One Stop Market

Somehow the US economy found its way into a debate clearly marked beforehand as a debate on foreign policy and I don’t know if either of the candidates got the memo on that one.  Both avoided the subject and the only thing an observant onlooker can conclude about such an action from an established and intentional politicial is that neither of them had any idea what to do or say or think about the current situation in which the US economy sits, with nobody to talk to and nobody to understand it’s unique, depressed, and potentially crippling feelings.  The problem is, being the natural economic psychologist that I am not, the market just wants to fall and fall and fall and then fall apart and no one has been able to talk it out of that disturbing behavior.  Not Bernanke, not Buffet, not Bush — any other big economic figures who have last names beginning with a “B” who want to give it a shot? 

 The issue is that nobody knows what to say.  When it comes down to it we have no idea where we are at in the temporary market valley…are we at the bottom, near the bottom, have we already hit the bottom?  Obama nor McCain knows nor does really anybody which clearly creates some uncertainty in the stock market, at the mall, at the new car dealership.  And that’s really at the heart of the problem: the sentiment that goes along with all this bad economic news hitting the wires 24/7 without so much as a hint of anything positive even in the near future besides this ridiculous bailout plan which, they all seem to be saying, will have worked in about 10 years.  But we won’t know until then.  We won’t know that we’ve come out of an economic valley until we have come out of it and that won’t happen for a year or so no matter how much money they throw at distressed banks and distressed loans.  Might as well make it a billion hundred billion dollars, the American taxpayer will be the one paying it back in taxes anyway. 

Am I a cynic?  No, my wife always says I’m an optimist but it’s important to understand that as much yelling at the economy as we’re doing, it’s doing exactly what it should: in an given day, week, month, year, decade, and century an individual stock will rise and fall and so will a country’s economy.  There is no straight up growth without ups and downs. 

It’s also important not to panic…who needs money anyway?

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