1. Raise taxes on any small business which nets more than $250K. Unfortunately, this encompasses about 99% of small businesses, and will force them to lay off employees. If each small business lays off just one employee, that will mean about 5,000,000 will be thrown out of work immediately by the Obama plan.

2. Raise capital gain taxes. This will cripple the stock market, and cause stock prices to dive by at least as big a percentage as taxes are raised. When Reagan cut these taxes, the market rose by 40%: so increasing them could in time cause the market to decline by this same amount.

3. Require health insurers to cover preexisting conditions. This will immediately double the cost of health insurance (we know this because we have data on state “assigned risk” plans which now cover preexisting conditions, and whose cost is about double that of employer plans) and cause virtually all employers to drop health insurance benefits for their employees. This will cause a national healthcare crisis, where nobody can afford healthcare, and doctors stop accepting insurance assignment and demand payment in advance.

4. Prohibit drilling for oil anywhere. As a result, the airline industry will be destroyed, the auto industry will shut down, and transportation costs will increase by double digits every year: leading to double-digit inflation in virtually every class of goods. Because oil is used as a raw material for many things besides gasoline, clothing, medicine, virtually all household chemicals, pesticides, etc. will become extremely scarce and prices will skyrocket.
Cities will be overrun by rats and roaches, and the suburbs will starve to death because of a shortage of horse-drawn carriages to bring goods to market. Computers will be useless because there will only be electricity for 6 hours/day. People will die of undernourishment because, without power, there will be no way to refrigerate meat and fresh vegetables.

Now that’s change!!!

Well keep on being a pessimist, that’s what.
And listen to me say, “I told you so, next question.”

In other news, I heard of an enlisted military guy who invested $18,000.00 in Wachovia @ 0.13 cents and sold out with over $200,000.00 in profits.

Lucky bastard.

Most bear markets don’t end with ‘V’ bottoms. They end with boredom and exhaustion.

More important still is to recognize the millions upon millions of Americans who’ve managed their finances prudently, lived within their means, and continued to make payments on time even as they are saddled with the burden of bailing out those who did not.

MB4 on October 13, 2008 at 6:17 PM

Where are my brownie points?

Most people, when they trip over the truth, pick themselves up and hurry off as though nothing had happened.

CC

ok Dems…take the credit. Wait, first lets see if it holds.

My taste is mostly in grade A+ high yield bonds(5-8 percent) which are suddenly available in limited quantities.

docdave on October 13, 2008 at 6:24 PM

Er … you trust the ratings? Have you not been around for the past few weeks, or something?

We are not out of the woods yet but people have to understand that the fundamentals of this economy are always strong.

titus_pullo on October 13, 2008 at 4:33 PM

Even with todays steep reaction the landscape is pretty bad right now and our nation is still consuming more than it produces. That is not fundamentally sound nor does it bode well for the future as this has been the trend now for 25 years. A global recession we can endure but there are systemic issues which need to be addressed within the cap markets.

Glad I called my broker this morning with instruction to be on the look out for bargains.

locomotivebreath1901 on October 13, 2008 at 5:49 PM

Believe me the bargains are out there not only in stocks but also in bonds. My taste is mostly in grade A+ high yield bonds(5-8 percent) which are suddenly available in limited quantities.

Over the past few weeks as the economic crisis has come into hideous focus, we’ve spent a lot of time blaming Wall Street executives and a lot of time blaming Congress, both deservedly so.

One area we haven’t spent enough time focusing on is the millions of Americans who helped get us into this mess by taking on more debt than they could afford. There are many sad and tragic stories among this group, of course, and while we don’t want to dismiss or denigrate them, it’s fair to point out they represent only a small portion of those who’ve gotten into trouble by overextending themselves financially.

More important still is to recognize the millions upon millions of Americans who’ve managed their finances prudently, lived within their means, and continued to make payments on time even as they are saddled with the burden of bailing out those who did not.

Gas prices falling. Dow climbing. Have the socialists fumbled the ball, or is this just a fake field goal attempt?

Well if it is, it’s one hell of a sucker rally.

I know I made some back today. Last time I looked, Alcoa made up 20%, with about and hour left.

It was up 11% today and things are a lot more volatile than 20 years ago. You don’t just see massive rallies in bear or down markets. You see them at the end of bearishness too.

Uninformed investors sell at the lows and buy at the highs. When AP gets back in, you’ll know we should sell again.

I said last Thursday to buy back in at 8200/8300 Dow. I still believe that is pretty close to the bottom. It was there in ‘98 and in ‘03. My opinion only and to be honest, I don’t buy stocks. I buy indexes.

Socialists believe that wealth should not be concentrated in the possession of a few members of a society (”few” being a relative term), and they believe that only the government should be able to determine how much is “enough” and how much is “too much.” The Socialists view it as the duty of the wealthy to support the non-wealthy.

Marx, Engels, Lenin and all the rest will be turning over in their graves laughing if Obama the Socialist is voted President of the United States.

Beyond that, you do have funds starting to wade back into the market, as there are any number of stocks getting hammered for absolutely no rational reason, like Rubbermaid.

And for all of Allah’s pessimism, he had that story in the headlines.