Ack! Wall Street's woesFollow

It's only a matter of time before Bank of America owns everything. That's why they're my bank. I only trust my money with vicious, ruthless, corporate giants.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I actually had more then $2.23 in my checking account.

Nexa

Time to buy!

Of course you need to have money to buy stuff... All my extra cash is going into my gastank. Oil is down $53.00 from its high and yet gas in our area has fallen about 10 cents and now is being held up high because of stupid Hurricane IKE...

It's all in the short term. By November gas will be $2.50 a gallon. Not sure of the stock market. Someone is making some serious jack off of us indivudual 401k investors and its starting to tick me off.

I'd recommend using the money you all got from selling oil and gold previously to scoop up a decent portfolio.

Yeah, this is hitting the retirement account hard. Guess it's a good thing I wasn't planning on retiring!

Global markets are being shaken, too, which is more problematic. Those ripples may not stop in time to spare us a fairly serious recession or worse.

Bank of America will be in some serious trouble real soon. The took on a huge amount of debt when they aquired Merril. They are also having problems with their other recent aquisition, Countrywide. BoA's has serious liquidity problems. Th need cash so bad they are offering CD's at unheard of rates.

Also, Lehman deserves to go under. They were one of the pioneers of investing in subprime mortgages. Ironic how one of the market trends they created also put them under.

I would also suggest buying huge amounts of cigarettes. You can use them to barter for food when you run out.

Why not just buy food? :o

I told my fiance he probably didn't want to look at his Vangard stuff for a while.

This mess was created because Bush & Co decided that Big Bad Government was being too mean to all the mortgage companies with all the regulatations regarding who could borrow money for a mortgage, and loosened the restrictions. This allowed people like me with ****** credit to get a mortgage for a McMansion, which subsequently lost value. Then the economy started to tank and many of them lost their jobs, so now they had a mortgage they really couldn't afford to begin with and no income.

The explanation I heard was this: Overseas investers were demanding mortgage backed securities, to the point that the investment companies that provided them literally did not have enough product to sell to them. Since the originator of mortgage backed securities is, well, mortgages, the investment companies wanted to be able to sell MORE mortgages to more people, so they could have more mortgage backed securities to sell to investors.

Unfortunately, all those people who were told they could get a mortgage really ought to have not had them after all. They defaulted and their homes were foreclosed. So now, the bank is stuck with a devalued house, and an investment loan that they still have to pay to other people.

This boils down to people telling the government where they could stick their Evil Regulations, and then discovering that the rules were put there for goddamn reason after all.

I'm kinda glad I cashed out my 401(k) when I was laid off a few years back. I'd actually made around $70 on it at the time, whereas now, I think it might have gone negative.

This begs the question, why is your and other people's sh1tty credit and their subsequent poor choice of purchasing a home they can't afford President Bush's fault or [fill in the blank]'s fault? Why is managing your own budget badly anybody's fault other than your own? No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to sign for a multi-hundred thousand dollar mortgage. Did Dubya forge your name on all those loan documents?!?

No one is making you spend money you haven't got. Plastic money isn't the same as real money unless the amount in your bank account equals or exceeds what you owe on the credit card balance. Please tell me you understand this.

That is quite possibly the stupidest argument I have heard on this board, cat-ho. If this is what passes for liberal logic, then God help us should the Black Neo get into the Oval Office and make the liberal's stupidity mandatory.

Totem

I hestitate to say this because I would think it is blatently obvious, but regardless how much you want something doesn't mean you should actually buy something. And purchasing a home you cannot afford to make monthly payments for during the entire life of a thirty year mortgage is just plain STUPID. Regulation, deregulation, envy, covetousness, keeping up with the Jones', or any other number of rationalizations should not prevent you from asking that very basic question: Can I afford this purchase?

This isn't rocket science. It's just very simple math.

Totem

Buying a major purchase with cash is probably one of the best experiences you can have.