Bloomberg's top story right now:

"U.S. Stocks Gain, Led by Banks; Citigroup, Wal-Mart, IBM Rise "

Optimists or Plunge Protection Team at work? Below is an interesting study of optimists...

The Downside of Optimism
By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 12 November 2007 07:28 am ET

http://www.livescience.com/health/071112-optimists-lose.html

'Optimism, it turns out, is best in moderation.

'People who have a rosy outlook are more likely than others to make prudent financial decisions, but those who are extreme optimists make riskier investments and save less money than others, a new study finds.

Manju Puri and David Robinson, professors of finance at Duke University in Durham, N.C., compared statistical and self-reported life expectancies to determine people's levels of optimism.'...snip...

'The researchers compared the self-reported life expectancies with statistical ones, grouping participants who expected to live longer than the data predicted as "optimists." Participants who expected to live an average of 20 years longer than is statistically likely were labeled "extreme optimists."

In moderation, optimism can lead to sensible decision making, but extreme optimists “display financial habits and behavior that are generally not considered prudent,” the authors write in the October issue of the Journal of Financial Economics.

The results held across demographic, risk-taking dispositions and health-related issues.

They find that compared with others, optimists:

Work longer hours
Invest in individual stocks
Save more money
Are more likely to pay their credit card balances on time
Believe their income will grow over the next five years
Plan to retire later, or not at all
Are more likely to remarry if divorced
In comparison, extreme optimists:

Work significantly fewer hours
Hold a higher proportion of individual stocks in their portfolios
Are more likely to be day traders
Save less money
Are less likely to pay off their credit card balances on a regular basis
Are more likely to smoke
“The differences between optimists and extreme optimists are remarkable and suggest that over-optimism, like overconfidence, may in fact lead to behaviors that are unwise,” Puri said.'...snip...

I checked http://finance.google.com and got: (bolding mine)

Sector Change % down / up
Basic Materials -3.86%
Capital Goods -1.25%
Conglomerates -0.21%
Cons. Cyclical +0.68%
Cons. Non-Cyclical -0.14%
Energy -3.54%
Financial +0.76%
Healthcare +0.66%
Services -0.27%
Technology -0.67%
Transportation +0.84%
Utilities -0.79%

Stuff like this is puzzling to me. Every supply and demand fundamental I thought I understand flies out the window.

I guess we will be counting our money, cold, in the dark?

Maybe the economists have a way of replacing the fuel tank on our machines with a credit-card slot? We can simply tell our machines that we have money, therefore they will work. If they still refuse to work without fuel, we can always call for a court order from a judge to demand them to comply.

shargash, speaking of the accounting changes mentioned in the comments at the end of Kunstler's article, I visited the links regarding those changes.

I was sufficiently concerned that I called a relative who is an accountant in the employ of one of the US states. Listening to her was like reading an article from Daily Reckoning or Financial Sense; without any prompting from me she described some of the state's investments as "garbage", used the phrase "blow up", and concluded with "it's not good".

She's concerned about ever receiving her pension.

Now I'm scared.

PLAN, PLANt, PLANet
Errol in Miami