Ok guys the dow continues to go down

255 right now

Yesterday was a dead cat bounce, helped by 70B

but what happened to all the shareholders of Lehman Brothers? Is their stock toilet paper now? Will it turn into Barclay's stock with the purchase?

some folks will loose their shirts though

Oh and this will affect folks WITHOUT even a 401 K with decreasing credit

My 92-year-old mother had $15k in Lehman stock.

I have been sweating bullets for now nine months

I fully expected this

That's what this is all about. This is a massive swindle.

If you read books about the crash of 1929, you learn that behind that crash was massive gambling and swindles.

Here is an example of one of the swindlers of that period who used "creative accounting" methods, which have been compared to those of Enron:

Ivar Kreuger (March 2, 1880 – March 12, 1932) was a Swedish civil engineer, financier, entrepreneur and industrialist. Between the two world wars, he was one of the most powerful businessmen of Europe. Negotiating match monopolies with European and Central and South American governments, he finally controlled two thirds of the worldwide match production, and became known as the "Match King"<1>. The Kreuger loans to European countries during 1925-1930, with most of the capital raised in the USA was to a great extend used to finance the reconstruction of Europe after the first world war.

. . . .

However, Ivar Kreuger did not only "acquire" companies but also introduced a whole new way of thinking in the match industry with large scale production facilities, new ideas to increase the efficiency in both production, administration, distribution and in the sales organisation. This was the starting point for the large international corporations that have since become the norm in the industrial world.

. . . .

By expanding the Swedish Match company through acquisition of government-created monopolies, the Swedish company became the world's largest match manufacturer. He set up an affiliate to Kreuger & Toll in the United States and formed the International Match Corporation which eventually came to control almost 75% of the world production in matches.

. . . .

By mid 1931, rumours spread that Kreuger & Toll and other companies in Kreuger's empire were financially unstable. In February 1932 Kreuger turned to Sveriges Riksbank for the second time in his life to support him in raising a large increase in his loans. At this time his total loans in Swedish banks was estimated to about half of the Swedish reserve currency that had started to give negative effects on the value of the Swedish currency in the international financial market. In order to grant him more loans, the government required that a complete statement of accounts of Kreugers entire company group was presented, as the bank's (Sveriges Riksbank) own calculations showed that Kreuger & Toll economy was far too weak to give him more loans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_Kreuger

The rest is history.

An interesting point -- Hoover invited Kreuger to the White House, and Kreuger received an honorary doctorate from the U. of Syracuse in N.Y. He was a precursor of today's incompetent CEOs whose main talent is for shifting money and companies around to create the illusion of growth where there is none.

so it's actually rallying a bit as the bargain hunters come out of the woodwork.

It might be weakly positive over the next several days but won't hit Friday's close.

it is bad...

Hey at least gold has gone up...

:-)

Looks more like a roller coaster, lots of peaks & valleys, so who knows how it will close.

and that folks is to a point is a crash... just a low moving one

up until now -- reality check time?

not even the laughably low numbers the gummint puts out and raise it the amount the dollar has lost and you see we're in Depression territory now.

This isn't a good time for the timid.

This is when people need to start buying, not selling off.

The timid, of course, will continue to sell.

BIGGEST loser is, of course, AIG. CitiGroup and JPMorgan ain't doing so well, either. The pattern seems pretty clear.
:shrug:
http://money.cnn.com/data/dow30/
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cp?s=%5EDJI

Even the talking heads on CNBC are getting it

What is amusing is... they are not talking free market that much no more

Socialize the losses... privatize the gains...

(And yes I get it why they could not allow certain companies to fail for again, structural reasons)

"Too big to fail" is simply TOO BIG period. Any such company should be broken up.

country any more...

Crony yes

Fascism, absolutely

But capitalist, under the classic definition... NO

Wasn't it somewhere in the mid 10,000s and are we approaching that mark?

I went to LBN so you don't have to

AT THE CLOSING BELL WHEN BUSH TOOK OFFICE on January 22, 2001
Dow - 10,578.24
Nasdaq - 2,757.91
S&P 500 - 1,342.90
Oil - $27.69/bbl
Gold - $266.70/oz.
$1 USD = EUR 1.06678
$1 USD = JPY 116.6200

The crash of 1987 happened on a Friday and his lies propped up the market through the weekend, giving them 48 hours to re-stack the cards.

Lying your way out of a crash on a Monday doesn't help unless you close the market on Tuesday.
:kick: & R