Posted on 01/01/2009 12:43:49 PM PST by Kaslin
After months of tortuous trading, Wall Street rang out its worst year since the Great Depression yesterday, leaving shareholders $6.9 trillion the poorer.
It hardly mattered that the market finished the last day of the year with a modest gain.
The losses in 2008 were so broad and deep that every sector in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index took a double-digit hit, and the financial sector lost more than half of its value. The Dow Jones industrial average, an index of 30 blue-chip stocks, and the S&P, a broader index watched by market professionals, were down 34 percent and 38 percent, respectively, their deepest losses since the 1930s. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index was down 41 percent, its worst year since the exchange was created in 1971.
Overseas, the year was just as dismal. In Germany, stocks were down 40 percent, in Japan, 42 percent, in Brazil, 41 percent. Taken together, all of the world's stocks lost 48 percent last year.
Traders endured unprecedented turmoil last year as Lehman Brothers, an icon of the financial industry, teetered then collapsed, while other firms were saved by government intervention or disappeared into the arms of competitors. By the end of 2008, the Dow had set new records for its three largest single-day point gains and two steepest point losses after swinging hundreds of points an hour during some sessions.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yup, you can say that again. There was nothing wrong with the economy when the republicans were in the majority
I forget. How many of the players are under indictment or in jail? I know it must be quite a few, yes?
A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
Unfortunately, the lending institutions are going to be left holding the bag, (for the most part) there is no shame anymore in home owners walking away like there once was. That is just one more card yanked out of the stack in this mess too.
BTW, haven't seen you post for a while, Happy New Year!
I'm in total agreement with you there, but this mess has been coming since long before Bush took office. He did sound the alarm several times and was blocked.
Now his reaction to it? Well that's a whole different thread and as another poster mentioned, set the foundation for an even more socialist government.
I shudder to think what the chosen one is going to do.
leaving shareholders $6.9 trillion the poorer...and in related news, president-elect Obama's transition team announced plans to increase federal taxes on long-term capital losses...
True, only the bogus bonuses paid for worthless worth was real as always.
Although conservatives realize this, some FReepers aren’t yet ready to face it, I guess.”
And the delusional thinking that allows some Freepers to avoid that reality will make it all the harder to get ourselves out of this mess over the next few years.
The head in the sand republicans.
“Ahh, yes. Well, let’s not forget that it was also “wiped in.” “
Well put. Live by the bubble; die by the bubble. I always thought the whining from Enron employees was a sob story. “My stock was worth hundreds of thousands and now the fraud wiped me out.” Hey fool, “Your hundreds of thousands were DUE to the fraud.”
Is that the DJIA or the price of gold?
Both!
Click here for a hot link.
DJIA. I’m in the deflation camp so I don’t see gold going that high. I do have some though.
Whom said everything would be equal in my assertion or immediate? Wealth is a subjective thing, just like love.
One day she’s beautiful girl with eyes you can’t keep stop looking at and the next day she has a light mustache.
The so-called value of these pieces of real estate were at silly levels. The wealth may not have profited the banks or the ‘loan-to-own-ers’, but those buying them at the bottom...they’re the transfered hands and they’ll get alot more money back in the long-run.
It reminds me of Monopoly. You wait till everyone else screws up and you buy.
Truth was our economy was never that pretty, she just wore a lot of makeup.
Bush, whom I believe is a decent, well-meaning man, has not governed as true conservative. Moreover, valid questions can be raised about his competence.
As far as Obama is concerned, he strikes me as very shrewd man who will probably govern from the center. He will not waste time with the leftwing social agendas of his supporters. Gay marriage - doesn't even want to hear about it. Handing Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld over for war crimes trial - won't touch it.
Just a feeling, but by this time next year the denizens of the DU and DailyKos will be more upset with him than we will.
That's it....All the Democrats will work for the federal government.
I’m not even sure who Art Bell is.
Many pundits have mentioned the possible Soros connection behind the 2008 crash. I am hardly the first to suggest it. Rush has even mentioned it in passing, and has called this crash an October surprise that got out of control. I am not at all sure that it wasn’t planned to be this bad. It is no co-incidence that the Democrats have been talking down the housing market for two years, while protecting the sub-prime loans, stashing away the cash, and then precipitating the bank crisis by starting the run on IndyMac.
O’Reilly has suggested a possible Soros connection to this crash, as well. Think about his connection to MoveOn, and Media Matters. Soros has been manipulating the economy, the media coverage, and the politics in this country for years. He finally found his “Magic Negro” in Barack Obama, the candidate who could win the presidency as a pop culture symbol of the new liberalism.
If Soros wasn’t the source of this economic disaster, he was a major player.
Well, if they aren’t Democrats now, they will be after they become members of the Federal Employee’s Union.
His taste for golf and expensive housing is an indicator of that.
Just a feeling, but by this time next year the denizens of the DU and DailyKos will be more upset with him than we will.
Those types were also upset with Clinton when he moved to the center.
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