Before last fall's election I posted a thread pointing out how the stock market had been going down for months. I also explained that not infrequently the market leads the economy. In other words it tends to show what's going to happen in the future. Where are we now? There was a little positive activity right after Bush was reelected but it didn't last long. Yesterday the market had its worst day ever in 2 years. There's been no net market gain since 2002. No net gain in THREE YEARS. A dead economy. A dying nation. Take a glace at a graph of the S & P 500 over the past 5 years. It's like a net downward trend. It's not hard to understand. Look at it this way. Every single task that's too difficult to do by manual labor --and that means just about everything you can think of -- is done by burning fossil fuel. Want to build something? Burn fossil fuel. Want to move or change something? Burn fossil fuel. Want to eat something? Burn fossil fuel. Want to go 50 feet down the road? Burn fossil fuel. When a nation depends for virtually everything on fossil fuel (i.e. largely petroleum) and the price of energy doubles and there's no margin for error -- especially a nation where no one can afford education or healthcare anyway -- the whole society goes down the tubes. So ironic because the thing they love most is $$$. If they'd listened to the hippies and freaks they wouldn't be in this mess. And what dollars there are -- send them all overseas. And go into debt on top of it. Maybe they can pray their way out of it. Darker days await us.
I'm sympathetic to what you're saying. We do need, and I do want, to change this slave system and the mindset. Economics is important however because we still depend on one another and still need a functioning society.
Well our GNP has gone up at an average of 3.5% a year since 2001. So maybe there is more to economics than the stock market?
i must agree, yeah im sure some people have made money off the stock market lately....hell ill buy some oil shares tomorrow and double my money in a few months if that. and our gnp may have risen but the price of gas has risen much more than 3.5% and probably more than anything else but crude oil itself. theres no doubt that our govt. is after what is in the middle east and were along for the ride.
If the price of oil continues to surge (I think it'll level off soon), there would be more incentive to develop alternate forms of energy because they'd be relatively more cost-effective than they currently are. The price of oil isn't just going to suddenly double without any warning or explanation. And I agree with the people who said you can still make money in the stock market. There are always plenty of stock opportunities available, even during average or slightly below average economic periods.
This analysis is bogus. The market bottomed out in early 2003 and since that time has risen by more than 40%. Markets do not rise 40% in anticipation of a nation meeting its doom. Futhermore, looking at the peak back in 2000, what does that mean? Yahoo was trading at about $350 a share back then, and so were hopeless companies like priceline.com. They weren't trading at that level because the economy was so super fantastic, they were trading there because the country was gripped by a speculative bubble. Lets also realise that this is not the first time in history the stock market has gone down. And it was correct to look at GDP. Our slowdown in the early years of Bush's first term was remarkably mild. The US economy grew faster than all the major European economies and Japan in 2004, and is forecast to do the same in 2005 and 2006. How is this bad? Finally, energy prices do not determine the direction of our economy. Energy prices are one component of GDP, i.e. only one cost among many. We can grow along with growing energy prices, although it won't help. As this chart shows, the energy intensiveness of our economy is declining, not increasing. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/archives/theamericas/images/energy_consumption_per_dollar_of_gdp,_thousand_btu_per_1997_$.jpg
