I feel the same way. During the dot-com crash it was HOLY. SHIT. THE SKY IS FUCKING. FALLING. Shit is gonna be BAD for a decade MINIMUM. A year later it was “the dot-huh-what? Let’s buy internet stocks.”
Same with the gas thing this summer. I said back in May or June that gas would be under $3 this fall and people called me crazy/idiot/asshole/delusional/etc. Now it’s fall and look where gas is - below $3.
So much of this is hype, and not just media hype. People like drama. Not that things aren’t bad and possibly getting worse - I’m in quite a pickle myself - but it’s not going to last forever. We are not entering another Great Depression.
The crazy thing about living through key points in history is not know what is going to happen. It all looks so clear in retrospect.
Of course the Allies won WWII. Of course spending your life savings on tulip bulbs is a bad idea. Of course the Jim Crow laws had to be overturned.
But those people who were in the midst of the events couldn’t see how it would all turn out.
I’m very nervous about this. If it’s the Second Depression, I imagine people will be a lot less calm and accepting than they were in the 1930s. I can imagine riots more than orderly bread lines.
I for one find it ironic that what OBL and the 9-11 terrorists tried to do to us, we have damn near done to ourselves. Now if you don’t think that’s funny you have NO sense of humor. We have found the enemy and it really is us… (Well, not you and I). And neither am I convinced that there will be no great depression II. Just found a quote from Hank Paulson from Sept. 15 (less than a month ago!) telling everyone the banks were “fine.” It all reminds of the assurances they were handing out in 1929. “We’ll be fine! Fine I tell you!” And we all know how THAT turned out. My mother was 10 in 1929 and my father was 20. I heard all the stories from people who actually lived it. Stealing potatoes from farmers’ fields and poaching deer out of season just so they could eat. The difference between now and then is there are no farms next door to steal potatoes from. I guess we’ll be stealing them from Walmart and poaching the neighbors’ cats and dogs… (EW!)
BTW, record gains on the DOW today…biggest day ever. Not that this means anything either, but just thought I’d add that the the gloom and doom mix. Obviously ‘volatile’ is an understatement for how things are atm…but I am doubting that we are going to be living the Grape of Wrath II (shamelessly stolen from friend 'luci, the One Small Voice of our tight nit community here)…
CNN defined last week as a cascading crash. A crash is a 20 percent drop. It did not happen in one day but took a week. Went up today because investors believe something is being done to fix the problem, Belief is an important ingredient in the market. Will the belief stay. It remains to be seen. The problems still exist.
Seriously. I remember I considered myself super lucky that I landed a job straight out of business school with one of the Big-5’s consulting group. I mean people were quitting jobs with investment banks to go start up dot coms and shit. From 2000 - 2003 people were throwing $405 parties (the weekly maximum unemployment benefit for NY). I lost my job in the beginning of 2003 and it took me 6 months to find a job and about a whole year to find a real job in my field.
This time I lost my job back in March and it took me all of 2 months to get two offers. While I freakin hate my new job, it’s still a management position in a Fortune 500 company for $10,000 more base than I was making before with better hours. At the very least I’m getting paid and it looks good on my resume. I actually don’t even care if I get laid off this month (although I suppose I would rather not).
Speaking of which, they are having these “Dealing with Change” online seminars to help people deal with the coming layoffs. Whatever. Look, I already read “Who Moved My Cheese” and I’ve only been her 6 months. If I get laid off, I already know how to deal with it (unemployement, beer and plenty of XBox) and if I don’t, I really don’t need the seminar do I?
When you say $46 million, what is that exactly? The notional amount of all outstanding CDSs? Or what? If it’s the notional amount, that’s a very different number than total stock market cap or total face amount of issued debt.