Financial Crisis Megathread - Revised bailout passed senate/house and goes into law

I'm down 20 grand at this point, but I'm not worried. Should have invested in pinball machines, but too late now.

I'm really glad to be free of debt finally and I don't plan on it coming back any time soon

I guess, it seems like it's gonna be political suicide for whoever gets elected in office anyways lol.

How? If the majority of Americans oppose the bail out then why would their career be over? Seems like the opposite to me.

"Oppose the bailout" is actually a misreading of the data. Nobody LIKES the bailout, but most everyone knows that the alternative is actually worse for them, personally. It's just that the "Oppose the bailout at all costs" crowd was nicely vocal for the media.

In the "American Life" show I linked to above, a financial analyst who initially opposed the bailout, got so scared over what he saw during the following week that he changed his mind and did a 180.

It cannot get worse for some of us. You'll all see that this so-called bailout is going to be a wasteed 700 billion.

Most everyone knows? Or "thinks" or is "guessing," or "scared into believing" it might be worse for them. The frighteners were out in full force after the bailout got rejected, you had the government and media propaganda machines working hand-in-hand during the week. Who knows for sure how much it will take, where it will be taken, and where it will ultimately take us. It was rightly labeled Pandora's Bailout. People opposed to the insane bailout were not all asking Congress to just sit back and do nothing, rather slow down a bit, ask some serious questions, investigate, consider the ramifications of the largest bailout in history and look at possible alternatives. Look at the panicked rush Bush and his cohorts were in and all of their predicted dire consequences if the bailout failed a second vote, yet now look at what he's saying, something along the lines of "it's going to take time."

Many are operating under the assumption that this will work when nobody knows for sure if it will do anything, it's more of cross the fingers and hope. Probably not unlike the Iraq invasion where everyone crossed their fingers hoping WMD's would be discovered.

Also we have to keep in mind that the same people that oversaw and dare I say were partially responsible for this financial collapse are the same exact people who worked on this bill, passed it, and will get to oversee its execution. Of course, let's not forget that an extra 100+ billion in bribes were added to it to buy the House votes. Finally, as noted earlier, let us not forget who was shopping this bill to Congress and the American people with the tired and overused end of the world rhetoric, it was the Bush Administration.


Now onto some polls in regards to the lowest rated Congress in history:

Rasmussen Reports™: The most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a presidential election.

If this administration has taught us anything over the last seven years it should be that we should take our time with major decisions and really ask some hard questions.

Sadly appears we aren't ready for history lessons:roll:

Yeah.

Even still, I feel like it's 2000 or 2004 all over again. Two idiots running for office. AGAIN.

Long as the companies are still around and you aren't selling any time soon, it'll come back. Hope you picked good companies.

We are not bailing out our loan providers, we are paying off their bets in short. They took on these loans, they sold them to other banks and provided them with "insurance" that they were good. When the loans tanked, the banks couldn't pay off the debt because the loans were never legally insured, in short not regulated. So, thousands of folks stopped making payments on homes, the bets, and yes they are bets, tanked so it's collection time. The banks and the rest of us are still saddled with the debt. I have no solution to this but neither does my Punahoe grad so I'll stop here.

What happens when the world's worst fears turn to anger?
Good thing we kept the bullpen full! (depending on how you look at it)

Oh yeah, they are all reputable funds. At least as reputable as a Wall Street fund can be these days. And yeah, as long as I don't sell it won't result in a loss.

I said that once.

lots of people, who were well diversified and stood there ground made it through the tech bubble A-OK.

I don't think this will be different, I just think its going to take alot longer for things to recover, there is alot of fear out there.

So were you invested in funds or individual stocks?

The bailout doesn't look like it's gonna do much. The markets are still low. Everyone sees risk still.

... and if funds, was it the safe indexed no-load funds, or one of those "actively managed" mutual funds that profit nobody but the fund manager?

The markets went south after the bailout passed, because suddenly the investors realized that this wasn't going to be a quick fix, which means the commercial paper market is still frozen, which causes businesses to cancel projects and lay off people, because they can't borrow short term funds to get them through periods where the outgo is greater than the income, thus stopping such things as latte machines in McDonald's.

The stock market will pick back up when the commercial paper market picks back up when scared investors stop sinking their money into T-Bills to the exclusion of everything else. (I think this is the real reason oil, and other commodities are going down; the money is fleeing to "safe" low return investments, so nobody is buying the commodity futures, which lowers the price.)

I agree with you 100% but I wouldn’t go about calling an index fund safe however. the S&P index is down near what, 20% this year alone? Some of the European index’s are down close to 30%. Safe is relative I guess, I can live with fluctuations like that, not everyone can. IMO Index funds are the way to go long term, but the offset of having no active management is potentially more short term volatility. To anyone who invests logically and for the long term(and is actually really in there for the long term, not just thinking they are when all is well) they are the way to go IMO. Why give up 20%+ of your growth on management fee’s alone when something like 94% of fund managers out there can’t beat the index long term. Over a life time, 1.5% for MER is would be huge, easily 100k-200K+ when you factor in compounding assuming you expect to save near a million or so.

Pro tip - The 6% or so that have won’t take money from people like you and me.

The bailout can’t be judged yet. I’m not saying its going to work, but the market going down the next day is irrelevant. The stock market isn’t a rational machine, its driven by investors buying and selling, the drop was hugely due to speculators who didn’t like the news jumping out. Its going to be a while before we have any idea what the effects are going to be.

Yup. Zero points means nobody ain't buyin' nutthin' and everybodie's tryin' to sell it all. There will be people jumping out windows when this happens, or Warren Buffet will spend $10 and buy EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE.

For indexes, such as the DOW, a point is a $1 price change in the value. Why use the term? I guess technically the DOW is not measured in $'s, it's an average. Is that Right? If so it'd be only proper to say 'the dow dropped 500 points, from 10650 to 10150' rather than '...dropped $500'.

YouTube - Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?

And this isn't just with the current politicals, thay all do it, McC is promoting this in an "I'm telling mom" ploy.