Just a Number?!

   "It's just a number!" is an oft-recited cliche with which most Americans are familiar, and a mantra too often invoked during the last 8 years, when this consumer-driven culture was encouraged, cajoled and admonished by its leaders to "Spend, baby, spend!"  Almost no one gave a tinker's damn how Americans could afford to play out the American Dream, much less afford "guns and butter" as a society at the same time.

     The bill has come due.

   The DJIA closed down for the 7th straight day a breathtaking 678.91 points, taking the Dow to a neighborhood not seen for 5 years.  If this sounds familiar, it is.  Just over a week ago (so yesterday) I wrote of the implications of that day's decline of 577 points, a loss which would, in any other year, be remarkable.  The fact remains, however, that the index has continued to lose ground daily at a similarly stunning rate.

   This week, I joked with a friend that if the DJIA continued in free fall, in approximately 10 business days - 65 trading hours away - there would be nothing - zip, zero, nada- left to worry about and we could all start over again,  ha-ha-ha!  Who says words don't have power? Especially in the collective consciousness.

   Surveying the collateral damage of the actions of a few - (1) the Wall Street titans besotted with greed/hubris; (2) the "nothing-down," un-vetted willing to be led, sheep-like, down the proverbial primrose path; but worst of all, (3) government leaders, who repeatedly misled and lied to their citizenry, all for the officials' own political interests and advancement -  it should come as no surprise that the financial arena is a proverbial war-zone.  The real problem is that we are - all of us - unscripted soldiers in this "take-no-prisoners" battle.

   Is it any wonder that the Dow tanked almost another 7oo points today?  The real wonder is that it hasn't cratered sooner.  Certain market gurus contend that -until one actually sells - there are no losses.  Well, just try to take that to the bank, assuming any are left....  

   It turns out that there is everything in a number, especially when that number represents the yardstick of a nation's financial health.  And right now, the U.S. is the sick man of the world, and none of the known palliatives are working.

   In the 1970's, during the country's worst recession since the Depression, President Richard Nixon said of the market's decline, "Frankly, if I had any money, I'd be buying stocks right now."  The market soared.  President Bush has not been similarly successful in reassuring Americans, who, mindful of  the adage, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me," have let W's disingenuous words fall on deaf ears.

   For all intensive purposes, numbers now are as transparent as cement and coherent as hieroglyphics.  Perhaps that's why, when all is said and done, the blood shed in the Street will neither exonerate nor condemn to anyone's satisfaction.  Rather, the clear winner will be anyone who's still left standing...