Bush Backs Off Forecast of 2.6M New Jobs...

I dunno, Josh hasn't described himself as wealthy, but when he sells his home in the booming market he'll be doing quite well.

I'm not particularly wealthy and I'm certainly doing better now than I was. In fact, this area has pretty much boomed right through the mild recession Bush inhereted from Clinton.

You have stated how well your stock funds did last year. Well guess what Dave? A LOT of little people own stock these days in their 401K plans. Just looked at our statements from '03 and the bottom line looked a heck of a lot better than it did a few years or even a year ago.

The job issue is puzzling. Granted it's a lagging indicator but something is amiss when there is supposedly such suffering and joblessness but people are refinancing and buying bigger homes, etc. at record levels. What is it that Kerry will do to bring the elusive manufacturing jobs back? More environmental regulations and land grabs. Higher taxes on the capital investors? Higher taxes to pay for the socialist programs he advocates? None of Kerry's or Edwards' plans have been articulated to any extent to satisfy the question of what they would do differently that would change anything.

Evie

as equity indices are just returning to pre-recession levels. No one has made money unless they invested when the market was down - we're just regaining what was lost to begin with.

... those who were contributing to their 401K's all along have made money. I know we sure have. For a while there contributions made in 2000 were worth less than paid for. In 2003, all of the contributions made when the market was down are up. There are a large number of "average Joe" stock holders that contribute regularly to a 401K. My bet is the majority of those are looking at their portfolios and seeing a nice bottom line. I'm also seeing houses in my area going for $30K more than they were only a couple of years ago and selling fast meaning there are plenty of qualified byers out there. Somebody must be doing better than all the doom and gloom reports would lead one to believe. My husband is pretty secure in his job as his employer's financial fitness is strong, and quite frankly he is in an industry for which there will always be a need. Manufacturing has been a shrinking part of our job base for a long time, and I think adjusting for all our country has been through in the past 3 years the economy is by all fair assessments strong, growing and better than expected.

Evie

Yes, you're absolutely correct in saying that contributions made during the last 2-3 years are now increasing in value. But for those of us who have been invested for much longer periods of time, the overall effects of this recession are just now being repaired.

The investments I had from before the bubble are doing quite well also. Only those whose portfolios heavily invested during that bubble are really effected negatively when it's all averaged out. Anyone who has been investing in the stock market for the long term should be doing quite well right now unless they were stupid enough to put all their money in Enron. Try as they might, those fiascos cannot be laid blame on Bush.

Evie

about long term gains in the stock market. I was just pointing out that President Bush won't be able to make much of a case that the market has done anything but rebounded from a low during his presidency.

Glad to hear that your long term investments are doing well. Sounds like you're diversified, definitely the way to go for most of us "small" investors.

Hi, Evie.

It all depends on what your 401k is in. If you were heavily into Internet stocks, you aren't close to whole, even if the few survivors (E-bay, Yahoo, Amazon) are doing well lately. My biggest investment is in Dell (bought back in 89, so we're still way ahead), and even though it's now the #1 or #2 PC company (keeps going back and forth with HP/Compaq), it's only 2/3 of its pre-recession high -- and that's among the best performers of the tech stocks.

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
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The opinions expressed above are my own,
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... to diversify. My husband's employer offers many options and we can change things with a phone call or on the internet. The average Joe 401K person is not likely to be heavily into internet stocks. A modicum of common sense would have most long term investors well ahead of the game with today's market.

Evie

But Evie, if Al Gore had been elected President the internet stock bubble wouldn't have burst, Enron would have still been a going concern, and everything would be hunky-dorey. It's all the fault of Bush, remember?

That's still "IF" I sell my home; we're still weighing our options but yes, if we do sell, we'd make a lot of money on it (all of which would go into our new home except for a small amount which we'd put into savings since we have none at the moment).

We were very lucky in that we bought our house in early 1999, and within months after we moved in the entire state of NJ (it seems) saw home prices skyrocket. The downside of that of course is that it is very difficult to find a decent, affordable house in a town with a good school system here.

In our case we are not as well off as we were four years ago, mostly because my wife isn't working as much but also because of the 15% pay cut she had to take last year while AA's top executives were trying to reward themselves with fat bonuses. But we do have this big-money asset -- our house -- which we can use to change that by moving someplace where we can use that money to eliminate (or nearly eliminate) our mortgage and significantly reduce our taxes, thus lowering our cost of living and making us better off even with the lower income.

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