Wall Street Main Street

Just Beyond my shrubs is Main Street, Edwards Mississippi

Christiansen’s Comments
Hinds county Gazette 10-09-08

America’s economic crisis has been…..well, it is like a train wreck you know what’s fixing to happen, is going to be horrific…. you don’t want to watch, but you can’t help yourself. ….I was glued to the TV Friday as the House of representatives were getting ready to vote on the Bail Out Bill. Before the vote the chatter from the TV commentators and politicians was mostly positive, this bail out is just what the nation needs…..the stock market seemed to agree….the Dow was on the rise …over 200 points. An exuberant news person on the floor of the stock exchange, alerted us that when there were enough votes to pass the bail out package, “there will be a great cheer from the traders“ , because this is the medicine Wall Street needed to save us all!

I was bothered, as I watched, waiting for the vote, by all of the folks who were saying “There is a disconnect between Wall street and Main Street…Main street Just doesn’t get it!” they were bellowing this because the polls showed voters were outraged by the Bail Out Bill.
As I am not Wall Streeter, so I must be Main Street, and I am the first to admit, I am not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I did pass high school Latin…which is no small accomplishment! And because of Brain’s experience with Latin, Brain believes, if somebody had taken the time to explain to me just how this Bail Out plan was going to work, I could have understood.

Some these people said, that Main Street would get on board when they couldn’t get a car loan, or a mortgage. Another guy suggested that if Main Street didn’t cooperate they would be in soup lines. Now there were conflicting ideas on what Main Street should do….One guy said, if the consumer didn’t start buying again soon or this Bail Out would be for not. …another opinion was belt tightening was in order.

And when oil prices began to drop, the folks on the TV screen (By this time it was unclear to me who were reporters and who were Wall Streeters,….everybody behaved as though they had a dog in the hunt, there was not much impartial reporting happening) They were seeing the price of oil dropping as a bad thing. If you remember not all that many days ago rising oil prices was a bad thing…because the consumer had to buy high priced gas, therefore he did not have as much money to spend on goods…Boats, cars and all of those ship loads of stuff coming from China…inflation was on the way!!!



I did learn something about short sellers by watching the TV all day Friday. I had heard the term but did not have a clue as to what short selling was all about. But what I learned has me scratching my thick head. As I comprehend it , short sellers borrow stock, millions of shares… they then sell that borrowed stock in hopes of driving the stock price down, they then turn around and buy back the stock, at the lower price and they have made a profit!! There is some question if maybe short selling has had something to do with the volatility, Wall Street has been experiencing….well duh! Short selling has be suspended for a time…

In the same short selling conversation …the subject of Hedge Funds came up…hedge funds are designed to make money in an up market or down market, they were skimpy with the details as to how they manage that seemly impossible feat. But they did hint that these hedge guys are a stealthy, sort of the Darth Vaders of the financial world….And they did warn , if hedge funds start crashing, we haven’t seen nothing yet.

As I continued to watch the events of the day unfold, there was “Breaking News” … two banks Citi and Wells Fargo are in a fight, they are both wanting to buy a failed bank, Wachovia, a bank that has billions in bad debt,…..Now to me and my financially unsophisticated self, that just don’t make good sense…..unless the buyer winds up getting great piles of tax payer money…tax free …..because of this bail out package….

The vote finally came….I did not see the predicted cheer…when the vote was over and Wall Street had been bailed out,. What I did see was the traders immediately turned from the giant TV monitors, and began selling stock …the market had been up, going in to the vote, but, after the vote it began to tumble. At the end of the day the Dow had dropped 157 points. The TV people were at a loss to explain the happening at the stock exchange…some began to speculate that this 700 billion was not enough.

I am not clever enough to know if the congress has done the right thing by passing this Bail out Bill. But I do know money has not been the answer to fixing our public schools…seems no matter how much money is poured in to the school system….the situation just gets worse.



In light of recent events, I thought of Dolly Parton and words she spoke years ago, I think maybe on the Johnny Carson show, …Dolly said, “If we don’t humble ourselves, the Lord will do it for us.”

From this financial crisis may come the humbling of America.

We have had a fantastic ride….we may now have to pony up and pay for that ride.

Love to all
Call if you need me.