Welcome

I have a lot to say about the current economy and stock market. How did we get to this point in the economy and what solutions are there to get the stock market out of a bear market?

How did we get here??

1) Abusive loan underwriting which was bundled and sold off around the world
2) Hedge funds using short sales to weaken once strong financial institutions
3) The Securities and Exchange Commission was asleep at the wheel in not regulating the Hedge Funds and Naked Short Selling abuses
4) A certain mega billionaire pushing for "Mark to Market" on all assets whether understood or not. Well, he got his wish and billions of asset value have disappeared. And the market value of many of his companies have gone down as well.
5) Ratings agencies like Moody's and Fitch have been marking down banks, insurance companies of all stripes constributing to the market decline. At some point, it becomes self fulfilling.
6) Politicians from both parties throwing money at the problems with no accountability. Does anybody really understand the mess that is AIG? What is happening to those billions in investments and loans?

How do we get out of this mess? It isn't easy and will take some hard "medicine":
1) Like the Brits, eliminate short selling.
2) Suspend "Mark to Market" accounting rules. Nobody really knows how to value the various instruments on the financial statements of banks and insurance companies now anyway.
3) Set up a bad bank to purchase the toxic assets from the banks and insurance companies. It was done before with the Resolution Trust Company in the late 1980's. It wasn't perfect but it did help clean things up.
4) Politicians need to present a positive message about where we are heading. Right now, they are ineffective and clearly don't have a plan. Spending money at record amounts isn't a good plan. It just increases debt at a time when foreign governments don't want to buy US paper.
5) Banks and credit card companies need to be restrained from cutting credit card lines of credit at the worst possible moment.

It takes leadership-someone who has a vision to lay it out-and the backing of the American people to make it happen.