It's been said that if you want to see a man at his worst, observe his behaviour when he has no money. The same might hold true for corporations. We've got our capitulation, but there aren't a whole lot of people out there right now with any desire to own common stock. Maybe the value of public companies will just keep on going down. It's possible. That would then throw us into a depression like it did last time. You ready for that? The more likely scenario is a horribly slow recovery with a sustained and wild bottom. The economy actually turned around months ago. But it may be that the stock market might follow quite a ways behind - or even possibly never recover. The similiarities to 1929 are striking. For several years owning stock was the way to get rich quick. Any stock - they all went up. There was a big tech bubble, and it imploded. But investors lost more than confidence in individual stocks. They saw first-hand how much pain the market can cause and most of them got out for good. That's what sent the Dow down to something like 48 - but three years after the peak. It just kept sliding and nobody was buying. Owning stock now was a tainted experience. Retirement funds were wiped out - the entire reason Social Security was proposed a few years later. Since the companies had no more outside funding, many shriveled up and died throwing huge amounts of people out of work.

So how are we to know? Just keep watching the squiggly line. If it starts to level off and even waffles between 5000 and 8000 for six months we'll be fine. If it gets to say 3K in the next month or two - you'll get a chance to observe all us men at our worst - all at once.

Been a while since I looked at my remaining stock options. Since the expiration was extended last year it's kinda' cool to know that I still have about 36,000 shares of AOL for a few more months. That's a lot of stock. Oh, but I have to buy it at like 54 dollars and change. It's selling currently for about eleven. Oh well. A nostalgic look back at the dot-com days. If the price goes to 64 it's 360k dollars. 94 and it's over a million. That's what it did just a few years ago. But those options vanish in a couple of months. Not even a phantasmal event could pull off ever seeing a penny. Well hang on. A federal judge might force Microsoft to give its core assets to the plaintiff in that pesky old antitrust case. That would do it. Hey, as long as I know it's a fantasy it causes no harm. Allow me to dwell on that thought for a few minutes.

Nah, wrong scenario. Let's try this. Microsoft admits to accounting scandals going back decades and goes bankrupt. The infamous 40 billion cash reserve turns out to be vapor. (Surprise?) The initial shock would probably drive the dow to 3k, but any software company left standing would get a quick infusion.