Honestly, looking at McCain and Obama objectively (without any party affiliation or any racism) I really can't see why anybody would vote for McCain. Obama has offered a much more coherent plan to get America out of the economic disaster we are in.
Right now, most people are anxious about the economy, fearing the worst but hoping for the best.
Reality check: within 18 months YOU could be standing in a bread line. That's how bad it really is. And Obama will work actively to prevent this short term, as well as make us strong again long term. As much as I like McCain and admire his patriotism, he really is not up for the job, not now with the global markets falling apart.
Obama's economic plan can be found at:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/index.php
The Anatomy of Fear
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The technology that transmits odors and fragrances digitally is still in the very early stages of development. But on Monday, Oct. 6, the whiff of fear emanating from the television was overwhelming. James Cramer, CNBC star, ex-hedge-fund manager, mascot of the 1990s tech boom and the recent bull market, was throwing up his hands. "There's always a bull market somewhere" has long been one of his signature lines. But Cramer admitted to the "Today" show's Ann Curry that "somewhere" was now nowhere to be found. "Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week," he pleaded. "I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock markets."
In the ensuing days, many investors—professional and amateur alike—took Cramer's advice. As a series of global convulsions shook markets from New York to Tokyo, and all points in between, the
stock markets plummeted, with the S&P ending the week down 18.2 percent, and down 42.5 percent for the year. Amid a broad-based, expanding credit crunch, and rising concern about fundamental economic weakness, no sector or region was immune. "The U.S. and advanced economies' financial systems are now headed toward a near-term systemic financial meltdown," says Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University and a longtime bear who has been vindicated in spades. There have been, and are, plenty of reasons for investors to freak out: the failure of banks; the demise of institutions like Lehman Brothers; the necessity for repeated, spastic (and, so far, ineffective) government interventions. Nearly every economic indicator in the past few weeks, from auto sales to employment, has been negative.
The stock of General Motors sunk to its lowest level since 1950.
Banks are refusing to lend to one another. The traditional safe havens of investment, such as municipal bonds and money-market funds, have buckled. The trumpets of leadership are so uncertain, they sound like kazoos.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed at his first Inauguration in March 1933, amid the worst prolonged financial crisis in the nation's history. Yes, the banking system was a shambles and unemployment stood at 25 percent. But conditions would certainly improve over time, and a change in attitude would help. In recent weeks, as the comparison between today's financial crisis and the Great Depression has grown commonplace, it's become clear that fear itself is Wall Street's greatest fear. "Anxiety can feed anxiety," as President Bush put it. We see it manifested in many ways: in the plunging Dow, in spiking interest rates, in James Cramer's frenzied pleas, in the shell-shocked silence of traders on the 5:01 p.m. New Haven-line train out of Grand Central Terminal.
Markets, we are told, continually process available information to spit out accurate gauges of reality in the form of prices. That's the theory. The reality: markets are frequently inefficient, and dominated by humans, with all their frailties. "The view that people in finance are rational is wrong," says Alex Edmans, a Wharton School of Business economist who studies behavioral finance. "They're susceptible to emotion just like anyone." In recent weeks, the emotions they have been expressing include anxiety, panic, rage and resignation. In the Depression, skittish investors would cause runs on the bank by lining up on the sidewalk to withdraw cash. In the past several weeks, we've witnessed a 24/7, digital run on financial institutions as investors, banks, corporations, borrowers and lenders worry that their assets simply aren't safe. This panic has shown similar dynamics to previous ones. But due to the rapid shift in the structure of the global financial system, it's also completely different. As a result, the amount of selling and declines are far greater than would be warranted by the erosion in the fundamentals. Call it the fear factor.
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