So they vote down the rescue plan to help ease the credit markets and bring some sense of stability to Wall Street.
Why did they do it?
According to the Republican news conference I just watched it’s because the Nancy Pelosi didn’t give a very nice speech before the vote?
What? Are you kidding me?
No, you are not kidding me. This is about getting re-elected, nothing more and nothing less. All kinds of elected officials are up for re-election and they want to keep their job.
People are calling their elected officials and saying “I don’t want to bail out big bad Wall Street …” which is fine if Joe Citizen wants to be angry, but elected officials (acting on behalf of the country as a whole) should know better. Instead of voting “no” to appease the people you need a vote from, stand up and think things through like an adult.
When Joe Citizen says he’s angry and doesn’t want to help Wall Street, that’s all fine and dandy. But more than 50% of Americans have their retirement allocated amongst mutual funds. What are mutual funds? Stocks. And what’s happening to the stock market over the last two months? Nothing but a nose dive. And what’s happening after the “no” vote today? As I write this the Dow is down a little more than 500 points. Which means the very people that are complaining about a bail out are watching the value of their retirement go down the tubes because their representative voted no, partially on their advice. Basically people are kicking themselves in the ass.
The biggest losers are the baby boomers. People like H and I can ride this market out over the next 25-30 years, but our parents are not in a position to do so. They are either retired or close to doing so and thus count on that money to live.
Politics has no business in coming together for an agreement to ease the financial markets. Elected officials should be ashamed of standing in front of microphones and posturing, pointing fingers and acting like spoiled brats.
This isn’t about being a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent. As someone who can’t vote I could care less what political party people choose to support. However, the retirement of my family is at stake just like millions of others in this country. That should come first.
It’s nice to see my business degree being put to use, even if it’s only on a personal blog.
I’m against the bailout. These guys got rich gaming the system, arguing against government oversight and finding any loopholes they could.
The thing is, yes, there’s a whole lot of retirement investments in the stock market… but this bailout does nothing to fix what’s fundamentally wrong with these banks’ assets: People can’t pay their mortgages because of their own fault and predatory lending on behalf of the lenders.
Next up, Option ARMs.
If you really want to fix the issues, spend that 700 billion on creating good jobs in green tech, alternative energy, fix our crumbling infrastructure and education. That allows people to actually pay their bills, creates demand for this toxic housing stock that no one can get rid of, and weans us off foreign oil, to boot. The economy will eventually fix itself.
Hey Rich –
It’s more about credit markets right now rather than mortgages and such.
The bailout plan isn’t perfect by any stretch, but relief to free up money is of the utmost importance right now.
This past weekend i checked my $$$ and i was expecting the worst but hoping for the best.
.
I am only down 7.7% which is not great but not bad at all considering some people really are hurting, especially retirees and baby boomers readying to do so.
I got over 30 years to ride it out if need be. But im no fool.
I am practical and conservative when it comes to money matters.
I rather risk in LOVE than MONEY
I wont check again til this Friday at the earliest!
You probably have a 401k or something similar, so you are well diversified and not going to see staggering numbers in the loss column. Mind you they aren’t going to be great but you won’t be down double digits …
If you have 30+ years like you say than you are fine to ride things out. It’s the people who either have a lot tied up directly in stocks and/or those looking to pull their money out for retirement over the next few years that are being killed these days.
I watched GMA this am, and they are really trying to help get the word out on how to watch your stocks, retirement accounts and how to remain call through all of this.
Then they showed a Stock Exchange worker yelling out, in responce to the bail out not passing- yelling “those idiots!!”.
I thought- you need to be looking in the mirror.
I own 2 homes and rent them out to pay my mortages- and am not in a bad position right now. I just need to hold on and ride it out. It always fixes itself, right?
Now is the time to buy stocks, isn’t it?
I think all the talk of how great our economy is, then the “we may have a problem here”, and then the WE WILL BE HAVING A GIANT MELTDOWN UNLESS WE BAIL THESE SUCKERS OUT, and now the well, it isn’t so bad we have to work on the Jewish Holiday…what will the headline be tomorrow? I give.
They can all kiss my ass.
Hey Christine –
I’m hardly a stock broker or financial adviser but I’m not sure I would buy stock at this time. I know the old adage is buy low, sell high but I’m not sure this is the low of the low yet. If you have a ton of extra cash sitting around and can stand to lose it all than perhaps a few buys might not be bad. Personally though I would wait it out a little longer – I don’t think we’ve seen the bottom yet.
Well B- I do not have any extra money, and if I did, I am pretty sure we would buy land/a apartment building before stocks. In fact I know we would. If I could garner up $500,000.00, I’d be at the realtors office faster than a bull going to hillside of cows.
I do not think we have seen the bottom yet either, and hope more folks don’t lose their assets/retirements.
I watched in 2002, as my Father lay dying, his stock portfolio go south by $200,000.00. POOF.
They can still kiss my asses- thefolks who meant well who gave $850,000.00 loans to folks making $55,000.00 a yr. The folks who thought they’d never get caught- the ones whose emails were read on 60 MINUTES last Sunday- who prayed they’d be out of the market and off of Wall Street before any of the crap they were doing got out on the street.