The Last Dead Bull on Wall Street

http://counterpunch.com/whitney11102007.html


For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls
The Last Dead Bull on Wall Street


What a week for the stock market. On Wednesday the market took a 360 point nosedive followed, two days later, by a 220 point belly-flop. By the time it was over, the trading pits looked more like a sausage-packing plant than the world's financial epicenter. After the bell, downcast traders could be seen tiptoeing through the carnage on their way to the local liquor store to load up on "Stoly" and boxes of Franzia---anything that would steady their nerves and put the week behind them.

-snip-

This is a bear market now. The last bull was dragged from the Street on Friday with a harpoon in its chest.

The subprime contagion has now spread beyond the US and Europe to markets in the Far East. No one is fooled by Bernanke's sunny predictions that the economy will bounce back next year with a strong showing in the first quarter. That's baloney and everyone knows it. The economy has stumbled down the elevator shaft and is just waiting to hit bottom. Consumer confidence is flagging, housing is falling, foreign capital is fleeing, and the greenback is one flush away from the sewage-treatment plant. Bernanke's soothing bromides are meaningless.

-long snip-

The system is broken. Maybe Greenspan did us all a favor by blowing it up with his "low interest" dynamite. Good riddance.
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