Stocks fell worldwide, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average below 7,000 for the first time since 1997, and Treasuries rose after Warren Buffett said the economy is in “shambles†and American International Group Inc. reported a $61.7 billion loss.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. retreated 5.9 percent after reporting the worst annual drop in book value since Buffett took control in 1965. HSBC Holdings Plc sank 19 percent after announcing a rights offering, driving down lenders such as Bank of America Corp. Exxon Mobil Corp. declined for a fourth day as oil tumbled 9.4 percent.
“The bear market has only begun,†Robert Prechter, the founder of Gainesville, Georgia-based Elliott Wave International Inc. who predicted the 1987 stock market crash, said on Bloomberg Radio. “I don’t see the clear weather yet.â€
The Dow average decreased 214.65 points, or 3 percent, to 6,848.28 at 11:48 a.m. in New York.
Even those who once backed O!s loopy carbon trading schemes seem to have second thoughts:
Duke Energy Corp. Chief Executive Officer James Rogers said President Barack Obama’s plan to raise revenue from an emissions-trading system would increase electricity bills by as much as 40 percent in some U.S. states.
Rogers, who supports a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions, says the problem with Obama’s plan, unveiled last week as part of a $3.55 trillion budget, is it assumes an auction of all trading permits, bringing in $645.7 billion by 2019.
The CEO is among business leaders and lawmakers who favor giving away permits to some industries to offset the cost of the transition to a low-carbon energy economy. Rogers, who backed Obama in the election, said he’s concerned some of the money raised might not be used to promote “clean†energy and consumers in the 25 most coal-heavy states would be hit with higher electricity costs.
h/t Gerry G.
What could possibly amplify this perfect shitstorm?
Speaking of storms, Treacher on the elastic definition of “during Katrina.” According to a correspondent, it’s still going on, for some.
I’ve got to go out in a bit here and help a friend with some grant proposals, so don’t know when I’ll be back.
Don’t worry, higher taxes and increased energy costs should snap us right out of this……..
I think we have a Finanshul Jeenus around here somewhere, don’t we? A Progressive Socialist Libertarian, unless I miss my guess.
O!
Baracky H. Obama, Suuuuperrrrr Geeniussss.
Has anyone seen Fidel Castro and Barack Obama in the same room?
OTOH, this makes all-out nuclear war seem attractive, so Obama’s proposed meeting with Iran’s madmullahs is positively perfect!
Yeah, the best way to stimulate an economy is to make sure people are scrimping and watching every blessed penny.
Wait, not best. Stupidest, that’s the word.
Wonder what the “Global New Deal” will cost?
Yeah, go ahead and mock Obamas economic acumen.
Just don’t question his patriotism.
Trust me, you’ll sleep better at night.
“Change” is neither a direction, nor a magnitude.
So, we are now a lot shitty, compared to before The O!.
Worst President Ever.
“Rogers, who backed Obama in the election, said he’s concerned some of the money raised might not be used to promote “clean†energy…”
Rubbish! I mean, look at how the various States that settled with the tobacco industry made sure that money went solely to smoking cessation and smoking related health care… Um, strike that.
I can’t believe you guys are so focused on this stuff. Can’t we all just focus on how fabulous Michelle’s arms are? How do you think she does it?
I think progressives are doing what they think is best for the country. They believe they are smarter than we are, and that they know what’s better for us than we do. They think the average person is a child that needs the big government parent to take care of them.
What they fail to see is that they are establishing a system which someone who is truly evil could exploit. They think everyone who comes after them will be as virtuous as they think they are.
I don’t question their feelings about their own patriotism. I question their ideology. I question their overweening narcissim. I question their apparent insanity in continuing to do things which have been proven failures in the hopes that this time it will be different because we haven’t tried hard enough yet, and it wasn’t those particular politicians doing it.
Ultimately, looking to politicians for solutions is insane. All they ever do is decide how to spend other people’s money. That’s all the ever do, it’s the solution to every problem. Spending money is their hammer, all the woes in the world are nails. It’s a rare politician who can put down that hammer.
How long will Bush continue to destroy the economy with the last eight years of failed policy?
Obama is outraged!
I can’t believe how personally we’re taking it too.
Carin, she practices with her Bat’leth every day.
You forgot the ‘FAIL’ part of the title.
Somehow the market doesn’t buy what The One Lightworker is selling. Shouldn’t confidence be returning, now that he got his Ginormous spending bill passed, one that was immediately necessary and was an emergency action, and TARP II on the way?
Cranky, kudos on your faith in our Dear Leader’s patriotism.
I myself have a hard time forgetting he chose the church of “God Damn America!”.
please, the man’s only been in office a month and a half. WHY WON’T YOU GIVE OBAMA A CHANCE?!
Urthshu, where President Super-Genius is concerned, the ‘FAIL’ part goes without saying.
Wouldn’t now be a good time to set up our withholding so that we have no income tax taken out of our check? Then we can say “We’ll think about how much will pay April 15, 2010. Would they put 20 million people in jail. That I’d like to see.
?
You’re right, Carin! I’ve gone all day and not offered a prayer to The One or the Holy Concubine! I’d best get crackin’.
Remember when commentators like Lisa (I miss her) were frankly stunned that we had all of these terrible fears about Obama and a Socialist agenda?
A month and a half was all it took to confirm our darkest night sweats.
I wouldn’t mind Baracky H. Obama, Sooooper Genius so much except that there’s no Roadrunner in sight to foil his sooooooper genius schemes.
At the
Socialist DemocratAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, one Hopes™.Speaking of which, ACME no longer has their mail order division up. I think they’re going belly-up.
Oh. Weird. I thought everyone was talking about Michelle’s tonearms, and I was thinking she was pretty cool to have a lot of vinyl and retro playback equipment lying about. I mean, I could just picture her grooving to this.
So much for that schoolboy crush.
urkel-nomics
Remember when commentators like Lisa (I miss her) were frankly stunned that we had all of these
terrible fears about Obama and a Socialist agenda?
I miss Lisa too. Also, America.
I can see the change.
Where’s the hope?
Hollywood.
Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, even, you know, regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.
– Barack Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqg7ThZB04
I hope I have a job next month.
Or maybe not. Then I can get summat awesome bailout!
I just got a new job. I hope it’s secure.
So much for that schoolboy crush.
Yea, I’d be careful. Michelle will crush you with her man-arms.
I mean, why not join the 40% non tax paying citizens?
You guys won’t mind too much, right?
Think I’ll refi first though, my mortgage is rather paltry at present.
I don’t think you would enjoy it.
You don’t really think punishing the responsible is going to help the irresponsible, do you?
nothing from nothing leaves nothing
hey-i think i’ll write a song…
but my afro needs -a-picking
and a grinnin’
Girls with masculine arms scare me. Adam’s apples are a bad sign. Oh yeah, a girl with a penis is a dead give-a-way something is wrong.
Good news, everybody.
AIG is suing us.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123595759968105885.html
I’d laugh if I weren’t crying on the inside.
Hey buttons!
Swing low
sweet haaair ex-tensions….
ahh-i guess i’ll just whistle dixie
aside
my opinion -battle hymn and dixie are 2 smoking tunes!
lee, I said that they think they’re patriotic. Not the same thing.
I guess my point is, on patriotism, that questioning theirs will go nowhere because they think that America needs a lot of help to “fix” it and they are just the ones to do it, but that America might still be an okay place every now and then, like when Obama was elected, but they still think they’re patriotic.
Dow – 263 @ 6799.
take that hope, seperate the stems, seeds and change, and smoke it.
damn.
But hey, OTT, this is a great time to buy! We have it on the highest authority!
market is voting no confidence on the future, with the exception for one stock.
Walmart.
A non-union, non apologist capitalist entity.
Obama and company have taken over the banks and insurance companies, no prizes for guessing who they come after next.
check the baby 4 change
put the baby in a blender
play fetch with ur dog/ but keep the stick
stir like ur making butter
ossiffy
This is it. They will fix. They will determine the costs. Arrogance beyond belief. And doomed to failure.
Any good stock picks?
“Baracky H. Obama, Sooooper Genius”
Shouldn’t that be Wile E. Obama?
Man hands are also bad. Like, really bad.
I agree with Jeff. I blame Bush for both the economy and man hands.
What’s that company that manufactures the cordite for small-arms ammo?
I think the fastest way to nowhere is to turn a blind eye to where we’re at.
I disagree with your premise that THEY think they’re patriotic, though they like you to believe that.
Again…”God Damn America”.
I believe Obama and his cult see America flawed at it’s conception, and it is not patriotic to love America if it was like Europe.
It’s like saying “I believe in Jesus”, but I’m not referring to the Jewish dude that was born of a virgin in Nazareth 2009 years ago. It’s that black Jesus that BLT preaches.
Faith in Jesus means nothing if you are not talking of the Christ.
Believing Obama has good intentions for America will catch you nowhere if/when you realize he will let it collapse in order to “change” it into something different.
Look, the bock-bock broke-dick chicken-little says the sky is falling and to sell everything!
You’re the best contrarian buy signal I can think of. I’m buying stock today, wittle boy.
Sniggle.
S&P at 700. One doesn’t see that every day.
Look, the bock-bock broke-dick chicken-little says the sky is falling and to sell everything!
I didn’t tell anyone to buy or sell anything, whore.
You said to buy. Right before the market opened this morning.
Genius, I tell you, pure genius.
[Crude is continuing to latch on to the stock markets, and the Dow Jones industrials dropped below 6,900 for the first time in more than 11 years.
“Anytime we get good economic news, we hit worse economic news,” said Daniel Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago.
Flynn said if current economic conditions linger, he could see oil prices hitting $25 per barrel within a few months.]
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Deteriorating-economy-cuts-apf-14513892.html
That’d be swell for stability in petro-states.
pop quiz.
which President ran the first non-wartime deficit?
who controlled congress from 1950-1994?
was the reagan revolution ever truly inacted?
what is the annualized growth rate of 100 billion going to 3.6 trillion over 45 years?
what is the average govt svc employee pay per hr vs the pvt sector worker?
does the stock mkt discount the future or not?
what year did the USA exhaust its pent up savings that fueled growth from equity not debt?
which 2 presidents and attendant congresses were liable for the stagflation lasting until 1982?
[The White House is the place to be on Wednesdays.
Since the presidency changed hands less than six weeks ago, a burst of entertaining has taken hold of the iconic, white-columned home of America’s head of state. Much of it comes on Wednesdays.
The stately East Room, where portraits of George and Martha Washington adorn the walls, was transformed into a concert hall as President Barack Obama presented Stevie Wonder with the nation’s highest award for pop music on Wednesday.
A week before that, the foot-stomping sounds of Sweet Honey in the Rock, a female a cappella group, filled the East Room for a Black History Month program first lady Michelle Obama held for nearly 200 sixth- and seventh-graders from around the city.
Cocktails were sipped during at least three such receptions to date, all held on Wednesdays.
Bookending the midweek activity were a Super Bowl party for select Democratic and Republican lawmakers and a dinner for governors, the new administration’s first black-tie affair. It was capped with a performance by the 1970s pop group Earth, Wind and Fire. And a conga line. ]
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96M09BO0&show_article=1
If Obama was named George W. Bush, this would be an OUTRAGE! sign of how out of touch he was.
Any theories on how “skyrocketing” energy costs will HELP the economy??
Market dwon over 300 points today. thor must have made a killing!
nikk – i’m sure he’ll be by next month to tell us how he bought below the low and sold above the high today.
Are we picking stocks?
http://www.insidefutures.com/article/96588/Barchart%20Stock%20Chart%20of%20the%20Day%20%E2%80%93%20March%202,%202009.html
Cut and paste, no time.
Obama saved or created 6,760 index points today. We should be thankful.
Only 6700 points to go.
Fair enough. I think I see your point, and with more thought on my part as well as giving up the last bit of empathy I have for them, I will probably come to the same conclusion.
If this is so, though, then stopping them is even more imperative.
i will not say ‘do the limbo rock’
ain’t gunna say it
nope-not me
no way
Can we realistically expect the DOW to fall below 5000 as we watch this dunce “change” America?
YES WE CAN!
And to the self-proclaimed moderates or conservatives who claimed that (despite all evidence to the contrary) Baracky was a good ol’ moderate, I have one word for you:
SUCKERS!
#43 pd:
Dixie is a toe-tapper. Battle Hymn of the Republic is different, it is a soul-stirrer.
I once had the pleasure of hearing the Navy band (there’s a formal proper name for it but I don’t remember it after all these years), and their rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever” was a religious experience.
Wall St. certainly feels stimulated.
Wall St. certainly feels stimulated.
Unconditioned stimulus: pain
Unconditioned response: avoidance.
Conditioned stimulus: Obama opens his moronic yap.
Conditioned response: Market goes in the shitter.
As Billy Mays would put it; “And it gets EVEN better!”
[U.S. companies, consumers and communities may grow so addicted to government financial help that cutting them off could trigger another recession soon after the current one ends.
Between the U.S. Federal Reserve’s trillions of dollars in lending programs, the $787 billion stimulus package and $700 billion — and counting — in bank bailout funds, no one can accuse officials of soft-pedaling their crisis response.
But there is increasing concern that when the flow of public money subsides — beginning next year when much of that stimulus package is spent — the economy still won’t be strong enough to stand on its own.
“The stuttering attempts to repair the banking and lending mechanisms so far by the new administration suggests that by late 2010, the specter of a second dip into recession will be looming large,” said Merrill Lynch economist Sheryl King.]
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE52168Y20090302
We had to raze the economy in order to save it.
McGeHee: I remember the National Cathedral service after 9/11. IIRC, the service colors were trooped out to the ‘Battle Hymn of The Republic’. It was chilling to watch.
Too bad so many want the USA to fail at war.
#41 – a bit late, but I was trying to figure ways to hire flying alien lizards from the planet Zorb to land on Earth and turn all AIG executives and their Treasury/Fed enablers into giant corndogs on a stick. [bonus points for IDing the source of this plan]
I’m having a bit of a rough go with it so far.
If I was a Duke stockholder or rate payer I would be after this idiot Rogers head. What a nimrod! Any CEO that supported Obama should get his or her walking papers. His company produces 40% of its power from coal and he wants cap and bend over. If he wanted to shoot himself in the head, he should do it without taking the company and the rate payers with him.
Prechter is right every 20 years. He was going in the wrong direction in the craxh of ’87, and then declared we were in the bear market of a century–for the next twenty years. You live long enough, you’re going to be right about something.
Ot-oh, who is this James Wilson character?
I’m sorry James, but you’ve posted something intelligent and factually correct which is rare amongst PW’s weedumblican regulars.
Shocked, I tell ya.
hey, thor. They’ve got a head start in making Obama the New Hoover, since Obama’s inherited Depression is only a few months old while FDR could hang 3 years of Depression around Hoover’s neck.. (and Obama will also have 3 years of Depression probably in the next election)….but Republicans in their demands that they we return to Reaganomics are defeating their goal of making Obama the Black Sheep.
Obama, like FDR, with his first class character, and unlike Reagan in his “ACT”, can speak to average Americans. Hoover was a great guy, who unlike FDR worked himself up from the bottom, but by letting Right Wing orthodoxies rule his public policies he lost the faith of America…(“a chicken in every pot”….ummm will be just dandy) while FDR, even though often too conservative understood people’s pain due to his own polio-caused fall from grace. Obama, unlike Rush, Gramm, the gov. of La. or Palin, doesn’t speak down to people and understands their pain, after all he had his own problems with seeing his own mother dying while fighting off bill collectors. And certainly being a “mutt” himself gives him an edge…being the political Tiger Woods.
My reticence about Obama is that he did appoint Larry Summers as Economic czar (with Timmy G. as the “face”of ‘change’). Summers like Robert Rubin and Phil Gramm helped get us into the Over Leveraged Derivative-based Ponzi scheme that is unfolding before our eyes…and the over-emphasized low-income housing finance problem is only a small part of the problem. Over-Financialization and Financial “INNOVATION” is the real problem. The over-valued stock market is still got a long ways to go to be ‘equitable’. After all look at the growth curve of the stock market in the last ten years (except for last year’s fall-off) and the general direction of the long range value shows that the DJI should be at about 4500, not 7000 or 14000….like Republicans kept telling us it should have gone as high as 36000!
Once we strip the economy of economic cretins like Phil Gramm, and cartoons like Donald Trump maybe will get back to really making things and ideas again instead of just wheeling and dealing dead horses.
Obama is genuinely a nice guy but he’s got to jettison the Economic Conservatives on his team: Summers and Geitner are the problem, not the solution. Obama’s own economic senses are far better than the so-called experts on his team. He needs to listen more to the likes of Dean Baker, Yves Smith, Galbraith, Krugman, and Rubini, not the arrogance of Larry Summers or even the overly respected Paul Volcker, (who certainly didn’t help Americans much during the ’80-81′ recession.).
Obama, like FDR, with his first class character, and unlike Reagan in his “ACTâ€, can speak to average Americans.
Fucking. Insane.
Back in the bin you go, dave.
The brownie recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon of Ganja dave. Not 2 cups.
Money shot, DD, money shot. Obama not only listens but he listens to a lot of people and that’s key, but we certainly agree on Summers, Gramm and the Trump-clown.
First thing is you should post here more often, not because you and I always agree, we don’t, but you have a good grasp of structural failings. As you know the hyperventilating disturbed here live in a topical world with limited understanding of how our economy works, where it starts and stops, etc…
Remember what I said early on pertaining to something I’ve witnessed for the past fifteen-twenty years. The CEO is now insulated from the proxy statement. Shareholders do not or can not hold the boards or management to any criteria whatsoever via shareholder proxy. Wendy Gramm of Enron and of Phil Gramm fame comes to mind. AIG – nobody can get a grip on their derivative trading positions nor the potential losses associated with their unwinding. As you know, derivatives are an unregulated market thanks to good ole Wendy-slurp. Enron and AIG are similar in that respect, except the AIG was playing with what ended up being our tax money whereas Enron only had what fraudulent financial statements could attract.
And what was it the Greenspan said, if I may paraphrase, “my biggest mistake was assuming the the bank CEO’s would do what was right by there shareholders.” No, Alan, the CEO’s haven’t given a flying fuck about their shareholders except to scalp them in a very long time. How could Alan “Ear Span” Greenspan have missed that obviousness? Would shareholders approve of failing CEOs making $20-million a year when new hires were making $20,000? Not likely, well, there are teh ‘toopids out there but they’re usually not in the majority. The motivation to become a Mexican politician and/or an American CEO have become one and the same, namely, to leave politics or the board room as wealthy as one possibly can, hence the golden parachutes and endemic state corruption. Actual governance be damned, it’s a game for fools!
The kooky winger birds here still don’t understand. They’re not capable. All they know is what Wush or Sean or what some mudbunker Freeper tells ’em. It’s as if a whole rudderless generation is lost to the worship of unconscionable greed, or, stated in another way, destroying the houses of profit their daddy’s built. Flippers and touts! – look that reference up. Not one of ’em knows what a stock certificate represents or what a bond entitles one to. A long time ago I opened my first large bond account by answering correctly the question as to what is a bond. Yep, the guy asked me what is a bond. It’s a interest bearing gun with a lot of fine print, in short.
Obama and Co. should try to address the legal structure problems of corporations or introduce mechanisms which will aide the shareholders role, and of course their should be fewer uneducated shareholders, looks like the market is taking care of that through Darwinian capital losses. Then of course they should more fully regulate the financial guns of potential capital destruction!
You only know what it is when you know what it’s not said Strauss. You only know capitalism when you know what it’s not. We are watching the destruction of a flawed version of capitalism, the invented paper type, the leveraged stock-optioned play with the risk monies of others type. The loony bird dumbicans don’t know it but there getting nose-punched, and not Obama and Co..
The market is kicking reaganomic ass, deleveraging the consumer and folding down undercapitalized companies.
Ready to wet your panties, wittle girly sPies? It’s going to be volatile, and we know how you hate watching others make all the money while you tinkle on your bicycle seat due to a bumpy ride.
The dollar is down, wittle girly, need a tissue for your tears?
“The bear market has only begun” is going to start being sung all the louder, and not just by Prechter.
He is only telling what the wave count tells him and he is doing it according to the rules as he knows them.
He is being true to his craft and delivering a message that would help people prepare for down markets.
The thing that he is not aware of is that the wave rules are not correctly formed and the important part is at the terminals. Waves this big have big bullseyes on them but that does not mean they are terminated. You have to have the right rules and you have to count accordingly.
There is a better way to navigate than using a compass that always points south. We are turning back towards these March 2009 lows once again but the wave is not the one predicted by standard counting rules. BTW, I learned waves from Prechter.
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