....We all saw it coming,, the economic collapse.

[.... callchet ....]

but were in denial. We all saw the debt growing out of control. But we all wanted our chance at the private jet and penthouse apartment and all the other trappings of success ( stealing the country's money ). Took everything from the poor, education, health care etc. Made it seem like a badge of courage to shame people who can't make it into thinking they are inferior so we could take away their entitlements and feel good about it. We all saw it coming. Now we talk about it like we were subdued saviors. Now is the time to see what we could do with our great foresight.

[CrispyQ]

1. Best post of the day.

"Made it seem like a badge of courage to shame people who can't make it into thinking they are inferior so we could take away their entitlements and feel good about it."

k&r

[ixion]

2. "we all" were not in denial

just sayin'...

[MorningGlow]

3. My mom grew up during the Depression

She saw an economic collapse coming several years ago. And she's "just" a retired bookkeeper.

Many of us saw it coming, but not all of us were in denial. That's why I'm still driving the car I bought in 2000 and why in '05 we bought a house $40K less than we could actually afford--knew enough not to assume any more debt than was necessary.

[PassingFair]

48. And we know that no matter HOW much we pay off and save...

when the economic tsunami comes, it
wipes out ALL the huts on the beach,
whether they are built on stilts or
not.



No one should be happy about this.

[Greyhound]

4. Who's "we all", speak for yourself. n/t

[.... callchet ....]

5. I haven't seen any demonstrations

anywhere about the national debt and stripping poor of health care and welfare. Or anything else. I saw some anti war demonstrators. I saw more anti abortion demonstrators than anything else. I said we didn't do anything about it to change it.

[Greyhound]

12. Then you have not inquired. Congress has been inundated with calls and emails

over this crap for years, they ignored us. Every newspaper in the country has received letters every single day and the subject and predictions have been a mainstay of the web and blogs as well.

If all this has escaped your notice, the fault is yours.

[Frustratedlady]

6. I saw it coming over 2 years ago and pulled my money out of the market.

As a result, I didn't lose anything, but I didn't gain much, either. A lot of older citizens around here did the same thing. I also stocked up on canned goods and non-perishables. May not need them, but I feel safer.

What I lost were friends and relatives who thought I was losing my mind. They know better now, but a lot of them were sure looking at the ceiling when I brought it up. I suppose you could compare that to when my grandparents would tell about walking on snow so high, you couldn't find the fence.

[Bigmack]

7. What you said....

I think anybody with any knowledge of History and who followed the news on anything but the MSM could see it coming.

Common sense would tell you that house prices could not go up forever, and that those mortgages were toxic. Common sense would tell you that stocks were overvalued.

Shit, common sense would tell you - for the forty-leventh time - that trickle-down economics don't work.

[Frustratedlady]

8. Amen! The only thing I screwed up on...

was selling my house at the high mark and downsizing.

Oh, well! You can't win them all. At least I have one.

[marions ghost]

9. while I agree about the psychological jerking around of the poor

I don't necessarily agree that "we all saw it coming...the economic collapse."

I have heard even economics professors say "we knew there would have to be an adjustment, but we still didn't expect it to be THIS bad..." Most of the people I know, most of whom have lost something --be it jobs or job potential, value in college or retirement fund, value in a home, value in stocks or savings--most of them say the same thing, "we never expected it to be THIS bad." To some extent, it was unimaginable.

We Americans have a fierce independence--but it leads to an "I got mine" mentality and the govt and business sectors promote that because it's good for bidness. We have been programmed to think competitively, not cooperatively. Even in small ways it's always about "what's in it for me." It permeates our society. It divides families no less than friends. For ex, one of the benefits of Universal Healthcare for me is that I don't have to think "thank god I don't have it as bad as my uninsured low-income friend who now is swimming in debt due to several treatments for kidney stones." I don't want this thought in my head but there it is. I wouldn't have to feel that twinge of jealousy because my sister's state employee's health plan is better than mine.

We have all been kept at the end of this tether, not only the poor. So although you're right about the state of things, I don't think there was much that we could do by advocating for the poor necessarily. We are too fearful of losing what we've got. We are all pigs at the end of a very unstable trough. So I don't subscribe to the "shoulda woulda" guilt trip.

But now as more are feeling the pain, we can't deny the truth of what is going on.

When people in America stop shopping...well you know that's what gets attention.

[Stinky The Clown]

10. Whoa there, Mr/Ms Broadbrush ...........

I never stole from the poor.

What's this "we" shit?

[uponit7771]

11. NO "WE" all didn't, that's not true. I expected Dems and reThugs to speak up more forcefully and

...they didn't. Just like 911 the Bush admin KNEW there was something wrong and took none to little measures to mitigate it when they had the chance. When the dems got policy control of congress they did very little either, they should've done more to point out the incorrectness of fiscal conservative ideals.

There are a LOT of people who are hurting due to actions or in-actions of a very few and those people did NOT have the information that our policy makers, bankers and financial services had.

Thx

[.... callchet ....]

13. Is there anybody that didn't see the stock market turn into

a pyramid scheme. Is there anybody that didn't know that continued growth is inflation ? Is there anybody that didn't know that you can't keep having more people making more money and run out of money to give to them. They tell the common investor to put your money in the stock market keep buying and leave it there. Forget about it and in 20 years you will be rich. Maybe "we" all didn't see that, but it was so obvious.

[marions ghost]

14. Yes

people who trust financial advisers & employer's option schemes and don't have the time or interest or knowledge to keep a hawk eye on the markets. The average person doesn't have a good grasp on the complexities to begin with. Who does, when even the more knowledgeable have been burned in this crazy pyramid scheme?

When you tell the mass of people to "put your money in the stock market and...forget about it"--that sounds very good in theory. People want to believe in Prosperity. For most people it's not a matter of "choosing" to be in the market when the most basic funds are invested. It touches you regardless of how hard you try to avoid the pitfalls.

Yes, I'd say MOST people didn't understand the dangers, even if they could read a few disturbing signs. Many couldn't even read the signs. And the rest were in denial. It's relatively few who did even the most common things to protect themselves.

Although a good topic, this is more complex than the smug & righteous, "didn't you guys GET it?"....this is a societal failure. A systemic failure.

[.... callchet ....]

15. How else do you get attention to a problem ?

"than the smug & righteous, "didn't you guys GET it?"....this is a societal failure. A systemic failure" It is a very large complex problem and attention has got to be focused on it. How did the national debt escape attention ? WE, you, me. them have got to start doing something. There is no innocence. I am a left wing liberal and it seems that I am always fighting on here instead of generating constructive action. I am not seeing a unification of action against the problem. They keep throwing bones into the kennel to keep the dogs fighting each other. It's like we won't get into the lifeboats on a sinking ship because we are arguing about the color of the lifeboats.

[marions ghost]

17. I'd say it's more like the lifeboats have sunk....

& we're treading water. We're waiting for rescue from the helicopters...

What would you have us do? Unity means people come together for action, not go around blaming each other...ie. you may have a noble goal, but you're not getting it across to your potential audience.

[.... callchet ....]

26. I just did not really expect

to see resistance on here. It almost like a conservative republican response that I am getting. Thanks for taking the time to write.

[marions ghost]

29. resistance?

resistance to what? And what is a "conservative response" here...as opposed to "liberal?" Can you explain your point of view? :shrug:

[.... callchet ....]

31. Really nothing to it.

I am learning how to talk on here. I will adjust to it. I am a radical left wing liberal. I post a thread thinking to get some meaningful discussion, instead it is picked apart word for word looking for literal meanings of each word.The things that I think about are not what most of the others are thinking about. I thought that there would be a lot of common ideas and discussions on how to execute those ideas. What I am finding is that I am way off center and I usually end up trying to defend my ideas that are being picked apart. When in fact I thought I would have been sharing discussion. For example, I suggested lowering the speed limit to 40 mph and I was virtually laughed off the discussion. Well if we didn't;t have an
11 trillion dollar debt, 12 million unemployed and a baking planet, maybe 40 mph would be " asinine " as it was called. But daily the news is worse and worse . and worse and we need to be looking at drastic measures. Lowering the speed limit would immediately decrease emissions, not take ten years like the green cars would. 47,000 people are killed by drunk drivers. 40 MPH would surely lower that number. Gun control is almost a dead issue, but people would rather argue about that than reduce the speed limit. The speed limit would have immediate result. It would take 20 years for any meaningful results from gun control. I am finding my way and I will adjust to it. And like you asked "And what is a "conservative response" here...as opposed to "liberal?" Can you explain your point of view? " I am having to defend and explain rather than join in with you in attacking a problem. But it is a blessing in disguise. It is teaching me the art of communications in the context of current general political thinking. Thanks again for taking the time to write. Callchet, the poster formally know as call chet.

[marions ghost]

32. OK well

people are gonna ask picky Q to understand exactly what you're saying. Because on this or any message board it can get sticky & snarky real fast. Many times I've had the wrong interpretation of what somebody wrote so I've learned to ask questions first, saves a lot of excess typing. I didn't understand your exact meaning so wanted clarification. I didn't appreciate being likened to a conservative but I didn't take it personally, just saw it as grouchy.

Well being a maverick as you see yourself can be a good thing. I'd go with it, but be more patient and not so defensive. Don't expect instant support for any viewpoint, esp as a maverick. Remember there are readers on every thread who don't post in it. You don't really know how many supporters you have so how can you expect instant validation?

I think you know that 40 MPH speed limit is a radical ridiculous idea to most people in this hurry-up world. Guaranteed to stir it up. OK then, don't act surprised or offended when they respond like you know they will...if you really care.

[.... callchet ....]

33. Thanks for your time.

But of course the 40 would be like the 55. Nobody went 55, and nobody would go 40 except responding to the 40 mph post. I really do appreciate your input, and like a diminishing sine wave, I will figure out the temperament. I am aware of the loaded sarcasm guns and am developing to take advantage of it. Thanks again.

[JackRiddler]

16. Everyone with no interest in the bubble and half a brain foresaw it.

How did I know the crash was coming four years ago, and for the very reasons that it happened? Anyone can understand how bubbles work. It's been 290 years since John Law's France and the near simultaneous South Sea crash of 1719-20, 380 since the tulip mania of 1637, and little about the basic scheme of overvaluation and overselling with a wink was different in the latest, greatest round.

Many know they're in a bubble market, in the hope of cashing out before it crashes.

One of the tricks this time around was that the perpetrators deployed hired mathematicians with sophisticated but ultimately non-empirical algorithms to conceal the predatory, largely criminal practices that became the financial sector's norm. They knew exactly what the inevitable results would be, years before 2008.

Come on, Madoff and Thain aren't "black swans" - they were the chairmen of the equities markets! They were not abberrations or bad-apple surprises: they were the paradigm of the modern financial sector. This is a Ponzi economy. From the Gramm-Rubin deregulation offensive on behalf of Citigroup and Enron, from yesterday's "Kenny Boy" Lay to today's John Thain, all of the executives at the biggest financials, not to mention the ratings agencies, the central bank, the Goldman Sachs cabal who commandeered the Treasury, the supposed government overseers of the SEC, and the outgoing Halliburton Administration are implicated in breathtaking financial criminality, and even more astonishing self-enrichment. Sadly, the yes-on-TARP voter Obama is a step away from fully cementing his own complicity in the systematic plunder of the American people and the world on behalf of the billionaire banker class.

Before the crash, any banking poobah who didn't go along with derivatives scammery would have been eaten alive for not pulling down the highest return, in accordance with the Money-God's commandments. Even their apologists know it.

For those who really want to read about the crisis, and not the justifying mumbo-jumbo advanced by the players, Michael Lewis lays it out in a brilliant treatment published in Portfolio:

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom?print=true#

The End
by Michael Lewis December 2008 Issue
The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.

[marions ghost]

18. "predators" = key word

when your top leaders are predators and glorified con men, how do you protect the people? You say that the truth was deliberately "concealed" --even as you expect people to have seen it beforehand. Kinda contradictory. You may grasp the reality of a bubble JR, but a lot of people only have an abstract concept of what that means. These are people who don't read up on economic history, but not losers with "half a brain."

Thanks for posting this article. It looks like a very readable account of what apparently happened. It reads like a story, and yet unfortunately, it would be true. However this insider account is still only accessible to those who are fairly savvy and read a lot. Everybody knows the SHTF and basically why now, but for many, it's ONLY in hindsight.

[JackRiddler]

20. I disagree about who the half-brainers are.

Let me clarify: The non-bankers, non-economists and non-geniuses I know tend to have no trouble grasping the concept that the financial sector is a scam to make the rich richer, and many really did understand the bubble, because it's easy. A bubble overvalues, overhypes and oversells, until the last sucker enters and payments can no longer be met.

If you don't smell the bullshit flying on CNBC, it's probably not because you're not smart enough, but because you really, really want it to be true, because it's promising you money for nothing. It's like 10,000 other scams we've all seen. So yeah, the truth is concealed beneath the fancy bullshit, but it's still something that tens of millions of people can see, if they but take off the rose-colored glasses. This does not mean that I blame people who were fooled. It's okay, the one who is in the wrong is still the scammer, not the sucker.

And hell, I'm a sucker too because I knew all this so well (ironically said) that I never entered the market at all. Or I would have exited by 2006 at the latest and might be rich today.

The "half-brainers," if you will, are those who were involved in the financial sector, but who nevertheless present the sophisticated justifications for what happened as the result of unforeseeable circumstances or a failure of honest math and science. The ones who are still shoveling the remaining bullshit after the bulls stopped producing it because, um, they were slaughtered.

[Romulox]

19. Link? None of DU's "bailout booster" club predicted the collapse

But every last one of them predicted armageddon if we didn't release the TARP funds without taking time for debate...

[JackRiddler]

21. THANK GOD IT PASSED!!!

We need a tee shirt of that.

[Romulox]

22. OMC, HamdenRice, Nadine, et al. won't even post on these threads any more. nt

[JackRiddler]

23. It's a shame about Hamden...

He's a good guy who knows lots of shit.

[Romulox]

24. I got the feeling that he got entrenched in a position that he found difficult to get out of

even as the facts proved his earlier position as misguided--he just had too much of his ego invested in being "right" to change his opinion even when it became painfully obvious that the facts weren't on the bailout booster's side.

[JackRiddler]

27. Well he works in the sector...

but he isn't a scammer, AFAIK. He was more like the "hired mathematicians" who were providing the fancy formulas to justify the scam.

[Greyhound]

34. What is the guy's name/handle that posted 3 or 4 very lengthy and detailed

explanations of just exactly what was going to happen, why, and when? I recall HamdenRice in particular trying to take him on and the guy just demolished him.

Also, he has pointed out that we are far from done with this. We haven't even been hit with the next two gigantic waves of this tsunami.

I guess I should have saved those posts...

[HamdenRice]

38. If we're thinking of the same person, every single one of his predictions was wrong

He said that the bailout would cause credit to the US federal government to dry up, that the US government would be considered bankrupt and would default, and that there would be hyper inflation.

In fact, international savings are fleeing to the T-bill, the yield on treasuries is effectively zero (Uncle Sam now has access to free money to fund the stimulus), and we are experiencing deflation.

Yeah, he was very, very clever and prescient, wasn't he?

:sarcasm:

[Greyhound]

39. Since he did pick what has happened so far, we must not be thinking of the same person.

But apparently somebody made an impression on you.

Have a wonderful day.

[HamdenRice]

36. Do you really expect us to constantly scan for every silly call out?

Every economist, left or right, agrees that there would have been a much more immediate and catastrophic collapse if the bailout had not happened. As some of us have pointed out over and over, if the commercial paper market had stayed frozen, there would have been an instantaneous collapse of the financial system, and now instead we're seeing a more "normal" demand decline recession/depression, which is manageable through Keynesian policies.

If I had to choose between the sentiment in this thread, and OMC's famous "thank god it passed," I'd say OMC had it more right than the "let it fail" group.

As for where we are now, no one said that the bailout would prevent a recession, so your premise is wrong. Most of us also said that the bailout was an immediate measure that was needed, and that it was a step toward full nationalization of the banks. The Obama administration (and Brown government in London) seem to be converging on that solution, and if it happens, then between the bailout and nationalization, there's a good chance that we will in fact avoid a great depression II. Sorry you hate socialism so much, but for me, based on my work overseas, it seems obvious that it's a better system.

As for the OP, a lot of doom boosters have been predicting imminent collapse of the economy for 8 years. I could predict that an asteroid is going to hit the earth tomorrow. I could do that every day for the next 40 years, and if an asteroid then hits in year 41, that doesn't mean that I somehow "saw it coming." Instead it means that a stopped clock is right twice a day. Paul Krugman was one of the few popular economists who predicted the collapse and the specific reasons for it and he only began saying so when he saw asset inflation in the housing market.

[Romulox]

41. You've never produced a link to your *pre-meltdown* powers of prediction, now have you?

Since you assert so forcefully a vision of what must be done going forward, it would seem only logical you anticipated the present calamity. Posts on these boards stick around a long time. So I was asking if anyone else had seen such a post. :hi:

Your appeals to authority otherwise fail to impress; since none of these authorities predicted the present calamity, their powers to predict the way out are of dubious value.

[.... callchet ....]

44. One little error.

I didn't predict it. I described it step for step for years on my web sight. No prediction, a description. A step by step year by year description. AS the regulations were loosened on the stock market years ago, I described its degradation into a pyramid scheme. I guess those of you that are smarter than me can relegate me to a stopped clock, but if you are that smart then maybe you can read, and if you can read, then read my website.

[graywarrior]

25. What could we all do about it during a Bush administration?

[burythehatchet]

28. Who? You and the two mice in your pocket? My family and friends disowned me

because I would not shut up about for the past 7 years. I sent out e-mails telling them that this would come. My brother, the Chicago MBA laughed.

Who in their right mind could not see that home equity financing plasma screens was not a sustainable economic model?

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

37. Chicago MBA, there's your problem.

Casandras are never appreciated until it's too late.

[Initech]

30. What pisses me off the most is that the republicans could have fixed this years ago

Which is why they lost. Like you said - we are in denial. the GOP everytime this was brought up ran like dogs with their tails between their legs.

[renate]

35. I thought that if individual families were fiscally responsible, they would be okay

I saw people going into debt right and left to keep up lifestyles that were out of their budgets. But I didn't expect our lives to be so affected by other people's debt when we were so frugal ourselves.

It drove my kids crazy when their friends went to the mall every weekend and got cell phones and iPods and video games just by asking for them, when they had to save their allowances to buy their own extras. They were embarrassed by our 10-year-old cars. We haven't done any home improvements in 15 years. We saved for our 401(k) and gave to charities and were lucky enough, and careful enough, that we never had to go into debt, even during some lean years.

And then this happened, and we were sucked into the sinkhole with all the people who used their houses as ATMs, while the CEOs of Merrill Lynch etc took their stimulus money and decorated their offices.

It pisses me off when newspaper columnists talk about how "we" lived the big life all these years. Not all of "us" did.

[Tsiyu]

40. In August '08 had a wingnut bet me $100

that the economy was "worse during Carter's administration than it is now." I laughed so hard I was crying.

"I'll take that bet," I said. "And hey, Bud?"

I stretched my hands out on either side of me. "This is reality," I said, wiggling my left hand. "And this is the fantasy land you live in," waving my right, "all the way over here.

"Dude, the numbers tell the story. The market is gonna crash soon but thanks to your dumb ass at least I'll be $100 richer."

We all know what happened a month later. Never got the money, because I can't stand the dude, but he cracked me up. I'm no economist by a long stretch but I've got a bit of common sense. The graph that should have tipped everyone off is the one showing the distribution of wealth. The numbers have been worse than before the Great Depression for a long while now. If that sort of disparity caused a collapse once, any fool could have predicted that even greater disparity foretold a collapse again.

Especially given that we WERE a consumer-driven economy. It's so simple even my neighbor's pig should have seen this coming: NO CONSUMER = NO ECONOMY.

We used to have a "Starve the Beast" campaign here, where we tried to keep our money away from the Bush-enabling corporations, but it didn't go very far. Americans want their shit and they don't really care which company makes their shit, how they treat their workers who are creating, marketing, transporting or selling their shit, or where the money they get for the shit is donated. "Buy blue," we said, but too many people said "But my SIL/mother/daughter works for the Red company and she might lose her job!"

WEll, she probably lost that job anyway.

If anything, this collapse is a message to the masses that they have power. Our lack of spending is bringing down the house! Okay, there are other factors involved - subprime mortgage sleight-of-hand, billions lost to Rich men's wars, but imagine if we had all stopped buying anything eight years ago. Imagine if we had had the discipline and insight and anger to say: ENOUGH. We will only buy necessities and let the corporations rot.

Now I listen to the pundits say "Well, Americans just don't have confidence." No, dumbfucks they don't have MONEY. Plain and simple. They aren't spending because they have nothing to spend! These Talking Heads won't get their heads out of their asses long enough to let that fact dawn on them and it just makes me laugh at them. I may be broke but at least I've still got a functioning brain.

Fix this mess? Ha! We know how to fix it but the affluent don't like the answer. Because the answer to the crisis goes against their entire World View.

The answer is calling Americans HUMAN BEINGS, not laborers, not consumers, not investors, but PEOPLE.

We are "such a great country" :puke: but we can't provide decent health care, a living wage, technological advances that conserve energy and don't rape the planet? Instead our leaders pass laws that say essentially, "the affluent are people who need billions and we will protect them. The American worker, his kids, our elderly, our weak, our sick can fend for themselves. That's what Jeebus and my lobbyist want so I'm voting YES for the billionaires!"

They don't want to end the outrageously expensive and Anti-American War on Drugs because then they wouldn't be protecting the billionaire pharmaceutical companies, the billionaire prison contractors or the companies that get cheap, non-violent prison labor at $0.22 an hour.

Not to mention continuing to make the farming of hemp illegal. That has got to make every American lawmaker a bonehead. We can import it but our farmers can't grow it? Oh, for fuck's sake, our legislators are IDIOTS.

They don't want to pass laws enforcing a fair wage because, damn, so what if working people live on the streets, at least the bank got a $1400 trash can and that will tinkle down, won't it? Maybe the poor working stiff can catch a crumb that falls out of that wastebasket.

And Americans are too damned proud- as a group - to stand up and say they're really hurting. They like the fantasy that maybe without their help, without their outcry, without their demanding more from their nation, everything is just going to be peachy.

It's looking pretty hopeless right now, because you can't fix a problem unless you can identify it. Too many of the pundits, congress, economists and plain old American citizens want to live in Fantasy Land.

[.... callchet ....]

42. Here's the rest of the story

My brother in-law is getting murdered by this economy. He can't qualify for medicare but he can't afford to see a doctor. He went to the emergency room because he was passing out. That was the last time he saw a doctor. He doesn't have and can't afford insurance, so he can't get an appointment to see a doctor. He owns a restaurant and the phone and cable are cutoff. He works seven days a week running a cleaning crew in New Orleans along with working the restaurant the rest of the time with his wife. She works at the restaurant 7 days a week. She had a lump in her breast. She went through hell and high water and finally qualified for some sort of womens and children's program in Mississippi and got worked on. That took months to do. The five dollar a gallon gas ate up most of the money that he made driving back and forth to New orleans. Nobody can help anybody . Work is disappearing everyday and people are just beating the landlord, and the power company, and the water company. Getting the power shut off and getting notices from the "public utility" power company that there poor creditor deposit is getting double because they are bad credit risks.

"So let this economy collapses" let everybody suffer and then maybe there will be some change. If there is no change ....so what.

Let John Thain and Stan O'Neal fly fly their corporate jets over us and shit on us. So what ! !

And this isn't just an isolated incident,,,is it ?

[davekriss]

43. I was not in denial

I moved most of my money out of stockes and into cash when the DOW was just over 12000. This was after it fell off its 14000 high, dropped back to the high 11000, and briefly blipped again above 12000. My only regret is I did not move 100% out of stock (which is what my wife urged me to do after I gave her my rationale for the major move); instead, I left some in stocks in case my "amateur" analysis was wrong. What's the worse that can happen, I thought? The DOW collapse by 50%? How likely wis that to happen? And even if it did, this would be the outcome and I am comfortable with that. The rest is history. But, bottom line, I foresaw, acted, and saved myself piles of money.

Not all of us were in denial. O, also, I count myself as one of the Proud Ten Percenters. One of the few who thought Bush was a terruble pResident and a terrible man even in the months after 9-11.

How'd he say it? "You can fool some of the people -- you can fool -- don't get fooled again." I was never fooled, neither by Bush nor by the Republican Party. What they are has long been plain to see.

[.... callchet ....]

46. I was not in denial.

My only regret is I did not move 100% out of stock . Not all of us were in denial. But you had your fingers crossed.

Where is your money now ? I moved most of my money out of stocks and into cash

[davekriss]

49. about 60% cash at the moment

I am selectively buying stock again for the long term

[riverdale]

47. Look at all these geniuses who timed the market

Judging by people who post on the Internet, I must be the only dumb sommamabitch in the country who left his money in the stock market. We got completely fucked over by the collapse, yes we did.

[NNN0LHI]

45. Stopped using credit cards for regular purchases years ago after using them for everything

I knew something was coming down the pike back then.

I am not that smart either. Just fortunate I think.

Don