Sometimes the 1-day rebound is very spectacular.

The fat cats will sell off their stocks, it will crash, the suckers will sell at low prices and the fat cats will buy up those stocks when it is time to run the game again.

By the way, have you notices that everytime there is an election that the high gas prices drop to affordable levels?

Wait until right before the election to buyy stocks, because when Obama wins Wall Street will go nuts and it will be "Happy Days are Here Again."

DJI:

10/29/29 230.07

10/30/29 258.47 +12.3%

10/31/29 273.51 +5.8%

Then...

11/06/29 232.13

11/13/29 198.69

Then the Dow rallied to 300 or so before dropping below 50 in July 1932.

Color me not quite relieved...

Is it Newtonian physics to say that what goes up very rapidly, is likely to come down just as rapidly... the inevitability of parabolic curves of ascent and descent and all that? With what's looming on the horizon, this dead cat is likely to bounce like a superball for a long while to come before settling down to the low level at which it will eventually end before the most gambling-addicted folks on wall street begin creating the next bubble. (And would somebody remind me what the original purpose of Stock Ownership and Stock Exchanges was, because I suspect we've long ago left all that behind in favor of casino gambling...?)

As it did under Clinton

This is a mere aberrant perturbation. It has been estimated that at least three weeks will be needed before the banks open their books and the designation of the banking beneficiaries of the bailout can commence. At that time, the hidden toxic waste will appear, and some banks will simply lose out because they have too much of it. I am talking about the CDS or credit derivative swaps here.

Along the way, a lot of volatility will strike, so don't express wonderment if the market doesn't tank 960 pts. by Friday. It is the nature of the beast until the locations of all those CDS are made clear.

For those interested, a good short article that explains the role of CDS and how they brought us to this sorry pass can be found in the (October) FORTUNE article: 'The $55 TRILLION QUESTION' (p. 135).

Quoted in the piece, a University econ professor - Morgan Stanley derivatives salesman notes: "The big problem is there are so many public companies- banks and corporations, and no one really knows how much exposure they have to CDS (credit default swap) contracts."

Since most CDS contracts are made "on the fly" in no formal mode, and often by word of mouth on cell phones or instant messages(ibid.) no one even knows where all the $55 trillion of this toxic waste is buried. As another hedge fund operator (Chris Wolf) quoted in the article put it:

"This has become essentially the dark matter of the financial universe" - comparing it to the dark matter discovered in astrophysics.

Finally, and most apropos, as the FORTUNE piece observed: “you can guess how Wall Street's cowboys responded to the opportunity to make deals that: 1) can be struck in a minute, 2) require little or no cash upfront and 3) can cover anything.”

So much for the disgusting canard now making the rounds that lowering housing requirements for poor folks is at the heart of this crisis.

Bush hasn't made a speech in couple of days. Maybe that's why the markets went up.

It is kind of interesting, all last week Bush kept trying to calm things down and market kept plunging. Bush shuts up for a couple of days, European leaders take center stage to announce the new plan and the market goes up.

So it seems the first rule to stabilizing markets is to muzzle George Bush.

It's possible to be a Democrat and occaisionally be happy. Democrats don't always have to be morose. The stock market had its biggest one day gain ever. Let's celebrate tonight. We can go back to being miserable tomorrow. And then we get begin the depression. And the world will be destroyed by Global Warming and over population. And everything will fall apart. And you can't say we didn't warn you.

The underlying problem was people that couldn't pay mortgages got them,mortgage companies got rich and then homeowners defaulted,mortgages were worthless and we have today - a democratic supported idea from Barney Franks and Chris Dodd-- I am all for home owning but first they have to be able to afford what they sign up for, which is their responsibility not the government's.But now we're all stuck paying for their bad choice. Vote McCain for reform.

Andrew wrote:

"and we’d still be facing a serious recession."

Aren't we in a recession now? What constitutes a recession? Is there a magic moment when recession happens? I thought we were in a recession but no one wanted to admit it. I'm quite confused.

First, McCain needs to fix his campaign. He cannot fix his own campaign, so how can he fix the problem? The problem did not initiate with the Dems, but Bush, Republicans, et.al. holds majority of the blame due to de-regulations. It was not the minorities that started the problem, it was the private sector. Bush et. al had eight years, and McCain voted with Bush for 95% of the time, so if McCain is such a great fixer, then why are we in this mess/ Finally, Bush, Paulson Bernanke, Greenspan,and McCain said the fundamentals of this economy was sound, so please tell me what happen? Why should we trust the same people who brought about this fiasco?

No $10 Trillion debt, no problem.

True, the 10 trillion is the problem, but this is complement of Bush et.al. We had a surplus when the Bush team came into office, now we have literally broke the debt clock, and it has ran out of numbers.

Of course "nothing is fixed, yet"! But why so positive on Obama? It seems that if McCain moves quickly, he's erratic, and when Obama jumps in with ideas he called "disasterous" when Hillary Clinton proposed them several months ago, he's "decisive."

Give us a break from the relentless bias and spin. Any rational person can see through it in a minute.