Too difficult for me to pin down words like "Armageddon", "next depression".
I guess for "we are on the edge", I'd say who's "we"?
My bank overextended itself and was closed and bought out by another. No change for me as far as my dealings with the new bank.
I got Bloomberg in the background now and there's that incessant commercial on for Nutrisystem with spokespeople urging people to sign up (pay up) and they can lose 30-40 pounds or more too.
While at the same time, tonight I'll be seeing a friend who is a big volunteer at a church in a downtrodden adjacent town. She reports families now watering down milk to make it last longer.
No breadlines, but there are volunteer feed stations at several places in towns around where I live (and in my town). I still see stores toss out food with outdated, expired numbers. And I see and know people who scrounge for these either to feed themselves or to recycle to others.
So I guess it depends on where you are class-wise, asset-wise, job-wise, aquaintance-wise as to whether you believe we're on the edge.
The thing is not so much where we are, but where we are going, and do stocks reflect that? I say there are lots of value stocks which seem to me to be cheap on an absolute basis and which seem to me to discount a lot of the problems we might see in '09.
I2, as I've bought some P&G, Pepsi, etc. recently, I had been reflecting on some of our previous conversations where you've mentioned you've been a buyer and holder of some of the country's (USA) best/strongest companies for more than 20 or 30 years. Maybe since the '60's if I recall correctly.
Perhaps too late for me now - I might not have time left to hold on for 20-30 years like you've done. It seems to me though that the strong companies, with moats, with a history of increasing dividends, will come through the turmoil we're seeing now. And that now might be a good time to be buying some, if one ever wants to own these companies. |
