Parkside Q

It's Over 9000!!!!!!

The above graphic shows the fluctuations of the Dow Jones Industrial Average for today. As the title of this post indicates, the market ended over 9,000 points, which conveniently allows me to post this old-ass meme:

That's the good news. The bad news is that this is the third day in a row where the market ended under 10,000 (which hasn't happened in four years). In case you've been living under a rock for the past month or so, recent market conditions are rocking financial institutions like hurricanes, and the bailout package recent passed by Congress and signed by Figurehead Bush ("President" is too kind at this point) hasn't kicked into effect yet.

I'm no economist, but my best guess is that things will probably get worse before they get better. I just hope that the "over 9000!!" vid becomes irrelevant again due to the market going over 10,000 as opposed to under 9000.

Government Handouts Are Bad, Unless You're A Collapsing Hedge Fund

There's an article in the New York Times today (via Consumerist) which details a disturbing development on Wall Street. The investment fund, Bear Stearns, had what is known as a "run on the bank". In layman's terms, BS said they weren't collapsing under the weight of their putrid subprime mortgage business - and the error of investing too heavily in them. Their investors begged to differ, and many of them asked to pull their money out of BS. The action of BS's investors would have lead to its demise, until the Fed, backed by JP Morgan, gave some short-term float cash to BS.

Now, take a sec to think about this. The Fed's action in this case amounts to nothing more than a government handout. In a truely free market, BS would have been left lying face-down in the gutter to bleed out and die, with its rotting corpse swept away to some unknown sewage treatment facility the next time there was a torrential downpour. This is not what happened. In fact, it looks like BS got the money from JP Morgan, but the Fed gave JPM the money to give to BS, since BS can't borrow the money from the Fed's themselves.