Monday, October 27, 2008

What Goes Down...

Someone asked me at a dinner party the other evening if I sold all my Citibank shares.  
Why he would ruin such  lovely evening with talk of the ailing stock market was beyond me. 
In his defense recent comparisons to the "Great Depression" have tapered the confidence of even the most optimistic of pundits.  No one is opening their statements and many with short (and not so short) time horizons have cashed out.  
Where is the bottom?  It's the question that moves us to listen to those on soapboxes and look to the heavens for answers.  With our fears and worries exposed, we wait for a ray of sunshine.
I remembered something my my dad told me years ago as I listened to the day's financial woes.
"Everything in the universe follows a pattern."  It hit me that it was time for us (the world's economy) to learn the lesson again.  Bad choices, greed and denial.  The bottom had to fall out for us to pay attention.    Sure, I'm angry too.  There were people that should have warned us (because they knew)  of the impending  "financial tsunami" and there were those we should have listened to.   All the chicken littles that quietly warned the sky was falling.  But, if my dad is right, the next part of the pattern (perhaps the next quarter) will bring a slow but bullish recovery.  Like my dad, I'm an eternal optimist.  

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed your blog and it is time for us to learn but do you think we will? There's too much avarice.
We could discuss the economy ad nauseum. We don't have a choice but to go along with it and hopefully we won't be financially ruined while waiting for the economy to straighten out.

Arava said...

yes- I see your point. No one really knows... the circumstances are different. I come from a family of immigrants... I always bet on the pass line- for the people. I guess for me it's good karma.

MaryWalkerBaron said...

We have had so much dooms day and fear hammered into us during these past several years. Sometimes the only logical choice left is one of optimism.