Reply #31: i;'ll clarify

[paulsby]

the pendulum swing has to do with which "philosophy" is in favor.

not too long ago, those in the repub party controlled most of the govt. and the conventional wisdom was that the left/liberalism was dead. they got fat, bloated, lazy, and arrogant

and ... guess what...

we took over.

now, we have people (iow this thread) saying "conservatism is dead". conservatism is no more dead now, than liberalism was during the "reagan revolution"

iow, today's flava of the month aint necessarily gonna be the same in a short while

it's historically myopic.

as for your comments of the dow, the stats disagree with you. a very high %age of people in this country have exposure to the dow, and the market in general. greater than at any point in history, when you consider all those 401k's, 403(b)'s, IRA's, Roth-Ira's, etc.

when the dow swung from 14k to 6.5k, HUGE amounts of wealth were lost. andif you think it's only the rich, you are insane. middle class people who had (for example) a couple hundred k in their 401k, saw they now had about 80 or 90

if they were more heavily invested in bank stocks, they saw a greater drop.

that was a HUGE loss of wealth for scores of millions of people.

now, it's halfway back, over 10k, and imo at a precarious juncture due to the disconnect between "on the street" reality and the market. the decoupling from the dollar, for example.

regardless, my point about the pendulum has to do with public opinion, not your personal political beliefs, which may be very consistent.