Today, Paulson said that he's changed his mind and they aren't going to buy up mortgages using the TARP funds. Now the name of the program: "Troubled Assets Relief Program" is a real misnomer, but I guess they are still trying to give relief to institutions with troubled assets. When the TARP was first proposed, many commentators argued that buying stock in the troubled institutions would make more sense due to leverage that banks balance sheets could provide to turn that capital into a much larger amount of new loans. But now that the government has finally decided to mainly do that (of course they have been doing that in practice) the Dow falls another 400 points. I guess investors have no confidence in the government after all these twists and turns.
Of course this fall battered my poor accounts again and I am again in a margin call. There is a chance that another account may soon be totally wiped out unless things turn around fast.
On a more positive note, I have a meeting set up in about ten days with a guy who maybe can either hire me as a researcher or work with me on developing a proposal that could fund me. On the website, opinions seem pretty divided between .org and .com. I'm leaning to .com following my brother's advice and that maybe in the future I'd offer consulting services via the website.
P.S.
I registered my domain (.com) and applied for webhosting and I'm working on editing my old webpages from my former university site to be ready for my new site. Also I've registered for an open day (2 days actually) in my disciplinary area at the local university. It'll be a chance to meet all the relevant people. I also just contacted a senior professor about some lectureship jobs (assistant professor in American) that are currently being advertised here. I was an external examiner for one of his PhD students. I'm also putting the finishing touches on an academic paper I co-wrote with Snork Maiden.
3 comments:
Margin calls are never pretty, and once you have one, you are usually on such thin buffers that another isn't far away. I had one in mid-October where I had to liquidate about 10% of my holdings, and have been skating in and out of buffer since. It frustrates me, because I see this as a fantastic entry point, but all my disposable income is being used in avoiding margin calls rather than being able to buy at good prices.
It's a common problem for those of us who are (were?) comfortable to use gearing and have been investing in equities for many years - just when we'd love to buy into the market at discount prices, it turns out that we've blown all our investible funds buying into the market at what have turned out to be 'bad' prices.
BTW, since domain name rego is quite cheap, why not register the .org domain for your name and have it redirect to your .com website?
rooting for you during your time of transition!
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