Off-Topic

Sold BIDU at $150 on Tuesday. It's at $133.XX now. Almost time to buy back again

Twist was and is a waste. All it does is compound the interest rate risk on the Fed's balance sheet with little ROI. It also crushes banks earning power. Trying to entice borrowing with lower long term rates when people are not borrowing at already historically low rates is a weak strategy. It just shows Bernanke is running out of options and needs to let markets sort themselves out.

I posted this in another thread yesterday morning:

Shifting the composition of the balance sheet to longer dated maturities is already priced into the market and will do nothing to help the economy. If anything, it will further exacerbate earnings issues for the banks by compressing the net interest margin carry trade and flattening the curve. Bernanke is running out of bullets. He is finally going to have to let the market go where it needs to.

Be interesting to see how Japan and Europe hold up overnight.

Could have been worse for us today.

That’s what we’ve been seeing on world markets since Thursday trading began in Asia; this morning it hit the US with the kind of sickening thud we remember too well from 2008. Amid the general hurricane of bad economic news a few things stand out.

--Chinese stocks fell almost 5 percent and key real estate company stocks were down by double digit percentages as fears grow that the long-delayed bursting of the China property bubble is here;

--the European bank crisis is deepening, with the IMF sticking to its guns about the massive capital losses faced by the continent’s banks and BNP Paribas apparently trolling the Middle East in search of a big capital injection

--the Federal Reserve’s new worries about the economy made a deeper impression on investors than its plans to support growth

--some US banks are starting to look shaky again.

There are many more reasons for concern. The continuing inability of Europe to cope with the euro troubles, the political impasse over economic policy in the United States, and the deer-in-the-headlights immobility of Japan do not inspire confidence. The emerging economies — China, India, Turkey and Brazil — face increased difficulties of their own and will not pull the global economy out of the dumps. That large corporations are sitting on cash hoards or buying back stock rather than making new investments is bad news; that consumers are cutting down debt and doing what they can to increase their savings is good news for the long term, but bad news now. And it seems clear that two years of frantic efforts in Washington have failed to breathe new life into the nation’s housing market.

To answer the OP's question, they hanged themselves in the foyer.

So what should be done? Stimulus? cut taxes? raise taxes? cut spending? some combination? do nothing?

I don't reply a lot to the politico threads I just read them. You have to be the most consistent troll/flamer PaulUMD. Here is an upvote for your consistent efforts.

Debt needs to be written down. Losses need to be taken. Until then, business and banks will continue to be frozen in a purgatory until markets are cleared. Nobody wants to take pain, but economies and markets do not magically go up every quarter forever. The excesses of the last decade need to be expunged.

My 1102 s&p target was hit today and it went thru it. Finally looking to sell my shorts. Still think we could move down to 1088 but who knows when we'll bounce back so don't want to get too greedy. Still the way the market has been selling off with decent economic numbers has been some concern, with Europe taking the headlines.

We are now officially in bear market territory. Belgian bank Dexia collapsing (this one had passed the Euro "stress" test) and I'm sure more to follow. Morgan Stanley CDS blowing out, curve massively inverted. Things getting ugly out there. This could be nearing one of those shot term capitulations before another counter trend rally. I would think we have one more good counter trend rally before a larger fall but things are moving pretty fast towards a Euro end game with liquidity tightening that could expedite that timeline.

AMR filed for bankruptcy protection today... $27.5 billion in liabilities

Of course not, they're just going to make the pain that much worse when it comes time to pay the piper.

peopel cant really be this stupid...