fake sincerity

[Slim MacSquinty]

Harper goes on TV tonight in in the midst of a discussion with Mansbridge states and obvious truth, "i think there are some real buying opportunities in the stock market"

Dion is on TV 20 minutes later looking like a constipated puppy saying how heartless that comment was when so many canadians are worrying about their mortgages blah blah blah. What a F**ing acting job.

Is that what Canadians want running the country a weasel who can turn on the tears for you, just image this mouse face to face with Putin, or any other world leader, he'd wet his pants.

Just what we need another weak kneed ass kisser, I can't wait for the trader agreement with Venezuala, and the accompanying photos of Stephane exchanging kisses with Hugo Chavez. Maybe he'll negotiate with the Taliban? We'll all be on out little mats pointing east four times a day.

Good God

[jdobbin]

Harper goes on TV tonight in in the midst of a discussion with Mansbridge states and obvious truth, "i think there are some real buying opportunities in the stock market"

He probably shouldn't have giggled when he said that.

[Vancouver King]

Harper goes on TV tonight in in the midst of a discussion with Mansbridge states and obvious truth, "i think there are some real buying opportunities in the stock market"

Dion is on TV 20 minutes later looking like a constipated puppy saying how heartless that comment was when so many canadians are worrying about their mortgages blah blah blah. What a F**ing acting job.

Is that what Canadians want running the country a weasel who can turn on the tears for you, just image this mouse face to face with Putin, or any other world leader, he'd wet his pants.

Just what we need another weak kneed ass kisser, I can't wait for the trader agreement with Venezuala, and the accompanying photos of Stephane exchanging kisses with Hugo Chavez. Maybe he'll negotiate with the Taliban? We'll all be on out little mats pointing east four times a day.

Good God

Jeez Slim, can't you accept what is coming with a modicum of class?

[Moonbox]

That's the Harper I like.

This economic 'crisis' was coming for almost a year. It was PAINFULLY obvious and anyone who didn't do anything about their investments has themselves to blame just as much as anyone else.

With that said, all of these people crying about their retirement savings going away need to realize that they're only losing money when they panic and sell their equity immediately after it loses 20% of its value.

The investments will largely recover.

Personally, I sold everything I had back in November when CIBC started posting its billion dollar losses. I have all my money in cash equivalents and I've secured credit for doing exactly what Harper said. Buy low, sell high. It's too bad the average person is too stupid to realize that:

A) Equity Markets are cyclical

Nothing Harper has done thus far did ANYTHING to encourage a financial slowdown in Canada

C) The Canadian government's capacity to halt an economic slowdown in Canada is virtually nil at the best of times. The government can smoothe things out a little and that's IT. At this point any initiatives by ANY elected government in Canada would do NOTHING to prevent a spillover if it's actually coming unless that government is looking to start running huge deficits.

[capricorn]

With that said, all of these people crying about their retirement savings going away need to realize that they're only losing money when they panic and sell their equity immediately after it loses 20% of its value.

Panic. That's exactly what the opposition has been selling. It's shameful. What is needed is someone to calm the nerves to avoid hasty financial decisions by Canadians based on WHAT IF.

[jdobbin]

Personally, I sold everything I had back in November when CIBC started posting its billion dollar losses. I have all my money in cash equivalents and I've secured credit for doing exactly what Harper said. Buy low, sell high. It's too bad the average person is too stupid to realize that:

Too stupid about investments that might be tied to the CPP or their private pensions? Too stupid when they can't renegotiate their mortage when the term end because of the credit crunch? Too stupid to not get credit for their businesses?

A) Equity Markets are cyclical

True.

Nothing Harper has done thus far did ANYTHING to encourage a financial slowdown in Canada

But he has done a few things that many economists have said were wrong headed if you want to encourage competitiveness. That would be the GST cut.

C) The Canadian government's capacity to halt an economic slowdown in Canada is virtually nil at the best of times. The government can smoothe things out a little and that's IT. At this point any initiatives by ANY elected government in Canada would do NOTHING to prevent a spillover if it's actually coming unless that government is looking to start running huge deficits.

This is where the Liberals disagree with the Tories.

[jdobbin]

Panic. That's exactly what the opposition has been selling.

Meanwhile Harper is saying it is a great time to invest! Hmm, I wonder if my lending institution will give me some money to do that?

[Alta4ever]

Meanwhile Harper is saying it is a great time to invest! Hmm, I wonder if my lending institution will give me some money to do that?

Now why would you leverage for that? Put in a little every month and time average, into the accounts, if you start now every dollar will count for a lot more when the markets recover.

[Vancouver King]

The PM's popularity seems to be diving in tandem with the TSX. Talking up bargains in the market might be his new strategy to pull his party out of it's current spiral.

Edited October 8, 2008 by Vancouver King

[gc1765]

Politicians do it all the time. It's not as if Dion is the first politician to fake sincerity.

[independent]

Harper goes on TV tonight in in the midst of a discussion with Mansbridge states and obvious truth, "i think there are some real buying opportunities in the stock market"

Dion is on TV 20 minutes later looking like a constipated puppy saying how heartless that comment was when so many canadians are worrying about their mortgages blah blah blah. What a F**ing acting job.

Is that what Canadians want running the country a weasel who can turn on the tears for you, just image this mouse face to face with Putin, or any other world leader, he'd wet his pants.

Just what we need another weak kneed ass kisser, I can't wait for the trader agreement with Venezuala, and the accompanying photos of Stephane exchanging kisses with Hugo Chavez. Maybe he'll negotiate with the Taliban? We'll all be on out little mats pointing east four times a day.

Good God

I hope you continue to post because you are making the Harper supporters look very desperate.

Edited October 8, 2008 by independent

[Argus]

del

Edited October 8, 2008 by Argus

[Argus]

Meanwhile Harper is saying it is a great time to invest! Hmm, I wonder if my lending institution will give me some money to do that?

Harper is right, actually. If you're willing to stomach the rollercoaster ride, there are a lot of stocks that are currently way oversold and will be going way up over the coming months when the current panic is done.

The worse thing you can possibly do is ride all the way down, something like 30% from July, and panic and sell now when, if they were good investments in sound companies, they'll probably go back up again over the coming months.

[Argus]

I hope you continue to post because you are making the Harper supporters look very desperate.

Not to smart people, though.

Don't believe me? Ask one.

[jdobbin]

Now why would you leverage for that? Put in a little every month and time average, into the accounts, if you start now every dollar will count for a lot more when the markets recover.

I already do that. The issue is not just about investing in the markets but for those businesses to have access to credit to make payroll, investment and acquisitions when they need to. When banks stop lending among themselves, that credit gets choked off. So while it might be great for people like Buffet who have cash lying around, for many businesses and individuals, it is access to the banks for things like loans for starting a business or getting a mortgage.

Glad to hear you have enough money to pay cash for your house. Most people need a bank for that.

Edited October 8, 2008 by jdobbin

[jdobbin]

Harper is right, actually. If you're willing to stomach the rollercoaster ride, there are a lot of stocks that are currently way oversold and will be going way up over the coming months when the current panic is done.

There are a lot of depends in that statement. It depends on how close to retirement you are. It depends on whether your job has not been lost as a result of structural changes. It depends if you have access to cash for investments. It depends on how far the market is going down and how long it will take to recover.

The worse thing you can possibly do is ride all the way down, something like 30% from July, and panic and sell now when, if they were good investments in sound companies, they'll probably go back up again over the coming months.

Most individual Canadians haven't done that. However, if they lose their jobs or get chocked off for credit for other investments such as a house, their diminished nest egg might be their only way out.

In the Mansbridge interview, Harper sounded like just another economist (and a contrarian one at that) rather than a PM.

In the back of their minds Canadians are probably asking themselves: Am I better off now than I was three years ago? For most the answer is probably no.

[stignasty]

Now why would you leverage for that? Put in a little every month and time average, into the accounts, if you start now every dollar will count for a lot more when the markets recover.

Buying on margin was a popular thing to do in the 1920s. It was also one of the reasons that the crash in '29 was as bad as it was.

[capricorn]

I didn’t care much for Stephen Harper’s accusation, earlier in the campaign, that the opposition were cheering for a recession. At the time, it seemed like a cheap shot. But the longer this goes on, the more I’m starting to think there’s something in it. The Liberals are now trying to make a “gaffe” of Harper’s perfectly sensible observation that the present panic on the stock markets presents a remarkable buying opportunity, for those with cooler heads. Stephane Dion, in particular, was quick to denounce the advice as “so insensitive.”

I’m sorry? How? What would they have him say? Sell? Take your lumps? Do nothing? You can only call it “insensitive” if you are bound and determined that nothing should break the spell of panic that now grips the country — that no possibility of an upside should be allowed to intrude. Just so long as cooler heads do not prevail.

This is demagoguery of the worst sort. And I don’t just mean that nothing about the present state of the Canadian economy justifies lumping it in with the United States or Europe, still less invoking the ghost of R. B. Bennett. We have not suffered a real estate crash, nor are we likely to; we have not seen a single financial institution go under, nor is any likely to; we did not have anything like the sub-prime mortgage mess; nor do we have the institutional equivalents of Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns — large, highly-leveraged, stand-alone investment banks without the backing of a chartered bank.

But that’s not what distinguishes the opposition demagoguery in this case. It isn’t that they’re fear-mongers: it’s that, having mongered such fears, they do not propose to do anything about them.

And here's his take on the pitfalls of getting involved with stocks.

Is a 35% drop in the stock market (from its June peak) a crisis in itself? No it is not. The stock market does not owe you a living. It’s down 35% from four months ago, but it was up 50% in the three years before that (see chart). The present “crisis” has taken prices on the TSE all the way back to where they were in the dark days of 2005 — when they had just finished climbing 50% in two years. Think back to that time. You were rich! You were happy! You were counting your money!

Maybe you should have sold then. But you didn’t, because you wanted more. Now you’re paying the price. You’ve given up three years of gains. But you’re still up 50% from where you were five years ago. And, if you’re sensible, you’ll make up for not selling then by buying now. Those who were on the buy side on October 19, 1987 made a killing in the months that followed.

Not willing to risk it? Fine. Just sit tight. Worried about your retirement? If you’re anywhere under 55, you’ll be fine. You don’t need the money for 10 or 15 years. They’ll have more than recovered by then. If you’re over 55 — what are you doing in the stock market?

This bears emphasis: If you’re old enough to be worried about your stocks, you’re too old to own them. Stocks earn more in the long-term, because they’re riskier in the short term. You should be heavily in stocks when you’re young, because you’re not going to need the money any time soon. But you should be gradually shifting into safer investments — bonds, T-bills — as you get older. By the time you’re of retirement age, they should be only a small part of your portfolio. That’s not complicated. It doesn’t take a PhD or a high-powered investment adviser. It’s just common sense.

So when the Liberals invoke the pensioner who’s lost half of his savings in the stock market plunge, you have to ask: what was he thinking? To be sure, on this one point the Grits have actually proposed something creative — allowing pensioners to keep their investments in their RRIFs a while longer, rather than being forced to sell at these prices in order to make the required withdrawals on the usual schedule.

But at some point, people have to take a little responsibility for their actions. Otherwise, we have the individual version of moral hazard: everyone has a great ride on the stock market on the way up, but comes crying to government to bail them out when things turn south.

http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/10/08/the-onl...ear/#more-11953

Thank you Coyne for saying what our politicians would not dare attempt.

[jdobbin]

Thank you Coyne for saying what our politicians would not dare attempt.

I think a senior should ask if he is better off now than he was under the Liberals. Enough said. Split income might have helped but split on investments taking a nose dive? Maybe not.

[dpwozney]

Harper goes on TV tonight in in the midst of a discussion with Mansbridge states and obvious truth, "i think there are some real buying opportunities in the stock market".

“A corporation is a fiction, by definition, ...”, according to Patrick Healy in a statement found in evidence provided to the Canadian Parliament's Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in 2002.

“A corporation is a ‘fiction’ as it has no separate existence, no physical body and no ‘mind’”, according to Joanne Klineberg in a presentation to the Canadian Aviation Safety Seminar in 2004.

In the real world, how is it possible, for a real non-artificial living physical natural person, to buy shares of a fictional corporate entity on a stock market?

[Argus]

There are a lot of depends in that statement. It depends on how close to retirement you are

If you're close to retirement you should be invested very conservatively, and have a lot of fixed income investments.

. It depends on whether your job has not been lost as a result of structural changes

.

Jobs get lost. But unemployment is low - contrary to Liberal campaign commercials. You CAN find another job.

In the back of their minds Canadians are probably asking themselves: Am I better off now than I was three years ago? For most the answer is probably no.

And yet you yourself can't point to a single actual thing Harper should have done differently or should now be doing differently. Nor can your leader.

[Slim MacSquinty]

I'm still up on where I was two years ago, but I'll admit to being a little concerned. I know that the stock market is a false economy that in times like this has little to do with fundementals, ratios or profit margins, it has everything to do with overeacting emotions.

It is the job of the Prime Minister and those in power to act the part of leaders as becomes their station in society, could you imagine Churchill going on the radio and instead of giving his "we shall never surrender" speech he came out like Jack Layton and Stephane Dion? Imagine soldiers falling on their bayonettes, and people giving up hope raising the white flag.

I'm not sure who to be more disappointed with, the federal leadership contenders, the media for sucking it up like the spineless weisels they are, or the public for being so utterly and hopelessly gullible.

Edited October 8, 2008 by Slim MacSquinty