First our government destroyed the value of your house. Barney and Chris Dodd insisted the government give a house to every American. Using Freddie and Fannie, they destroyed the real estate market. The bad loans spread all over the globe. That, in turn, destroyed the financial community and put the world in recession. That destroyed the stock market. Trillions of dollars went to the sidelines despite the constant advice of financial experts to ride it out.
Where does that money go now? Financial experts now say the dividends on stocks are paying more than bank CD’s, so go back into stocks. You have the potential upside gain, plus more interest and low taxes on the dividends. But, what if the market keeps going down? Not good, eh?
Why are CD’s so low? In most recessions CD’s go up. Remember the 18% of the Carter years?
Simple, the banks are getting all the money they need and then some from Hank Paulson. Why pay interest? And, Hank’s partner in stupidity, Ben Bernanke keeps lowering the Fed rate to move the stock market. If you are a bank and you have all of this TARP money and no one with good credit to loan it to, why would you pay anyone anything to get deposits?
OK, I don’t like 2% CD’s and I don’t like the near term future for the equities market, real estate is still going down, hedge funds are all broke, and the bond market is too risky, how about Muni’s?
There is the real chance that cities may go bankrupt. Where do I buy munis? In Texas or Alaska or some other red state. The blue states are all rife with cities trying to sell high risk munis.
Thanks Barney, Chris, Hank, Ben, and George W. you have successfully reached across the aisle as they say and created a bi-partisan financial disaster in America. Then you continue to make bad decisions that block options for investors. Simple example: the TARP money was to go to aution to buy reasonable sub prime mortgages to get those off the bank’s books and out of the securitized investments. Then it was to go to banks to make loans to businesses to stimulate the economy and create jobs. But it really went to banks to buy other banks or to clog their balance sheets to make the need to seek deposits unnecessary.
Watch how the wizards mess up the Big Three. Remember, your government could not run the Chicken Ranch in Nevada, a successful brothel that forgot to pay taxes. Do you really think they can run complex businesses? How would you like to present a business plan to that group? First, you would have to make sure they had all the graphs right side up. Stick people might work.