News Writer's Guide To The Stock Market

Those That Know said today that the stock market dropped because of AIG's huge 4th quarter losses and, of course, the general worry about the state we're in.

The last time the market "bounced" was just a week ago, when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said something that downplayed bank takeover fears.

A week before that, the market fell because investors were afraid the stimulus bill the President signed that day wouldn't be enough.

A few days earlier, it was up because the president was working on a mortgage rescue plan.

The day after the president's inauguration, IBM's earnings and news that Tim Geithner was going to be nominated to be Treasury Secretary brought the market up, after dropping on the day of the inauguration because they were looking beyond it to what the new president faced.

The week before the inauguration ended up because investors were looking forward to the big event.

Notice a pattern? Yeah, me neither.

Wanna know what I think? I think that

1) the so-called experts have no fucking idea what they're talking about and

2) the investors are a buncha kids who are playing high-stakes games of chicken with money.

That's a pretty ugly thing to do, really. It messes with people's livelihoods. You and I, and the managers of most of our retirement funds, generally take pretty good care of our money. But when greedy sons of bitches are playing chicken with the money, it screws it up for everybody. You can't be conservative enough in the stock market to stay ahead of the assholes who are out to make millions at the expense of everybody else.

And they do the same things on the commodities markets, where it hurts people like farmers who depend on the Chicago exchange to set the prices for some of their goods. If these guys get scared that they might lose some money, well, there go the farmers.

These folks aren't "investors." They're gamblers, trying to stay in the game long enough to make a killing and get out before the whole thing crashes.

And y'know, if it only affected the gamblers, there'd be no problem. But it doesn't. It affects everybody who invests in the stock market.And, as we've clearly seen, everybody else too.

And what drives gamblers, aside from that weird addiction thing? Mostly greed.

That's the problem with unfettered capitalism. I have no problem with capitalism. Kinda like it, really. I have what I need, and a fair amount of what I want, even a few things I only think I want. Contrary to the depiction of liberals put out by the Supreme Leader of the GOP lately, I am not in favor of socialism, nor am I an unhappy liberal. I'm quite content.

I just lack the greed gene, I guess.

The Ayatollah Limbaugh, for example, has god knows how many cars, because "I like nice cars," along with five houses. He's not married, he has no children. Just a cat. And a $35 million contract.

Far be it for me to say that he's a greedy son of a bitch, but come on. Who needs all that?

Usually, it's greedy people. And they fuck it all up for the rest of us. They're why capitalism needs some regulation here and there to keep their stupid asses from doing what they've done to us for the last 30 years.

And rather than admit they're selfish assholes, they dole out more money to their congresscritters to keep them from doing anything that might make it harder for them to play the game.

Anyway, all of this is just a round-about way to tell you that I've decided I can explain the stock market as well as anybody else. I've set up a new category -- things that make the stock market go up and down -- and I'll use it to tell you what's going on in the high stakes world of finance. Here's today's good news:

Today, the market fell to 12 year lows after an unusual winter storm blanketed the south in snow over the weekend and headed for New England, dampening investors' hopes for riding around with top down on the convertible.

They were also made uneasy by the brewing conflict between Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele and the Supreme Leader.

On CNN's "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," Steele called the ayatollah's schtick "incendiary" and "ugly" entertainment, and the ayatollah fired back that Steele should go back behind the scenes and work harder to destroy the liberals.


"Why do you claim to lead the Republican Party when you seem obsessed with seeing to it President Obama succeeds?" he said on his radio program.

Investors will probably feel better about it all tomorrow though, since Steele saw the error of his ways, just too late to save the market today.

"My intent was not to go after Rush -- I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh," Steele told Politico in a telephone interview. "I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. ... There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership."

"I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren't what I was thinking," Steele told Politico.

It wasn't yet clear whether rising Republican star Rep. Eric Cantor's mealy-mouthed repudiation of the ayatollah's oft-stated desire for the Obama presidency to fail will have any effect on the market, or draw fire from his Supreme Leadership.

"I don't think anyone wants anything to fail right now," the House Republican Whip said on ABC's "This Week on Sunday." "We have such challenges. What we need to do is we need to put forth solutions to the problems that real families are facing today."

Which, of course, is precisely why Cantor and his fellow GOP obstructionists want nothing more than to continue the same failed policies of the last 30 years and block any attempt to change our direction.

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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