13042 for the Dow today... it lost four percent for the week

ok Ok this is a major correction we will be told...

And Wachovia is also in trouble

heading toward Wachovia's main office.;)

That is quite the belly laugh you gave me, thank you

I'm marking this as official beginning of the bear market...

Not a disaster, the markets have historically wavered, but a bear market none the less.

My geuss.

Though I do hope it keeps going up. Hate to see a lot of disapointed people.

It really depends on how investors are positioned. For some people, these drops are not really a surprise. Hopefully, many people hedged their investments by putting some portion of their portfolio into foreign currencies, gold, or natural resources.

It's a tough time, and it's even hard for investment managers to figure out what is going on. Personally, I think we are entering a true bear market and possibly recessions.

will be bad or disastrous

As to the recessions... I fear we are there...

And I hope it stays there.

and that the writing has been on the wall for about four or five years.

Some people saw this and prepared in advance.

Maybe most did not and have not prepared, or have run up a lot of debt or credit, or bought things they cannot afford.

My fear is that the next few years will be very hard and ugly for many people, and that... well... It's just not going to be a good time for us, but maybe we will wake up and learn to be good people again and vote for good leaders.

She reiterated that it was what was needed to lift us out of this... quicksand?... eyeball deep horse huey?... disaster looming?

She needed "one of those magic ball things" to figure it out!
(crystal ball)

quarterly profits are down... people ain't buying

People are tapped out

fiscally speaking.

imho anyhow

To get us out of this mess.

He was right about that.

But even said, it would have been manufactured in China, like the I-pod, which is good for Apple stocks, no big deal for the economy.

Course if we go into recession, Apple's gonna feel the pain too. I'd say most companies would and might learn a lesson about the importance of "consumer spending" and how we need descent jobs in order to spend.

But of course no lesson will be learned as corporate CEO's only care about their bottom line, which of course is their golden-parachutes...

would just move the operations to another country where labor costs are cheaper, and government supplied health care is available!

They exposed themselves to certain portions of the Sub-Prime securities and have made that public. Merely because they are going to take the loss on their balance sheet does not by ANY means put them in trouble.

I realize the above makes me appear to be defending the dreaded corporation, but hysteria and false assumptions do no one any good at all.

(Nadin...i am not accusing you of being hysterical, by the way,...it just seems to me that waaay too many DU'rs seem to think we are all going to be out of work and in soup lines in 3 months.)

we can still turn it around, but the window is closing

And it has to do with liquidity crisis... debt up the nose... et al

:-)

I am by no means an economist. We have a published professor of economics on DU so i prefer not to stick my neck out too far because this is hardly my area of expertise. It is apparent however, that the differences in regulations, reporting requirements, rules for new issues, etc. are so dramatically different now than they were back then the market already knows how big (for the most part) the problems are and those problems are being priced in as we speak.

The window might be closing, but i just don't see it as being able to close all the way. Not by a long shot.

by Clinton back in the 1990s...

This is partly why we have the liquidity crisis that paralels 1929

Now Bernacke is truly doing everything the fed didn't do back then... and it is pulling it in the other direction

Having him in there at this very time is forboding.

which was essentially nothing

And the credit crisis is really bad right now

And they didn't have the world economies changing their reserve currencies to boot back then

I don't expect it to do well at all until the GOP are all out of office and a return to fiscal sanity is being pushed through Congress.

It's going to get much worse before it gets any better.

The banking/credit mess is going to get worse...a lot worse. The ongoing collapse of the sub-prime market is destroying the housing market that is putting a lot of contractors and other construction-related people out of business. But the real albatross is the outstanding personal debt...billions that people are also starting to default on now that the banks are not ready to deal with. Add to that growing corporate debts and you have a financial system drowning in its own largess.

For years now there's been a big shell game as the economy has suffered despite itself...as long as people were spending, that was all that mattered. Now that money is tight, the deck of cards are collapsing as profits vanish and with it the money to pay off corporate debts.

Ironically, the market is still up overall for the year and those who aren't invested in bank or housing/real estate have done well. But I don't see that lasting. I expect a very rough fourth quarter as people will be putting what xmas money they still have into their gas tanks or heating systems...then first quarter next year will be brutal as companies release poor earning reports and other problems...that could turn things downward in a bad way.

The supply-side saturation is working it's way back up like a snake eating its own tail.

Hell, the whole damn thing was a fraud to begin with,...

The major players are waiting for sufficient CRUNCH to push us into the next corrective step: war on Iran.

It is very important, but these market topics tend not to be of great interest to most people here on DU, not that I blame them.

part of the problem is the complexity of the issues, real and perceived