Stock Market Drops to Lowest June Numbers Since Great Depression

Outdated laws and practices mean America will see black marketeers take far less of a hit than the average citizen relying on traditional means like credit cards to help them through the hard times.

(SALEM, Ore.) - It is sure going to be interesting to watch what happens in this country over the next few years. Stocks on Wall Street tumbled today, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst June since the Great Depression. Record oil prices, credit-market writedowns and a slowing economy increase the likelihood of a yearlong profit slump.

Americans have allowed corporate business to completely undermine the nation's economy, and our slow progress at turning toward natural and renewable sources of energy are likely to haunt us for many years to come.

All too many people in the U.S. live on credit card debt, always diversifying and borrowing from one line of credit to take care of another. What would happen to these people if the banks suddenly call their loans and stop providing credit?

Food prices are surging and the cost of oil based fuels like gasoline is out of hand to the point that people are frosted when looking for answers in this land that is turning colder by the second in terms of economical success.

For those who have stood shoulder to shoulder in recent years, denouncing the GOP politics that have led us from a balanced budget under President Clinton to a land teetering on the brink of total financial disaster... it is doubtful that having been right all along will mean much. For some, the fact that America abandoned its rightful ideals and "went with Bush" was something that they never would have predicted, or forget.

It is equally interesting to note that antiquated federal laws that prevent farmers from cultivating Cannabis or marijuana alone, are likely contributors to our national financial crisis. After all, this is a land where thinking out of the box can lead a business person to prison.

But for those growers who stay out of the federal spotlights, there are probably many fruitful years ahead. Authorities in Oregon frequently tout the latest "pot bust" but in reality, they are simply jailing people for non violent crimes and it does not help our economy. The authorities refuse to recognize that it matters, and each time they sweep a few thousand plants in places like the Willamette Valley and southern Oregon, they take a significant toll on that region's economy, legal or illegal.

Nothing is gained under the current laws, and your tax dollars and mine pay for the very lives and existence of people charged with marijuana crimes, once they are incarcerated. Marijuana was outlawed because two American companies, Dow and DuPont Chemicals, wanted to introduce synthetic rope on the marketplace and they had to get rid of the world's strongest natural fiber in order to accomplish that. Therefore, marijuana was villainized and demonized with propaganda and the rest is history.

I fail to see how locking up people for growing a natural plant benefits this society, especially when that plant has the ability to replace so many unnatural products today like rope, medicines, clothing, even building materials and an endless list of things the hemp or marijuana plant potentially generates.

In the meanwhile, investors are pulling back from the stock market and groups like General Motors Corp. are taking the big hit, plunging farther than ever during the last three years, as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. advised selling the stock and crude rose by $5 a barrel.

Bloomberg reports that, "The Standard & Poor's 500 Index plunged 38.82, or 2.9 percent, to 1,283.15, its biggest drop in three weeks. The Dow decreased 358.41, or 3 percent, to 11,453.42, its lowest since September 2006. The Nasdaq Composite Index sank 79.89, or 3.3 percent, to 2,321.37, its worst loss since January. Almost nine stocks fell for each that rose on the New York Stock Exchange."

Citigroup Inc. is approaching a 10-year low as Goldman Sachs said the lender may report an $8.9 billion second-quarter charge and cut its dividend. The manufacturer of the Blackberry, Research In Motion Ltd., posted its biggest drop since 2001 on concern competition with Apple Inc.'s iPhone is reducing earnings.

Bloomberg also reports that company earnings in the S&P 500 slid an average of 18 percent in the first quarter. Analysts are projecting an 8.9 percent profit drop this quarter, according to a survey conducted by Bloomberg last week.

The Dow itself, has slumped 9.4 percent this month. That is the worst June since 1930 during the Great Depression, when an 18 percent tumble was experienced. Long story short, nearly every company has posted losses in the month over the surge in oil prices, and the rate of unemployment is the highest since 2004.

It isn't good news but it also is not unexpected. Things are going to continue to tighten up and Americans are reminded that sometimes it is better go liquidate early, especially real estate, rather than just watching it move toward eventual foreclosure.

Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. Today, in addition to his role as a war correspondent in Afghanistan where he spent the winter of 2006/07, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators. Tim's coverage from Iraq that was set to begin in April has been delayed and may not take place until August, 2008. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com

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Henry Ruark June 28, 2008 12:48 pm (Pacific time)

KilK,Rowe,et al" Wonder if KilK is frustrated acrobat, since his comment puts facts upside down on head, as Tim too-kindly points out. Real motivation revealed rapidly in his use of Obama designation obviously meant for political-smear via false association --so why should we accept his claimed-facts ? They are, to put it mildly, a bunch of crappy neocon disconnected and denied points and theories. Best possible answer cometh from neocon-himself Moynihan: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion; but not his own facts." --Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Kilkenny June 28, 2008 10:17 am (Pacific time)

I love my country and I am of the old style "Liberal", so when I mention the word liberal now it may not apply to you if you also love this country and our people, all of them! Without reservation.
The new "pod-people"Liberals dismiss studies that show a link between abortion and breast cancer, claiming they are biased because the people promoting the studies are "anti-choice."

For the same reason, no one should believe the Democrats' "energy" policies.

Democrats couldn't care less about high gas prices. The consistent policy of the Democratic Party, going back at least to Jimmy Carter, has been to jack up gas prices so we can all start pedaling around on tricycles.

Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26-cent tax on gas. John Kerry said it should be 50 cents. Gore endorsed the Malthusian proposal of Paul and Anne Ehrlich in "The Population Explosion" that gas taxes be raised gradually to match prices in Europe and Japan.

The result is consumers now pay about 46 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes. That's not including taxes paid directly to the government by the oil companies and passed onto consumers. As the inestimable economist John Lott has pointed out, in the past 25 years oil companies have paid more than three times in taxes what they have made in profits.

B. Hussein Obama's response to soaring gas prices is to have the oil companies collect even more money from us at the pump, proposing a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies. "Corporate taxes" sound like taxes on rich people, but all they do is force corporations to collect taxes on behalf of the government.

Democrats have worked hard to ensure that Americans pay as much for gas as Europeans do. After a quarter-century of gas tax hikes, a ban on drilling for oil and a complete destruction of the nuclear power industry in America, I guess liberals can declare: Mission accomplished!

In response to skyrocketing gas prices, liberals say, practically in unison, "We can't drill our way out of this crisis."

What does that mean? This is like telling a starving man, "You can't eat your way out of being hungry!" "You can't water your way out of drought!" "You can't sleep your way out of tiredness!" "You can't drink yourself out of dehydration!"

Seriously, what does it mean? Finding more oil isn't going to increase the supply of oil?

It is the typical Democratic strategy to babble meaningless slogans, as if they have a plan. Their plan is: the permanent twilight of the human race. It's the only solution they can think of to deal with the beastly traffic on the LIE (Long Island Expressway).

How do liberals propose we acquire the energy required for the economic activity and production that results in light appearing when they flick a switch? The larger enterprise involved in producing that little miracle eludes them.

Liberals complain that -- as B. Hussein Obama put it -- there's "no way that allowing offshore drilling would lower gas prices right now. At best you are looking at five years or more down the road."

This is as opposed to airplanes that run on woodchips, which should be up and running any moment now.

Moreover, what was going on five years ago? Why didn't anyone propose drilling back then?

Say, you know what we need? We need a class of people paid to anticipate national crises and plan solutions in advance. It would be such an important job, the taxpayers would pay them salaries so they wouldn't have to worry about making a living and could just sit around anticipating crises.

If only we had had such a group -- let's call them "elected representatives" -- they could have proposed drilling five years ago!

But of course we do pay people to anticipate national problems and propose solutions. Some of them -- we'll call them Republicans -- did anticipate high gas prices and propose solutions.

Six long years ago President Bush had the foresight to demand that Congress allow drilling in a minuscule portion of the Alaska's barren, uninhabitable Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In 2002, Bush, Tom DeLay and the entire Republican Party were screaming from the rooftops: Drill! Drill! Drill!

We'd be gushing oil now -- except the Democrats stopped us from drilling.

Drilling on only 0.01 percent of ANWR's 19 million acres was projected to produce about 10 billion barrels of oil. From all domestic sources combined, we currently produce about 1.8 billion barrels of oil per year. To a layperson like myself, 10 billion barrels seems like a lot of oil.

The other party -- plus John McCain -- ferociously opposed drilling in ANWR, drilling offshore or drilling anyplace else. Instead of Drill! Drill! Drill!, their motto could be: Kill! Kill! Kill!

They refuse to believe our abortion studies? I refuse to believe they care about Americans having to pay high gas prices.

Editor to our readers: Again, I will go ahead and approve this person's rant, maybe I shouldn't, but I want people to see how some neocons label, etc. Amazingly, this character even finds a way to throw abortion into it? Most GOP politicians are all working in dollar oriented environments, representing big corporations and oil money that is pillaging our economy, and at least some Democrats have the courage to call everything today what it really is, a fiasco nearing disaster. Everyone knows the nation was in much better shape under Democratic leadership, that is a fact, it is also a fact that members of the GOP's current leadership has severely tarnished our reputation as a peaceful nation in this fragile world. That is not a slam on the Republican Party; it is directed toward the current administration and people who still lobby for it.

T.F. ROWE June 28, 2008 3:10 am (Pacific time)

Funny that I stumbled upon this article after just reading John Kenneth Galbraith's article "The Great Wall Street Crash" published in October 1954, in Harper's magazine. One of the things Galbraith points out, is that economic collapse does not happen in a single tumultuous day (Black Tuesday for example) but rather a continuous cycle of downward spiraling events. What is also remarkable, despite all of the advancements in technology, is the fundamental force of speculative greed and fear, is the underlying engine of our present predicament. In 1929, FDR, who was Governor of New York at that time, spoke of the "fever of speculation". As Galbraith so succinctly puts it: "the question inevitably arises whether a similar cycle of speculation and collapse could again occur, The simple answer is of course!"

Matt Johnson June 27, 2008 4:15 pm (Pacific time)

Kilkenny, you don't feel squat, you make a lot of us sick and the rest of us would like to take you in the ring. To put it bluntly, you are a non-human and I wouldn't be surprised if you are abusive of those you are near.

Kilkenny June 27, 2008 11:07 am (Pacific time)

Once you've watched liberals long enough to understand how they think -- scratch that, how they feel -- they become extraordinarily predictable.

To begin with, the liberal agenda is, in many respects, the same as it was in the thirties. Whether you call it communism, fascism, socialism, liberalism, or progressivism, the only real difference is how much they believe they can get away with, the way they sell it to people, and the latest trendy name for what they believe.

So, once the liberals pick a policy from their stale program to push, the next step is to get it implemented. This is where liberals have problems because whether a policy makes sense, is practical, or actually improves people's lives is of secondary importance to them. What is important to liberals is whether supporting or opposing that policy makes them feel good about themselves.

This is why liberals continue to support dysfunctional policies that have been failing miserably for decades and why they often oppose common sense programs that have been proven to work time and time again -- because it isn't about whether it works or not, it's about how it makes them feel.

In other words, a liberal will almost always prefer a policy that's extremely expensive, is difficult to implement, helps almost no one, but seems "nice" -- to a policy that is cheap, simple to implement, extremely effective, and seems "mean."

However, since most Americans make decisions about policies based on whether or not they believe the policy makes people's lives better or worse, liberals have had to become habitually dishonest about what they believe and want to do to get their ideas put into action.

Editor: I approved this stupid rant because I want this hateful individual to go ahead and "show his stuff". "Liberal" means kind and open minded and it is the spriti of people in the 1930's who helped each other out and helped survive the Great Depression. It is not communism, that is a suggestion made from total ignorance, and parallel with comparing neo con politics which have nearly ruined this country, to Nazi and fascist politics. This individual's rant does not show a love of country or a love for his fellow American, and neither do his obvious heroes, a sad, sick little bunch of little bald white men Limbaugh, O'Riley, Savage, etc. I suggest this poster considers moving to eastern Europe or anywhere for that matter, where totalitarian politics are accepted, because they are not part of our system. You are no longer compatible with the American system pal.

Optimist June 27, 2008 10:15 am (Pacific time)

Okay let's say the commercial farmers are greenlighted to grow marijuana, what would be the macro/micro financial benefit? In other countries of the world, is there a demonstratable benefit that could be extrapolated for an economic American model? A social model? I guess I'm a glass half-full kind of person when it comes to our current economy. The national unemployment rate is extremely low at 5.5%, especially if you compare it to the Great Depression years. As far as looking back and comparing different time periods and the presidential administrations, this can provide misleading causal variables. For example during the Clinton Administration, he and the democratic congress raised taxes in 1993 which hurt the economy. In 1994 the republicans were elected into power and from then on Clinton signed their legislation. In fact you would be hardpressed to find any Clinton passed policies that helped the economy. He got credit for signing congressional bills that helped maintain a robust economy until 2000. The Bush Administration has been booming until the last few years. Who came into power back in 2006/07, and what has happened to the economy since? Coincidence? Was 1993's bad economic turn a coincidence? Economic cycles happen, look at the empirical evidence for proof. Our world economy (nearly 7 billion people) runs on oil, and we need more of it as we develop alternative energy sources. If we do not get more supplies, then an economic "tipping point" may rear it's ugly head and things will get pretty bleak. Out national economy is too diversified for us to experience anything remotely close to what happened during the depression years of the 1930's, but because of our huge population, we will be ripe for a political take over by people who really are more concerned about power than the welfare of our population. Please be aware that self-fullfilling prophecies have a way of happening. Look for positive economic indicators as a way of rallying a good outcome, there are many. I assure you, that dark forces want a doom and gloom scenario, be afraid of these people, for they simply are agents of darkness. There are plenty of oppressive government models for you to view, past and present.

Peter Kennedy June 27, 2008 8:23 am (Pacific time)

Tim- You are correct on every point. What most Americans can not accept that other Americans have done this to us, willfully with purpose, for short-sited and selfish reasons. Thanks for linking news to reality.

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Stock Market Drops to Lowest June Numbers Since Great Depression

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