Market is tanking. Trade Deficit News?

[BurtWorm]

The Dow, NASDAQ and S&P are all down nearly 1.5%, with half an hour to go.

Aren't traders still high on Greenspan's greenlight to Bush policies?

[montanacowboy]

1. The filthy pie hole

opened his mouth in Ohio today -

[nostamj]

2. yes, and...

he was blathering about how GREAT the economy is...

[SoCalDem]

4. Did you tweak that picture???

:)

[nostamj]

6. well....

maybe just a little. but this one is 100% really really REAL

[TahitiNut]

3. A Trade Deficit of $43.1B instead of the expected $42.0B?

Ubetcha.

[orwell]

5. Sell-Off

Not likely, though that may be the cover story.

The market has had a huge run. Negatives are starting to build that up to now have been able to be overlooked. Combine that with seasonal and technical factors and you have all the ingredients for a sell-off.

O

[YNGW]

7. Have to admit...

.... I've never thought of the market being down 1.5% as "tanking". Guess what? I still don't.

[kysrsoze]

14. You have to look at it over time. The losses up until today have

completely erased all gains for 2004. I'm a bit freaked out to see what things are going to look like over the next month. 7 days of this type of sell would add up to a loss of 10%. That is HUGE.

[sweetheart]

8. deeply structural

The markets as standing presume the wasthington consensus of free trade imperium lead by the IMF and the WTO all underwritten by a
massive (paid for by our children's schools) military deployment.
This protection racket of dominating the world, is bad news.

This old hegemony breaks with the dollar consensus, and that has
been sliding off its moorings for some time now. Pretty soon,
the dollar will sail out to sea and then, we'll see some really
wild surf.

[prolesunited]

9. I have some money

in global bonds. Is that a good or bad position to be holding right now?

[Zinfandel]

10. Why are all the big bucks people buying & investing in the Euro?

Dollar is tanking?

[BurtWorm]

11. Didn't Greenspan say it was good news that the dollar was weakening?

Is it good or isn't it?

I think Kerry should have little difficulty presenting the Bush team and Republicans in general as utterly untrustworthy stewards of the economy. The media will make his job more difficult, but I will be astounded if he can't make some hay over how out of touch the Republicans are with American aspirations for the economy.

[sendero]

12. I'm no expert...

... but I think most would agree that the dollar weakening some could be good. But weakening too much could be very bad.

The exact cutoff between some and too much is probably open to debate :)

[BurtWorm]

13. I was under the impression that at a certain point, an unattractive dollar

means less foreign investment in the US, or in US currency, hence a looming disaster for the balance of trade. And believe me, I'm no expert either!

[sweetheart]

15. Dollar depreciation

The post world war 2 consensus of military protection for money,
is breaking down with europe, and the europeans can better invest
in their own protection. East asia is not economicsally strong enough to take too big a shift of their currencies relative to the
dollar without having severe effects on their economic prospects. A severe dollar collapse would be a great tragedy eclipsing many recent
wars in the memory of destrustction of goodwill. It would mean the
world giving up on the american-post-ww2 project, and embarking on a
path of dangerous militarism.

Finance being very conservative, follows politics by a lag, and
the european disinvestment in american credit is obvious both politically and financially. These radical shifts in relative
credit are seizmic and can cause entire empires to crumble. A
breakdown in trust with russia regarding world oil markets could
repolarize things radically if this empire-land grab of us empire
treads inappropriately.

Finance confidence, can only be reflected by the military-industrial
complex and its competence, which is, of lately, rather light.