Marketplace

"was the system truly on the brink?"

If your answer is "no," then I'd really love to know what the hubub on Capitol Hill is all about.

If your answer is some flavor of "yes," then I'd really love to know why Chris keeps advocating diversity while at the same time telling people to pump money into the Treasury. I mean, I'll fully grant that if the treasury goes bankrupt** then we've got bigger problems than 401k values. But let's face it: in the next month we're going to dump a trillion dollars that we don't have (and aren't going to repay in my lifetime). The foreign lenders won't last forever, which is just going to lead us down the inflation spiral. People get itchy when AAPL misses profits by pennies on the share; why do we continue to plow money into such irresponsible borrowers/spenders as the feds, without any thought towards whether it's a risky investment that can hurt us in the long run?

** I know, the treasury can't TECHNICALLY go bankrupt, but, for brevity's sake let's say that turning the presses on full blast and turning us into Zimbabwe's Inflationary Cousin is close enough.

Tess,

Maybe you and Chris could spend a few minutes talking about why it's suddenly considered a "good thing" not to have any investment banks (since Goldman and M-S are turning into Bank Holding Cos). Wasn't it just a little while ago in 1931 that Congress considered investment banking so risky that it had to be kept separate from "regular old banking"?

Business growth requires capital -- big buckets of it. That's what banks are for. But underwriting new business ventures is inherently risky, even when business plans aren't half-baked. When the crisis is over and a new growth cycle starts, what will stop the bankers from fueling the next bubble with your and my savings?

Perhaps Marketplace should change its signature music to the 'Jaws' theme.

I remember when the Enron mess was exploding and thinking about all those poor bastards who had their entire retirement savings wrapped up in now-worthless Enron stock. How smart I am, I thought. I'm diversified, I have money spread out across the spectrum, funds, money markets, bonds, FDIC accounts. This won't happen to me! I may lose a little here and there, but it will come back.

Ha ha ha. Life is funny, isn't it? Who knew being 'smart' would be so stupid? Silly me, working all these years, saving, investing, saving, investing, never going into debt except for mortgage, never going on vacation, never splurging. It'll all pay off, someday, I thought.

Well, it's paying off for somebody. The CEOs are certainly not hurting. Most everybody else, we got fleeced, big time.

I knew the subprime mortgage situation was going to be a short ride with a bad ending, but I never realized just how poorly run the entire financial system in this country was.

This thing goes beyond calculated risk. This is a situation where the entire system is apparently in the control of spoiled, short-sighted, self-centered two-year olds, with no parental oversight. And now they've busted all their toys (and ours) and want mommy and daddy (gov't.) to fix things. But mom and dad don't have a clue either, and anyway, all that parental discipline stuff is so old-fashioned. They wanted to be the 'fun' parents and let the kids run wild, and hope for the best. Fun's over. We need some grown-ups, and now.

If the market comes back before all my funds have bled away I'm tempted to let things build back just enough for a little comfort, then close out the accounts, take the tax hit, and stuff it all in a fireproof safe buried beneath my house, sadder but wiser.

At this point I have no interest in putting any more money into the market in any form. I'm uneasy enough about my bank accounts. How many banks can the FDIC cover before it too is bankrupt?

How about a discussion on AIG, and how the government's takeover has promulgated this mess. Isn't a lot of this the result of the wall street's brightest losing their insurance, and the threat that with the takeover the reality of what has been happening will be made public? I read that a consortium of banks and investors are frantically trying to scrape together enough to buy back the loan before the warrants are served for the shares. Remember that wall street got paid the big bucks because they "took all the risk", but in reality, had insurance with AIG.

How about a truly financially democratic bailout? Divide the trillion $ or so among American families and let them decide who to help (themseves maybe, since they are footing the bill anyway). There also would be a trickle up effect to assist the financial industry! This scheme should be no more devastating to the dollar than any other bailout proposal made public so far.

Haven't we all known that it's a game of musical chairs and if we all walk out at once there isn't enough money to pay us back for all of our compounded interest investments?

Further since the correction in 2001 when we were down around 7000 didn't it seem like a meteoric rise back to 10,000 and then later 11,000 territory? Just like calculus derivatives, every time investments are based on something other than direct values you lose a little something in the translation.

Before I get burned know that I am a dual homeowner, and since very few people are buying, I can't wait for the economy to get back to normal.

If Social Security had been privatized, as Bush wanted to do a few years ago, what would have happened to it during this meltdown?

I seems that our accounting standards system is broken. The banks and money market funds will not loan money to companies that they would have just a month ago. After the Enron fiasco we were told hiding money like they did was not possible now it seems the Wall Street gang just found another Ponzi scheme to enrich themselves.
The problem as I see it is we are in love with debt. People my parents age looked forward to paying off their house by the time they retired. Now people owe more for their housing when they retire then they did when they bought their first house. There is a place for debt but why are successful Fortune 500 borrowing money over over night.

I just heard a playdoyer on PBS for the "American" way of national economic structure in which the current crises is considered "the price of doing business." The point was illustrated in terms of a comparison between Italy & Switzerland.

Baloney! Get the numbers---of patents, say, per capita per year.

Highly "socialized" economies, like those in the Nordic countries, have rates of creativity (patents, publications, even profits) per capita that compare very very favorably with the US. In part, because their citizens have good health care, free education, rational transportation, etc.

Despite GOP slogans, there is a better way and the evidence is at hand for all who look!

They said we are going tooo die if we let the AIG die,or if ua auto dies americas dies we died when N A F T A- WAS SIGNED GIVEN TARRIFS NO CHARGE TOO FOREIGN BUSINESS! YET we let all these big business MY,YOUR,AND HERS, my pay in lew as the CEOS of enron rip off many people so monkey see monkey do . we are stupid let them do it well we have slowly seperated the gap ! I say let them go we have honda toyota suzuki mitsubishi let it be business do or die. When we are giving too our charity(alumni first) yet who gives too us when we struggle lose let this icon DIE AS WELL AS ALL WHO WILL.