I may not know too much of the stock market ....
 

but I know enough to say that .... this is extremely bad. $85 billion 2 year loan pulled out of the federal reserve to bail out AIG and it didn't do much.

we screwed ... :|

I was thinking of enrolling in a 401k at my work. Is now a good time to do that? I know that some people haven't been doing so well with it right now.

yeah i know nothing about it but i know those numbers are too big to do nothing at all. aig should start selling gas....

Start buying, especially if you are young. The stock market will not stay like this forever. Buy now, have faith, profit soon, retire early.

Now is the best time to enroll. People perceive a soft market as bad, but what it really is for the average, 401k based investor, is a sale on the stuff you need.
Basically most stock prices are down right now, saving you money on your initial investment. Now when the market corrects back to level, which it always does, you will be ahead of the game. Then once we hit another period of economic expansion, your money that has already grown, will start to grow even faster.

Slow markets are not a bad thing unless you are in the "retirement red zone" with in 5 years of retirement. Even then, you should have dropped back and gone conservative anyway and you won't be effected as bad.

Anyone who has access to a 401k, get in it and invest as much as you can ASAP. It will pay for itself many times over in the next 5+ years when the markets come back. If your company doesn't offer retirement planning or their program sucks, check out ING, Ameritrade, or any of the other online banks associated with the big investment houses, they all have programs.

I just pulled my money market.....gonna look into some potenial stock options soon as my fat check comes.

hmm i have an AIG account with money the town gives us firefighters every year... fantastic lol

I'm 17 and have about 3grand that I planned on a heads and cam package for the maro, but it's gotten enough of my money. I've actually become so interested in the stock market that I'm on cnnmoney.com atleast 2 times a day and I'm constantly watching the GM and Ford stocks. GM stock I think will be a great buy because I truly believe that once 2010 comes GM stock will be somewhere around $40-$50 a share range and it's at $10 a share now. Idk much about the stock market, but you'd have to be dumb to not think you can make some major money off of that. I'd be willing to throw a grand in the market right now, but I don't know where to even start off. Anyone that does stocks wanna chime in on what to do?

What kind of account. It should be safe, btw.

LOSAP program probably the town gives a set amount of money or money based on attendance to a retirement account every year for each firefighter.

This crap is ridiculous! My 401K is down 18% so far this year and that doesn't include today's wonderful performance. These giant companies that bought out all their competition and took huge risks should not be bailed out by my tax money! People who took out mortgages with interest only arms should not be bailed out! Banks that gave loans with a ratio below 28% should not be bailed out! This is BS that the risk takers are being rewarded while the hard working person keeps getting hit in the wallet to pay for everyone else's stupidity. Don't even get me started on healthcare.

I agree 100%. If you mismanage your personal finances, does the gov bail you out? Then why are we bailing out these banks? Lehman Bros. 158 year old firm, down the tubes because of mismanagement and greed...and I am willing to bet the CEO, CFO etc. still get their millions and walk off into the sunset....I hope karma bites them all right in @$$, like it did to the Enron folks.....

Sometimes ya gotta bleed alittle bit...The more the gov't bails out these companies, the more you promote the behavior. "Oh, don't worry the gov't will step in and make it all good"....Uncertain times, for sure.

They let lehman go. They told Merrill they were toast too. But if they let AIG go we'd all be ****ed. At least AIG is a loan and the govt appears to have negotiated pretty steep terms, including senior mgmt must resign.

Blame the politicans & regulators who let these idiots do what they did.

yepp

Chances are that is covered with no issues. Probably falls under ERISA regulations.

Amen man.

Answers to Questions
 

As a few of you guys might know from my earlier posts on this message board, I’ve been working as a financial services rep at MetLife for some time now. The concerns you are expressing are something we deal with on a daily basis. The market is obviously very volatile right now, and proper management of your retirement funds is a critical issue.

You have all been very helpful in the past in answering questions about my SS, and I would like to make myself available to any of you who might have questions about your work or personal investments and retirement planning.

My advice and my time are free to all members of this message board. I can be reached using my PM or my contact information below.

Anthony Stanek
Baypark Financial Group, an Office of MetLife
(908) 698-2071

i forget the actual numbers but the CEOs for Lehman, and AIG and Fannie Mae etc. all walked away with a few billion dollars.

DO NOT DO NOT buy stock in ford. For has been in the crapper for years and have had record loss the past few. On another note does anyone think there is going to be a fix that dosent hurt the tax payers??

lol, i know. In the little i've learned from the past 4 months of watching the stocks, I've seen ford's stocks only grow about 60 cents a share while GM's have grown over $4 a share.

I blame them, I blame those who run the companies and I blame any person who signed on a mortgage that was far beyond what they could afford. And I don't want to hear that people were misinformed or did not know the risks. What's the rule of thumb 28% or 3x your salary or something very close to those numbers. Not 300k on 70k salary coupled with massive credit card debt.

Stupidity abounds and sadly now it will cost us, the taxpayers and those who manage their financial resources in an appropriate manner to the tune of 700 billion +/-...

I wonder what kind of national healthcare plan 700 billion could get us?

Very well put!! Foreclosures is thru the freakin' roof!

Lol my professor at college bought stock in ford years ago and deeply regrets it he lost alot of money. If you want to buy stock in the an automaker toyota is where its at

If you don't want to take the risk of losing out bigtime, you shouldn't look at individual stocks anyway

I know everyone is bitter because of the buy outs, but realistically it is the best thing for the long term economy. If Fanny and Mack had been allowed to fail and had to file, that would have meant the sale of assets, ie: all of your mortgages. Something that very few people know and mortgage companies thankfully rarely take advantage of is the ability to adjust your loan terms without even telling you. Basically, every questionable loan would have been called first thing, everyone would have forclosed, and anyone who managed to keep their home would just have to sit back and watch it devalue while you pay across an increased negative equity thanks to the drop out in proerty values.

It blows, but it is reality. This is no different than the government bailing out the airlines from their own mismanagement or when chrysler got a few billion in help to stay alive. It is a move that is in the best interest of the economy, it leaves the bulk of the working population uneffected, at least not in the horrible way that watching half of the home loans in the country go into default.

The amazing thing is that everything that lead up to this was and remains perfectly legal. It will take them 10 years to rewrie the laws in any effective manner and by then all of these slick accountants will have found a new loophole to exploit.

AIG