[lbo-talk] Baker/Henwood: Stock Market Drop

W. Kiernan wkiernan at ij.net
Mon Mar 5 18:19:00 PST 2007


Robert Naiman wrote:

>

> DEAN BAKER, http://www.cepr.net

> Co-director of the Center for Economic

> and Policy Research, Baker said today:

> "A lower stock market is good for a lot

> of people..."

Don't forget us little 401K investora. In recent months I've repeatedly played the damper; whenever the guys in my department with 401Ks look online and get to crowing about how, wow, the Dow is up at the highest point evar! I explain, no it's not since it's in current dollars, so the number would have to be at least fifteen or so percent higher than the 2001 figure to compensate for inflation.

But this last week, however, these same guys have been looking at, for example, the "1d" graph in Yahoo and, all bug-eyed, moaning "ZOMG we all gonna _die_!!!1!" To calm their asses down I've been walking over to their peecee and navigating to the "2y" chart. Then I explain how, insofar as they didn't intend to tap their 401Ks for another two, three, four decades anyway, all this last week's action means is that the contribution extracted from next week's paycheck will now buy them more shares of stock. Of course we could be headed right over the cliff at last and I could be full of crap.

Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net



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