How does financial crisis strike you?
After all the screaming headlines and doom and gloom of the last few days, we got to wondering whether the government's bailout plans have made people feel better. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman went to find out.
Pedestrians walk by the New York Stock Exchange in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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TESS VIGELAND: One of the rules of roller-coaster riding is to hang on to anything that could go flying out while you're upside down -- including your wallet. No different with this week's stock market -- even if you're not involved in Wall Street's day-in, day-out nuttiness.
But we wondered whether today's actions made people, generally, you know, feel better after all the screaming headlines and doom and gloom of the last few days. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman went to find out.
MITCHELL HARTMAN: Most of the people I talked to are worried about what all the financial turmoil will mean for the economy down the road. For now, they're watching and waiting to see if the latest government moves will stabilize things.
RUTH PARNALL: I suppose people think it's going to make it better.
Ruth Parnall is 64, a landscape architect in western Massachusetts.
Parnall: I really don't know. But it makes me angry that they're doing it at all. Angry because banks that were deregulated and behaved badly and with extremely poor judgment and a lot of greed are now in trouble and the taxpayes are footing the bill.
Parnall would just as soon see these banks and brokerages fail. Still, her own investments have taken a hit and she'd like them to rebound before she retires.
Owen Leiser doesn't have any investments, so he doesn't feel personally endangered. He's a graduate student at Arizona State University in Tempe.
OWEN LEISER: I don't like the idea of taxpayers bailing out every single bank that Is going to go under. But, yeah, I think from time to time, the government has a responsibility to keep things afloat and keep things moving.
Josh Ellyson, on the other hand, has been burned by investment failures before. He's 57, an IT worker in Portland, Oregon.
JOSH ELLYSON: You wonder at the end of the day, Will this really do it? I think we've been shaken in our confidence of the experts a bit.
Ellyson wants to see at least a few weeks without huge ups and downs on the market before he's ready to invest again.
I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
Comments
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From Austin, TX, 09/19/2008
"Serendipitous Speculation" comes to mind. The speculators have taken the profits and the taxpayers will now take the losses. What makes the Federal Reserve sacrosanct? The present disaster is clearly the work of "Bubbles" Greenspan and "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke. They deliberately created the greatest "bubbles" of all time -- but conformist economists do not dare criticize them!
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