The Dow is down over 800 points, and the day isn’t even over. This beats last week’s all-time record of 777 points. A global credit crisis is in full swing, with versions of what just decimated Wall Street repeating itself across Europe as governments swoop in with bailouts of high-profile banks. Verily, blood is in the streets. Hm, what’s that old saw? Oh. Right. Buy when there’s blood in the streets.
stocks
By 10.6.08
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The stock market is not doing well. The Dow Jones industrial average fell below 10,000 for the first time since 2004, and is currently down 440 points. [NYT]
What Does The Bailout Mean For You?
By 10.6.08
So, Congress finally passed the bailout bill. You know about the Treasury’s newfound $700 billion, and you’ve heard about the snipped golden parachutes, but what does the 451-page week-old shotgun savior of a bill actually mean for you?
By 10.1.08
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In one brain-melting two-minute clip, watch all the media frenzy, punditry, and cable-news excitement of the financial meltdown, courtesy of CNN’s own Rick “The Twitter Board Is Blowing Up!” Sanchez. [YouTube]
E*Trade Sells Your Stock To Pay Inactivity Fee
By 10.1.08
If you’ve bought stocks through E*Trade, make sure you log into your account at least once a quarter. That way you can see if there’s any alerts on the account, like the one telling you about the “inactivity fee” for not executing at least one trade per quarter, the fee that they’ll sell some of your stocks to pay for. This happened to reader Brody, who writes:
Understanding The Money Meltdown In 10 Easy Links
By 9.30.08
After reading these 10 links, the I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog believes they will make you smarter than 99% of other people about the financial crisis, what it means, and what to do about it. [I Will Teach You To Be Rich]
How Not To Panic About The Stock Market
By 9.29.08
Seeing the greatest single-day point drop in the Dow is probably not the kind of history anyone wants to be living through right now. The failure of the bailout bill to pass caused a big freakout in the market, which thought we were going to get a bailout today. But before you click the button to transfer all your investments to 0% return T-bonds (aka I give up on investing), first ask yourself if that’s really in line with your long-term investment goals. Secondly, realize that point-wise it might the greatest drop, but it’s not the greatest drop percentage-wise. In other words, we’ve been here, and bounced back, before. If you’re decades away from retirement, today’s plunge is a buying opportunity. Here are some thoughts about fighting the urge to panic.
Poll: Do You Support The Bailout?
By 9.25.08
Lawmakers are hashing out the details of a huge taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street in an attempt to keep afloat the system of banks whose willingness to lend drives this economy’s growth. Constituents have flooded their representatives phone lines and inboxes with with their heated reactions. What do you think?(Photo: Getty)
Warren Buffett Buys $5 Billion Worth Of Goldman
By 9.24.08
Warren Buffett buys $5 billion in Goldman Sachs stocks, causing a subdued “yay” to rise among investors. Is the contemporary equivalent to J.P. Morgan helping to calm the Panic of 1907 by walking onto New York Stock Exchange and buying bank stocks?
Understanding The Panic Of 2008 In 15 Easy Steps
By 9.23.08
If you’re wondering how we got into the big money mess, Kiplinger has a nice and easy 15 step guide to the market meltdown. They trace the origins back to 2000, when the Federal Reserve made the federal funds rate, the interest rate banks charge each other for short term loans, very low. Then we go through the speculative bullshit of the subprime mortgage market, the various imaginary castles built on top of it, and then just how everything went to pot once the naked emperor was revealed. No blame-casting, just the straight up facts.
New Super Agency Proposed To Buy Up All The Very Bad Loans And Save Our Financial System
By 9.18.08
Markets rallied in late trading in the biggest gain in six years, emboldened by news that Washington wants to create a new agency that will buy up ALL the bad loans on these financial companies’ books. The initiative would be an attempt to fashion a holistic solution instead of bailing out each individual bank as it fails. This would cost many more billions of dollars and require Congressional approval. In order for all those CongressCritters to keep their jobs, there is talk that the deal would be packaged with another stimulus package perhaps including more rebates, along with food stamps and unemployment benefits.
How Wall Street Lied To Its Computers
By 9.18.08
The people who ran the financial firms chose to program their risk-management systems with over-optimistic assumptions and to feed them oversimplified data.
Personal Finance Roundup
By 9.18.08
5 Simple Steps to a Successful Cover Letter [Yahoo Hotjobs] “[Here’s] an easy-to-follow, five-step formula for cover letter success”
What To Do In These Uncertain Financial Times
By 9.18.08
The housing crisis. The stock market plunge. The banking industry in shambles. What’s a person to do in the midst of all this financial turmoil? We thought we’d offer our suggestions for making it through the rough waters many of us are facing:
Feds Didn't Bail Out Lehman, They Just Loaned Them $87 Billion
By 9.17.08
Effectively, the Feds loaned the global financial firm Lehman Brothers $87 billion Monday as it filed for bankruptcy and sent Wall Street into even more of tizzy, CNBC reports. In order to “to avoid disruption of financial markets,” the feds asked JP Morgan Chase to advance Lehman the 87 really big ones, then the Federal Reserve Bank of New York repaid Chase. Wait, wasn’t everyone patting the government on the back for not bailing out Lehman? Looks like that was only half of the story. Your tax dollars at work.
What Merrill, Lehman, And AIG Customers Need To Know
By 9.16.08
NYT’s Ron Leiber breaks down what you need to know and do if you are or were a customer of Merrill Lynch, Lehman, or AIG…
Lehman Files For Chapter 11, BoA Buys Merrill Lynch
By 9.15.08
Bankers worked hard over the weekend to prevent the American financial system from imploding.
- Lehman filed for Chapter 11
- Bank of America bought Merrlil Lynch
- A special trading session was opened Sunday from 2-6pm to allow traders to try to unwind their positions
- The Fed is expected to temporarily make it easier for banks to borrow from the government
- European Central Banks stand ready to pump billions into the global market
- Washington Mutual’s new CEO’s disclosure of further writedowns and setting aside of capital calmed investors and stemmed the massive selloff of its stock
But How How Does The Bailout Affect Me?