Well, I think I just lost the rest of my retirement in the Stock Market today.

[Raven]

Down almost 5%. What do these people want?

[Sebass1271]

1. everything.. including bringin down our President...

[Raven]

2. Isn't that against their best interests?

[Sebass1271]

10. read post #4 and #9

[Cleita]

3. Join the club. n/t

[Avalux]

4. They want to crush the middle class into poverty. We are well on our way.

Can you imagine if Bush had been able to privatize social security??

[Sebass1271]

9. exactly!.. and "they" know full well, Obama will try the impossible

to help the middle class.. They don't want that.. they want power for themselves, not the rest of us.

[blm]

5. Well, Bush's Bailout helped them 'fix' their books before they got popped like Enron....

and so now it's time to pull the last rug out from under the rest of American people and the Democratic president.

[Johonny]

6. Well 5 % wasn't what it use to be

[Fovea]

7. I think it comes down to this.

The repair that the Republicans and Blue Dog Quizlings required is less than one fifty fourth the size of the potential crash --- *In the Mortgage Market Alone*.

They want a repair they can believe will at least slow down this juggernaut, and they hoped congress understood that.

Today they reacted to being wrong.

[msongs]

8. corp0rate whores are tantruming until they get welfare bailouts nt

[Pale Blue Dot]

11. We need to fucking face reality.

I'm sorry, Raven, I like you, even though you probably have no idea who I am. I'm just getting so frustrated with the way people here and in the real world are believing what they want to believe.

I have been warning that this was bound to happen. I presented evidence and analysis. Nobody wanted to listen. I have nothing to gain from this fact; in fact, I may lose my job in June. I REALLY WISH THIS WEREN'T SO, BUT WISHES DON'T TRUMP FACTS.

We are in massive debt as a country, as states and municipalities, as corporations, and as individuals. That is the root cause of all of our problems. No one wants to hear that, because to admit it is to admit that there is NO SOLUTION. This is going to be extremely painful, no matter what.

The TARP bill and the stimulus bill are temporary fixes that, because they get us EVEN DEEPER INTO DEBT, are actually going to make the problem WORSE. No one wants to hear that. They won't respond to the argument, but they don't want to hear it.

Nothing that happened today comes as a shock to me. That's the frustrating part: sitting on the sidelines, watching it fall apart, without the money to capitalize on that knowledge. AND NO ONE WANTS TO BELIEVE IT.

I will be attacked for this post, perhaps rightly so. This will come across as "I told you so" and as bitter and angry. But the fact is that I have been right every step of the way and had people listened they might still have some of their retirement savings. I will be dismissed and ignored for this post, but in the end, unfortunately, I will be proven right. And that won't do me or anyone else a lick of good.

[Sebass1271]

13. I have been reading your posts and you are right, you have

been saying all along that DEBT and DEFICIT is the cause of it. However, you haven't been providing solutions. Obviously, we are all losing our jobs, retirement accounts, savings etc. The president has been trying to do so something he thinks is right and stop the blood bath.. Remember, he FOUND THIS, this is is NOT his responsbility, but as a leader of the "free world" he must make actions.

What do you suggest, he should have done INSTEAD?

[Pale Blue Dot]

15. There are NO easy solutions.

Obama, I firmly believe, is a great man who is honestly trying to do the right thing; but my whole point is that it is now too late for "solutions". This economy, due to our massive, massive debt, is going to collapse, and our continued spending does not prevent that collapse, it only stalls it and ultimately makes it worse. In my view, the responsible thing to do is to PLAN FOR THE COLLAPSE. We need to stop fooling ourselves and prepare for life afterwards.

I don't have all of the answers and I don't pretend to. I just know that this economy cannot be saved - it sucks and people will dismiss me merely for saying so, but it's true.

[Sebass1271]

16. pLAN FOR THE COLLAPSE? HOW???

stock up on food and water? please be more specific.

[Pale Blue Dot]

19. I don't have the answers.

But we are not even at a point where we can talk about it as a nation, because we still want to believe that there is a magical solution.

Note how you did not respond to any of my arguments, but merely focused on the fact that I don't have the answers. That's exactly the problem I'm talking about.

[The2ndWheel]

18. Wait

Spending more money that we don't have isn't going to fix the problems caused by spending money that we didn't have? Next thing I know you'll be saying that attempting to grow the economy won't fix the problems caused by a growing economy. Then you'll say that we do actually have to exist within physical reality, and that it's always chasing us, and when it does catch us, since we've built the tightrope so high off the ground, we'll need one hell of a safety net that we're not able to pay for with the money that isn't there that we've borrowed from somewhere that doesn't have any money either. You might even then throw in that the system was never sustainable from day one, and how we've been increasing the debt in many ways not just for years, or decades, or centuries, but even longer than that, and that with every solution, we've only increased the problems which we haven't really solved.

Any other crazy ideas?

[high density]

12. I guess they don't want us to save any money

They've cut interest rates basically to zero, so everybody in CDs or savings accounts earns almost nothing after taxes. Although that did better last year than my investments in the stock market, which ate about 150% of my savings rate last year. I have decades to go until retirement, but I am seriously wondering these days if shares I'm buying today are really bargains or the new normal. I just don't see how we get out of this cycle. We've done so in the past, but given how our economy is built today on consumer spending, I just don't see where the jobs come from.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

14. 401K's are a vehicle for them to take more money off the table.

What a bill of goods we've been sold.

[ThomWV]

17. The market dropped 4% today - that's all you lost if your retirement was picked by dartboard

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

20. They don't want banking stress tests or to be held accountable for their actions nt