Both the Celtics and Bruins have had their seasons ended. They both had great seasons but it's tough to watch your teams go down. The B's somewhat overachieved this year, but showed a lot of heart coming back from 3-1 to force a game 7 and push that game into overtime. I heard Tom Carron on WEEI today say that this years Bruins is similar to the 2003 Red Sox team. They gained a lot of experience and put themselves in position to win in game 7. They are very young and have a solid nucleus on the team. Hopefully they'll be able to take this as a learning experience and improve over the offseason. The Celtics took one on the chin last night. They looked tired out there. After playing with seven guys and pretty much no points from the bench against the Magic, you could see the wear and tare on the starters. We really saw Rondo and Big Baby mature in front of our eyes this year. With KG and Poe back next year, a couple of additions to add to the bench, and the C's will be right back in contention next year. Cav's vs Magic will be a fun series to watch. You'll see two of the most athletic players in the NBA facing off with Lebron and Dwight Howard. Look for Lebron to be Lebron and lead Cleveland to the championship series.
While the stock market continues to rise, the underlying fundamentals of companies, and our economy as a whole, is rotting. Last week we saw a higher than expected initial claims figure and a deeper than expected contraction in retail sales. Both of these indicators show that the consumer is no where near gaining any traction. The more the consumer cuts back, the more their collective psychology changes. The deterioration in the initial claims means that loan defaults (mortgage, credit card, auto, etc) will continue to rise and retail will continue to suffer. This will then put further pressure on the banks. Since many of the "toxic assets" the banks are holding are securitized by some type of loan, this will force them to write down more losses. These losses will be offset by the orchestrated secondary offerings issued by banks. The faux "stress test" results allowed bank share prices to basically double, if not more, in the past two months, to recapitalize to try and cushion themselves from the second wave down which we are approaching.
I'm getting sick and tired of mainstream economists touting a second half recovery in 2009. The nominal figures may show some signs of growth but that will only be temporary due to the massive stimulus packages. Once that wares off, the taxpayers will be left out to dry. The more we go into debt the more we are taking away from standard of living of future generations. These bailouts NEED to stop. This is America, if a company isn't making money then it should fail as the others who came before it. I feel as if the people of this country don't care anymore. If we collectively took some time and reflected on some of the things that are going on around us, a revolution should soon take place. Once the taxpayers realize the government has looted them to bailout the very same people who brought us into this mess, there will be hell to pay. The funny thing, not funny at all actually, is that the media is cheering about the banks repaying TARP money but they don't say a peep about the fact that the insurance companies are now replacing banks as the next in line for the taxpayers money. This has got to end somewhere. When will people wake up? Please prepare yourself by upping your financial literacy and building some rainy day funds because when the realization that we are in a depression right now starts to go mainstream, most people will wish a rainy day was the least of their problems.
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