Even Weird Al Writes Songs on the Economy!

Dooms Day opinions are everywhere.....

Oh brother...unemployment is on the rise!

Hearing about the economy going south is only bad for two reasons.....it hurts to see investments I have take it on the chin.....but even worst, it is hard to imagine possibly being laid off.

Cash flow is the key to life's finances....and having a job makes so much possible.

Even if you have savings.....those are supposed to be for retirement....and I'm not quite at that point!

So this article talks about mounting job losses....and how we are already into the sort of unemployment that characterizes a recession.

Hang on tight people.....

See how the old "bad guy" is the current "good guy".....today we need to SPEND FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY!

Another Collapsing sector of the economy....the Anti-Bush Merchandise sector!

Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse

CRASH DANCE - song parody on THE NATIONAL DEBT CEILING

Gas Prices further evidence of economic downturn.....

The Market is so Fickle....and looking for reasons to go up!

Check out the market the past few days....it is going up, and pretty quickly too.

One can never be so sure....because the market has shown "counter tendencies" in the past....as recent as the first quarter of this year.

I guess the news today was that the credit crisis is loosening up....and the federal government is talking about yet another stimulus package.

So the market is going bonkers......

I looked at the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets of the past few days and I see the trajectory of things isn't quite as positive from my perspective.

• Retail sales numbers are down big time in September.
• Wholesale prices drop for the 2nd straight month!
• Japanese exports are down 52%.
• US Factory output is down the most since 1974.
• World car makers suffer greatly from the crisis!
• Circuit City my cut 150 stores in order to avoid bankruptcy.
• Linens and Things goes Bankrupt. (sales begin Friday)
• Yahoo plans budget cuts and layoffs
• NBC Universal outlines a plan for $500 million budget cut
• Signs of Hollywood slowdown
• Talk of he demise of the US Automakers
• Talks of layoffs all over.....
• The company I work for is reported to be looking at a big loss this quarter.

So the market seems a little off to me again.....perhaps a way to make money by shorting the index in some way. I don't know.

Real Estate Blues

Our bailout is a big one!

According to this MSNBC article. the current spending of $250 billion is akin to about $1.6 billion 1932 dollars.

This is a lot of money, because the Reconstruction Finance Corp. (created by President Hoover) which was formed back then to do a similar thing during the Great Depression...invest in banks....they spent only $1.1 billion!

Given that the current $250 billion is only a drop in the $700 billion pool we call the bailout....well, then you can see that we are indeed using a big hammer! (compared to FDR during the Depression anyways)

Warning....yesterday's metioric stock rise might be a "bear trap" set to catch bulls!

Please note that the Dow Jones Industrial average rose11.1% yesterday, and I am sure it is enough to make a lot of people thrilled.

I am certain that many have proclaimed...."The Bottom Has Arrived".

Well, take a look at the spreadsheet above. You will notice that our 11.1% gain falls in between rows 4 and 5....which means it is only the fourth largest single day percent gain. (though it was the largest total point gain)

But if you look at the above table more closely, you will see that nine of the ten big gain days came DURING the Great Depression!

Yes, the market crash happened in 1929, but the market didn't really bottom out until about 1933.....and all of those big gain days happened in between. (OK, the #1 day might have happened as the market was climbing out of it all...but it was right in there)

What is my point you ask.....stock buyer beware!

Yesterday's market gain might just be a bear trap set and ready to trap people.....I suspect this is one of the reasons so many lost money in the depression....."trying to pick the bottom".....which must have looked to have come several times over between 1929 and 1933.

Look at the fundamentals of the economy.....look at actual things like unemployment, profits, foreclosures, people and companies going bankrupt. This is not the time to "double down" at the roulette table....at least I don't think so.

Check out the rocky ride the stock market had in the great depression in the graphic below.
Lots of great opportunities if you are day trader....but even then, the spikes seem so quick and abrupt.....I suspect it is even difficult for them.

Be safe with your retirement money.....if you have money you would normally take to Las Vegas....go for it...but be prepared to lose it.

There might be a "bear trap" out there ready to *SNAP*!

Could this economic Crisis be due to a deep structural debt problem in our system?

Check out the Comptroller General of the United States who has been sounding the warning bell about the USA debt problem. It is the same issue that Ross Perot, Paul Tsongas and a few other canaries in the coal mine.

Well, this is a pretty important and non-political person who has the job to that would KNOW this stuff....and here he is in these two videos telling it like it is.

• US Government Immorality Will Lead to Bankruptcy

• GAO: "USA is living beyond its means"

Where to go now? (investment-wise that is)

The stock market is quit messy....no, it is a darn slaughter house. In fact, I know people are carefully looking for the bottom, but I'm going to believe those who say it is impossible to time a bottom.....no need to right now, there doesn't seem to be one.

I have friends at work who are close to retiring and lose more and more each day. It is quite sad because they feel "trapped" by the market.....they have lost too much to get out now.

But I tell them that there is always more to lose....to get out whenever it feels like too much and get back in on the rally up. It will happen at some point....even if it is perhaps 4 years out as I worry it might be.

But that's not the point of my post.....what I am wondering is, what next?

I mean, unless we have total uncertainty and wicked deflation, sitting on cash isn't a great idea....because inflation is a slow moving cancer to savings.

In deflationary times, Cash is King.....and in inflationary times, Cash is Trash.

So for me, that is the high order question.....which are we facing?

At the moment, commodity prices are falling....not just oil and energy, but food and other things too. This seems like a great thing....especially with uncertain jobs....but that signals deflation, and that isn't a fun time.

Our economy is based on the flow of money....and actually on debt itself. When deflation sets in, it is very bad to have debt....

So the falling commodity prices seem to be signaling this....but since the economy is so much in flux, who knows if this is a real sustainable situation, or just some sort of "ploy" of the economy to get us to spend. (you know, that invisible hand and all)

If we have inflation....it makes sense to put your money to work, or suffer the ever-eroding loss of value over time. It is a dance of sorts....and the uncertainty we have clearly leads me to think that liquidity is really the key.....being able to cash in, and cash out is much more valuable in such unstable times.

Short term: Who knows where things are going.....so I like the idea of keeping my assets liquid. This way, I can move in any direction I want fairly quickly.

Long Term: I hope to see a constant pattern opening up.....and move accordingly. It might mean investing in property....it might mean buying a small business. It might be equities... who knows. But being liquid until things stabilize is the key.

Income: The most important thing in this time of "waiting", make sure to have an income. This is the biggest reason for thinking of perhaps owning a business....or maybe even rental property. But again....that sort of thing makes for very non-liquid investments......none of these for me until we have stability.

New dollar proposed after violent market ride of the past month....

How to end up with $1 million in about a month while investing in today's market.....

Start off with $3 million......

Yikes....the debt is so large, the debt clock is now too small!

Check out this YOUTUBE video.....apparently the debt clock in NYC needs to be replaced because it is running out of room....the national debt is too large to fit on the clock.

The solution is NOT to lower the debt.....but to buy a bigger clock! (and do so on credit no doubt)

If it were only this easy......

Yikes....I'd hate to see what the market would do if there was no bailout!

Well, the economy seems to be contracting at an ever increasing rate. I hear that unemployment is up....layoffs were at a high last month. I see that oil seems to have fallen to a very low level of about $88 per barrel.

We all know about the credit crunch, and the $700 billion government bailout....yes, the news is bad, but holy cow, what is the stock market doing now.....the floor about fell out today and the market was down about 800 points at one point.....finishing down about 370 points and below 10,000.

Stock markets around the world were falling....so I suppose it made sense to ours to fall as well.

As I type this, about 11:30pm on the east coast...the Asian markets are down about 3.4% to 4.8%. What a mess!

We shall see what tomorrow brings. In the mean time....SELL, SELL, SELL.

OMG: $700 billion isn't enough?

This afternoon the Senate version of the $700 billion bailout bill passed the house....and at that moment the stock market decided the take it's 20o point gains for the day and slide them into about a 158 point loss.

What happened? I thought there was much need and interest in this package by Wall Street.....I thought that until I read this article titled - "Credit markets to Washington: Bailout isn't enough".

What is going on here folks....have we just been had?

Was all this a sham....made up to extract $700 billion from taxpayers? I don't believe it.....or as the article notes.....perhaps the mass population of people (read that majority) who thought the bailout was wrong....well, maybe they were actually right!

We shall see.....hopefully we are finding our way out of the woods.....in the mean time, I'm thinking of investing in Mattress Makers......and perhaps coming up with a special patented design that remains comfortable being stuffed with greenbacks.