I am not a day trader. I'm a Vanguard market index "buy and hold" kind of guy. Even so, when the Dow(n) Jones stock index dropped, I moved five figures of money market into stocks, betting on the uptick. That was when the Dow(n) was down to 10,700! Who could believe that key market index would stand at 8,579 on Thursday!
Can you do the limbo rock?
Even so, there is still gasoline at the station, and it isn't quite as expensive as it was this summer. They have not turned off the electricity at Stately Blaska Manor. The shelves are well stocked at Liquor Town, my favorite purveyor of old John Barleycorn.
I'm still awaiting the "dead cat bounce" but I got to think this market is vastly oversold and under-bought. Isn't the idea to buy low and sell high? If you don't sell in a bear market, you don't lose. (Repeat three times, then rinse.)
And John McCain, that dunderhead, should be raising the roof beams in this one.
Three years ago, he sought to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - agencies that, in a misguided attempt to make sure slackers could buy homes, had the perverse effect of assuring that privateers could make money flipping homes. For awhile.
Some inconvenient truths:
NBC's Saturday Night Live has been dead-on with its Tina Fey impressions of my beloved Sarah Palin. (Secret unveiled: Republicans have a sense of humor.) But the same night SNL aired its take on the vice presidential debate, SNL cut even closer to the bone with the Congressional bailout bill.
Fannie and Freddie were lovers:
Commentary by Kevin Hassett Sept. 22 in Bloomberg:
Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Chris Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000. …
Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.
… The bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter. (As one economist) wrote at the time: "It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit."
How the Dems Created the Fiscal Crisis .
Let's hear it for Rent to Own
The great economist Robert Samuelson wrote:
Our infatuation with homeownership, embedded in dozens of government policies, has turned housing - once a justifiable symbol of the American dream - into something of a national nightmare.
As a society, we're over-investing in real estate. We build too many McMansions. They use too much energy, and their carrying costs, including mortgage payments, absorb too much of Americans' incomes. We think everyone should become a homeowner, when many families can't or shouldn't. The result is to encourage lending to weak borrowers who are likely to default. The avid pursuit of a few more percentage points on the homeownership rate (it rose from 64 percent of households in 1994 to 69 percent in 2005) has condoned enormously damaging policies.
The Home Ownership Obsession .
While Rome burns:
This just in from the Dane County Board. Something about fighting crime? Creating jobs? Reining in taxes? No, it's Brett Hulsey:
AMENDING CHAPTER 34 OF THE DANE COUNTY CODE OF ORDINANCES, REGULATING DIESEL POWERED MOTOR VEHICLE IDLING
...
Excessive idling prohibited. No person responsible for the operation of a diesel powered commercial vehicle shall allow or cause the vehicle to idle with the motor running in Dane County for more than five (5) minutes in a sixty (60) minute period.
Unless it's real cold or real hot. Seriously!
