Economic Warfare

[Dayuhan]

I'm not sure that's true this time around. We've allowed a lot of otherwise unhealthy companies to thrive, and have even allowed them to continue, in general, the unhealthy practices which got us all into this spot in the first place. We're getting rid of liar loans in the housing market (largely through the wholesome and healthy method of drying up credit almost completely), but we still have a derivatives bubble of between $500 trillion and $1.5 quadrillion.

Largely true, but those are consequences of bad policy, not of short selling or of some shadowy conspiracy driven by AQ, the Albanian Mafia, Dr. Evil, or any similar entity. Economic policy that is shortsighted, driven by immediate political expedience, and/or just plain dumb has been a consistent theme since the mid/late 90s... and before, but that makes a reasonable start point, as it's where the current crisis really began to build.

What "got us all into this mess in the first place" is debatable and deserves more debate. Politicians of both parties have made a consistent and largely successful effort to lay all the blame on Wall Street, thus conveniently absolving themselves, but in truth Wall Street, main Street, and Washington DC all carry a lot of responsibility, with the latter probably carrying the most.

Regarding stock price, "prolonged" is pretty relative, considering that we're trading over tens of milliseconds nowadays.

Trading is very fast, yes, but the impact of stock price on a company's ability to raise funds or on boardroom stability plays out over a much longer period of time. A company has to be in pretty precarious shape to collapse because the stock price dropped for a few weeks.