Obama Speaks, Dow Tanks! Is it time for Obama to "shut up" for the good of the nation?

The cynic in me believes that on days when President Obama is prominent in the media and offers some "hopefulness" regarding his economic stimulus package...THE STOCK MARKET TANKS. I don't think it's an accident or a coincidence.

The cynic in me feels that the ORGANIZED WEALTH gang - the REPUBLICAN WALL STREET CONTINGENT, goes to Short Selling to rain on Obama's and the Middle Class' parade!

Short Selling involves the sale of a stock that the seller doesn't own. More specifically, a short sale is the sale of a security that isn't owned by the seller, but that he or she has promised to deliver. That may sound confusing, but it's actually a simple concept.

When someone short sells a stock, his/her broker will lend it to him. The stock will come from the brokerage's inventory, from another one of the firm's customers, or from another brokerage firm. The shares are sold and the proceeds are credited to the short seller's account. Sooner or later the short seller must "close" the short by buying back the same number of shares (covering) and returning them to his broker. If the price drops, the stock can be bought back at the lower price and with a profit on the difference. If the price of the stock rises, the buy back is at at the higher price, with a loss.

This is in part what, months ago, tanked the market (along with the sub-prime mortgage scandal). Rumors were placed on the internet to frighten investors and drive the market, and prices, DOWN.

This letter was/is my open and public request for my Congresswoman and U.S. Senators to investigate the above scenario.

Hopefully, they will.

Suspend short selling....

Good point. Iinstitutions do drive the markets.. @ 55 5 or more of market 401 k's as well as self directed i.R.A's being cashed by the unemployed would have a huge swing on the indicators.. Thank You.. R.Max

No McGovern wrote; I don't think there is a lot of short selling going on, I cant image most brokerage firms taking the risk and the congressional hearing if they did and it could be proved their was some 'conspiracy theory".

The big investors can wield a big hammer 30 minutes before closing. People who live on their 401ks generally take systematic withdrawals of equal or nearly equal size on a regularly scheduled basis - not huge chunks at one time.

So: I think a lot of the recently unemployed might be raiding their 401K or closing them out entirely.

That is your quote above No Mcgovern: and Some unemployed probably are doing that. very true...but there are SHORT SALES going on...There are many on Wall Street

who are still manipulating when they can: Very unfair to the stock holders/the public.

President Obama does not have control over that....Wall Street does and all the deregulations in the last 4-8 years have made the mess you see today:

President Obama is not the reason or the blame of when something on Wall Street goes Up or Down....I think you better take a look at who is in control of Wall Street

Here is a link: Frontline

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/

It opened my eyes: Paulson and Geithner were both appauled

by what they found in Sept 2008. We were very close to a disaster...

and still are in the balance

Arlene in Seattle

I don't think there is a lot of short selling going on, I cant image most brokerage firms taking the risk and the congressional hearing if they did

Short selling to hedge against downside risk is standard practice and a financially conservative strategy. What's more the puts and calls figures are published, so to offer a guess just flaunts your financial naivete. There's no way that short selling will be stopped or seen as a conspiracy unless it is in a single stock targeted for takeover.

It's great to theorize about the market movements, but it is better if you grasp the fundamentals of the business first. Look at the DJIA closing figures over the last decade. The DJIA hit a high of of 14,200 in October 2007, largely driven up by imaginary earnings in the banking and mortgage swaps. When the news was out the investments were worthless, the prices fell. That's how market valuations are supposed to work, investment capital gets returns or it doesn't find investors. It's that simple!!

George Bush was President and remained President as it took a precipitous decline to 7,400 in December of 2008, again due largely to the banking sector's imaginary earnings being revealed as the losses they really were.

Say what you'd like about Obama, the DOW's swan dive was predominately made during the Bush term. The current decline is now part of a fundamental restructuring of the American investment mindset, that no longer has faith that Wall Street will give Main Street anything but a screw job.

The same way some take the attitude that sub prime housing folks should take their loss due to lack of education on what they were getting into, one could say Wall Street should take it's losses because they played themselves into this situation.

As for the hiring folks with tax issues, I agree. As Sarah Palin paid back taxes, after manipulating her state, she by these standards no longer qualifies to run President. Let's see if she is ridiculed by the GOP as the lower appointments were during the Cabinet process.

Then there is the always stated "pork" spending that is thrown out but never defined. LOL.

Frankly, I am grateful our President has not "Shut up" as he is the only intelligent voice we have heard for the last eight years and from what I hear of MSM as well from posts like these, he continues to be the only intelligent voice of political soundness.

I will say I am glad you had an opportunity to vent the frustration of screaming into the desert wind.

think a lot of the recently unemployed might be raiding their 401K or closing them out entirely.

A lot of people ARE doing just that. I had 29 employees between November and now request information for pulling their 401Ks. That's huge in a company of 250 employees. Some 48 changed their asset allocation to conservative. I kept mine at aggressive. At this point, my 401K has lost over 50%, might as well wait around. Millions of Americans have been pulling their money out of the markets. Don't just say "Wall Street" or point at short selling. HUGE chunks of average people have given up. DUMB move, but most sheeple aren't very bright. If you've already LOST more than half and won't retire for at least 5 years, there is no point in pulling out.

The lengths that conservatives will go to blame the Bush recession on a man that has only been in office for 35 days are extreme. So extreme, really, that it's laughable.

You seem to have bought into the kool-aid, but spun it in a negative direction. Apparently you do think that Obama should have a magic wand and should fix the economy forthwith....but just, what, isn't? Otherwise you very well know better, that he has no such magic wand, and that you don't stop an ocean liner - much less a nation - on a dime. You do know that, don't you? And you were there when - over and over - Obama admitted that it was going to get "worse before it got better"? Seems, then, the kool-aid was of your own concoction - not his.

McGovern: So...you basically reinforced my anecdotal theory that Wall Street is a bunch of BS. So, someone has to take an "optimistic tone" with the wizards of Wall Street...geez...that's all it takes to get this economy up and running again? While I agree with some of what you say in terms of the make up of investors, the President should not have to whisper sweet nothings in the ears of the financial swinging d#@ks on Wall Street. The diversification of investors happened because we small fries were told to invest by the big guys on Wall Street...now that they got greedy and their house of cards is collapsing on the heads of us small fry...now they want Papa Obama to talk nicey nice to them? If us small fry are pulling our money out of the market (which I have not done by the way) it is because we have lost complete confidence in the "expertise" of our KING financial investors...you know...the highly educated bastards who walked away with their bonuses as the ship was sinking...and they were holding their hands out for a government bailout?

Good thing I'm not the President...I guess we would sink into a Depression because I would tell every major investment banker to drop dead. I'd rather hear the truth than pretty things up....the economy GLOBALLY is in trouble...there is no use in playing Mary Poppins with it.

"Unemployment at 8 percent" OR "92 out of every 100 American has a job!"

" Mortgage crisis" OR "Most Americans are making their mortgage payments."

Those two things have greatly contributed to the ailment the national and global economy is in. That unemployment used to be 6%. This mortgage crisis was a very short time ago a mortgage boom. The fact is that these changes are happening very quickly, and unemployment and the mortgage crisis (yes, it is a crisis when $2 trillion worth of mortgages are set to default this year) are precipitating further trouble.

So if you want the president to get on TV and talk about how great things are, then you want to be lied to. Even though the majority of the country is working, and the majority of borrowers are making their payments, that slim margin is more than enough to cause major trouble for the majority. It's happening right now, and big steps need to be taken in order to counteract that negative action.

You can argue that the steps being taken are not the right steps. Time will tell. But to blame Obama because the economy is finally feeling the results of the greed of the last decade is dishonest and irresponsible.

McGovern: I sure do remember mortgage interest being 14-15%...this is what kept me out of a house at that time, even though we had good credit and the required 20% to put down on a house. Again, I don't think that anything this administration says is going to change the downward spiral on Wall Street...they blew it...they jacked with us....something has to be done to help the average person...whether this stimulus will actually do it or not....I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

As long as there is the idea of nationlization of banks, you will see the Dow go down.

Nationalized banks means the people own them. How is it better to pour our cash in and own not one blessed thing but the toxic loans and keep pouring tax dollars into losers?

The Dow, frankly, was inflated beyond reason for years. It should go down, I'm glad that it's going down. This is a market correction which is a good thing. Well, good for the market since it puts it back where it should have been all along. If "investors" would stop trading things at artificially high values solely as a short-term means of making a profit, the markets wouldn't have been so vulnerable to being popped like this for the second time in a decade.

Opposition to nationalization is a political objection to a economic problem, which is how we get problems like this in the first place. Republicans just love doing that, substituting sound economic policy for politics and ideology. I'd like to see them try replacing the gas and oil in their cars with politics and ideology and see how well that works out for them, because it's the exact same thing.

Nationalizing insolvent banks to save them and their customers is an economic solution to an economic problem that simply must be done, and it's not even permanent. It's not like the government would own these banks forever.