Tomorrow is going to be yet another bad day for investors.  Prepare for a drop in the value of your 401k.  Personally, I think you should ride this out.  But that advice won't make your losses feel any better.

We no longer have pensions.  We have 401ks.  That means, there is no safety net.  Thanks a f#@#ing lot Republicans.  This is a product of YOUR party's free trade kool-aid.  Assholes.

The incentives are setup to reward short-term earning.  Defined benefits (pensions) require a lot of money, especially if medical is included.  In the 80s, rules changed and corporations could contribute less.  That left them in the hole.  And then who wants to really pay to catch up when that would impact current year earnings.  So, best to just drop the pensions all together.

It's like that public safety ad about drugs:"So I can work longer, so I can earn more, so I can do more coke..."

Remember bush-mccain also want to privatize social security.  Essentially this will transfer the risk from the govenment to you.  

Once again stated by a McCain adviser in today's Post:

Things today just aren't that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression -- or exaggerated Depression comparisons.

McCain campaign adviser and former U.S. senator Phil Gramm was right in July when he said that our current state "is a mental recession." Maybe he was out of line when he added that the United States has become "a nation of whiners." But when it comes to the economy, we have surely become a nation of exaggerators.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

talk about bad timing!

Although, scarier still is that Palin doesn't seem to know many economic basics.
Last week, in a speech, she mentioned that the taxpayers were tired of paying for Freddie/Fannie. Well, the taxpayers were handed a bill with the takeover but even though government backed, Freddie/Fannie were private companies with stockholders, etc.  

The Federal Reserve and Treasury's answer is to create even larger financial institutions.  We are then really stuck in the Bear-Sterns-too-big-to-fail conundrum.  By the end of this, they will have to start calling Charlotte (and not New York) the financial capital of America.

You might want to check out your own bank. Didn't Bank of America take over Countrywide not long ago, and had some trouble digesting it? And now it's taking over Merrill Lynch? Did it not have a boatload of derivatives of its own? I sure would like to take a look at that secret watch list the FDIC has naming some 90 banks that are "borderline." How many more depositors does FDIC have the funds to pay off if another biggie fails?    

As Treasury has proven in the Fannie and Fredie take over, the government will ensure financial stability via government funds.  Now maybe that is really money from China, Japan and Korea, but who is really counting at this point?

And as Palin has pointed out so deftly, we can close that 400+ billion hole in the federal budget by cutting the office supplies of the federal agencies.  So, there that is even more money on the table to rescue our troubled financial market. ;)

Really inflation is the price we will pay.  Your purchasing power will diminish.  Everything will cost more and your salary will buy less things.  That or the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates so sky high that regular folks won't be able to afford credit.  Either way regular folks are going to be hurting from this.  BoA will probably survive due to its size like Citigroup.  Your local banks will probably survive due to limited exposure to this mortgage mess and the window at the Fed is open to pour out money.

If Lehman and Merril are out, you have to worry about Wachovia.  That is probably the next shoe to drop.  You know once this momentum starts, it's hard to stop.

but not yet hyper-inflation. The government's statistics are so jiggered that even GDP is skewed. You are right, we can count on more and more fiat money being issued, but the more that is done, the more it takes to produce the required effect. Mugabe and Bush, same-o same-o.

works for Merrill Lynch and will likely be affected by the upcoming merger with BOA.  Yet he still supports McCain.  

He reminds me of one of the "former Republicans" who spoke just before Obama gave his acceptance speech.  The one who said "I thought I was living the American Dream.  I had a good job, health care, a 401(k) and then ..."  My friend is just like that guy was just before the speaker lost his job.  I hope that my friend doesn't lose his job in the Merrill Lynch sell out and lose his job too.

But I also am angry at my friend.  He remains a staunch supporter of John McCain.  My friend can not or will not see all the danger signs that are telling him that he too may be headed for a financial cliff.  That he too may lose his job, his health care, his retirement.  And if he does, John McSame and the Republicans won't lift a finger to help him.

My friend, and so many like him, seem to think "it can't happen to me."  He thinks that we Democrats are just pampering people who are too lazy to work.  He just can't see that his job and the benefits that come with it (what seperates him from "them") is not guaranteed.  Just as other jobs are shipped overseas, his could be lost to "re-structuring."  And now that he is part of the "over 50" workforce, he could easily find himself too expensive to make the transition to the post-merger Merill.

Worse yet, my friend just found out that his son, a sailor in the US Navy, will be stationed in Iraq in early 2009.  Suddenly he has a lot more to lose than just a job.

Yet he continues to blindly follow Bush and McCain and Lieberman and Palin.  If he, and a lot of smug republicans like him, could just open his eyes to the very real possibility that they too could be without healthcare, etc., this election would be over today.

I keep hoping he will open his eyes before he casts his vote.

Much of the severity of this crisis has been caused by the deregulation, lack of oversight, and defunding of government watchdogs that has occurred over the last 20 years.  It's is essential that the government keep some temper on the Invisible Hand.

Housing bubbles are inevitable, but if the government had done it's part, the the bubble and this correction would not have been this severe.

I hope there are some meaningful reforms from all of this.  Lending was been totally out of control during that boom and many people made out like bandits.  Now everyone is going to be significantly effected because of the excesses of one segment of our economy.

are coming home to roost!

"If lenders are going to act like predators, they should take a hint from biology. Predators who kill too many of their prey may enjoy brief population booms, but those booms are always followed by a crash.

You can't prosper in the long run by destroying what sustains you."

I think it sums up the economic situations of lenders perfectly.

only if there is excess liquidity, which is exactly what happened under both Greenspan (who created the dot.com bubble---- and bust) and under Bernanke (who created the housing bubble on the foundations of Greenspan's excess liquidity). Too much monetary inflation inevitably creates price inflation.  Since Bush II arrived and began his Free Marketeering rape of regulations, his tax cuts, and his huge budget deficits---- all financed and enabled by the Federal Reserve's wildly pumping fiat money into the system (so much that the government stopped telling us how much when they cancelled publicizing M3)---- our cost of living has soared: groceries up almost 20 percent, utilities up 45.5 percent, medical up 34.6 percent by some estimates.  

And the beat goes on: in order to "prevent collapse of the world financial system," the Fed opened its window to shakey financial institutions and allowed them to borrow from the Fed through TAF (Term Auction Facility), taking as collateral those toxic subprime mortgages and other high-risk derivatives. From December 2007 to May 2008, just six months, Wall Street borrowed half a trillion dollars or 22 times what they borrowed in all six years before. And then there's Fannie and Freddie as well as Bear Stearns rescues putting the taxpayer and his children and grandchildren on the hook for unknown amounts of money and risk. The dollar's purchasing power is going to continue to plunge, and you will see it every day at the grocery store, the gas station, the mall...

What we see here is The Bush Doctrine of preemptive warfare (domestic version, middle class). Is the Republican Party actually trying to destroy America?