I know someone that works at the Veterans Admin, and they note that one of the largest problems with injured vets is that they sell their wheel chairs, mobility scooters, and other durable medical equipment for drugs and alcohol. The first place to start in helping veterans should be helping them integrate back in with society. And it may cost some money to help them, but many of them have suffered much emotionally and physically so we did not have to. If there was ever anything I would support an increase in taxes for, helping veterans would be it.
Society doesn't value vets like in the past. After WW2 and Korea being a veteran put you on the top of the hiring list. Another issue is that the military is fairly well paid when you consider the benefits, dependent payments, BAQ etc and a guy with dependents has a hard time living as well when he gets out.
Too bad the corrupt US banks sold the sub primes for premium loans assets to other banks across the world, making the financial thing global ... Anyway I hope you guys can recover from this mess, things need to change drastically, not only in the political world, but also the financial and industry niches. As someone said before, shipping jobs out of the country isn't really gonna do much good to the buying power. And for people who think that due to that the rich (who buy stocks from companies that ship out jobs) will increase the buying power, I'm not that sure about it as they'll just import more.
Hard to say they are corrupted at this point of time, by the time the sub primes reaches the national banks, it has already been morphed into some derivatives among derivatives and is only a figure. True they are profit orientated but too early to see any corruption.
We are nowhere near the bottom. There are a lot of adjustable loans that will reset to higher rates in 2008. And with many people losing good paying jobs, this trend will continue for quite some time. Sure, the market will bounce on news of rate cuts and stimulus packages. This bounce will be short lived because the underlying problems remain. The only way to get out of this mess is to solve the problems that got us here in the first place. And they are moving slower then a turtle to accomplish that.
I won't dare commit myself for such a statement, the market is still in a state of flux, great that such measures seemed to take effect but it is really still too early to say. Wonder whats the consequences of SG fraud case. Seemed pretty serious to me.
All the Federal Reserve and our elected officials are doing is prolonging the popping of the housing/economy bubble till Bush leaves office. I say let it pop so that it does not drag out for years.
Part of the reason it took Japan 10 years to bottom is that the banks kept the loans on the books longer then they should. While our banks are writing off the loans right now, hence the reason for our pain.
The market bottom in 2002 on the day SOX was signed into law, and there was a similar occurrence in 92. The idea is that governments tend to be the last people to know or understand market movement and tend to act when the worst is over with.
I don't believe this is a bottom. Government may be getting involved but a lot of the money will be put into savings or spent on imported items.
We are no where near bottom of housing/stock bubble The two things to watch are inflation and the dollar.
I would agree if the government's actions are pointed towards correcting the problems. All the stimulus package does is allow people to continue spending like there is no tomorrow. When that money dries up, these same people still must deal with the same problems that were hurting them financially in the first place. The rate cut by the feds may help businesses, but it's influence on consumers at this point is minimal. Besides foreclsoures, credit card delinquencies are on the rise. Many people are tapped out. Lenders know this, so lending standards will probably get really tight which will drag on this economy for years. The sad part is that the US can't operate within a budget. Sure, things like wars happen. But what about everything else? Bridges are collapsing, water shortages threaten regional energy and local communities, social secuirty/medicare is running out of money, etc. These are some major issues that our elected officials appear to weak to address. Their answer? Just throw more money at the people and let some other elected officials solve the problem once their out of office.
The stimulus package is free lunch politics. Everyone loves a free lunch. It helps to power the Schumer economy. The Schumer economy is people spending borrowed money for imported stuff they don't need. When the money runs out, it's time to give someone else the bill or bail somebody out.