Thursday, November 12, 2009

Opinion

Is 9/15 the New Black Monday?

September 15, 2008 12:54 PM ET | Bonnie Erbe | Permanent Link | Print

Reader Comments

Black Monday

Watch Lou Dobbs if you really want to know what is best for all. Top Economists are saying a Wall Street Bail Out is like freezing your nose to put stitches in your foot. You cant treat the top when the bleed is at the bottom.

If anyone who borrowed via the crooks who wrote less than above board mortgages thinks this bill is going to get them out of trouble better think twice. The bill is geared to helping the banks, giving the fat cats bonuses for ripping off the country, and still allowing the bankers to make $500,000 a month. Sounds pretty slippery to me.

The situation can get worse....

elect John McCain and find out how!

Wake up and Smell the Coffee

The whole world is watching to see if a nation of people can lose their homes, lose their investments, lose their children in a dishonest war, lose their innovative spirit in just eight years, only to turn around and elect the same party into power. Tell me it aint so, America..tell me,please!!!

David K.

Dear Wall St.,

You reap what you sow.

Dear Main St.,

There are three kinds of people in this world: Those who make things happen, those who watch what happens, and those who ask "What happened?" If you're tired of getting plowed over by someone else's train, then try turning off American Idol and take a pass on this morning's installment of the National Enquirer for once and clue in to what's going on around you.

I told my friends and family that they were living impossibly above their means. No one listened. "Not my business." Fine: I wrote over a hundred articles and blog entries and replies like this one, fighting the oil hype tooth and nail. "It isn't "peak oil", it's a self-sustaining *simulation* of a "peak oil" market, the spike is parabolic and there is no need to physically hoard the underlying commodity: holding the futures contracts accomplished that handily and with less fuss.

I told my friends and family that too, in dumbed down terms. "No, no, just read the news, et cet."

Fine...

"Oh, my god, is that...my job! my house! What happened? The prices!"

Sure, I could lay out the finishing touch on the coming Mediocre Depression on them: The fact that my friends and family have been comfortably avoiding all this by taking out 3, 4, 5, 6 new credit cards, and the fact that they've started to miss their payments, and that such an arrangement (especially when they've just lost their job) is not sustainable.

But why? Why bother? I took precautions and made my adjustments, and I'm doing just fine, thanks. I'll be doing even better in the following months as my competition starves to death. I get so many calls on a daily basis from these same friends and relatives asking, begging, or outright guilt-tripping me for money that I'm amazed my cellphone doesn't blow up in my hand like a frag-grenade. Most of the time, I just let it ring.

There are three kinds of people walking the earth, folks: Which one are you?

the real mistake

I believe congress made the real mistake in 1913 when they passed the Federal Reserve Act.

economy

There's no way this was Black Monday. The U.S. can crank up its presses and print enough dollars to bail everyone out of this mess. Do you know how much time it takes to print $75 billion? A whole less time than the press run of a metro U.S. daily.

Sterling Greenwood

Aspen Free Press

Credit Junkies

Americans wanted to believe they could keep sucking money out of their homes every year and that it was "Never Gonna End!" Wall Street and the bankers started to believe it too - All those Harvard MBA's really thought this could go on forever...I guess those "paper chased" diplomas don't count for much if you have no common sense.

Well we all danced to the music - Now it's time to pay the piper.

I don't see that there's a lot a President or anyone in Government can do except off gas plumes of hot air. So stop screamin' for 'em to do "something"... It's just gonna make matters worse over the long run.

It's time to take our medicine and try to figure out where to plug in our big screens now that we're in the street.

Check Your Facts Please

Ms. Erbe, please check your facts.

1.There is no such thing as free market when govt. subsidizes for price control.

2.Glass-Steagal was replaced by Gramm-Leach-Bailey.

3.Sarbanes-Oxley is ethics legislation. It is otherwise known as The Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act.

Forget free market principals.

As American financial institutions fail, the US Govt must help and or provide bailout. If not the domino theory will prevail, as what happened in '29. It is paramount our central banks are not "rescued" by foreign investment capital.

Maybe you would prefer foreign govts. on the board of the Federal Reserve, dictating American fiscal policy. -If the

T-Bill tide turns, this will happen anyway-. ie world bank

You can thank New World Order leader Bill Clinton for the repeal of Glass and the passing of NAFTA, amongst others, and the repeated lowering of intrest rates (which by the way is another form of rescue) that fueled the frenzy. Bill Clinton was the Free Market President. His short term fiscal policy has had devastating long term effects.

lowering interest and subprimes

Bush continuing to lower interest rates and borrowing against the budget, in turn de-valuing the dollar and people believing they should be permitted to live beyond their means because watch too much MTV is why this is going on. Not three ultraconservative idiot Senators from the '90s. Most of the provisions protecting people stayed in place as long as lender didn't make bad loans and people were not STUPID. This reminds me of the SNL bailout, with Charles Keating, who went to prison seeking protection from John McCain......jesus, what a bunch of losers. Will the Neocons eat crow? Or will they continue to falsely blame this on the "liberal media"

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About Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.

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