Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch Fold

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It's going to be a very bad day for the stockmarket, everyone better strap in, the Dow futures are already down nearly -400 points.
 
Its going to be a VERY BAD day everywhere !!!

Thank you Mr Bush and Asshole Greenspan!
 
Mcsame/Palin for 08 YAY!!

I have (or had) investments through Merrill Lynch.
 
How does this relate to Bush?

Bush sucks, I'll give you that, but he is hardly responsible for this mess we are all in with the stock market.
This is due in part to greedy,unscrupulous lenders giving loans to naive, uneducated, people who couldn't afford them.
That is what started this whole mess.
Then, the inevitable came. Foreclosure and forced sales all add up to the already increasing inventory, expectedly hurting the real estate market.

It was bound to affect the stock market sooner or later. No surprise to me.
 
Oh, yes

The "one" is gonna make everything.. ALL BETTER!
Barack is the answer to all thats wrong in the world!

I'll pass on the Kool-Aid. Thank You.
 
All right, I've sat back long enough and kept myself quiet. Don't blame the current administration for all of your petty little conmplaints. What got us into this mess? GREED. The financial institutions lossened their guidelines and made credit so much easier to get not only for mortages but also credit cards and other loans. And lots of people kept spending and spending and putting themselvesa into more dept. Mortgages were loaned out with very poor lending requirements and ratios. And people kept extending themselves more into dept and buying housing far more than they could normally afford. I have a coworker who is going through trying to refinance because of an upcoming balloon patyment. I begged her two years ago to not accept this loan, she'd regret it. But no she didn't listen to me and now she's in the shape she's in. And she could never refuse her daughter anything--the new house, a new truck, and more "stuff". Kids are given far too much these days and parents can't say no. People have been borrowing from Peter to pay Paul so to speak. The only ones I feel sorry for are the 1st time home buyers many of whom shouldn't have bought or been allowed to buy what they bought--it was too much dept for them to manage. I don't feel sorry for all those living in the large houses with swimming pools, wonderful ammenities, driving beautiful cars and huge trucks, lavish vacations, and on and on. Many of them lost large amounts of equity because of their just having to have the berst of everything even though they couldn't afford it. Spend spend spend, more debt debt debt and when the balloons came, they were so locked into trying to pay everything back, there was no rooom in budgets to make sacrifices to hold onto the roofs over their heads. And don't go telling me I don't know what sacrificing means. I took a 65% decrease in income 10 years ago, and at that time, making less than what I made in 1977. And not until 3 years ago, did I finally pass the ratio where I was supposed to be able to afford my own house. I managed to hold onto my house and had to make a lot of sacrifices and scrimp by. All the while I couldn't get over how so many could afford buying new homes and very nice cars and keep spending and spending.
 
Thank You Bob!

I always knew you were a smart man. This confirmes it.

How are you doing btw? after Ike?
 
Shane, I'm fine--hardly a blow and only about 0.10" of rain. Streets here Saturday and yesterrday were errie, hardly any traffic and not many in the stores. We have many many evacuees from the coast sent here in shelters and the substantial teaching/research hospital here is taking care of the sickest of the sick that were also purposely sent here!!!
 
Bob,

I am glad you were spared the worst of Ike.
Shane, I agree with you that greed is a cause of many of our ills. This is the reason that both republicans and democrats agreed to market regulation after the meltdowns of the 1890's and, of course, the horrible problems which came up during the 1930's.
Unfortunately, the current administration set aside, or chose to overlook unsafe practices. Even Reagan, however reluctantly, maintained a strong control on free capital. I remember because I was studying macro- and then microeconomics during his presidency.
(I got an A+ in Macro and basically just showed up. Dropped every other course except Pre-Chaucerian lit., got a tutor and worked my ass off to barely get a B- in micro. Anybody else have that experience?)
I know that for you folks on the right, it seems like we are blaming this administration for every cloud in the sky. Sometimes they aren't at fault. Mr. Paulson, however, has even had to undo their lax policies, and has been saying so publicly. Nobody will ever accuse him of being a Marxist, communist or even an Eisenhower republican.
Quite frankly (yes, now I'm letting the Bushies have it), I don't understand how you can advocate such fiscal sanity to you friends (I agree, remember I am a fiscal conservative) and yet not be bothered one bit by what this administration has done to the economy.
 
Agreed Bob

But if Greenspan and currents would keep the interest rates up at higher levels so many would not have spent so much. I too don't feel sorry for any of them you are so right about the spend. but Bush did tell us to do so in just words. His exact words were "Lets spend out way out of this mess" too many listened to him. A lot of the blame should go to the C Card and lending co, too they were far too gun ho to get one to buy any thing they could not really afford.
 
Folding!

It's sad but soon all of them will fold. It's all bad business practices. Everything is so disfuctional. I hope we all can survive in the new world.
Peter
 
Remember, this is more than just a mortgage mess . . .

and the current administration IS partly to blame. Bush and his cohorts inherited a nice budget surplus from Clinton. They then cut taxes and greatly increased government spending, thus creating the huge deficit we now have. At the same time the Fed held interest rates artificially low, which is what allowed all the subprime lending to become a large part of the economy.

It's true that greed is what ultimately caused banks to fail, but after the debacle of the 1920s stock market crash it has generally been the policy of the Fed to hold interest rates at a level that allows enough money to enter the economy through banking institutions to keep everything moving forward, but not so much money as to encourage poor business practices. In this case the Fed has allowed so much money to enter the market that banks and mortgage companies could afford to lend large sums to people who normally wouldn't be able to get loans. Remember if a bank can only afford to buy so much money from the Fed, they're not likely to loan it to those without proper collateral and good credit.

The market started to get soft late last year, but the sh*t really hit the fan this summer when fuel prices shot up. Part of this was due to demand, but a significant part was due to the big drop in the value of the dollar - since most of our fuel is imported a drop in the dollar's value will raise prices. And why did the dollar drop? Because we've become the world's largest debtor nation, which leads us back to the whole problem of constantly reducing taxes while increasing spending.

The Republicans aren't alone in blame for this, but since a Republican Congress and a Republican president were in control while the whole overheated mortgage situation developed and they did nothing to slow it down I certainly think they bear some responsibility. What's more distressing is their continued insistance, through the McCain campaign, that we need more tax cuts. I don't like paying taxes either, but the Treasury cannot be used indefinately as a revolving credit card without destroying the value of our dollar.
 
> The market started to get soft late last year, but the sh*t really hit the fan this summer when fuel prices shot up. Part of this was due to demand, but a significant part was due to the big drop in the value of the dollar - since most of our fuel is imported a drop in the dollar's value will raise prices. And why did the dollar drop? Because we've become the world's largest debtor nation, which leads us back to the whole problem of constantly reducing taxes while increasing spending. <

The primary cause for the dollar's collapse was the end of so-called "dollar hegemony". Economists have been expecting this debacle for years:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4611300-102271,00.html
 
Jeff, that's an interesting article, and it notes pretty much what I was referring to:

"So the US can carry on printing money - effectively IOUs - to fund tax cuts, increased military spending, and consumer spending on imports without fear of inflation or that these loans will be called in. As keeper of the global currency there is always the last-ditch resort to devaluation, which forces other countries' exporters to pay for US economic distress. It's probably the nearest thing to a 'free lunch' in global economics."

From the end of WWII until the creation Euro there was nothing to challenge the dollar as the investment currency of choice for most of the world. This greatly benefitted the US, and in return the US government generally worked hard to keep the dollar as stable as possible. Even with the Euro, many institutions throughout the world saw no reason to dump the dollar - after all, it had served them for half a century with almost unheard of stability. Once Washington began to run the nation into significant debt, however, everyone with a brain knew things were going to change. In contrast, Europeans had kept a more sensible monetary policy and the Euro was better supported by assets than the dollar. Is it any wonder then that the Euro has become a formidible competitor for investors across the globe? Before the Euro perhaps Washington could have gotten away with some of this mess, but Congress, the President, and the Fed should have known better today.

Fixing our current problems will require the cooperation of both Republicans and Democrats. The first step will be an admission that we cannot under any circumstances continue to spend vastly more money than is taken in via taxation, but unfortunately nobody wants to address the issue in an honest and constructive manner.
 
These Things Happen On Wall Street

Not all of Lehman is going away, and Merrill will still be around, just under a different owner.

Be that is it may, add the names to the long list of Wall Street firms no longer around and or merged/bought: EF Hutton, Drexel, Smith Barney and so forth.

Something that cannot go on forever must stop, as the man says.

L.
 
Hold On Folks....

You all have it part right...but Bush boy isn't off the hook for this mess. This has as much, if not more, to do with the easing of regulation for banking and brokerage operations whereby they were allowed to operate unchecked, with such high levels of leverage, leveraging investments that ranged from superior to crap to seriously misrated (such as mortgage securities - mostly way overvalued). Brokerages were so highly leveraged in some cases, they operated with little to no cash on hand and certainly no supervision. This, combined with leveraging near worthless securities helped to put the nails in the coffins. Think they didn't know these securities were way overvalued??? Guess again...they sure did. But this represented opportunity on their ends, something that they were not going to walk away from when there was no regulation that said, hey, you can't do that!!

Yes, greed played a role (doesn't it always?), but quasi government regulation of this industry (like banking) has proven to be necessary in the past, to keep irrespsonsible practices in check, just as it is necessary today. While Bush may not directly interface with policy on this end, as a leader, he certainly has a role in seeing the signs (and they were everywhere) and pressing the fed to examine the fiscal health of the industry for the good of the economy and the country. Of course, this would require balls, and as we all know....he ain't got none when it comes to big business.

It will be interesting to see, as this plays out further, exactly what, if any, laws were broken, and who, if anyone, goes to jail.

Fucking twists my balls....put Martha Stewart in prison for selling ImClone stock on "insider trading" charges, but this shit just goes on an on and on, and people just skate away from responsibility for it. be something to consider, now would it? Common sense is gone from our society...I'm convinced. People need to be told how to think, what to think, when to think....cause they sure don't seem to be able to do it on their own any more......
 
Let me tell you about inflation

On the grassroots level, ok actually my checkbook. I experenced inflation first hand yesterday. I went to Wallmart, one of the less expensive places to shop and bought groceries. It had been several months since I had "stocked Up" but money be as it is. . .I ended up spending $363,39 for my cart of groceries.

Here is an example of how prices have risen just lately.
Cascade w/dawn 36 count. Was $3.63 Now $7.98
Hudson Cream Flour (locally produced 25lb bag Was $4.79, now $11.49
Charmen Tissue 12 count Was $5.00 now $7.99
Tide 56 load w/bleach Was $7.00 now $10.00
Eggs 1dz large Was .99 now $1.74
White Tuna Was $.99 now $1.39
Sugar 5lb white Was $1.39 now $2.49

All in all I paid almost double what I would have paid for this cart load of groceries. This isn't to mention the $67 it cost me to fill the car to go to the store to start with.

We won't have to worry about the President, we will all have starved to death while broke in the poor farm.
 
Inflation at work . . .

and it's directly tied to the drop in the value of the dollar. Virtually every imported component of that grocery bill costs more, even if only because of the extra dollars required for fuel to produce or grow it and then transport it to Walmart. The terrible thing about this sort of inflation is that it hits common people hardest; wealthy folks may be annoyed that their grocery bill has doubled but for the middle class it means less money to be saved for retirement or large purchases, while for the poor it means simply doing without some of the groceries in the first place.
 
Shane and Bob, you can suck on the "Everything's A-OK" teat of the GOP as long as you want but it won't change the facts. Bush and a Republican congress let this mess unfold on their watch. They were elected to be stewards of our country. That includes the economy, the environment, everything. Look what they have done. In the history of this country, we have never had so much debt on the books. Instead of pulling us together to stand against terror and those who perpetrate such evil, we were told not to worry and go shopping - take a trip, we'll handle everything. They didn't ask us to sacrifice to rid ourselves of dependence on foreign oil. They didn't ask us to even do simple things like growing a few vegetables in the yard to save the oil it takes to produce and ship them to our grocery stores. Hang your washing outside, drive less, every little bit helps. Just go shopping - and with no regulation or or control over the market, the banks and lenders step in to provide seemingly unlimited lines of credit to do just that. Yes, I agree some of the responsibility has to be lain at the feet of the end borrower, but how many people do you know that actually can balance their own checkbook or know the difference between a debit and a credit in accounting? Ignorance is bliss and ignorance with a pocket full of cash is dangerous. While we were out frittering away the best investments most of us will ever have - our home equity - on flat screen TV's, video games and new cars, Bush and his go-along congress brought us into one legitimate but poorly executed war and one illegitimate war that were both paid for entirely off the books and with borrowed money. Long term obligations of this nation have topped 53 Trillion dollars so if you're looking forward to Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid when you retire, it's time to face reality. Within 15 years we will be forced to make cuts in education spending, subsidies for agriculture - you name it, it's gone. Just these budget items will go toward making the interest payments on the debt we have right now. McCain is promising more tax cuts and has brought what could have been a rational discussion of our economic, employment and social problems down to an American Idol show "Race for the White House". We all need to pull our collective heads out of our collective asses and put a stop to this madness now and start listening to the economists who have been saying for years that these darker days were coming. Enough of the smoke and mirrors and the horse and pony shows to distract us from reality.
 
Well, if Republicans are so terrible.....

Why isn't "The One" doing better in the polls? Why is McCain, who just about everyone here has branded as "McSame", doing so well with "suburban women"?
Newsweek has McCain leading Obama 13 points with this crucial voting bloc. He should have a double digit lead over McCain, given the state of the economy, and the fact that he is being outspent by Obama 3 to 1.

Could it be that the DUMBOcrats nominated the WRONG person?

I think so..
 
InTrade Market odds~

show McCain up over Obama 51.7 to 47.1..Interesting, considering 2 weeks ago Obama was up over McCain by 20!
 
Post# 303809-9/15/2008-16:54 ||| ~sudsshane (Orlando/Winter Park,FL)

Well, if Republicans are so terrible.....
Why isn't "The One" doing better in the polls?

Because people are stupid enough to vote them in...again.
 
Hmm,

Neither of them are going to do anything worthwhile. It's a problem that expands so far beyond what this current government can even handle. I know enough about myself to know that I'm a pessimist. In my mind the days will get even darker and for good reason. The system this country is being run with simply does not work. This country is not being run as a true democracy for starters and, if anything, is a more fascist government. Furthermore, there is such a huge disconnect between citizens and government now that average people just sit back and think the government is going to make all bad things go away and take care of them without ever needing to take any sort of responsibility for themselves. The current system smoke screens and bi-partisan junk has got to go away. Decisions have to stop being persuaded by media coverage and large interest groups. I have a feeling one day, maybe even in my lifetime, this is all going to come to a bloody end (and I do mean bloody) and we will be that 3rd world country that hopefully others will feel sorry for enough to send us aid. But with our record of foreign policy I would even doubt that.
 
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