Reason Number 3,567 For Putting $$ Under Your Mattress

Are they going to start calling this The Crash Of 2009? The New York Times bears the grim news:

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged below 7,000 Monday for the first time in more than 11 years as investors grow even more pessimistic about the health of banks, and in turn the economy.

A staggering $61.7 billion in quarterly losses at insurer American International Group Inc. touched off fresh fears about the health of the nation's financial system.

The worries pushed the blue chips below 7,000 for the first time since Oct. 28, 1997. The credit crisis and recession have now slashed half the average's value since it hit a record high over 14,000 in October 2007.... snip

''As bad as things are, they can still get worse, and get a lot worse,'' said Bill Strazzullo, chief market strategist for Bell Curve Trading. Strazzullo said he believes there's a significant chance the S&P 500 and the Dow will fall back to their 1995 levels of 500 and 5,000, respectively.... snip

In late morning trading, the Dow fell 184.94, or 2.6 percent, to 6,877.99. The Dow last closed below the 7,000 level on May 1, 1997....

In afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 4.5 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 3.2 percent, and France's CAC-40 fell 3.7 percent. Earlier, Japan's Nikkei stock average dropped 3.8 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 3.9 percent.

And a hearty, "Oh thank you so very, very much," to the Bush administration and its many greedy, unscrupulous cronies. Without you, we could never have restored America's belief in mattresses as savings instruments. [Obligatory string of expletives deleted.] If only we had something left to put there.

The Dow Grovels

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, 2/19/09 Close

Oh boy. This is ugly.

The Dow lost 89.68 points or 1.2 percent to end the day at 7,465.95, dropping below the recent lows it set on Nov. 20, when the broader markets tumbled to their lowest levels in a decade. The Dow last closed below 7,500 during the recession following the Internet bubble, sinking to 7,286 on Oct. 9, 2002.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index finished 9.48 points or 1.2 percent lower at 778.94. The S.&P. 500 has fallen below 800 in recent days — which analysts consider an important psychological threshold — but it has not retested its late November lows near 750.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq index was 1.5 percent lower, weighed down by losses at computer companies including Dell and Sun Microsystems.

source

Today was the first time the Dow closed below 7500 since 2002. Put another way, the Dow has given back seven years' growth and is worth just about half of what it was at its peak last year.

This is ugliness. And the prognosticators are implying that things will get even worse:

While stocks have been trading in a broad range over the last three months, analysts said that the indexes may be carving out a new, deeper trench, where the bottom of the old range becomes the top of the new one. Stocks could linger there for the next few months, analysts said, as Washington tries to resuscitate the shaky financial system and slow the pace of economic declines.

Putting money under the mattress was apparently quite a viable strategy for the past six or seven years. Or low interest savings accounts. Everything else seems to have been a total bust.