Markets are selling off big time, just as i told you all they would. dow, is down about 270, S&P down about 28 as i write this. Barring a mass late afternoon shorters rally (cashing in on this sell off), we are likely to hit near 10 yr lows.
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Now I know all the naysayers will tell me the sell off has nothing to do with the stimulus bill passage. Just pure coincidence the market saw huge sell offs on inauguration day, house passage of the stimulus bill day, and final signing of the stimulus bill day. RIIIIIIIIIIGHT.
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As I kept telling you all leading up to the obama presidency; it will be the best thing ever for traders, and shorters. The real $$$ (IE: that which is not relying on hope, change, free cars, free gas, free mortgages, free tuition, ext) is running for the hills on this government take over of the economy. You will see one mass sell off after another the more the government gets involved in this. Hell, the government can not even run their own capital hill cafe without losing millions of $$$'s! You expect them to run real business now, and actually not screw it up?! This is to funny..I am LOVING this hope and change!

People can you say SOCIALISM?? That is what we are in for with this new "Change you can believe in" This bill is going to fail and put us so far in debt we won't ever see the light of day! We'll be lucky if our grandchildren will! Of course they will blame it all on the previous administration, even though it was a democratic house and senate! We need to leave things as they are and it will correct itself eventually. It may take awhile, but at least the government wouldn't be in control of everything,including banks and our business. In the depression, government trying to fix things prolonged it and this is even worse!

Janesvillian---Speaking of completely uniformed, “most economists believe this is much more than a recession”. Even to the extent 2008 had dismal economic numbers the GDP still increased at almost 2%; thus disproving your economists. In the simplest of terms (not that you would understand) a 2Qtr decline in GDP (from previous gains---not a minus GDP) is a recession and a minus GDP (over 10%) is a depression. If you were correct in your statement that most western economies follow the Keynesian model, why is it only the Keynesian model will get us out of the recession…if we already follow this theory now the recession should never have happened (your logic).

RetiredAirForce, a) most Western economies follow the Keynesian model, including the United States, so this is hardly radical; and b) most economists believe this is much more serious than a recession, so that is hardly a radical thing to say. Other than being completely uninformed, what is your point?

Isn't that what President Obama is doing??? We need the Reagen Years

I used to have a saying that "I didn't meet a pig that I didn't like" That is until this pork wrapped bill. FYI dumbbells did not write the bill the lobbyist did. What happen to having bills on the Internet 48 hrs for review, and a campaign promise of not signing a bill for FIVE days??? Also stop blaming this all on the Republicans...Dems came in to power in 06 and have increased their hold and look at the Clinton years, this is where the foundation was laid. This is like a bad rerun- I'll give you another example - now the White House is trying to control the Census Bureau, please don't think that every 10 ten years they just put out a boring report. This is used to realign districts - giving or taking away seats in the house, and spending, and rating of cities. Clinton tried this same garbage and it went to the Supreme Court in 99 and Clinton lost. Let it be known that I am for this country but when I hear that the United Nations is now trying to get money for the people hurt in Asia from this bill - I go what is wrong here.

It's pretty sad to know that our Congress is NOT representing the people that elected them. Instead, the choose to vote party lines and protect their stature within their own ranks. Any Congressperson that doesn't accurately represent their constituency and vote accordingly... should NOT be re-elected!

janesvillean---On previous posts you have stated that only Keynes policies will bring us from this recession (10 Feb) and 3 days later say “We are probably actually in a depression, although there is no formal definition of what that is” (13 Feb). So your belief of these two radical ideas should be heard by all and those that question the reasoning by the party in charge to increase spending today [in direct contrast to their positions during the last administration] should not be heard and people espousing these remarks should just “shut the heck up”…so much for the new party of hope!

Even the NON partisan CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has wrote this stimulus will do far more harm then good. I mean it's obviously a no brainer that it will bomb, but every time you say it and articulate the reasons why, you are accused of being partisan, obstructing, ext ext.
Ah well, it will be fun to continue shorting the markets and cashing in on yet another failed government bill (TARP being the 1st failed multi billion $$ bill ram rodded through congress).

dkush21: Sad but true! When two parties can not get it right, leave it to the people!

Yes, we all know what already happened with the 1st stimulus bailout for the banks, without any stipulations attached. How smart was that??? And yes, sorry to say, as bad as our economy is right now, I think they should have kept at the stimulus package until everyone was in total agreement. Better yet, since it was our tax money that paid for it, we should have been able to read and vote on it ourselves. Not our politicians who keep screwing us left and right, both Democrats and Republicans!

Here it is people, but you can't see it, I truely think your going to like!

I love to vote on what I don't know!

I wish me and you the tax payer could have seen the bill, let-alone our reps! How bumd is that!

the dumbells wrote a bill loaded with pork projects, a bill thet no one understands what the implications are going to be and a bill that no one read and was not debated in congress at all. our reresentatives signed off on a contract without reading it. it don't get no dumber than that.

Let's get real, we paid to have manufactures leave, now we need to pay to get them back!!! all because of nafta!

This is the 3rd stimulus that won't work. Japan did 10 stimulus @ 100 trillion yen that put the country into so much debt it killed economic growth, some 200% over GDP. With the boomers retiring the next 20 years, we need to do what the Japanese are telling employees to do now, "Go home and make more children."

All I have to say about spending is...we spend billions on all these activities with other countries but when it comes to spending on our own country and its best interests.. apparently..it's not ok to spend to help ourselves.
Don't you think our priorities should be to help out our situation first? As selfish as it sounds we cant help others if we can't take care of our own situation.

90% of the bill has been out there for weeks, the only things that they would have to read were the amendments added in conference. If they hadn`t read it, and realized what was in it, how could they go on the floor and argue either for or against it? I saw McCain reading a list of things he didn`t like, I guess he knew what was in it.

These are excellent debating skills on exhibit here. "Just shut up" is a sound rebuttal.

How could any reasonable person vote for a bill that is purported to spend a trillion dollars of taxpayer's money when they do not know what is in the bill? How can any lawmaker vote for a bill that they have not read? I understand that lawmakers have staff to help them cover things like this and that they do not read every word of every bill, but their staff needs a reasonable amount of time to assess the bill before it is voted on. This reminds me of the limited time offers that are used to rush people into buying cheap and shoddy merchandise through television advertisements.

RetiredAirForce, we're pretty sick of Republicans screwing things up and then saying it's our fault for trying to fix it. Just shut the heck up until you guys learn how to run a country again. Or do you really have no shame at all?

I'd like to know why they voted against the stimulus plan....

It is stunning that the same Democrat lawmakers that today are saying the government needs to spend more to fix the past eight years...are the same ones saying the last administration doubled the debt by spending to much. So which is it? Spending now is good but then was bad? All spending is bad? Or is it only based on who is doing the spending determines good from bad?

Again you see the distruction within the republicans and their attemp to stop anything to help!!!!!!!IMO IMO. Time for the backers of the former leader the last 8 years to admit WE NEED CHANGE and to give it up and look at anything is better then what shape we are in now.