10/2 Thursday -348.22 10,482.85
10/3 Friday -157.47 10,325.38
10/6 Monday -369.88 9,955.50
10/7 Tuesday -508.39 9,447.11
10/8 Wednesday -189.01 9,258.10
10/9 Today! -678.91 8,579.19

Happy Anniversary!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I dunno, Atrios likes to say it.

23 comments

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  1. I’ll have to crash out before I can embed the Flintstone Anniversary song.

    • robodd on October 9, 2008 at 23:40
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    Here’s Krugman:

    Stock prices are, however, the least of our worries. The money markets are frozen; the TED spread is 4.14%.

    G7 meeting tomorrow, IMF-World Bank over the weekend. Now is the time for major action – an announcement of coordinated capital injections, liquidity measures, and more. If we’ve had nothing except vague assurances by Monday …

    Those ellipses worry me.

  3. This is where I think the bottom will be. Dow 4000 would put the NYSE roughly at 1995 levels — before the dot com bubble, easy credit bubble, and the housing bubbles inflated the value of stocks.

    It took 25 years for the Dow to recover from the 1929 crash Before the crash the Dow was roughly at 343. It took until 1954 to match that high again.

    I suspect people who stuck with the market and didn’t sell in 2007 or early 2008, like myself, won’t recoup the losses. I do not see the markets recovering in my lifetime.

    Why? Well for a few reasons, both demand related.

    First, with the boomers retiring and selling off shares, there is going to be less domestic demand for stocks. The Republicans’ plan to privatize Social Security was, I think, a scheme to inflate the demand for stocks and keep the prices inflated. I pray that schemes to privatize Social Security are now dead. Social Security is what I will likely have to live off of when I retire, if I am able to retire.

    Second, the weakening U.S. dollar have investments in dollars unattractive. I think foreign investors are now less interested in keeping their money tied up in U.S. dollars, so again the demand for shares will not be as high. Countries like China and India are developing their own markets and investors there will have incentives to keep their capital at home.

    Third, since the 1970s, the U.S. has been shipping its manufacturing jobs to places like Asia. When Reagan took power, the job exodus really took hold. Clinton got NAFTA passed and jobs were moved to Mexico. When the dot com bubble burst under Bush, the professional jobs in software and computers began to be offshored. The point is, the U.S. doesn’t have the economic base that the country once had. It is relatively easy for a corporation, say like Halliburton, to pick up its HQ and move to a tax haven like Dubai. The upshot is there is less real things to invest in in the United States, thus, again, reducing demand.

    Now situations can change and I’m guessing things are not as bleak as they seem to me. A green economy will give investors reasons to invest in the U.S. again. I hope for my planet’s sake, my country’s sake, and my retirement’s sake, that it actually happens.

    • AAF on October 10, 2008 at 00:10
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    before it gets better. That’s the European consensus, but what do we know?

    • pmukh on October 10, 2008 at 00:13
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    There’s always a single day in any given market meltdown period that gets remembered as “black (fill in the day)”.

    (putting aside concerns of racial tinging for the moment)

    How will this entire month be remembered?

    my 401K is down (only?) 20%, but I have 30 or so years time to make it up….haven’t asked my dad what his numbers look like, and frankly, I’m a bit scared to.

  6. Come to think of it, the Dow might just crash down to early 1980s levels. That’s where it last was stable.

  7. and I might try to turn it into a diary for Big Orange, but it’s certainly apropos here as well:

    https://www.docudharma.com/show…

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