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US consumer confidence drop hits stocks

S

spidey07

No Lifer
The summer of recovery keeps rolling on. Low consumer confidence = low spending = no jobs = lower consumer confidence = less and less jobs. It's like a death spiral. I don't know how to get out of it until this administration and congress change their tune or get booted out. The liberal experiment has failed the world over and it's failing here as well, just a lot quicker.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h3kgMAkbLwyfxBdjzw8Pc4KZ7DhQD9I9NMG00

The University of Michigan reported that its main consumer sentiment index slipped to 66.6 in September from August's 68.9. The drop was unexpected — the consensus in the markets was that the index would rise modestly to 70. The long-run average is around 85

The data provided further evidence that the U.S. consumer is faltering amid mounting talk of a double-dip recession, especially as consumer spending accounts for around 70 percent of the world's largest economy.

"The broader story is that the slow bleed in consumer sentiment appears to be continuing, probably because of an array of reports that this recovery is not generating nearly the same number of jobs as past recoveries," said Alan Ruskin, an analyst at Deutsche Bank.
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In other news, the DOW is up over 50% from it's low last year, and around 20% since the day Obama took office. Meanwhile, banks are sitting on around $1 trillion in assets they'd normally loan out for no real clear reason. Republicans filibustered a program designed to improve lending to small businesses until just this week, yet bizarrely Republicans are still labeled pro-Business. As for today, the DOW is currently in the positive (slightly). We now return to our regularly scheduled trolling.
 
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Carmen813 said:
Meanwhile, banks are sitting on around $1 trillion in assets they'd normally loan out for no real clear reason.
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There are very clear reasons, you just don't want to see them. Reasons like the uncertainty in the economic environment because of a business hostile administration and their legislation (health care, cap & tax and so forth).
 
spidey07, I know you delight in pinning everything in the world that goes wrong on Obama, but as to the stock market: (a) it has been on a little-publicized but real mini-tear upwards for the last two weeks or so and is clearly due for a breather IMO, (b) today is options expiration day, generally a high volume very flakely day in the market when prices frequently soar or plummet without regard to external factors like the state of the economy and (c) the market is up again today, at least as of right now (Dow Jones +14.38). The Dow has been trading in a very narrow margin up and down all morning.
 
Thump553 said:
spidey07, I know you delight in pinning everything in the world that goes wrong on Obama, but as to the stock market: (a) it has been on a little-publicized but real mini-tear upwards for the last two weeks or so and is clearly due for a breather IMO, (b) today is options expiration day, generally a high volume very flakely day in the market when prices frequently soar or plummet without regard to external factors like the state of the economy and (c) the market is up again today, at least as of right now (Dow Jones +14.38). The Dow has been trading in a very narrow margin up and down all morning.
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The main point was the big drop in consumer confidence. It was expected to go up, not down.
 
spidey07 said:
The summer of recovery keeps rolling on. Low consumer confidence = low spending = no jobs = lower consumer confidence = less and less jobs. It's like a death spiral. I don't know how to get out of it until this administration and congress change their tune or get booted out. The liberal experiment has failed the world over and it's failing here as well, just a lot quicker.
Click to expand...

When they get booted out, what makes you think the Republicans (who got us into this mess in the first place) or the Tea Party will do anything to keep the death spiral from accelerating?

As far as I can tell, neither party will do anything other than enact policy that will help the rich get richer at the expense of the lower classes. I have yet to hear a Republican or TEA Party candidate say, "I will vote to immediately end the H-1B and L-1 visa program," or "I will vote to raise tariffs (or enact other policy) in order to (forcibly) end foreign outsourcing."
 
And the weekly unemployment figures (week ending 9/11) announced yesterday were better than expected (450k new claims, consensus expectation was 460k). Three days ago the August retail sales figures were announced, also better than expected [+0.4% increase vs. +0.3% expected]. Anyone expecting a recovery to proceed in a nice straight unbroken line up is living in a dream world.

The fact is our economy took a huge wack that was generallly felt in all areas and nearly all sectors of the economy. Personally I think we came within a hairbreath of plunging into a real depression-and I credit GWB for showing some real leadership and courage in acting against his party's doctrine to do what was needed to stop the crash. Recovery is going to be long and tough, but I remain firmly convinced we'd be in a lot worse shape if McCain won. I still shudder when I recall his moronic performance at the summit he engineered to address the problem.
 
Often known as high frequency trading (HFT), the ultra-fast algorithms buy and sell millions of shares a day, executing deals within split seconds. They today account for more than 50 percent of daily trading volume.

HFT has come under increased scrutiny and criticism following the May 6 "Flash Crash" which saw market indexes dive by more than nine percent in minutes, only to rebound again after seconds.

The stock exchange's extreme volatility and complexity leaves average investors scared.


Even savvy traders find it almost impossible to master the stock market as trading increasingly becomes dominated by machines and fractured by a myriad of highly specialized and often little-known markets called black pools.
 
It is the administration and the federal reserve that is suppose to promote or prop up consumer confidence. So President Oh-Bummer is a failure as a leader and as a president. That marxist philosophy is really working well for him, isnt it? Maybe if he had some positive people on his cabinet that promoted a good economic message that might help. After a while, overtaxing the rich and blaming the bad economy on wall-street and corporations will only get you so far.
 
WhipperSnapper said:
When they get booted out, what makes you think the Republicans (who got us into this mess in the first place) or the Tea Party will do anything to keep the death spiral from accelerating?

As far as I can tell, neither party will do anything other than enact policy that will help the rich get richer at the expense of the lower classes. I have yet to hear a Republican or TEA Party candidate say, "I will vote to immediately end the H-1B and L-1 visa program," or "I will vote to raise tariffs (or enact other policy) in order to (forcibly) end foreign outsourcing."
Click to expand...


The Repubs probably will not have to do much of anything. Businesses will feel better about them being back in and blocking what they see as an anti-business administration. That should be enough for them to start hiring again and get us out of this death spiral, albeit slowly.
 
Thump553 said:
And the weekly unemployment figures (week ending 9/11) announced yesterday were better than expected (450k new claims, consensus expectation was 460k). Three days ago the August retail sales figures were announced, also better than expected [+0.4% increase vs. +0.3% expected]. Anyone expecting a recovery to proceed in a nice straight unbroken line up is living in a dream world.

The fact is our economy took a huge wack that was generallly felt in all areas and nearly all sectors of the economy. Personally I think we came within a hairbreath of plunging into a real depression-and I credit GWB for showing some real leadership and courage in acting against his party's doctrine to do what was needed to stop the crash. Recovery is going to be long and tough, but I remain firmly convinced we'd be in a lot worse shape if McCain won. I still shudder when I recall his moronic performance at the summit he engineered to address the problem.
Click to expand...


We would have been better off now if McCain had won. He would not have made as many extreme changes as the dems and would have been seen as pro-business and having moderate roots. The average American would have been more comfortable with him in the WH than Obama.
 
IGBT said:
Often known as high frequency trading (HFT), the ultra-fast algorithms buy and sell millions of shares a day, executing deals within split seconds. They today account for more than 50 percent of daily trading volume.

HFT has come under increased scrutiny and criticism following the May 6 "Flash Crash" which saw market indexes dive by more than nine percent in minutes, only to rebound again after seconds.

The stock exchange's extreme volatility and complexity leaves average investors scared.


Even savvy traders find it almost impossible to master the stock market as trading increasingly becomes dominated by machines and fractured by a myriad of highly specialized and often little-known markets called black pools.
Click to expand...

That's the the thing with the stock market, it's no longer people buying stocks based on the value of the the company but a game of its own in which you try to maximize your gains. Either the stock market shouldn't be used as a gauge of the economy or there should be some regulation on it that will increase stability even at the expense of profit (ie must hold stocks for 2 weeks before selling). I don't know enough to say what would help and what would hurt more but from a layman's perspective it seems like the system is being milked at the expense of small time investors.
 
Lanyap said:
We would have been better off now if McCain had won. He would not have made as many extreme changes as the dems and would have been seen as pro-business and having moderate roots. The average American would have been more comfortable with him in the WH than Obama.
Click to expand...

I think an Iran war would have been a pretty extreme change.
 
Lanyap said:
We would have been better off now if McCain had won. He would not have made as many extreme changes as the dems and would have been seen as pro-business and having moderate roots. The average American would have been more comfortable with him in the WH than Obama.
Click to expand...

It's voters like this who raise the question whether democracy can work, as much as we support the idea of the voters deciding things, they often do so terribly.

There seems to be no limit to how bad things can get that they can't say 'it'd be worse with Democrats', or 'it'd be better with Republicans'.

They're so clueless it's like letting a blind armless man perform surgery with his toes.
 
The liberal experiment has failed
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I hope you're referring to something bigger than only two years of Obama.

If anything, Obama has done too little; he's had too little an effect. But this current recession has proven itself, thus far, bigger than his ability to influence to the positive or, probably, to the negative. But again, if anything, he's too passive than not.
 
JTsyo said:
That's the the thing with the stock market, it's no longer people buying stocks based on the value of the the company but a game of its own in which you try to maximize your gains. Either the stock market shouldn't be used as a gauge of the economy or there should be some regulation on it that will increase stability even at the expense of profit (ie must hold stocks for 2 weeks before selling). I don't know enough to say what would help and what would hurt more but from a layman's perspective it seems like the system is being milked at the expense of small time investors.
Click to expand...

Exactly, when the bulk of the market isn't sharing in the growth of companies, but has massive sums there for 'game-playing' that extracts wealth from the country.

I haven't seen one right-winger yet respond to the fact that in 1979, the financial sector was under 10% of the US economy, and recently it went over 40%.

Why? They don't understand why it's important and their eyes gloss over and they parrot the next Obama attack. We have democracy corrupted by the right-wing propaganda.

It's like the people causing the harm have really been able to misplace the blame and not be noticed for their role. The citizens who rise up to the wrongdoing face the right's dupes.

Reagan era: "Hey everyone, cut taxes on the rich and you will get rich too!" Sorry.

Clinton era: "Hey everyone you can get rich on the stock market too!" Sorry.

Bush era: "Hey everyone you can't go wrong putting all your money in real estate!" Sorry.

Obama to campaign team: You idiots, you were supposed to make me viable for 2012, not win and put me with a shovel in the billion cow barn of Bush to clean up crap!

What's the problem again? Oh ya, liberals who fought for the people the whole time.

Liberals who said "green energy" in the 70's, who said "oppose the Reagan tax cuts and skyrocketing deficit" in the 80's, who said "don't repeal FDR financial laws" in the 90's.

Al Gore saying 'put a lock box on the social security trust fund and don't let government borrow from it' in 2000, John Kerry saying we had some of the biggest crooks in history and needed to return government to the people from the hundreds of lobbyists the Republicans let run it in 2004.

Liberals in the House who would pass single-payer healthcare to reduce the trillions in waste America overpays for a system that bilks the public, who would pass serious finance reform.

Instead, the nation paying attention to people who show up to meetings of a 'movement' paid for by corrupt interests hiding from them with signs of Obama as Hitler and the Joker.

Save234
 
Craig234 said:
It's voters like this who raise the question whether democracy can work, as much as we support the idea of the voters deciding things, they often do so terribly.

There seems to be no limit to how bad things can get that they can't say 'it'd be worse with Democrats', or 'it'd be better with Republicans'.

They're so clueless it's like letting a blind armless man perform surgery with his toes.
Click to expand...


It's called being realistic. I'm not an extreme partisan like you. We are in the shitter now and it's going to get worse. Dems screwed the pooch by pushing their left/liberal/progressive agenda to fast. They could have used other more moderate strategies and been more successful but they didn't. If it makes you feel any better, we would probably be better off now if Bill Clinton had ran and won instead of Obama. The extreme right does not have the answers either.
 
Lanyap said:
It's called being realistic. I'm not an extreme partisan like you. We are in the shitter now and it's going to get worse. Dems screwed the pooch by pushing their left/liberal/progressive agenda to fast. They could have used other more moderate strategies and been more successful but they didn't. If it makes you feel any better, we would probably be better off now if Bill Clinton had ran and won instead of Obama. The extreme right does not have the answers either.
Click to expand...

I'm still waiting for the Democrats to push a progressive agenda. We're still in Afghanistan. We will retain 50,000 troops in Iraq. Gitmo is open. The Health Care bill was perverted into yet another Corporatist handout. The military budget continues to grow. The Middle Class continues to be gutted. Free trade continues unabated.

A progressive agenda would include an end to the wars, a shrinking of the military, and a reemphasis on the American Middle Class, including Universal Health Care and other changes to make employing Americans an easy decision.
 
SammyJr said:
I'm still waiting for the Democrats to push a progressive agenda. We're still in Afghanistan. We will retain 50,000 troops in Iraq. Gitmo is open. The Health Care bill was perverted into yet another Corporatist handout. The military budget continues to grow. The Middle Class continues to be gutted. Free trade continues unabated.

A progressive agenda would include an end to the wars, a shrinking of the military, and a reemphasis on the American Middle Class, including Universal Health Care and other changes to make employing Americans an easy decision.
Click to expand...

Amen, brother.
 
Who cares about that pyramid scheme? Just rich boys trading back and forth duping middle class fools and profit taking which is probably what happening now. I have about $44K in there from when I had a job type job and I put $44K in there...this is 10 years later I left with 44 still have 44. I have not logged in in years to look at it but statements come every quarter. Fund manager makes about 13 million tho.
 
Market is predicting GOP gains, crashing. People know that gridlock in bad times means you get to sit in your own sh!t.
 
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