Money, Power and Wall Street

Have you seen this?  

Frontline did this very good documentary and I'd file it under "those who forget the past are CONDEMNED to repeat it" – let's all TRY not to repeat the mistakes of 2008…   "Wall Street got bailed out and Main Street didn't" is the quote that neatly sums up the present situation.  Wall Street and the top 10% of this country – of this World – are partying like it's 1999 while the bottom 90% continue to languish in the worst Recession since the Great Depression.  

Despite a myriad of worrying data, the Corporate Media is in full-blown promotional mode – pushing stocks as if it were modern snake oil – the panacea that will cure all your ills.  We often forget that essentially ALL of our news sources are publicly traded companies and have a vested interest in the stock market going higher.  Hell, we have an interest in that too, as our longer-term virtual porfolios are entirely bullish - but that shouldn't preclude us from making a realistic assessment of the CURRENT situation, should it?  

Concerns about China overshadowed better-than-expected earnings at the company, which is based in Peoria, Illinois, and led investors to push the stock down 5 percent Wednesday, which was great for us as CAT was on our Long Put List.

ABB, a maker of power equipment, reported profits in the past week that were below analysts' expectations, caused by weak Chinese demand. “It was a very slow start to the year for China. China in January was extremely weak,” ABB's chief financial officer, Michel Demaré, said Wednesday.