which is worse....short term memory or tunnel vision?

[j_koch]

I assume everyone has seen this gem from The Onion talking about how focused everyone is on getting the economy to rebound, but it seems truth is stranger that that fictional article.  It seems the only metric that anyone wants to apply to measure the health of economy is the Dow index value.  If Enron and the past few years should have taught us

Comments

[jscro]

I don't think we'll see the market return to 10k this year, although I could be wrong. Today's rally was just a little buy back of the market being way oversold after some pretty big news from the government.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

[j_koch]

we should all know that if the Dow return to 10K this year (which would be a ridiculous ~50% growth in one year), its due to something big happening elsewhere...something like trillions of tax dollars being handed out via corporate welfare THAT HAS TO BE ADDED to the DEFICIT!

So horray..Wall Street made a profit, but its not based on higher earnings. All we did was move the irresponsibly obtained / managed liabilities from the financial books of private industry to the liability column of the federal government so EVERYBODY get to pay for the incompetence of a FEW rich, greedy sobs.

I propose the Obama plan be called a success today since we have already seen 20% increase in the Dow. 20% is clearly an unsustainable rate, but apparently the national financial attention span is no longer even quarterly (3 month windows) but weekly.

I say Obama wears a flight suit onto the floor of the stock exchange tomorrow and declares "mission accomplished"...after all, if a 20% increase isn't respectable then what defines success?

[dirtywest]

Could you boil this down to 160 characters and post it on Twitter?

[dryad73]

I think it would be naive to just look at the Dow as an indicator of economic stability. I'm more concerned about the amount of money the Fed is printing. China is increasingly voicing concern over it as well. It devalues the dollar. And while we may be in a deflationary period now we will eventually be in an inflationary period as a result of the increase in money supply. In short, the gov't will be stealing our purchasing power.

[j_koch]

I agree with you up until the end. All our eyes should not be on Wall Street...but I think "stealing" is a bit strong. Its probably more accurate to say your purchasing power will be diluted via inflation because the government had to bail out irresponsible corporations (financial, auto, etc).

yeah?

[dryad73]

Mmmmm....really that's a just a semantics argument. Either way, purchasing power is diminished due to government actions. By not calling it theft we desensitize ourselves to the impact of these types of government actions. Why do you think the Chinese are upset about? Because they see it for what it is, the US government devaluing their investment.

It's also very debatable that the gov't HAD to bail them out. Why is it ok for the entire American public to have their purchasing power lowered rather than individual companies failing and paying the price for their poor business practices? It's like getting away with raising taxes across the board but nobody knows about it because it's wrapped in different language.

But back to the main point, that being that the Dow is definitely not the sole indicator of economic health.

[westheoperative]

yo, i added you to my flist.