Not a 100% guarantee. I have no insider information. But I don't see what else can happen after the managing director of the IMF comes out of the We're Not Panicking talks and says things like this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...al-crisis.html

And frankly, I think him saying 20% is a defensive bet, if you know what I mean.

"Have pushed" is past tense, this is information already known and thus already priced in to the market. The 20 percent argument has been thrown around so much it's not news anymore. You can't assume this one person is the dictator of future events.

If a french economist thinks we're doomed that's obviously all the proof I need.

Here's something that you may find interesting from today's WSJ:

The Government Is Contributing to the Panic

Despite all the hard work and good intentions on the part of our public officials, when economists and historians look back on the current financial crisis they are likely to conclude that government intervention prolonged and deepened it. In particular, officials at the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department are to blame for publicly losing confidence in the very economic system they are supposed to protect.

The Fed, the Treasury and the SEC appear to be in a state of panic. A crisis mentality led the custodians of the U.S. capital markets publicly to jettison their lifelong commitments to the capital markets in favor of a series of short-term regulatory quick fixes. Even more troubling, for the past several months the doyens of U.S. fiscal and monetary policy have ignored the most fundamental principle of central banking, which is that the primary responsibility of central bankers is to promote stability and to maintain confidence in the capital markets. Our central bankers appear to have suddenly lost confidence both in their own abilities and in the standard tools of fiscal and monetary policy.

The original Treasury plan -- which called for the transfer of virtually unlimited taxpayer dollars and unlimited spending discretion to Treasury with no judicial or congressional oversight -- sent a very bad signal to the markets. Instead of restoring confidence, this approach to the crisis instilled more fear and panic in the markets.




It's clear to me at this point that government has/is contributing greatly to the panic situation(s).

Do we really have any faith that Dubya has a clue at this point in time?

Has anyone faith he ever did?

Let the weak financial companies die. The weak will be replaced by the strong who actually knew how to manage their risk. The world does not revolve around banks, they are a small part of the entire economy. We don't need to keep every last one alive at all costs.

well I think the markets are gonna tank on monday if the G7 meetings dont produce some meaningful results before tokyo opens sunday night. That expectation was already priced in and im shocked they havent already announced anything yet.

can these guys come up with something new, damn this rally is gonna fall apart

noob question:

does this mean the $ will continue to rise vs € etc?

- i'm planning to cash out a good chunk of online $ to €

,ty

these idiots got us in this mess. oh the folly of expecting them to fix it.

DOW 3000 sounds about right.

keep the money online if you dont need the money right now, the $ will get stronger, because the euro economy is ****ed up as well and wont recover that fast, take it for what its worth, i am not an expert

Markets aren't that efficient. Are you kidding? Recent losses have a lot to do with scared everyday people taking money out of the market...that can continue. How is that already priced into the market? Those recent drops came with zero new news...so markets aren't that efficient, come on. Can we please get past crap like this? Hasn't this disaster just falsified the "already priced into the market" thesis?

i don't agree with this

I don't agree with this.

I think I agree with this.

I definitely agree with this.

I agree completely with that analysis. I mean, everytime the President hits the Rose Garden to announce, "Stay calm! All is well!" the markets tank. What do they think is going to happen when the Masters of the Universe come out and say, "Ok, time to panic"?

Their whole job is to blow smoke regardless of how ****ty the situation is.

It's almost as if the inducement of panic is intentional.

AGreed.

The WSJ is correct that having our financial leaders running around like chickens with their heads cut off is exacerbating the problems. However, the WSJ backed every move made by them at the time it happened as far as I can remember, so we'd be in the same spot if the editorial board of the WSJ was in charge. This is a totally unprecedented mess in terms of both causes and scale, I don't know that anyone could have done better.


From today's NYT:

"Some said we should just stick capital in the banks, take preferred stock in the banks. That's what you do when you have failure," Mr. Paulson told the Senate Banking Committee on Sept. 23. "This is about success."

I do.

I imagine this would have been a lot different if it had been in the first year of the Presidency. Seems pretty convenient to be doing all this "fixing" 2 months before hitting the exit door.

Kinda reminds me of all the CEO's that left last year, before the sh** hit the fat. When who ever is elected, they can say all this inflation was the other guys fault. And do some "fixing" him self.

how do you know that its priced in? is it just that theres no other reason to explain the friday rally?

They really are waiting until the last second here to announce something....

here is my take,

this is something that most of us already know and i dont see why it wont apply to these circumstances. there is much talk of an over sold bounce. the problem is that most people are expecting it......but it still hasnt happened.

i remember when bush was going to announce the second invasion of iraq. everyone was expecting the markets to sink on the announcement.........it didnt.

the markets right now are sinking because nobody really knows how bad things are looking forward. the market doesnt mind bad news if it knows thats all there is. the markets will simply adjust and then its all buisness as usual.

the problem now is all the question marks. i dont expect these question marks to be answered any time soon so, i dont expect any sort of market bounce either.

the markets are going to adjust themselves to the forward out look. markets are never fairly priced. it wouldnt surprise me if the markets are still over valued vs. the forward out look. i dont mean to sound negative but listen to your gut. there is some serious damage out there and the trickle effects are going to take some time to show itself.

i wouldnt be surprised if we get a short lived bounce but it will come when everyone is thoroughly convinced that the market is doomed. the markets will bounce and people will slowly come back in. people will start to breathe a sigh of relief. "ahhh, the worst is over". there will be a lot of people who sit on the sideline watching the bounce who finally get in when its too late and the markets will slowly sink again, retest the previous lows and more than likely......break those lows.

how far we go from there is unknown but i believe THAT will be the time to start buying and setting yourself up for the next bullmarket.........hopefully.

there are a few reasons to explain the friday midday rally, but it certianly crossed my mind that the market is/was expecting something from these meeting + every talking head on tv was suggesting things the G7 might do and some journalists reported what some of the proposals were. So most people who follow the market should have some expectation and that would have priced itself in imo.