The Nation: Decline and Fall

[marmar]

The Dow's Decline and Fall
By Nicholas von Hoffman

October 6, 2008



This is one of those days your financial adviser never told you about. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped below 10,000, taking with it the savings of millions. How the money runs out and goes who knows where!

Below 10,000 is below a magic line, the line the hard-times barbarians were not supposed to breach. Since the Dow ascended the heights above the line in 2004, it has been an article of faith that it would not go below 10,000 again in our lifetimes.

The price of stocks is not the only thing that is going down. The price of everything is heading south. Corn is down 46 percent. Oil is down 39 percent, which means you will see the price at the pump continue to slide. But take no solace from that; there will be less money with which to buy gasoline.

Gold, which is supposed to be the last and safest refuge when trouble storms across the economy, is no haven of protection in this hurricane. People who bought gold are beginning to wish they hadn't, as its price tumbles along with the others.

This is deflation, a word with which we may become as familiar as we are with inflation. Deflation usually comes as a result of the bursting of very large inflationary bubbles, with resulting strings of bankruptcies, foreclosures and failures. The last major deflation in the United States occurred during the Depression, when prices dropped much as they have begun to do now.

Deflation is a dragon, a wealth-destroyer, a fire-breathing eater of money. As it drives down prices, wealth simply vanishes as an estimated $3 trillion of people's investments have already disappeared over this period of decline and fall. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081020/howl2

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Enough of happy talk.

[blue neen]

2. Scary, depressing, and it makes those of us close to retirement feel really hopeless.

How will we ever get our 401K's anywhere near what we need to retire on?

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. They got us again, didn't they?

Got us to invest our retirement funds, made sure the laws said we had to leave the nest egg where they could get to it and use it.
And made sure the banks made money off our funds.

Lessons learned. We gotta make sure our kids don't fall for Soc. Sec. privatization.

[tom_paine]

5. Yep. The whole Bushie 401(k) scheme is one big fucking Trojan Horse.

Which is their usual M.O. When a Bushie doctor comes to "help" you, it's time to guard your wallet, he's there to help himself.

[tom_paine]

4. We won't we were never meant to. And if you think about it like a Bushie,

the whole 401(k) idea, whatever it's merits, when analyzed again the Standard Bushie M.O. of creating a crisis tthat allows them to loot hundreds of billions, then posing as the savior with a new scheme which is intended to do only one thing, STEAL MORE MONEY.

Think about it. To a Bushie, what do all those 401(k) that are receiving new contributions every week, REALLY MEAN.

I'll tell you what I think it means. I think the entire 401(k) system, and yes I do think it does have merits and could work FOR the people in a non-corrupt, non-Third-World Country...but not Amerika, is a huge money pump, always primed to buy buy buy with billions of dolklars every months.

Think about it. How much did our 401(k)s, which are now being looting by Bushies as quick as they can sell off, to buy back later when we are FULLY destitute as a nation, help the Bushies by providing their criminals a constant and endless revenue stream of buy buy buy.

How much worse would the stock market be without these constant infusions of sucker cash? (sucker because our 401(k)s have been looted BIG by the Bushie Rich TWICE now since 9/11. Once after 9/11 and now.)

How much sooner would a productivity-free house-of-cards collapse without all that sucker cash coming in every week BUY BUY BUY?

Again, when the Bushies propose something they insist will "help" look for the scam.

I wonder if it was 401(k) monies the Bushie PPT used this afternoon. The more I think about the math involved, the more I wonder if PPT simply doesn't have the authority to "hold" 401(k) deposits and time their release all at once to blunt the downward spiral (in this case).

Again, these ae things we can't know. Because Amerika is a totaloitarian nation, albeit a kinder and gentler one, we can NEVER know, unless we wish to replicate the actions of the East Germans in 1990.

Though everyone knows the Bush response will be so brutal and vicious, that it will make the East German Stasi seem like the Founding Fathers. The victims will WISH they were in Tiennanmen square 1988 left to the tender mercies of the Chinese Communsists, rather han what the Bushes will visit on them.

Plus anyone who has been watchingthe arrests and charging of the RNCWC knows that teher really IS little difference between how Bushie and ChiCom law enforcement works. China is our future, as created by the Bushies, tyrannical authoritarian capitalism. China is our sister nation. China hasthe same form of governemtn we do. Chinese communists respect their Constitution as much as the Bushes respect our Constitution, which is to say not at all.

Bushies and ChiComs are cut from the same cloth. Hell, damned near ANY one totalitarian tyranny is at heart much like any other totalitarian tyranny, though teher are all surface definitions.

But some things are universal to all authoritarians, left or right. Things such as size and frequency of lies. VERY BIG and told almost 100% of the time.

For Bushies, Nazis, Soviets, Khmer Rouge members and all the rest who stand onthe Tyrant's Side of History, this and other characteristic are endemic to all of them. Other characteristics such as ignorance of history and inabiltiy to think critically, to name two.