The Dow's roller coaster ride

[bascule]

The Dow rose 889 points today, the second largest one-day gain since earlier this month when it shot up 906 points. However, this cannot be described as a good month on Wall Street:

 

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/28/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm

 

 

What does this bode for our economy? Are we headed for a second Great Depression? Or will we eventually ride this one out like we did the S&L crisis?

 

I opt for the latter, but I think who we choose as President will greatly influence the outcome. We need a President that can reinstill our faith in the economy, get people to start spending again, and get banks to start lending again.

 

Personally I hope Obama gets elected and we see something akin to the Clinton years again... I can only hope.

[Realitycheck]

When you see such volatility in the market, you cannot count on anything short-term. Such activity frequently spawns even further downward slides, though with such drastic interaction, things are not quite the same. From an economic stand-point, I think that we will mend and rebuild. I still have a hard time accepting that we needed to spend a trillion dollars to simply unplug the logjam. I hope that they fix it right so that it never happens again and we get some overall improvements out of the deal. I say that war caused everything, caused people to be frugal, caused people to lose jobs, caused banks to be cautious, caused misers to not even come out of the house and get some sunshine.

 

Good thing that Obama has a good-looking wife and no need to play around, always a good thing when you are a president.

[ecoli]

Markets are impossible to predict. That's why trying to fix current problems with responsive regulation doesn't make much sense. You just wind up with a bunch of future new problems that your regulation caused.

[john5746]

Good thing that Obama has a good-looking wife and no need to play around, always a good thing when you are a president.

 

Its not about his wife's looks. Its about his ego.

[npts2020]

I just wonder how long they can keep cranking up the money machine before it is broken altogether? The only reason I can see for giving a bunch of mismanaged financial entities money to loan out instead of just doing the loans outright is so they can skim even more money from the process before finally giving up the ghost when the mismanagement becomes so great (and apparent) nobody can possibly bail them out. The only problem with it is that the U.S. Treasury is likely to suffer most of the long term consequences. The treasury secretary has been given wide ranging powers by the Emergency Economic Stabiliztion Act of 2008. Corporations like General Electric and General Motors have already asked for money, with the yea or nay resting almost entirely to the secretary's discretion. My question is where does it all end and will oversight make any difference if all of our money is given away first?

[Realitycheck]

It's a Republican plot to keep incoming Democrats from spending too much money.

 

Its not about his wife's looks. Its about his ego.

 

I was referring to Bill Clinton's swinging style.