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Sunday, September 21, 2008

Economic Armageddon? Not on Wall Street, Not Yet

While I still try to pick my jaw up off the floor over $700 billion dollars to bail out irresponsible borrowers and lenders, here are some smaller stock market numbers, for what they're worth:
  • Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closing value, Friday, 9/19: 11,388.44
  • DJIA opening value, Monday, 9/15: 11,318.59
  • DJIA net gain for the week: +0.6%
  • DJIA net change since peak (14,093) last October: -19%
  • DJIA net gain over the last five years: 22%
  • DJIA net change from 9/3/1929 to 11/11/1929: -40%
  • DJIA net change from 10/14/1987 to 10/19/1987: -31%
  • DJIA net gain over 1987: +0.6%
Maybe President Bush and Secretary Paulson should take the investment advice I hear all the time: take the long view, ride it out.

But if we can't ride it out, if we have to write that check (and leave it to our kids and grandkids to pay for our profligacy), it will prove one thing: the free market is dead.

And Sibby thought Obama and I would bring Marxism to America. Hmph: President Bush beat us to it.
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9/22/2008 8:49 AM

    How can Bush be to blame when Congress is mostly Democrat??? Don't the Dems have a little bit to do with this?

    I think it is unfair to blame one person or party, when everyone in Washington as a whole is supposed to be working together.

    ReplyDelete
  2. caheidelberger9/22/2008 9:01 AM

    Even arch-conservative Michelle Malkin says Bush, not the Dems, are to blame:

    -----excerpt-----
    "We must act now to protect our nation's economic health from serious risks," President Bush said Friday.

    Not all were convinced. Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin lambasted "the mother of all bailouts" and declared "the death of fiscal conservatism."

    Malkin scolded readers who were blaming the crisis on Democrats, who took control of Congress in the November 2006 elections.

    "This is your Bush legacy — not Pelosi's, not Reid's, not Obama's,"     Malkin wrote, naming the House and Senate leaders and the Democratic presidential nominee. "Fiscal conservatism has been on life support for quite some time. Bush/Paulson pulled the plug permanently today."

    [James Rosen, "Fiscal Conservatives Declare Free Market Dead," Seattle Times, 2008.09.20]
    -----------------

    ReplyDelete
  3. caheidelberger9/22/2008 9:01 AM

    ...but then Michelle Malkin is a terribly unfair and biased source... right?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous9/22/2008 9:42 AM

    Corey, I don't know who Michelle Malkin is. Never heard of her.

    What upsets me is that everyone is so busy pointing fingers at who is at fault, that they forget to look for a solution. Everyone is right and everyone is wrong. I truely believe that all of us want the same thing, it's just the arguing of how to get there that is disappointing. :-(

    ReplyDelete

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