This bail out thing is a mess.  The stock market reflects investor confidence.  I have confidence in the American economy and know that the market will pick up….but it's a matter of “when” that I'm not so sure of.  It would be a good time for people to buy some blue chips for cheap if they're willing to hold on.  Reminds me of that anecdote about how the Kennedy family got rich…apparently the father Kennedy got a tip from a shoe shine boy that the market was going to crash.  Kennedy then sold out and after the market crashed he got back in, buying stocks for dirt cheap prices. 

I am waiting for stockbrokers to start jumping out of windows in Manhattan.  Probably won't happen though, I think they fixed it so windows above the third floor in Manhattan cant open after the crash of '29.I would think the crash was hysterical if I didnt have money invested in the market.  As to the banks, bad mortgages, and those that took those mortgages;  they can all rot and I hope the government doesnt bail them out.  Maybe a little time in a soup kitchen line would make some of these idiots wake up and realize you cant spend money like adrunken sailor all the time with no consequences.  I have no pity for anyone or any entity that cant take care of its finances and I sure don't think they should dip into my pocket to keep them in their houses.  As someone who is responsible with my money why should I pay for the idiots that arent?

The economy has been global ever since Rome started shipping grain to Italy.  Globalization is nothing new, it is just a neat buzzword.  Does anybody really think that the worlds economy only became interdependent in the last 50 or 100 years?  If so, I seriously question their intelligence.

Actually I think globalization has significantly grown in the last 100 years (though I won't mind if you question my intelligence 😉 ).  From what I recall markets were more globalized pre-WWI than they were perhaps until after WWII.  The period of American isolationism followed with higher tariffs, and I think when this happened other nations followed suit.  But I think that the word "globalization" refers to more than just international trade, or economic interdependence, which indeed has been going on since ancient times.  It also refers to the large-scale shifting of jobs among nations that results, the change in lifestyles/culture in Islamic countries due to huge gains in wealth, the use of such things as cell phones in the jungles of Africa, the ability for some average guy on his computer in Toronto to trade in the Australian stock market, the large dependency of national economies on other national economies, and so forth.  It also refers to how geo-politics is affected by all of this (like Russian oil tycoons getting riches by oil sales in far away countries), or even how figures such as George Soros are able to strike it rich by betting on currency fluctuations.  So "globalization", at least in my understanding, is much more than international trade.  Thomas Friedman (who I no longer call myself a fan of because of his politics) wrote a book called The Lexus and the Olive Tree about the growth of globalization and its convergence with culture.  It was written around 2000 but provides a great insight into globalization and how its impact really touches just about everyone around the world.

Oh, don't worry…I didn't take offense.  I can see your point about economic interdependence as being nothing new, as well as the desire having already existed.  Indeed, it is modern technology that has enabled this greater convergence of international economies, politics, and culture which in turn forms the “globalization” boom.  Two hundred (or even a hundred) years ago we wouldn't be participating in a forum like this from different parts of the world.  Instead we'd have to live in the same geographic area and discuss issues in a pub or post notices on some community town hall bulletin board.  In a way, this is how I understand "globalization" - technology, the elimination/ignoring of distances, and collective benefits that result.  At the same time, it can create problems.  For those people tacking opinions about historical events to bulletin boards in 1808, the last thing on their minds would have been what some kid in Turkey was doing to disrupt their experience.  But for us in 2008, that is a problem.  >:( 

I think that Dow Jones isn't a good indication of actual economic conditions, except on a really macro scale.  It dropped something like 800 points today before rebounding some.  If the financial mess greatly affects the larger economy by putting large numbers of people out of work, then yes, there will be a bigger problem.  But if the underlying economy is still strong, then I think that the we'll weather through the Wall Street crisis.But this mess makes me even more worried about an Obama presidency.  One of his calls has been for the creation of quite a few "green" jobs.  I'm not entirely sure what these are but I imagine they wouldn't be economically feasible without a lot of government spending (or perhaps tax breaks for corporations that create them).  If they were based on attractive business models, one would think that the private sector would have gotten in to them.  Another problem I see is that they don't offer tangible benefits.  The intangible "benefit" they supposedly provide goes toward the hypothetical reduction of global warming or something like that.  So basically more money would be spent to create jobs that would provide the same amount of tangible benefits that they currently provide.  That's inefficiency, and on a large scale that's bad.