Our Glorious Burden

Our president requested that we now go out and buy some stocks. A question -- which ones should we buy?

GM? With expectations that shareholders are going to be left holding nothing if sales continue the way they are continuing, and with a potential for bankruptcy? Hmmm...I should seriously consider GM.

AIG? After having posted the largest corporate loss in U.S. history on the heels of yet another $30 billion thrown at them this past Sunday afternoon? Hmmm...I should seriously consider buying shares of AIG. You should too.

You know, it's nice that I have a job and the disposable income to be throwing it into stocks...I wonder, does Obama envision the 4-plus million unemployed to cash in their unemployment checks and wire the money to their brokers? How about the 45% of all Nevadans who owe more on their mortgages than they're worth...should they borrow more non-existent equity to fund their stock purchases?

Seems to me that in deflationary times, one should be selling everything they can. Values in the future will be less. Doesn't seem to me to be to be a good time to be buying, certainly not until we're closer to the bottom, and I don't think we're there yet. Personally -- I hope for home values to fall another 40%. That way, when I finally get around to buying that small East Sacramento home close to work and close to everything else, my long term property taxes will be about what I pay today. This alone will save me scores of thousands over the long run.

Last week Obama declared that we "need to arrest the decline in home values." What the fuck for? So that hundreds of thousands of future Americans who buy artifically overpriced homes pay hundreds of millions in additional interest to banks too big to fail? They need to fall, or at a minimum, they need to reset to the historical point of where the median income buys the median house. We ain't there yet.