I was watching the opening bell right now, and the dow plunged 700 points within the first 7 minutes we're all screwed

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If god dropped acid, would he see people?

Don't fret....Our "illustrious" elected officials know what to do. They'll save us.

Hey, the bailout package is the love child of a failed presidency and a failed congress. It can't fail!

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Geeze, how the worm turns. I remember it wasn't that long ago you were parading the Bush presidency as the panacea for the country. Finally woke up, eh? Now if you'll just admit you were wrong on all those other things you railed about, fat chance, eh VI? Geeze it feels good to be right, and so bad for the country. I knew that asshole was going to break it, and all you dipshits that voted for him and some that still support him, sound familiar CC, Big P, TBT, Spitzered? Bush the destroyer of countries, including his own.

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Supposedly, there's now talk of closing the world markets...Ominous news indeed. They didn't even do that during the Great Depression...
Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

Monday AM I'm heading for my bank, a withdrawel is in order. Don't worry, I'll be packing, that's for sure. Even though my bank is backed by mormons, I feel better keeping my money in my safe at home, although, if the dollar goes further south, It'll be like holding on to doilies. I wonder if my millions of Dinars will come around? I may be able to buy food with those, or asswipe along with the dollar. I knew I should have cashed my stocks in and bought gold. I did transfer the majority to money market, unlike my wife that I begged to transfer hers three months ago. She has lost 30-40K and probably will never get it back. As much as I want to say "I told you so", I just give her a look every time she bitches about the stock market, she knows, she even says, "I know, I know".
.

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Safes are selling out around the country. The S&P had its worst week since 1933. The DOW had its worst week *ever*. Hello, Depression. One financial analyst on CNBC said that the amount of money necessary for the world to recover may be closer to 3 or 4 trillion dollars, that $700 billion probably just wasn't nearly enough. Obviously, we won't be forking out two trillion more dollars, but the G7 may have to cough it up collectively.

It took 12 years to fully recover from the Great Depression, on the stock market. So, we should be back to normal around 2020 if that's true this time. Now is actually looking like a good time to get IN the market. I mean, we've had a monumental crash, and right *after* a crash is when the smart folks start bargain-hunting. You could tell Friday that they'd already begun to do some nibbling, which is why the market didn't end down all that much. However, I don't think we've yet seen complete market capitulation, so I'd expect some more declines.

Bong ...

Do you remember looking back to 1990 and saying: "Gosh, if only I had bought real estate in that depressed market, I would have been a millionaire today?" Well, in the real estate community, its 1990 all over again. Bargains galore!

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Yeah, you're right -- I have seen some *amazing* deals on homes in my area. Two years ago, you could hardly find any homes at all for less than $100k in my area, regardless of the condition of the home. Now, there are at least hundreds, and probably thousands. Lotsa supply, and most people are too poor and/or paranoid to generate any demand. I'm sure my own home has dropped in value as a consequence. (But that's okay, because that'll mean lower property taxes in a couple of years.) If I was selling, I'd be pretty bummed out. But for buyers, well, this is their market...if they can get credit, or have the cash. I could actually buy a second home, if I put it on credit, but I'm not putting anything on credit that I can't pay off entirely when the bill arrives. (Because I'm paranoid too.)

Some people have had perfect timing on this housing mess. I have a friend who went to California to work in the video game industry, and he was renting a house for a while near San Diego. The guy who owned the house had paid $350k for it about ten years ago, and he sold it two years ago for $850k, so he made about $60k/year profit on that one investment. My home is valued around $250k, and it's got one bedroom less than that house that sold for $850k in CA, but otherwise, quite comparable. And my home has waaaay better location, pretty much anything and everything within walking distance, including one of the nicest urban parks in the country. That $850k house was way out in the sticks, 25 miles from civilization.

That's when I started getting paranoid about the markets, seeing that massive rise in home prices in CA compared to a similar house in the Midwest going for less than a third of that, despite the better location. I started saying to myself, what goes up eventually comes down, and what goes up THAT much probably comes *crashing* down. That was the year (2006) that I installed my garden and food-bearing trees, and started eliminating debt from my life, because I had an unshakable feeling that some kind of shit was about to hit the fan.

^^^^ I pretty much knew the housing boom was over when I attended cocktail parties and heard everyone standing around telling each other what geniuses they were.

By the way, you can petition your county assessor to lower your property taxes based upon the decline in value. The county in which I live only requires that you fill out a simple request form and mail it in. In fact, a lot of us in the business are doing it for our past clients as a courtesy.

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.