tetrishead

Thank you for explaining to all of us how the market suffers from cyclical volatility. This is new and exciting information, and is not at all the basis of every long term investing strategy of the last 50 years.

The dotcom bubble was started by Wall Street, although whether they're responsible or not is debatable (I don't think they are directly, although PWM people did a poor job advising clients). The subprime crisis was financed by Wall Street, and I agree that it's less their fault than it is the fault of shady mortgage companies, compromised appraisers and incoherent and mostly non-existent regulation.

Anyone who's going to do well in this industry knows that it will recover. The topic that's worth discussing is what the time frame is, and whether or not the actions of the Fed are setting us up for a depression. It's also worth wondering what's going to happen to the middle class--which over the last 10 years has been obliterated, and what has been left is the upper middle class and the lower middle class. Those making below <$70,000 a year for the last decade have arguably been in a depression, and it'll be interesting to see if a market recovery is tied to a surge in the middle class--or if it's another pseudo-bump prompted by the wealthy, which absolutely never lasts.

I mean, I'm pretty much a conservative, but even I recognize that Reagonomics and trickle-down economics is ridiculous. I'd like to see the next president significantly cut taxes for homes with AGIs of <$90,000, while enforcing taxes on HFs and repealing Bush cuts. It probably makes me sound like a liberal, but if there's one thing we've proven time and time again it's that we can only have a strong market and a strong economy simultaneously when the middle class is strong.

This is spot-on.