Hard year

Ernest wrote: You said it. The economy is not only far worse than people generally admit, but if you pay close attention to recent news, all signs point to another sharp decline that's already underway. You want a recovery? We had it, baby! That anemic little blip was it. It's all downhill from here. Despite assurances that "the economy is basically sound", too many bad factors are coming together at the same time. Many are preventable; some are inevitable. Investor confidence is low, consumers are holding onto their cash, unemployment continues to rise, and foreign investors are pulling out of the US market in droves, perceiving rightly or wrongly that the US leadership is neglecting fiscal policy (or worse, actively screwing things up), and creating problems for global stability due to reckless and/or unilateral foreign policy. Oil prices are headed upward, mostly due to defective foreign policy, which is always harmful to the economy, and the odds are good that a lot of European investors will yank their holdings out of US markets and put them into Europe or Asia. There's no up-side. There's no turn-around, or even economic news that hints at one. Of course, this kind of condition just exacerbates the tendency of people to hold tighter onto their income and cut spending, in a downward spiral. In the absence of inspiring leadership to reverse the trend, it's going to be a while before people are going to spend, let along re-enter the stock markets in large numbers needed to bring things back. Bleh. That's my analysis, take it or leave it. :) On the bright side, now that more and more people are aware of the value of these old systems, maybe a lot more will be spared from the dumpster and will end up on e-bay. That ought to increase the supply at least. Supply-side economics says that means the price should drop. :) -- Ross