I think that this isn't going to be an isolated case:
My husband's business is a canary in the coalmine. When tax policies are favorable to business, he hires more guys, buys more goods, etc. When he is taxed more heavily, he fires people, doesn't buy anything new, etc. Well, duh. So, at the mere thought of a President Obama, he has paid off his debt, canceled new spending, and jotted a list of whom to "let go."
The first of the guys will get the news tomorrow. And these are not minimum-wage earners. These are "rich" guys, making between $200,000 and $250,000 a year.
My husband will make sure that we're okay, money-wise, but he won't give himself a paycheck that will just be sent to Washington. He'll make sure that he's not in "rich guy" tax territory. So, he will not spend his money, not show a profit, and scale his workforce down to the bare minimum.
Multiply this scenario across the country and you'll see the Obama effect: unemployment, recession, etc. No business owner will vote for this man, but many a "middle-class worker" will vote himself out of a job. Sad the Republican can't articulate this.
Unfortunately, the Republicans nominated the wrong candidate for that. Maybe the vice-presidential nominee can.
And if Biden/Gore is any indication, the coalmine will be closing its doors soon as well. Fortunately, I have had most of my retirement in bonds for over a year now waiting for this collapse. Unfortunately, until Pelosi gives up, I don't know when the bottom will be reached, so I can put my money back into the market. I also suspect that moment won't come, so long as an Obama Presidency is likely to occur.
If Obama gets elected, I'll have to wait several months to learn if Obama will govern like the primary Obama or the general election Obama.
Except for Reagan and Goldwater, the Republican Party has not been articulate in my lifetime.
...whether you agreed with him or not on the war, Ron Paul is and was spot-on on the economy.
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2008/cr092908h.htm
On the other hand, the "obama effect" is pushing sales of firearms and ammunition to new heights! Just goes to show there is no one who can sell guns as well as an anti-gunner with some power.
I think that it would not only be useful directly, but be a salutary lesson, to treat appropriately the people that got the USA - and the rest of the world including my country, the UK - into this mess in the first place; which is to say - those who, in the pursuit of bonuses, lent money to people who couldn't afford it, and then concealed those loans under multiple layers of complication and sold them on as if they were real assets.
And what would be appropriate? Strip them of every last penny of their assets wherever held, turn their families out on the street - and hang the perpetrators. They have collectively done more damage to the USA than any military traitor ever managed, after all.
I would also include in the list similar bonus-seekers in the UK, by the way.
I have absolutely no problem with people who take big risks with their own money and win big. I have a very large one with those who gamble with other people's, with no risk to themselves.
I dunno, Fletch, think that one through a bit more. It's not like the financial wizards on Wall Street forced the money out of their customers, like, say, the government does. Folks gave it into their hands of their own accord, after reading the prospectus carefully (ha ha). It was their own money, to risk as they please, and they chose to blow off the work of figuring out where to invest it directly -- chose not to start a business, lend it to someone starting a business, buy a house or rental property they'd directly manage, buy some stock in a company they knew well, et cetera and so forth -- and instead just chose to put it into the hands of a fund manager who gave vague promises of a wild wonderful rate of return. Trust me, said the snake, and Eve did just that, without asking questions.
So...still sympathetic to the person who wanted to make a fortune off his loose $10 grand, without doing any actual work? Couldn't be bothered to keep close track of his own money? This starts to smack of the sympathy people have for "predatory lending," that evil process whereby the banker offers to lend you money and you accept without thinking about whether you can afford it, and then the evil banker doesn't warn you against your own folly. In other words, you're totally infantilizing investors here, more or less because, since they're out of a lot of dough, they seem sympathetic and sad. I doubt you'd have nearly that kind of sympathy had they made those bazillions for doing roughly zero work, and be sitting on sweet piles of cash, driving up the prices of decent houses and elite college educations to where you, plain old working stiff ploddingly saving your nickels and dimes, can't afford them any more.
You want to be pissed at people gambling with other people's money, start with Congress, hmm? They gamble with one fourth the income earned by 200 million working Americans, $3 trillion a year, spending it on whatever suits their fancy, whatever random "alternative energy" or community organizing scheme they imagine will better the Republic in the long run (or just ensure re-election), and none of us have any choice about lending them our kids' college tuition money for the gamble.
And if they screw up massively? Do they pay for the appalling losses with their own savings, or even their own jobs? Not much, no. Instead, they'll just conjure up a law that will force tomorrow's taxpayers to pay for the follies today's taxpayer can't quite cover.
That's moral corruption on a grand scale.