Monday, January 21, 2008

Lucky It's A Holiday

Updated below at Noon.

I guess we are lucky it's a holiday today and Wall Street is closed. Last week was bad enough and the outlook for this week doesn't look good. The rest of the world is responding to the U.S. economy and more than likely to Shrub's idiot proposal for fixing it. I am still unclear what he thinks dipping into the Chinese Visa once again and handling out a few hundred bucks is going to do for the long term fiscal health of the county. Today, the Nikkei lost 3.9% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng has dropped 3.5%. China, who has to be worried about a failing US economy, shed a whopping 5.1% on the Shanghai Composite.

It is going to be a bumpy ride folks so hold on...this from the Agonist.
Somewhere in all this mess the U.S. stock market will collapse. At the moment the stock market is already in a correction, worrying about an economic recession. What it really should be worrying about is something much worse – a complete collapse of the credit markets globally, leading to a depression that will last 3 – 5 years. Once that is understood, the Dow will be trading well below 8,000.

So hold on to your job, whatever that may be. Pay down your debt and watch your expenses. Monitor the credit and market risks in your investment portfolio, and if you have any real concerns, U.S. Treasuries earning 2% will be a lot better than stocks or bonds that might collapse in value. As of now, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are mowing down the big players, but the little guy will be in their sights eventually.


Update: Not looking to good right now..
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- If futures contracts traded on a day when U.S. stocks weren't even due to open are anything near accurate, then markets will be in for a major decline on Tuesday, with concerns about bond insurers and the health of financial institutions dragging markets lower.
March contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 482 points lower to 11,624.


It is not just the Asian markets either look at what is happening in Europe.

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