Friday, September 19, 2008

Financial Meltdown

As the financial markets came to a near collapse during the early part of this week, I, like so many others, found myself with head in hand. The Dow dropped nearly 500 points on Monday after Lehman's bankruptcy, Merril Lynch's merger, and AIG's troubling balance sheet came to light. Then, on Wednesday, stoked by investor pessimism, it dropped 450 points (4.1%) to finish at 10,609.66, its lowest closing level since Nov. 9, 2005. This led me to hastily sell off a sizable portion of my stock portfolio on Thursday morning--ironically, the market jumped about 400 points after I sold. The Fed announced that it plans to enact a bailout program which would take the bad assets off the balance sheets of financial companies, freeing them up to resume conducting business in a somewhat regular fashion, and restore some sense of trust and confidence between institutions. The market has reacted positively over the past 2 days but we'll see how this plays out long term.

Monday, September 15, 2008

The Bunkbed Series

It comes down to this: 2 brothers, former bunkmates, separated across the nation, but united as family, forced to duke it out. In one corner, The Al Pedriques (Desmond B.) bolstered by Chase Utley, Justin Morneau, the ailing Vlad Guerrero, the surging Andre Ethier, and Cliff Lee. In the other corner, The Gordon Geckos (Twainfecta) a.k.a. The Wall St. Whammers who surged from 12th place to 4th place over the course of about 6 weeks just to get into the playoffs, and who now, miraculously, find themselves in this 2-week September Classic. The Geckos boast a lineup of Alfonso Soriano, Jimmy Rollins, Manny Ramirez, Dustin Pedroia, Nate McClouth, et al. And a pitching staff backed by Jon Lester, Brett Myers, Mike Mussina, and a bunch of mediocres.

As these brothers go tete a tete, the question on everyone's mind is: who will end up on top?