My rat's ass meter for the Dow only extends so far as to be concerned for all those who still have 401(k)s tied into that nightmare anymore. Playing Russian Roulette is not the same thing as SAVING for your retirement. Kinda like basing your retirement plan on how the Blackjack table treats you.
Well, I do give a rat's ass about it. our livlihood depends on the interconnectedness and health of these things. And most of you are fooling yourselves if you think this isn't important to you too. When a company can not get more then .01 %(that's not 1 percent, that's 1 hundreth of 1 percent) on overnight funds, where do you think they are going to start cutting back? hmm? Especially when their budgets are already stretched to the max? I know it's fun to get a chuckle at the wall street set(which we aren't exactly part of working in a seperate niche), but it will trickle down. I actually hated to think of this happening to fellow Americans, but the more both conservatives and liberals wish ill will on basically 'my house' and the house of many others I know in the business, the more I wouldn't mind seeing a little vengance reaped on those cackling gleefully in the corner at the failings of others made, I might add, on policies encouraged by our federal government. Does that mean I think everything should be left intact? No, and it won't be...too much has already happened for that, but I certainly don't want to test the limits on this and watch people NOT intimately involved get their asses handed to them in the fallout.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion - and I admit to being in a distinct minority with my own.
It doesn't change the facts though, that because these ****ers leveraged and banked your investment on the government bailing them out when their poor business decisions led to the inevitable results, whether the bail out happens or not the US economy is a 'plane going DOWN. Some think that the bailout will soften the crash at the end of that drop, others think that it'll just create another "Bubble" that artificially inflates a really bad situation, leaving us in line for an even bigger hit when that bubble bursts. Regardless, the market forces are about to prove - once again - to those alert enough to watch for it, that GOVERNMENT MEDDLING in free markets which it cannot control, and demonstrably has no understanding of, cannot make BAD business decisions GOOD. The Congress can throw more and more socialism and "market controls" on, and try to convince themselves that they can keep the "American people" from feeling the hurt - and then taking it out on the incompetents that created this mess. Market forces will prevail however. They always do.
As for all of us being intertwined in this damned thing; well, I'M NOT. I am an engineer with my own fabrication tools in my garage, and no fear of Manual Labor. That means that I can sell to anybody else who managed to think farther ahead than a ****in' day-trader whatever they need to advance THEIR American dream, and thereby advance MY American dream just that much more. I've got no doubt that WHEN the economy goes in the tank, I'll feel the hurt as well; but I'm not losing MY "savings" hand over fist because it was banked on the Stock Market doing the impossible.