I'm not talking about the broke (disclaimer: I am in debt myself) buying more.

I'm talking about Bill fracking Gates getting off his ass and SPENDING HIS BILLIONS!

Asking me to buy more won't help because I'm broke. I have no cash. The millionaires that have $150 million just sitting in their offshore accounts? THEY can spend. But they aren't for purely psychological reasons.

The MILLIONAIRES are the ones who have $250 million sitting in a bank and saying, "Now is not a good time to build a factory. I better just wait this one out."

And if we have a tipping point of billionaires and investors ALL thinking, "Better not spend" -- then that very act CREATES the conditions. It's a psychological phenomenom. (I might be wrong. Did 100 billionaires all declare bankrupcty and I didn't read about it?)

It's not like Bill Gates or any other billionaire doesn't have the money. They all do. It's right there. I can see it. It's right there!

But they have all collectively decided not to invest.

They will not buy any new office furniture. They will not hire anyone. They will not invest in any new companies.

I can physically SEE the money sitting in their banks and yet they are all claiming that they "can't" invest right now because the economy is "bad."

That's what I meant when I was talking about the markets being driven by psychology.

For Bill Gates it IS psychological. It's not that the man is broke...it's that the man has made a purely psychological decision to invest his money.

And it's become a self-fulfilling prohecy(sp)

Why is it every time Obama farts the stocks take a wild ride?

Did anything actually change or is it purely a psychological response?

What motivates someone to buy a stock? More importantly what motivates someone to sell a stock?

We like to think the economy is all about hard numbers and facts. The reality is that it's all about psychology. When was it decided that a dot com stock was worth $3,000 a share....and when was it decided that it was worth $1 a share? What caused that huge spike and what caused that huge drop? Just psychology. Hard numbers never entered in to it. People believed the Dot Coms were "worth" $3,000 a share and thus it became $3,000 a share. Then people "believed" it wasn't worth that and -- viola! -- it dropped to almost zero for many companies.

That's not to share this current crisis isn't rooted in some reality -- but the ripple effects are largely psychological.

As I said before...the majority of the super rich are still super rich.

Companies that COULD hire more people....aren't. And that has more to do with psychology (imho) than in economic reality.

We gave the banks bailout money and told them to start lending it out.

They didn't. Why? Was there a physical reason...or was there a psychological motivation?

Everything keeps coming back to psychology and not economy.

If Investor A has $250 million dollars (and, yes, those people still exist) and he chooses to NOT break ground on a new factory...is it economic or psychological? If he decides not to build the factory because he assumes everyone is broke and won't buy what he makes...can we really call that anything other than a psychological decision?

Again...why was dot com stocks valued at thousands of dollars and then overnight drop to zero?

Was there a banking collapse that took place? Was there massive unemployment? Nope....the entire thing was driven purely by psychology.

And the decisions investors are making now are driven purely by psychology.

And the decisions the BANKS are making are driven purely by psychology.

And what about the idea of restructuring Ford through bankruptcy instead of a bailout? bankruptcy makes the most sense. Everyone can see that...but the idea is dead in the water because the fear is that no one will buy a car from a bankrupt company. Again, the decisions being made are driven entirely by psychology and not economics.

The banks handling of the money. Psychological.

The decision to use bailout money instead of putting Ford in bankruptcy. Psychological.

The decision NOT to nationalize the banks (breifly) in order to stabalize them. Psychological. It needs to be done, but Obama can't because he is afraid of being labeled a socialist.

The entire crisis is being decided by emotions, not numbers.

But I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. From where I sit I don't see mathematics...I see a bunch of white guys holding on to their money or making bad decisions based soley on "gut" feelings, not hard numbers.