<p>Hasn’t commercial real estate already started tanking? I’m just thinking of my local community - which was booming until this year. As evidence - one brand new shopping center with three anchors and a lot of empty smaller storefronts, newly rebuilt university area which was to include a large apartment and shopping complex for students - that project now withdrawn due to lack of financing and the economy.</p>
<p>I’m sorry for everyone who has lost money despite following “expert advice.” I was going back over some 1999 and 2000 stock recommendations provided by experts of that time. WCOM, out of business. EXDS, out of business. GM, nearly out of business. After the crash I spoke with a financial company representative. His insight? “Well if you’d been in Treasury Bonds …” Yeah, thanks a**hole. For us oldhands, the current environment is simply one more bad stretch in a lifelong journey. At least I can fall back on assets that don’t depend on the stock market or government coffers. Sadly, the same probably isn’t true for my children. Stock market they must.</p>
<p>Commercial real estate values are being marked down due to lack of financing and higher cap rates. With many loans coming due and not much refi $$$ yet some owners are in tough shape. Apartments remain strong due to lack of homebuying and people losing homes. Office and retail are getting softer in some areas with lots of banking and an oversupply of retail with retailers going out of business… Industrial is OK but some more vacancy as inventories are cut to the bone. Next year will be interesting and then it will bounce back.</p>
<p>I had world com - fortunately not too much. The memory of 2001 is still fresh in my mind.</p>
<p>Notable market technicians say the S&P 500 has farther to fall – and maybe much farther:</p>
<p>S&P 500 Index’s ‘Retest’ of Low Fails to Spur Rally</p>
<p>[Bloomberg.com:</a> Worldwide](<a href=“Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg”>Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg)</p>
<p>dstrak:</p>
<p>The downside of the current slide is along with rich people, if too many middle class people loose 401K, country may suffer immense harm as tax base may shrink and more people need handouts. This will not allow people to pass many long overdue reforms like healthcare for all citizens if money is not there. Charities will suffer too as many people will be stingy with money. The down side has also too many negatives for the poor and the people who need most help.</p>
<p>The past few weeks whenever the s & p tested the lows, it bounced back - not today however. I wouldn’t put too much credence in what anybody says about where the market will go when the likes of Buffett, Miller, Kerkorian, Heebner etc have been clocked.</p>
<p>I also found a Fortune magazine in my garage dating 2000. It has on the front page, 10 stocks you can retire on. Enron is one of the stocks. I think the article forgot to mention we would be living in the following type of house.</p>
<p>[Tumbleweed</a> Tiny House Company](<a href=“http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/]Tumbleweed”>http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/)</p>
<p>The headline of the thread is just a headline. I know the middle class and the poor are going to be hit too.</p>
<p>I am expecting one hell of a bad economy.</p>
<p>The wealth destruction that is going on right now is unprecedented.
The wealthy, by definition have more wealth :), and the wealthy are losing at a faster clip than ever before. Some stocks like US Steel are dropping faster now than they did in 1929-1932 and US Steel dropped quite a bit in that prior period.</p>
<p>But as many posters have said, yes, the middle class and lower classes are going to be affected too.</p>
<p>$SPX had a descending triangle with two tests below the base. These usually resolve to the downside. Banging at the base removes buyers there. Hitting the top removes sellers but there are fewer and fewer buyers willing to buy so new highs are lower than the older highs giving you your pattern.</p>
<p>A rather interesting picture of four crashes by percentage losses x number of days. Our current crash is running fairly quickly. The 1929 scenario view is pretty scary.</p>
<p>[four-bears-large.gif</a> (image)](<a href=“four-bears-large.gif]four-bears-large.gif (image)”>four-bears-large.gif (image))</p>
![four-bears-large.gif]four-bears-large.gif (image)](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SSSevkxwNtI/AAAAAAAADzE/V_BMgbRML4E/s1600-h/four-bears-large.gif%5Dfour-bears-large.gif){kind=link}
<p>Very nice chart.</p>
<p>Larry Kudlow is starting to get nervous. He is one of my leading indicators. :)</p>
<p>A piece from Richard Russell (Dow Theory Letters)</p>
<p>During the Great Depression, Henry Morgenthau, the Treasury Secretary, told his fellow Democrats, “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong – somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started – and an enormous debt to boot.”</p>
<p>Russell Comment – Did all that government spending end the Great Depression? Sadly, the answer is no. The spending simply built a mountain of government debt. So what ended the Great Depression? World War II ended it, when 11 million American men were inducted into the military.</p>
<p>I remember all this too well. I enlisted in 1942 while I was a student at Rutgers. Prior to the war, the Government tried everything including the NRA, the WPA, PWA, and CCC. Government can make work, but government can’t reverse the direction of the primary trend of the market.</p>
<p>^ 84 ,85, 86, 87, 88?</p>
<p>Just reading up on pension fund stuff.</p>
<p>Companies play some interesting games with pensions. When the stock market is up, they can drain money from pensions to pad their earnings. When the stock market is down, they are supposed to add money from operations (or elsewhere) to their pension funds.</p>
<p>A law in 2006 was passed to protect pensions by requiring regular payments to pension funds because of corporate bankruptcies where it was found that companies weren’t making payments to their pension fund.</p>
<p>Corporate pension funds have lost about $265 billion in the crash (nice round figure for a bailout, eh?) and there’s a bill to resolve the problem.</p>
<p>By allowing companies to not have to make regular payments to their pension funds. It has bipartisan sponsorship. Nothing like burying your head in the sand to make a problem go away.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/business/economy/20pension.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1227156997-gcGYzpoYYbxyaDSJM37BuA[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/business/economy/20pension.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1227156997-gcGYzpoYYbxyaDSJM37BuA</a></p>
<p>Sometimes, you just have to bite the bullet. Otherwise it becomes a bomb.</p>
<p>This is very ugly!</p>
<p>Like most of the people, we lost a lot. The only positive sign is we did not borrow money to buy stocks. However, during last two years, our spending was huge, bought a bigger house in 2007, bought a car two month ago, and paying 50k/yr tuition.</p>
<p>I do expect that business of our group will go down quite bit. Not a pretty picture.</p>
<p>Thanks for the crash chart, BC. Looks like we’re near the bottom reached in the tech crash and oil crash bear markets on a percentage loss basis. If markets continue to drop through this level, it’s not a pretty picture!</p>
<p>Yesterday, I saw a business outlook presentation for a US multinational. Key points:</p>
<p>–Demand slowed substantially in September and fell off a cliff in October
–4Q 2008 will be the worst for the US economy since 1982
–Leading indicators continue to fall
–Global economy will continue to worsen even if markets bottom
–Global developed and developing countries are already at or near recession
–Chinese economy is very weak
–Recessions associated with financial crises are longer and more painful than other recessions
–Businesses should expect bankruptcies of major customers</p>
<p>Bottom line: much more pain to come.</p>
<p>[Bloomberg.com:</a> Exclusive](<a href=“Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg”>Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg)</p>
<p>"The Warren Buffett of the Gulf is taking a bigger hit from the credit crunch than the original. </p>
<p>Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was lauded by Time magazine as the Middle East’s answer to the Sage of Omaha after a 1991 investment in Citigroup Inc.’s predecessor helped make the Saudi billionaire one of the world’s five richest people. </p>
<p>This year, Alwaleed’s investments aren’t keeping pace with regional benchmarks, let alone Buffett. His Riyadh-based Kingdom Holding Co. has slumped 63 percent – more than Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul All-Share Index or Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. – wiping out $13 billion in value. Kingdom Holding today said Alwaleed will increase his Citigroup stake, his largest holding, to 5 percent, even after the shares fell 77 percent since Jan. 1. </p>
<p>“When people nail their colors to the mast in such an obvious way, if then it all blows up, then that’s very damaging to your reputation,” said Ken Murray, chairman of Blue Planet Investment Management in Edinburgh, who says he shorted shares in Citigroup last year. </p>
<p>Alwaleed and his companies are buying Citigroup shares because the prince believes they are “dramatically undervalued,” Kingdom Holding said in a news release. The combined stake stands at less than 4 percent after recent share sales by Citigroup, Kingdom Holding said. </p>
<p>“Prince Alwaleed is fully confident that Citigroup’s universal banking model and global franchise will make it a long- term winner in the financial services industry,” Kingdom said. </p>
<p>Citigroup shares rose 6.4 percent to $6.81 in pre-market New York after the announcement."</p>
<p>Hopefully the faster they go down, the faster they go up!</p>
<p>The chart is very nice and very scary. Compared to green (2000-2002) and red (73-74), it seems that we are near the bottom. I dont know anything about 73-74. However, I remember 2000-2002. Even, we lost a lot then; the economy was different from today. Housing was not that a problem then (housing problem is so much more fundamental than tech /dot.com crash). The unemployment and consumer spending situation was not that bad in 2002 as it is today, and is heading toward worse next year. It appears that we are following the gray curve (29-32). </p>
<p>Should we hold on for possibility of additional loss (up to 90% lose like the great depression) or take the loss now (50% loss) and let go the recover opportunity? </p>
<p>Since I finished all my education and training in 1999, in less than 10-year period, I have gone through two major market meltdowns. Financial security through investment is going to be a joke for the rest of my life. As far as I can see now, the true financial security is your health, your skills which can bring in a reasonable income and your willingness to work through your whole life.</p>