Comments on: Market tantrums should be tamed

By: urownexperience

urownexperience — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 19:02:57 +0000

Why would anyone in the world ever trust Wall Street or a bank? You can only trust gold. Buy it and keep it.

By: calexandre

calexandre — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 19:46:52 +0000

Everything has alreday been said. Now it’s my turn: Sheer stupidity and arrogance.

By: explorer08

explorer08 — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 14:53:13 +0000

To many of us individual investors the markets appear to be schizophrenic, perhaps even psychotic. Subject to daily emotional whims rather than hard data. Up one day on optimism regarding Europe. Down the next day on fears regarding Europe. Ad nauseum. Business results seem to have little impact except momentarily.

By: stevedebi

stevedebi — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 23:53:19 +0000

The author is claiming that governments should somehow have kept housing prices from rising? Nonsense. Sound financial loans would have averted the entire disaster – and kept prices in line because only those who could afford houses would have been buying houses, preventing the bubble that occurred.

This entire mess originated in the CRA of the late 1970′s, and accelerated when the Clinton administration forced banks to make bad loans in order to do business. It just took 10 years for those loans to catch up.

The last thing we need is the government trying to regulate every aspect of life. We’ve already seen how that turned out in Soviet Russia.

By: RandomName2nd

RandomName2nd — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 23:17:18 +0000

This article is so funny.
“No you can’t sell your house for one million dollars! You only paid half a million for two years ago! You can only sell it for six hundred thousand!”
“No you can’t sell shares in that company for five dollars! I don’t care if you need the money, they were six dollars yesterday so you’ll have to wait a year to sell them at five! No one wants to buy them at the allowable $5.95? Too bad!”
I love the photo of the columnist. He looks so confident and knowledgeable.

By: the_italian_guy

the_italian_guy — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:27:15 +0000

I especially like the part about destroying money…

By: HumanityRenewal

HumanityRenewal — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:12:14 +0000

A few questions: exactly when did it become the role of government to sheperd markets? How is normal price discovery ever to reassert itself if governments constantly seek to intervene? What qualifies a government to set prices?

Did the earth start turning backwards on it axis at some point and I didn’t get the memo?

By: Hewson

Hewson — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:04:26 +0000

Well written.

Thatcher’s dictum that you ‘can’t buck the markets’, along with Reagan’s like-minded attitude, sowed the seeds of the 2008 calamity, now running at a finance house near you as an ongoing fiasco.

The ‘markets’ can not only be bucked, they need to be whipped into line. The obscene profits being raked in by investment banks and hedge funds out of the current turmoil is being paid for by the masses in the form of unemployment, higher levies and cutbacks in public services.

The family that eats in the burger joint is picking up the tab for the champagne-quaffing oyster-eaters in the four-star Michelin restaurant.

It’s time to put wrongs to right. The ‘markets’ are a brainless herd of wildebeest. The guy in front turns left, followed by the ten thousand behind him. A right turn produces the same effect.

It’s way past time for governments world-wide to grow a pair and take on the manipulators and circus-jugglers who profit from the kind of volatility they themselves are often responsible for.

You can include the rating agencies in that.

By: potatohead

potatohead — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:00:24 +0000

Yes, you are right of course Edward – no one should ever lose, and we should always eat chocolate cake. People like yourself, Barrack, and Ben know what is best for us common folk, and we should be happy with the lot in life that you choose for us. Great article.

By: TobyONottoby

TobyONottoby — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 02:54:17 +0000

Speaking of muddled, a “long climb in prices of whatever” is not the subject of the article, which seems crystal clear and rational. “Can we stop investors from panicking?” Maybe not, but regulators can briefly halt trading. Sometimes a five minute break is all traders – not to be confused with investors – need to alter their mood for the better.