This is the death of the Reagan era

[CatWoman]

Everybody in Washington is pointing a finger at everybody else — Republicans are blaming Democrats, Democrats are blaming Republicans, Congress is blaming the regulators and executive branch, and the executive is blaming Congress.

They’re all correct. They’re all guilty, it’s just that some are more guilty than others. And I’m more than willing to let the historians sort that question out, because it really doesn’t matter.

But this much we know already: The Reagan Era is over. The mythology of the all-powerful, all-wise market is dead. Dig a hole six feet deep and bury it, then plant a tombstone with the dates 1981-2008. It’s finito, kaput.

Under a deeply conservative, free-market-fundamentalist administration, the U.S. government now owns the biggest insurance company in the world and the largest mortgage company in the world. And according to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and other financial media, the Securities and Exchange Commission may temporarily ban short-selling on the stock market.

Short-sellers essentially place a bet that a particular stock will drop in price. They fulfill a critical pricing function in the market, but a lot of folks would like to believe that the collapse of the market has been caused not by market fundamentals but by overly aggressive short-sellers.

So the SEC’s answer is to ban them, which smells an awful lot like desperation. They’re trying to fix the game. And if investors see it that way, things could get very, very ugly.

Either way, the Reagan Era is over. We don’t know what comes next, but we do know that things will never be like they were.

UPDATE: The SEC has indeed banned short selling, but only in financial stocks. Stock futures are up on the news, but it seems driven solely by government manipulation.

http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/bookman/entries/2008/09/18/this_is_the_death_of_the_reaga.html

[yourout]

1. And about 28 years to late.

[Taverner]

2. Although I agree with you, the funeral won't be until the whole system fails

[rosesaylavee]

3. Promise?

I still hear 'trickle-down' referenced every few weeks or so.

[navarth]

4. Ye GODZ that sounds good.....MAKE IT SO

Can we change the name back to Washington National Airport now?

[NashVegas]

5. Shorts and Manipulation

CatWoman, you know the online games out there with celebrity markets? I used to play one. There were a couple of groups of people who would build up a stock to high heaven, attract outsiders on the way up, and at a given signal, short short short.

Fortunes were made. Fantasy fortunes for no other purpose than getting your name on the leaderboard. You think no one's doing it on Wall St.?

[CatWoman]

9. of course they are, Crisco

these people give greedy underhanded bastards a bad name.

:hi:

[NashVegas]

26. But, To Get Back to the Topic At Hand ...

It was the consolidation era.

In 1990 I was pink slipped. Our company was going into "buying mode" and had to show the banks they were trimming to get the loan. Every sector has seen it by now.

And it's hysterical we have all these "managers" who sit in meetings all day while the staff that does the actual work is hacked and hacked away. It's all going to topple.

[SmileyRose]

6. I think it's more like the orgasm.

The rapists will be back for more.

[Arugula Latte]

8. And, in Palinesque fashion, we'll be forced to pay for the rape kit.

[avaistheone1]

7. Ding, Dong.

At the risk of sounding coarse. Thank God that bastard Reagan idealogy is dead.

[ColbertWatcher]

10. ...

Here's another one:


You can make your own with the Tombstone Generator: http://www.jjchandler.com/tombstone

[CatWoman]

11. way cool, CW

thanks!!

:hi:

[ColbertWatcher]

12. You're welcome, CW! n/t

[lynettebro440]

13. I remember having this stupid conversation

when I was in my early 40's right after bushshit stole in 2000. The guy was in his 20's, we got drunk on new years eve and he sat there and tried to tell me that the reagan economic theory worked. I was drunk and soooo tired of stupid people. I looked at him and said boy, you don't have a clue how much it doesn't work. People like you and me get shit on and the only people that benefit are the really, really rich people. I couldn't convince this guy for anything.....I wonder how that stupid fuck is now. I lived that damn reagan era in my 20's, it sucked...sucked real bad. Can't believe it's happening again.

But something I do feel is that american's needed this. They had become fat and lazy and thought life was a lottery. It took this much to even get their attention. There not awake yet, a real shot up their ass would really help.

[petgoat]

14. It might have been dead in 2002 but for the pre-emptive strike 9/11 represented

The corruption was already there. The SEC knew it. Merrill Lynch selling
their clients garbage stocks, same as Solomon did with their bonds, Artie
Anderson hinkey as hell, Worldcom, Enron.

If all this stuff had happened in an ordinary environment we would have
been seeing cover stories on national magazines "Is Corporate Capitalism
Inherently Corrupt?"

We didn't, and each successive scandal made barely a blip on the market.
'Cause the scar tissue from the panic of 9/11 smoothed things over.
After we'd seen the brokers jump from the 100th floor of the twin towers,
and seen the collapse of the World Trade Center with 3000 people inside,
the collapse of ENRON didn't hurt a bit.

Incidentally, the Securities and Exchange Commission had its NYC offices
at the World Trade Center in building 7 on floors 11, 12, and 13. 12 and
13 was where the fires burned the strongest, and allegedly the fires
brought thr building down. Hundreds of active case files were destroyed.

[Itchinjim]

15. I said this as a young union man in 1980 and have been saying it ever since:

FUCK REAGAN!

[malaise]

16. Good riddance Friedman

You sucked and I knew your ideas would fail before I finished graduate school!

[Mari3333]

17. Catwoman, I saw this happening in the 80s

my first husband was a union man..i saw the unions get broken up when reagan got it, and then the huuuuge tax breaks to corporations..with the promise that they would rebuild america..and what they did was move their damned factories to 3rd world countries..and now, its all coming home to roost. yep. i guess its darkest before the dawn.

[CatWoman]

19. I work with a guy who is a Public Health Officer

and we talk about politics about once a week.

His specialty is in pharmacy.

He told me so many horror stories about things he saw during the Reagan Era, when Reagan was about doing away with discretionary spending. Unfortunately, that's where the money came from for help for the disadvantaged and the needy.

Clinics and hospitals were shut down, mostly in Appalachia, and people had to travel several miles just to get to the next available clinic for treatment. Bear in mind that these towns are sparsely populated and there's no public transportation.

That's just one of the many stories he told me about the suffering Reagan caused.

:hi: Mari

[BlueIris]

18. If wishing made it so. nt

[DeepModem Mom]

20. K&R

[VeggieTart]

21. We'd have been far better off if it had never been born...

And, yes, let's PLEASE take the old goofball's name off the airport and the fucking Metro sign. It really rankles when I have to travel to or past the airport, which thankfully isn't often.

Trickle down is bullshit. Free market is a lawless market.

[Matariki]

22. Amen to that. And let's put a stake though it's heart and cut off it's head for good measure.

And seal the coffin with lead.

[CatWoman]

24. and ketchup

:)

[Matariki]

25. !!!

can't find the 'drink sprayed out the nose' smilie!

[Odin2005]

23. Good riddance to BS pseudo-economics.

Time to call Market Fundamentalism what it is, A SECULAR RELIGION, the right-wing equivalent of Marxism. If there is a Hell I hope Milton Friedman is burning in it.

[goodgd_yall]

27. Let's hope so

Things may be like they were. We never seem to learn. But by then, I may not be in this world anymore.