Paul Krugman is decidedly less optimistic about 2009 than I. Ah-ha, but he bases his pessimism on facts, whereas I base my (relative) optimism on "a feeling". Take your pick.
Andrew Tobias points out that Alan Greenspan's comments about "irrational exuberance" in the market came when the Dow was at 6,500 -- which it dipped below last week (and probably will this week, too). Wouldn't that be an ironic place to find the bottom, he asks. But "even if 6,500 were, ironically, fair value for the Dow here, there’s nothing to keep it from going to 3,500." What a cheerful guy.
Another article over the weekend announced:
In one of the bleakest assessments yet, economists at the World Bank predicted on Sunday that the global economy and the volume of global trade would both shrink this year for the first time since World War II.Happy Monday!
Just remember, you can tell the market is about to rebound when everybody thinks it can only go lower. In that spirit, let me add my voice to those crying "Doom! Doom! We're all doomed!"
Speaking of facts, Gretchen Morgenson's AIG: Where Taxpayers' Dollars Go to Die does a good job of making what's going on with that company intelligible. We taxpayers now own 80 percent of AIG, so it's worth reading why and how $160 billion of our national treasure has been poured into that sinkhole.
The late Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen is famous for remarking, "A million dollars here, a million dollars there -- pretty soon you're talking about real money!"
How quaint.
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