Markets 200308

The Sentinel All the news that's fit to print and some that's not.
The Stock Market This reporter is no expert on the markets. All I can do is relate what happened in the past with the market. We have to go back to 1929 to the huge market collapse that led to the great depression. The market then had been booming for more than 10 years, just like this market. Then the market began wild swings, up for a bit, then down, just like the current market. President Hoover urged the federal reserve to drop interest rates to boost the market, again just like this president has done. This was when things went horribly wrong. The big shareholders wanted cover from the storm in the market. Ordinarily they would sell stocks and buy bonds, but with the decreased yield in bonds due to the drop in interest rates, the big boys sent their money overseas to other markets and we have the same situation possible at this time. Uncertainty drives markets crazy, always has, likely always will. Things were uncertain before the K-19 virus, now it's Dodge City on a Saturday night.	Recession and depression A very smart man once told me that after Germany's hyper-inflation that country would do whatever necessary to prevent that from happening again and Germany has done that. America had the great depression and America will do everything possible to prevent another depression. In the past when recession reared its ugly head, the federal reserve could lower interest rates and stimulate the economy to bring things back under control. Now here is the rub, to keep the stock market pumped up the federal reserve has lowered interest rates to near zero. So in desperation will the federal reserve actually pay entities to borrow money to try and bring things back to normal? I suppose it could happen, but there could be a terrible price to pay. At this point, any further action the federal reserve could do like giving away money would increase inflation, making those of us Americans to pay more with less valuable dollars for everything we buy, and boost the national debt up into the stratosphere.	What to do, what to do? Those of us older folks remember the drills in school called "Duck and Cover" during the early cold war when paranoia set in with the idea that the Russian army could drop nuclear bombs at any time and destroy cities. Many kids parents dug out air raid shelters in the back yard. While the threat of all out nuclear war is still as possible as it ever was, we learned to live with it and don't worry anymore. A little back story here. In October of 1962 there were 13 days when the U.S. and Russia could have gone to war and destroyed a big part of the world. Things were very close and our own Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted president Kennedy to give them the order to go to it. Kennedy held fast, making it possible for millions of us to be alive in the world today. Alas that was then and this is now and let's face it things are so far out of control, there's not that much left to do but go to Margaritaville. I know it's 5 o'clock somewhere and it comes an hour earlier today due to this daylight savings thing.