Shut it down! Now!
It is my belief, based on a day-by-day analysis of the situation as it pertains to my own sector and the economy as a whole, that Wall Street should be shut down immediately and re-opened to people who can prove their sanity on January 2.
We don't let people drive who are drunk. We don't allow people to operate heavy machinery when they're on psychotropic medication (except in California). Wall Street and its associated analysts, brokers, traders and investors are simply too stupid to operate at this point. So let's not let them.
Everybody should take a month or so, celebrate the holidays with their families, take a look at the genuine value of the companies on the various exchanges, and then come back with a clear head. It's hard to have a clear head when it's shoved firmly into the darkest place imaginable. Let's wait until we get a little light.
This is not an academic proposal. What we have here are a bunch of guys potted on fear, thwarted greed, grief and short-termitis, rampaging through the forest with shotguns. Not since Dick Cheney went duck hunting have we seen such danger to all in the vicinity.
Companies that are actually performing quite well are zooming down to incomprehensible lows, with market caps lower than the value of the real estate on which their operations perch. Anybody with half a brain is sitting things out until the madness is over. This leaves those with less than half a brain on the field.
Let's send them all home. Now. Let the season of cheer and good-fellowship start immediately. And take the guns out of the hands of these children.
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This would have been the very first things I would have done. Shut the effin thing down until a plan was in place to deal with the idiots, uhm , I mean mess.
Ya I know, the US represents free markets yada yada yada and a blah blah blah thrown in there for good measure.
Take your money out of the market....There was a USA before the stock market and there could be one after it. She how the wealthy like bankrolling their own debacles for a change.
congress should be put on commission.
and exactly who can sit out and enjoy the "holidays" when you have no idea if you can pay your mortgage next month.
the "holidays" were also trumpeted up to buy, buy buy. I bet the day after t-giving will still have those i d io ts trampling each other to get deals at w al mart
although I would like to see the stock market closed to stop a lot of the madness, this article is written with an agenda. to ride this out is in Fortune's interest.
I think many of us have wised up FINALLy to the fact that Wall Street has always been just taking our money. Do you reall believe that your money vanished into thin air? NO! Someone has it.
Do you understand this: Someone has your money. It did not vanish.
They feed off of us who have bought into the notion that the ONLY way to make money is to put it into the stock market.
Yeah, now go ahead and buy "low" so you can be taken again.
You're right. Your money is being redistributed to the hands of the top 2% (or is it 1% now) of the richest Americans. But not all that money you thought you had was real.
But, to be specific, most of what is happening now is not real money disappearing. It is CREDIT disappearing. And credit is not real money. Oh, sure, it gets used like real money but, the reality is that, all it does is dilute the value of real money. All that stock you bought on margin? Not all that money was real.
But the loses sure will be.
I've always thought that the stock market was just legalized gambling for rich people. I don't even know why it exists at all except as an anachronism that may have worked before the computer age but now is a flawed and faulty institution that does nothing but cause problems.
So since when are 'fear, greed and short termitis" not components of the genius of the market? Aren't we supposed to believe that what the market sets as the price IS the value? Help me, I'm an American!
Wall Street, long masquerading as a bastion of economic fortitude, has finally been revealed as nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme has folded liike the house of cards and a whole lot of folks should be charged under section 1964(c) of the RICO Act and sent to jail
Exactly, they are as much Racketeers as Charles Keating...of Lincoln Savings and Loan....
Hey, Mr. Bing! Whatever happened to "Lloyd, What Happened?" Great satire, and prescient to boot! Should be a movie, or an HBO series, SOPRANOS in Brooks Brothers. Come on, don't wait until they fix this mess. You're book forecast this global financial insanity! And poor Lloyd, that once idealistic baby-boomer who finds himself at the center of it all!
Any chance LLOYD will be given some life on the big screen or small?
Well said which I said long time ago that all wal street activities must be frozen till sanity prevails, and a semblance of stability could be envisioned. The treasury secretay and who breathed the air of wall street on a regular basis could not even think of it, and only came up with hackenyed proposals to stabilize the market.
It will shut down on its own just like the Bush administration did.
I'm with you Bing. Put a three month ban on short-selling until the Inauguration. The big players cashed out a month ago and are waiting for the bottom before building portfolios. It's that middle group of quasi fund managers trying to cover their shorts playing now. Hundreds of Hedge Funds locked in/out their investors during the last Crack. Enough of the smoke will have cleared by the time the next Crack, scheduled in late December, sees the real bottom approach. Is a Dow at 5,000 too low... or too high?
Great stuff, as always, Mr. Bing!
Mr Bing's idea has merit. While hopeless277's words are true; there is evidence that the well of money ran dry on 9/15/08 during the meltdown. There isn't any money in circulation to bribe politicians or for other less sinister commerce. The US Congress is playing like money, ready money, is available. The world, including the USA, is broke. While fiat money still is available & circulates, it has no value. Let the Wall St crowd loaf till 1/2/09. Unless someone finds something of value to back the world's fiat money by 1/2/09, Wall St. the City & the world's other exchanges might find it necessary to suspend trading till money or some other medium of exchange which has a value can be found or created. Happy holidays.
Can someone listen to this guy and do exactly as he says?
This the smartest idea I've heard in a while.
I'm in.
Wait.
It's a paid vacation, right?
LOL, I was thinking the same thing - I work in a bank, so if it's paid, I think we should include banks, too :)
Sure, you get paid in fiat money. Don't be surprised if your employer, a bank, won't accept fiat money. Bankers can be old fashioned. Banks don't accept counterfeit money either.
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