This is not something I thought would not happen. What a sad statement about our leadership- U.S. loses AAA credit rating from S&P United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P - Yahoo! News
I think its a good thing, more motivation to clean our own house first, this has been going on for far to long with little to no regard from leadership.
I'm more concerned with the stock market losses over the last week or so. Congress went on vacation without doing anything to help get people back to work. But for younger people it is a good time to buy stocks or mutual funds. The next big battle in congress will be over the federal gasoline tax (18.4 c per gallon) which expires September 30.
I don't think we've seen the worst of it for the market. Tomorrow morning should be interesting if not painful. As much as I want to lay this at the feet of Obama i think everyone in elected office in Washington had a hand in it. It really is disgusting. In regards to Brez statement, I'm not sure how this can be viewed as a good thing. Interest rates are about to go up. Anything funded by debt (think small businesses trying to grow) is going to suffer from this. Politicians have played the campaign game all weekend, blaming the other side. I agree there needs to be a shakeup in Washington, but this isn't what any American needed. Unemployment is likely going to remain where it is at, if not increase, making the burden on government greater as they have to fund additional individuals feeding into the system on less and less revenue. Dear God, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but we are going to have to increase revenues, i.e. Raise taxes. I just hope it isn't on the backs of the most prosperous and that we look to the 51% currently paying nothing in federal taxes to shoulder some of this burden.
S&P is about to downgrade the student loan program. They have said that the program has driven tuition costs so high that if you have to finance your education via loans it likely isn't worth it.
I think its done the same thing...schools just charge as much as they can not what they need to...you were right btw, its worse today.
Lucky me, 15% of my portfolio is in gold (lets not discuss the 10% I have in oil). I have about 10% in Apple, cannot believe that stock is down. Still a good value, if you have the means I'd buy Apple like mad right now. 2 pm and the down is down just under 400 points. I believe thats as much as it dropped over the course of the entire previous week. Told you it was going to be painful today.
Dumped all equities last Monday after the week to week VAY dropped >4% per Marty Zweig's model. Worked like a charm, avoiding huge losses...will be back when it climbs > 4%.
You dumped everything?!? Wow, that's bold. Fees must have been brutal. I don't buy anything short term so I don't jump around much with fluctuations in the market, I have long term positions in everything.
Yup. And I dumped Chevron about a month and a half ago, left some money on the table I suppose but I didn't want to be around when the bubble burst. Shifted deferred comp to fixed around the same time. And gradually cast off things in the meantime. I was getting defensive obviously. At $8 a trade it was an easy decision...last week I only had to dump about 7 stocks and ETF's. The taxes would suck, but my wife lost her job early this summer so the bite shouldn't be so bad.
