I officially just had my mind blown (in a good way, like: "Dude, that was an amazing rodeo flip, you just blew my mind) On Monday, the Dow dropped 777.68 points, the S&P 500 lost 8.4% of its value, and here's the slap shot to the unprotected pearly whites of the stock market--overall the market lost $1 trillion.
Here's how much $1 trillion is: if you spent a million dollars a day, it would take you 2,739 years to spend a trillion bucks. That hurts. The reason that the market fell faster than a lead balloon filled with velcro aerobic weights was because Wall Street thought they might not get bailed out. Panic time. Now here's where your faith in the logic of the stock market really takes a beating. On Tuesday, the Dow went back up almost 500 points.
Talk about a roller coaster ride; this was more like riding out a hurricane in an ultralight aircraft. The volatility in the market spurred the Senate to pass a version of the bailout yesterday. And today, the House, which had previously slammed the door on the bailout plan, passed the bailout. Evidently, it had become more clear that the original bill had been updated to provide more protection for taxpayers. Also, it was more apparent that a bailout plan was needed to open up credit. But, even though the bailout passed and was signed by President Bush, the stock market still fell due to ongoing fear about the credit market. You see, credit is frozen more solid than a Canadian duck pond. Even qualified people can't get a loan. It's the backlash to those high-risk mortgages that got us into this whole mess in the first place. Check out this video to see the consequences of buying what you can't afford.
Leave a comment with your thoughts, and stay tuned for more updates next week. If you want to catch up on our recent coverage of the financial disaster, go here and here.
--Jens
Thanks for keeping your readers up to date on what's happening with the economy crisis. After seeing another Black Monday in the books, the brass mission is more and more important. Keep blogging and providing a "real world stuff" take on what is happening.
One suggestion: If you are going to link so much in your posts, you should register the brass|BLOG with Technorati to start building the blog's authority. Also, it'd be great to see the brass|BLOG get some love in other money-finance-current affairs blogrolls and directories (try Ning for blogging communities). Keep it up!
Thanks for the support Lauren. Wall Street is definitely hurting and we'll keep trying to break down what it means for you and I. Also, thanks for the suggestions on how to promote the blog--it's been something we've been trying to do. Keep spreading the word.
Wow! Channel 1 flashback! That video is crazy. I'm sure that it is due to just lack of time and resources, but why isn't the bank or that guy selling all of that stuff? I'm sure they could make some money at it. At least offset the cost of cleaning it up. Or even the people leaving it all. They have months to move out, why not sell all of their stuff first? It just doesn't make any sense at all. I feel bad for that other couple living there. $400,000 is what they own, and the house is probably not worth $200,000. You can see why people just walk away. Because they can. They will still have their monthly income and once their house is foreclosed on, they no longer will be encumbered by that huge mortgage. Sorry, this is getting long. Good post!
Thanks for the props. Apparently it makes more business sense to go fast and just trash it all--but what a waste. It's crazy that charities can't get their acts together and go get that stuff when they are being offered it.
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