what the fuck is going on with the market

[Willie Escalade]

ya but you are still living my dream life you bastard! BTW you take great photos Willie

Thank you, kind sir...I try my best!

[PomonaCA]

A big vote of no confidence is what's going on. No one wants to throw money in with this chimp in the white house.

[onmyknees]

The truth is the US economy is dangerously under-regulated. GOP policy has always been to de-regulate and that leads to cowboy businesses busing the system and leading to financial disasters. If you look at the countries that have AAA+ credit ratings it's places like the Norse countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), Switzerland, Australia etc. Those countries have regulations on banks and business that allows for profit but stops the reckless behavior so common in the US. They also tend to have good social welfare systems that prevent the massive poverty that occurs in the US that leads to higher crime etc etc. Sadly the US system seems to be on a increasingly quicker cycle of boom then bust.

Sadly from 10,000 miles away, you're misinformed. The current fiscal calamity in the states was caused by Fannie and Freddie two quasi government agencies, which were under the "close scrutiny" of Congress and the Administration over the past dozen years. It was social policy disguised as regulation. We have an SEC, FTC, Rating Agencies, Banking Committees, Congressional oversight, and still they all fell asleep at the switch. It's not too little regulation, it's piss poor oversight and enforcement....and typical of politicians they over react with a new set of regulations ( Dodd Frank) that never address the causes of the problem, but rather the symptoms. You can see the market reaction to new regulations.
You talk about the US downgrade from S&P....which is the biggest bunch of horse shit ever laid out. You think China or any other purchasers of US debt are going to stop buying it because S&P downgraded it? We're still the safest investment in the world. And speaking of S&P.....watch for a Watergate sized investigation when it's revealed they had a hand in rating these Banks and Mortgage companies as AAA when they knew full well the paper was worthless. Yes...that's right...the big banks and the Morgan Stanley's and Lehman Brothers paid S&P for a AAA rating on those "toxic assets" that were bundled together, not insured and sold as AAA investments. That led to the housing crisis, which began the snowball effect. So much for the integrity and verasity of S&P.
Banks,brokerage houses, fund managers and investors need clear ,concise regulations, and the fear of enforcement. Not one person has gone to jail for all the shenanigans that went on over the past 3 years....in fact the Justice Department nor the SEC has even brought charges, so why should anyone fear any regulation if it's not enforced.


Those countries you mention ( with the possible exception of Australia) have much more government involvement in private sector business...in terms of subsidies. And they're homogenous societies....It's like comparing apples and oranges, and besides their GDP's are about this size Connecticut, so the comparison is foolish. What works in tiny, homogenous Finland, won't work in the biggest, most diverse, most complicated industrial economy in the world.

[Stavros]

It's not too little regulation, it's piss poor oversight and enforcement

This goes to the core of the events that have undermined confidence in economies on both sides of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, if the regulations were there, and the agencies were staffed, why indeed was there such a failure to understand, for example, the derivatives markets which played such a crucial role in spreading credit around the world?

Here in the UK, it seems that Her Majesty's Treasury, which used to be the smallest government department with the brightest minds, was able to monitor daily events on Wall St, the City of London, Frankfurt et al, but not to employ someone who knew what derivatives were doing on those markets -or if someone was employed, his or her reports were not read or understood. Again, the Bank of England, one assumes, must have had an expert on derivatives who knew what was happening. Both the Bank and the Treasury have enforcement options in their armoury, presumably a similar battery of options exists in the Federal Govt of the USA.

But surely it was a reluctance by the Bush Presidency and here, Blair's government, to 'harass' the whizz kids on Wall St generating such staggering profits year in year out -even though a close analysis would have revealed it was based on credit. Were these people blinded by the blizzard of dollars every time the glory boys got their bonuses?

Bush and Blair were pioneers of business-friendly 'regulation-lite'; I don't think even Margaret Thatcher would have ceded so much power to the men-in-markets: surely Americans can't put yet another 'business-friendly' dude in the White House who wants to go further and scrap regulations altogether, and do just about anything which recent events suggests would make things worse?

We are still waiting for an answer but yes, the lack of enforcement was critical.

[DaveinBoston]

I heard Obama announced he was going to cancel his vacation and remain in Washington and 'work' and the marked dropped 400 points.

[Border80]

Trees, meet forest.

Those places are more egalitarian than the US. And they don't have a government run by the rich, for the rich.

It's 1% of our country with 90% of the assets.

The sick thing is that they have the rank and file convinced that taxes are evil, corporations should gave the same rights as people, and that the TeaBaggers are a grass roots movement instead of a bunch of ball suckers.

Guess whose sack it is?

Taxes ARE evil. The current tax system is used to promote and oversee a social agenda rather than to raise revenue for the government to operate. Don't believe me? Look at a lot of the credits being promoted by the government (ie: green energy credits). The tax system stopped being about funding the government long ago when the idiots in congress (most of whom have 0 business/financial/economic/accounting experience) realized they could promote whatever agenda they wanted instead of what is best for the country.

[SammiValentine]

Bush and Blair were pioneers of business-friendly 'regulation-lite'; I don't think even Margaret Thatcher would have ceded so much power to the men-in-markets: surely Americans can't put yet another 'business-friendly' dude in the White House who wants to go further and scrap regulations altogether, and do just about anything which recent events suggests would make things worse?

was it not Thatcher that pioneered freetrade,unregulated dealings, with regards to business/banking...?? I think so..:P

[buckjohnson]

Thank you, kind sir...I try my best!

This is not a gansta type response.

[MdR Dave]

Taxes ARE evil. The current tax system is used to promote and oversee a social agenda rather than to raise revenue for the government to operate. Don't believe me? Look at a lot of the credits being promoted by the government (ie: green energy credits). The tax system stopped being about funding the government long ago when the idiots in congress (most of whom have 0 business/financial/economic/accounting experience) realized they could promote whatever agenda they wanted instead of what is best for the country.

Incredible. You're talking about what government does with taxes, not taxes.

I do agree that there is a lot of waste, especially when the money goes to bail out greedy, over-leveraged financial institutions that managed for years to pay out multimillion dollar bonuses through cash and options. Or fund a war that benefits a company like Halliburton, which moved it's headquarters to Dubai so it wouldn't face scrutiny in the US.

Blades of grass in an endless meadow. Have fun grazing.

[MdR Dave]

This is not a gansta type response.

That, Buck, is FUNNY!