Ha ha, this is our attempt at a “business news” headline. (We were never very useful at the business desk.) But there does seem to be some investor concern, what with everything in free fall around the world and especially in the oil-y parts. Meanwhile, in sad-sack America, big companies from Amazon to something that starts with “Z” (Ford? Microsoft?) are revealing the desperate measures they must take, constantly, to stay afloat in this pathetic un-recovery. But at least things are good over in Asia, where America’s owners live, right? Ha, no, “broad based sell offs” started last night. Uhh.
The Marketwatch bulletin says:
U.S. stocks deepened their slide Friday, with violent protests in Egypt in focus as well as domestic concerns about earnings after disappointments in quarterly updates from Ford Motor and Amazon.
Ford is down 14% for the day, on investor concerns that nobody actually buys Ford cars, and those who might want to wouldn’t be able to afford it (get the financing) anyway.
Crude oil jumped, stocks fell around the world and the dollar gained against the euro after protests in Egypt intensified and President Hosni Mubarak imposed a curfew in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria. The Middle East nation’s dollar bonds sank, pushing yields to a record high.
Ireland, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, who knows what other Arab countries (Syria? Jordan?!) … everything’s collapsing faster than a normal Italian government. Then again, the DJIA hit 12,000 for the first time since before the economic collapse officially began, so that’s something!
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"Recession II: The Revenge of the Keynesians!"
I'm keep tellin' ya, O. was born right here in America!
I see what you did there!
We were never very useful at the business desk.
Still, at least it wasn't as bad as when they put you on the Vatican beat.
I think I've seen this movie before.
I'm not excusing the teabaggers, wingnuts, paultards, birthers, pumas, militiamen et al, but sometimes getting royally fucked up on cheap corn liquor and running through the streets screaming incoherently does feel like the right thing to do.
There's a reason it's America's pastime.
That reminds me, I'm out of bourbon.
Too bad none of the above groups you listed would actually get off their ass and run through any streets. They're all on oxygen tanks and Doritos diets.
What do you mean, "sometimes"?
But, hey, gold is up and that's good for Glenn!
This will make it harder for me to figure out how much gold to shave off my ingot to pay for mah Skoal…
Buy buy buy! What? They're all buying? Sell sell sell!
Mortimer and Randolph Duke would've enjoyed this moment.
Well, it was a wild ride while it lasted, but it looks like it's back to the stone-age for us. Too bad, I'm going to miss my iPad when I'm spending all day chasing down rats for food and clubbing them to death with a human femur.
Club them with the iPad.
No way! I use the iPad to stun pigeons.
There's an app for that.
Only elitists waste time clubbing them first. Just bite off a leg and release, cuz if you're still alive tomorrow, you'll be glad for it.
Borse-shit!
Egypt doesn't even have oil.
Well, no. But they do have military accessible air strips within operational distance of oil.
That whole country is an airstrip.
I like the cut of your jib!
They have browns. Stands to reason that there's some oil around there somewhere. Or terror.
Can we go back to burning mummies for fuel?
We will soon enter the phase of the "ammunition based economy," which will shortly be followed by the "human flesh-based economy." I have thought long and hard, and I recomend getting a sailboat, and avoiding land as much as possible until the great die-off is over. You can fish, stocks will rebound after the industrial fishing fleets die from lack of oil.
And me with my fucking allergy to seafood. Guess I'll just stay ashore and die quickly.
It's going to be a regular, ol' Donner-brook.
And I will sell people like you fresh water at $40 per gallon. Capitalism!
ALL HAIL THE LORD HUMONGOUS!
Thank you.
♫Wooden ships on the water♪♫
Dimitry Orlov may have tips for you.
All you need to know is that insiders are selling their stocks and none are buying.
So yeah, good thing I'm already poor.
Mummy! I want my mummy!
Once news of the Dow downtick reaches Cairo I'm sure the protests will stop.
I'm confident enough to buy frozen orange juice futures.
Looking good, ManchuCandidate.
Put it all on "don't pass-don't come" you'll be fine.
All you need to do is cut taxes. Just cut taxes. And smaller government. Problem solved!
I am honestly surprised by this poor news in the markets. I have been watching the protests on Al Jazeera. There were so many people prominently carrying bottles of Coke and Dasani. I just figured the whole middle east uprising was some sort of viral marketing campaign.
Flash mobs just aren't what they used to be.
Dasani is the complete triumph of modern marketing, Coke convinced people to buy empty bottles of coke. Filled with the same water, and less of it, that they use to wash the coke bottles before they put the coke in them, and getting the same price, for empty bottles with the wash-water left in them. Amazing. We deserve to collapes, when you think about it.
It's a good thing there is no justice.
Good for those who deserve to get some justice, good and hard.
Where they also smoking Marlboro's?
Isn't it adorable that investors are always depicted as being "concerned" rather than "in a fevered bed-wetting panic"?
It's not the heat, it's the uncertainty.
It doesn't matter to them. They just "sell short" and make even more money. Win-Win for Gordon Gekko.
Isn't it "out on a window ledge" panic?
There is no doubt in my mind that the Exchange has a team that is paid to just make up shit to motivate investors will move on their positions just to generate commissions for the brokers. Word has it that it is the same team that writes for the Enquirer, but I don't know that for a fact…
"PROTESTS IN CAIRO!!! You know what that means – RIGHT?! Sell, SELL, SELL!!!!"
I don't see what open-housing marches in Southern Illinois have to do with any of this.
It don't make no! Buy, BUY, BUY!!! Er, uh…. I mean SELL, SELL, SELL!!!
Every time something happens that just might involve change, the markets freak out as if the Second Coming is imminent or something. Jeez, one country decides thirty years of the same dictator is enough and suddenly investors think the bombs are on their way.
JFC, Wall Street, take a chill pill already…
I knew I shouldn't have invested in pyramids.
They're great places in which to put your mummy.
My pyramid scheme, on the other hand, is paying off marvelously.
Cosigned,
Allen Stanford
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/11/07/article...
(By the by, how much you want to bet he paid someone in jail to beat him up, so he could get off on an "incapacity" technicality, then, six months from now, miracle of miracles, be back to good health? It's the new "Ken Lay faked his death".)
That's SIR Allen to you. (Well, it used to be, in Antigua.)
Ponzi son. Always in Ponzi.
I'm still awaiting Pat Robertson's verdict as to what that vindictive god of his is punishing us for this go-round. Homos or abortionists?
Certainly not the moneychangers.
Both. End times. Send him cash.
f-i-r-e-i-n-c-a-i-r-o
Somene at Fox Business is quickly rewriting their lead story which was titled "Has New GOP Congress Given Business Renewed Confidence?" but is now titled "Economy Reeling From Obama's Anti-Colonial policies."
Now I understand what he meant by "Win The Future".
I never understand why, when companies post a healthy profit, like Ford just did, but didn't quite reach the "estimate" the oh-so-wise analysts made in some metric, there's MASSIVE SELLOFF. I mean, they still made money?
Right – you'd think the analysts who misunderestimated Ford's performance would be discredited, not the company that still did pretty well, all in all. Sadly, no (as the kids say).
I think the standard answer would be that that Ford's stock price just before the news came out would have reflected the overoptimistic predictions, so that the sell-off is just an adjustment for the overoptimism.
Hillz bitchslapped Mubarak and told him to open the intertubes.
She's been talking freedom&shit all day and yes, it kind of gives me a hard-on.
It's the invisible hand (job) at work.
It crushes the windpipes of protesting Egyptians.
Does that have something to do with the "don't come" comment posted previously?
Only if you're doing it wrong.
Is that the one where you sit on your hand until it falls asleep and you can't feel it, then fap with it, so it feels like a stranger is doing it to you?
Boys don't cry over that. But they might kill an arab.
Wait a minute. Egyptians can't revolute without permission of the Greatest Freedom Loving Country Ever. This can't be allowed.
When Charlton Heston comes in to the part the Red Sea, the markets will calm down.
until he starts slapping the sands. "You Maniacs! DAMN YOU ALL! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"
Then the heat disappears,
and the mirage
fades away
Plastics Benjamin. Plastics. The wave of the future.
I'm sure glad that Wall Street found a way to gobble up almost all of my meager inheritance. I might have been able to relax a little bit, and not have to give 110% of my effort to making some genetically fortunate bastard even more fortunate.
Let me help you with the business knowledge thingy. Here's what I know about business from my TV. Erin Burnett is good masturbation material.
To paraphrase the Brothers Young: what would I do for money-honey? Everything.
Must be on "Mute", though.
I'd put on a gas mask (because, tear gas) and walk around saying "Are you my mummy?" and see if Egypt has any Doctor Who fans and then I'd probly get my head blown off.
"broad based sell offs" . . . Nah! Too easy, drill sergeant, too easy!
How will Sarah Palin explain this?
Extra credit question: What would President Palin do?
We were never very useful at the business desk.
Apparently neither is business, or the tools we have running the government…worldwide fail.
You kiddin me? Stocks down 1.26%…There'll be a bigger change due to the Super Bowl than Middle east war. On the whole, we are a rather idiotic species.
"On the whole, we are a rather idiotic species."
This could be appended to almost everything Wonkette posts on and still be relevant.
Best headline ever.
So, their 60 million dollar bonus will turn into a 30 million dollar bonus?
Oh noes!
Fuck 'em, too.
buy buy buy…no, sell sell sell….no, jump jump jump…
LOOK OUT BELOW!!1!!
And buy gold, silver, and oil.
We are freakin' doomed, but inflation will drive up the prices of the aforementioned commodities and we'll be rich, rich, rich!!!1!!!
Maybe if tuition wasn't so high more of those protesters would go to school. It worked right here in the ol' US of A. on May 14, 1970. Kids making a fuss, make them go to college, then invade the college with armed National Guard, corral them and shoot at will. Worked just fine at Kent State.
"Meanwhile, in sad-sack America, big companies from Amazon to something that starts with “Z” (Ford? Microsoft?) are revealing the desperate measures they must take, constantly, to stay afloat in this pathetic un-recovery."
Z. That sounds like a stock symbol for masturbatory products and sleep aids. In this day and age that would be a home run.
I'm just sorry I'm so fucking broke I've never been able to give the big boys some of my money to play with. I haz the sads having to sit idly by watching them make Gazillions pissing away my relative's nest eggs.
Every time I read a story about "The Market's Response to ___________" I am reminded of the Star Trek original series episode where they bet on Kirk in a fight to the death. "Fifty Quatloos on the newcomer!" Then I am reminded of the cash in my 401K that turned into whores, bubbly and cocaine and I am snapped into reality and pissed off again. Every other week something seems to justify raising oil prices and food prices, which are *magically* not included in inflation measures because they are "too volatile" to be considered as an inflationary measure. Oh well…..
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