The panic is creeping closer...

[kentuck]

It was evident yesterday in the wailing of Jim Cramer on CNBC. The doubt has set in and the rats are jumping ship. A number of Merrill Lynch executives gave themselves huge bonuses of more than $10 million each yesterday, even though their bank had lost over $20 billion dollars. Over a hundred others received bonuses of $3 million or more. Take the money and run, you bastards!

Cramer, of CNBC, blamed President Obama for the huge drop in the market and directly responsible for his own personal losses, it appears. The house of cards has collapsed. It's not going to be rebuilt in a short time. Many people are going to lose a lot of money. There is much pain to come in this man-made calamity.

Wall Street and many Republicans are in denial. Those that preach fervently about "personal responsibility" refuse to accept any responsibility for the present condition of our economy. The disarray in the Republican ranks is much like a herd of elephants stampeding in many different directions, bellowing and ranting toward the sky...

[Tigermoose]

1. Sounds like a good time to invest.

If Cramer and the talking heads are calling for armageddon, then we are probably ready to recover.

[Cary]

2. I listen to Cramer.

I'm not really sure what he's whining about.

I give him a lot of credit for standing up for the little guys, like me. I think that's more where he's coming from. However, other than some market psychology, how do you blame Obama's policies which haven't even gone into effect yet?

And it's not like Cramer hasn't been saying the market is going to go lower, regardless. He's been pitching a defensive strategy of buying high dividend stocks as they decline in price.

But that kind of 180 is fairly typical of Cramer. I think he means well enough, but you have to take him with a grain of salt.

[notesdev]

9. It's the rules-changing he's talking about

I rarely agree with Cramer, but he's right on this. Nobody is going to invest because the government is picking winners and losers. You put your money in a company that doesn't get picked to be a winner, and you will lose out hard. So unless you have inside information on who will get picked to be winners, you'd be a fool to put your money in the market at all.

The government's job is to root out and prosecute fraud. If they do that, the market has mechanisms that will heal its woes. But to keep ripping the scabs open while ignoring (and to a large degree, enabling and perpetuating!) fraud is a literally insane policy.

The situation right now is that investors got ripped off in a barely-imaginably huge way by misrepresentation of risk and outright fraud. The government in its bailouts is performing a cover-up, trying to pretend that if we all just believe the economy will get better, that's all it takes for a recovery to occur.

But it's not. And it won't, it can't. Nobody is going to put their money down on a stock when there is no possible way to know, or to have any reasonable degree of assurance, whether the government will step in, favor a competitor, and tilt the market so that the honest companies eat dirt while the fraudsters get billions.

[Champion Jack]

3. True,

[ginnyinWI]

5. the market is up this morning.

:)

Cramer and all of them over at CNBC are acting like a playpen full of infants. Geeze.

[closeupready]

4. When you look at the steepness with which the DJIA has dived, it seems clear the DJIA will drop more

Much more, likely. At this point, I think we could see 4,500 by next month. The fundamentals continue to be weak, manufacturing is weak, real estate values continue collapsing, there is still a second larger wave of mortgages to reset, GM and Chrysler are in very bad shape. There's no objective reason to be optimistic.

[Tigermoose]

6. Maybe it will drop some more, but overall it is a good time to buy.

It is very hard to buy at the absolute bottom or sell at the absolute top. But you can play the percentages and buy near enough the bottom to make it profitable over a 10 yr + time scale. If you are ready to retire, don't invest in Stocks. But that's pretty simplistic and basic advice.

[indepat]

7. CNBC has largely become a sounding board for blaming everything on Obama and, by so, keeps

driving down the price of stocks, including their parent, GE: couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of MFers. :P

Edited for syntax

[chrisa]

8. It's hillarious how the freepers think that...

The end result of this depression is a Mad-Max type, post-apocalyptic world where motorcycle gangs are killing eachother in the streets.
This won't even be as bad as the Great Depression.

[EstimatedProphet]

15. That's really what they're hoping for

Their secret fantasy is that they would be the Mad Max character. In reality they'd be Mad Max's dog.

[Hubert Flottz]

10. Jim Cramer looked like he'd been spanked yesterday.

I don't feel a bit sorry for people like that.

[spanone]

11. cramer wants to be santelli....i'm not worried about his rants

[Laura PourMeADrink]

12. Cramer was the one who told people not to sell Bear Stearns a day

or so before it crashes. Idiot

[kentuck]

13. He also advised people to get out of the market...

as I recall ??

[GliderGuider]

14. Cramer is no fool. Cramer is part of the game.

Read, and learn: http://www.deepcapture.com/category/2-the-journalists-tried-to-be-players-but-became-pawns/

While you're at it, read the whole Deep Capture web site. It will radicalize you beyond words. Here's a taste on Cramer:

The day our earnings press release appeared (with my letter embedded in it), Larry Kudlow & Jim Cramer of CNBC invited me to appear on their TV show. I had been on Kudlow & Cramer once or twice by then and they seemed like smart, decent fellows, so I agreed, and drove to the studio in Salt Lake City from whence one does remote interviews. This interview was different from our prior ones, however, in that they attacked me aggresively. The basis of their attack was my use of the mysterious phrase, “Gross profit,” in my discussion of Overstock’s financials. Cramer in particular berated me as if he had caught me in some heinous incantation. They gave me a brief moment to respond, then quickly signed off.

As I drove away from the studio feeling somewhat mystified, my cell phone rang. The caller was a man from deep within Wall Street “smart money” circles, someone known widely within the hedge fund community, who has been friendly to me, and even has looked out for me when he could. He speaks in charming if profane emphatics.

He said, “You know what just happened, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You want to know what just happened? I’ll f—ing tell you what just happened. Here’s how it works. Those two guys are part of the short-seller community. Cramer especially is part of this ring of hard-charging short-sellers on Wall Street. I’ll bet you anything that one of his buddies is short your company. Whoever it is saw your earnings release, saw you blew your numbers away, got on the phone to Cramer and said, ‘Don’t you dare let this thing start moving. Don’t you f—ing dare let this move!’ So Cramer goes on TV and screams that nonsense at you. I bet my last f—ing dollar that’s what happened. It’s been like this all my career, but it’s never been like this.”

[closeupready]

16. Why I'm glad I have been 100% in money market for years.

Those sharks don't have a DIME of my money.

[babylonsister]

17. I think Cramer is just competing with Santelli for attention. nt