[Phanuthier]

Claeren - again, good post, some things I agree on, some I don't.

First off, I see 2 sides to this thing (America to rebound or to be a epic failure?) and I see them almost equality.

The pessimist in me see's American strong hold companies dying left, right center. Wall Street, the Auto Industry, and if GE falls hard (even if its not bankrupcy) that takes a huge dive out of the reserves. Additionally, even if the dying industry sectors survive, the margins and management of these companies are so poor that they're long term outlook is quite poor. Most other US strongholds aren't really American in the way of producing jobs and value - for high tech, most of the work (especially programmers, techie's, fabs and IT) have all left for Latin America, China (Shanghai) and India (Bagalore). That leads to my second concern, and my biggest concern, the state of the US education system failing. I apologize for sounding anti-american here, but for a 1st world country, the USA education system is really really far behind the curve; the majority of the population have very poor education and little to no skills, and that makes it really tough to create value. Even their university programs seem to produce alot of mediocre talent that its going to be tough for companies to justify keeping the work in house, rather then just shipping it off to Bangalore and Shanghai for 10% of the price. This idea of the American dream producing entrepreneurs and innovators is failing, and imatators and idiots are able to make their quick buck leveraging - why would the innovator go through the hard work? And moreso somewhat, the seperation in wealth between the rich and everyone else is growing faster and faster - in value and in %. As Claeren mentioned, a broken healthcare system at the end of a baby boom and the market crash, just how are we going to expect the World's most powerful country to produce value anymore? Finally, liquidity problems, solvency issues, this balloon debt is a huge huge problem. How many generations is it going to be to pay off this beast, if ever? Unlike other recessions (dot com, ~1997, ~1987) we aren't talking about just paper losses here, we're talking about real losses, debt and sky rocketing unemployment. Sketchy.

India, China and Latin America could have had another 5 years to stabalize themselves as a independent economic strong hold, but right now, when the US catches a cold, emerging markets get mono. Without a doubt in my mind, the future is there and not here. Its just a matter of when, I argue in as little as 2-5 years, some say 10 years, some 20 and a few say never (can't see how they think its going to be never).

The optimist side of me... the US reserves are deep. Production of goods and services have improved every year for the past few centuries, and notably the US in the past 100 years. The US makes more good more efficiently with better reliability and innovation every year which accounts for the rapid rise in the value of alot of blue chip companies. There's reason to believe that this will continue and if so, we should reach highs higher then our previous high. Also, the feds have deep pockets to bailout and give the economy and stimulous package.

I dunno... a big factor to consider. Even still, trying to time the market is sort of crazy. We can keep our eyes on unemployment, CPI and bond rates to use as indicators of the start of a bull market, but the stock market advances the indicators. Also, the 3 weeks of movement in the 8000-9000 mark before the crash this week makes me think alot of the movement came from the people getting out and the people coming in, so the boat for the bull market has already started boarding - you don't want to miss out. If you invest in good companies with strong management and strong profitability, then whether you buy now or when it goes 10% down doesn't make a big difference if its gonna make major rebounds. Also, if you are young like me, I can and am willing to sit on these stocks for 5-10 years, if need be.

Lastely Claeren, if you are targetting your post to the speculators / traders for quick gains, saying this isn't the time to do it, my retort would be that its never really a good time to do that. But hey, some people are good at it - and they're lucky for that with all the crazy graphs, computer algorithms and so on.