back to article Cisco joins Dow, as GM jettisoned

Let the metaphor mixing begin. With American car maker General Motors filing for bankruptcy, the Dow Jones company - which puts together the eponymous industrial average to gauge the strength of the stock market and, in turn, the U.S. economy - had to yank GM from the DJIA index this morning. GM will be permanently removed …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tell Me A Story

    Well, we're in a real pickle like sitting ducks being shot at like fish in a barrel.

    Isn't the DOW like the old biblical name of the tribe's God, too holy to be spoken? In a fictional economy, wherein fudged numbers and immigration practices, (run like a shell game to hide minimum wage labourers needed to prop up industries currying favour with an overpaid middleclass, service sector), the DOW is the equivalent of a Siberian, shaman's greater daemon whose otherworldly force vanquishes the spirits of all contentious tribes. Economists/Shamans mutter incomprehensible phrases steeped in maths based religion and urge the unwashed to brandish the newest, consumer gadgets in a frenzy of conspicuous consumption that would have made Aldus Huxley unsure whether it was his deathbed hit of mescaline talking or his worst Brave New World nightmares come true. The true nightmare monster rearing its ugly head is that there will be a world population of 9 bln, and, if 9 bln, then the force of inertia says it will hit 12 bln before any policies we put in place today will begin to take effect. What all this means is that we have to shake our booty and buy, buy, buy hoping the spin off will be R&D that will provide tech driven solutions to our demographic problems. To this end let the DOW speak as though the word of God and the tribe members twitter and post on internet, spun tech casting a glimmer over a dark future.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The U.S. is under economic seige

    Bama is doing all he can to massacre the U.S. economy. Today he eliminated tens of millions of U.S. jobs and thousands of auto company suppliers. Bama-nomics ain't working and the world will pay for this folly.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ahem!

    "aluminum" -> aluminium

    Before the Britards forget how it's supposed to be spelt. Or spelled. Or whatever.

  4. Eddy Ito
    Alert

    How now Dow cow.

    The Dow isn't any more effective as an economic indicator than inflation is. How can it when it literally becomes a case of comparing apples or oranges. The Dow does it when prices of an index stock goes down and the government changes the index items in the inflation basket when prices go up. Ok we have a stock index whose composition is subject to the whims of Dowager Jones and an inflation index that looks great as long as we don't count food, energy or healthcare. Sorry but it's hard to see the relevance of any of it through this heavy rose colored tint on these glasses.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And if we dig deep enough....

    We'll probably find that all those years back GM replaced "American Buggy Whip" or "National Corset Company" in the Dow.

  6. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

    I've never believed in the stock market

    Since the dot com boom of the late 90's when companies like freeserve(remember them) had a higher stock value than companies like ICI despite the fact their turnover was like about 1% of ICI's and never made a profit too

    PS for all you stock brokers out there... I've got a bridge you could buy... made from brass... very unique.. yours for A$ 50 000

  7. Rich
    Thumb Down

    @mindbrane

    Sorry, you just failed your Turing Test.

  8. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Sigh... GM...

    GM has been dying since the '70s and has been too egotistical to seriously consider any reform to stop it. You can see with the current battles that the UAW STILL won't listen to reason.

    You thought the British car industry labor woes were bad... we've got it tenfold. Now ours is dying just like yours did.

  9. Pierre
    Alert

    Why Cisco and not Google or Yahoo?

    Well, call me cynic but aren't Yahoo and Google using open-source software? They're not gonna let the commies in the Dow! So they took the second-sorry, third-sorry, fourth-sorry [...] twentieth best. The first who don't use commie OSS. Given the failure rate of non-OSS-using-companies, in 3 years they'll have to let in some e-bay traders to avoid the OSS commies! I can't wait. At long last, the Dow will reach its natural level: only slighly lower than the Lagos Stock Exchange. Mouarf.

  10. amanfromMars Silver badge
    Flame

    Booming Bust ...... A Growth Industry fueled by Profit/Money for Nothing and Ponzi Servers*

    With particular regard to the motor industry and the hundreds of thousands of unsold stock units parked in vast and fast depreciating fields/holding pens ..... an expensive expansive sea of yesterday models, would you buy one of them?

    To do so means that both present and future labour production is penalised and the same collapse cycle perpetuated/maintained.

    And have you considered that currency is a manufactured manufacturing vehicle which when wisely distributed to smarter spenders rather than delivered to blinged bankers, would energise industry with its leading purchases which would encourage production of improved replacement models for future clients. Nowadays, with consumers getting smarter quicker and gaining more global knowledge, is more of the same overpriced* goods, a thing of the past.

    Banks and bankers are a problem, because they are stupidly designed to create and imprison one and all with debt rather than liberate and nurture one with imaginative credit.

    And as the system, which is in catastrophic spiralling meltdown, has not been changed at all, but rather it, the system, [and that would be personalised and have to be attributed to whomever would be responsible and accountable and recognised as the system's administrators] thought to invent and introduce conspicuous free liquidity/untold wealth from nowhere/quantitatively eased monopoly money, and deposit it with itself, those self same institutional zeroes who are/have been the Root Cause of the Great Global Problem ...... in essence, the active creators of all present chaos and dysfunction with inventive debt perpetration/fiscal and monetary imprisonment of the human spirit* ..... is it destined/fated to continue apace at an accelerated rate, but ever more accurately targeted and sustained against the problem's root cause.

    * Anything which has profit added to cost is overpriced, by vicious virtue of the fact that profit is an arbitrary sum added to generate higher costs in a higher price to generate money for nothing, and will create an artificial hyperinflationary bubble which will eventually burst catastrophically with the base realisation of the fundamental folly.

    And when wealth can be generated from nothing, why is debt created rather than credit given?

    Is it to give crippling powers to those who control money supply, for as we now all know, making money is easy whenever it is printed paper? But whenever it is not backed up with an Viable Intellectual Property supply, is it as a hopeless Junkie chasing a Dragon for a Reality Hit.

    Methinks the Indisputable and Abiding Powerful Control of Words and Common Sense will always Trump the Fleeting and Artificial Controlling Power of Goods and Phoney Profit.

  11. Martin Nicholls
    Gates Halo

    @Boris

    "freeserve(remember them) had a higher stock value than companies like ICI despite the fact their turnover was like about 1% of ICI's and never made a profit too"

    It's all about market cap, if /I/ was floated in the market and issued 2 shares they might go for $10,000 each, making my total worth $20,000 - and Microsoft might issue hundreds of billions of shares and they might be worth $0.50 each and they'd still be worth billions as a company. I really hope people haven't been assuming company worth just by it's share price ignoring the other numbers, though it might explain the s**t we're in now if they were...

    As for Cisco not being in the DOW before now, it always seemed like a strange omission to me, but really these indexes just rely on the people involved a) wanting to be in them, and, b) that DOW wants them to be in the list, it's not like there's a science behind it.

    The FTSE 100 is no different, it's all about who they want to be in the list based on no real logic.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @Rich (re mindbraine)

    just ignore him, he's just a manfrommars wannabe....

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @amanfromMars

    The issues are thorny and, without exception, as far as I can tell, those trying to grasp them are bleeding red ink. The auto industry should be retooled and turn out pale, but green products. The bankers and credit companies are the thorns. Economies of scale dictate the need for bankers and credit companies but their unregulated greed seems systemic and the old saw of "moral suasion" on the part of Central Banks seems to have fallen on deaf ears. The system is troubled but not in terminal, free fall. There is a, relatively nascent micro credit sector immersing and, if a progressive, tax policy can be put in place to support it then, IT can possibly provide the means to allow individuals enmass to by pass much of the, for bloated profit, credit companies practices pursue. IT permits fast, relatively unrecorded transactions that for generations have passed as a "Shadow Economy" that has been the bane of Internal Revenue Depts. The proper software, web portals and government oversight could provide liquidity and tax revenues (and tax incentives) to drive the economy based on micro transactions. Tax incentives could be in the present form of tax write offs given for donations to thrift stores and charities. It's mostly just a matter of harnessing the existing web conduits and providing micro exchange/taxation software. Third world countries could benefit from excess discards. The Cargoe Gods could again alight in distant lands and perhaps natural resources could be taken in return, not to mention exporting potentially hazardous garbage to countries that could break it down and recycle it much cheaper than we can. This "microrevolution" in economics is viable, it just needs to be facilitated.

    @Rich & AC, bring it on, if you'd care to I'm easy to find, not a very nice guy and kinda like scars... it's your call. Cheers :)

  14. amanfromMars Silver badge

    Wanted ....Smarter Banking*

    "The bankers and credit companies are the thorns." ..... By mindbrane Posted Tuesday 2nd June 2009 12:13 GMT

    Indeed they may most certainly be that part of the rose, mindbrane, and as they are part of the landscape, it would be ungallant of anyone to want to sweep them away simply because they would have thought themselves untouchables and in charge of everything and able to control everyones' lives with paper and ink. But they are now on very shaky ground and would do well to ....... well, I believe the phrase is, reconsider their position, which would most definitely equate to their strategy and partners.

    Microtransactions with web savvy conduits, which in essence would/could/should be Virtual Machinery and their AIgents working for Banking, in their Parallel Virtualised Dimensions and Programs, aka Cloud Projects, and which they [the Establishment] would host and harvest /seed and sow with nothing more onerous or difficult than the simple facility of providing Driver Credit and Quantitatively Eased Funds, which is a No Cost/No Pain Gain Game Plan requiring nothing of them but a simple Yes to a Third Party Request for an Unlimited Liquidity Facility, from Canny Savvy Conduits into Global Macros, would keep them in the Great Game rather than them being extraordinarily rendered as AIdDinosaurs with Rapid Extinction and Easy Replacement, because of their Inaction/Inappropriate Fit for Future Purpose Action and Virtual Reality Market Place Ignorance.

    They do not need to know the in and outs of what they are investing in to be able to Create a New Market, with those who are Virtually New and SurReally Remote IDEntities, and who would know more than enough to allay all of their fears and/or concerns, for I'm pretty sure that, in a parallel situation, they would have no idea about the workings of the nuclear bomb industry but it does not suffer from any lack of funds and research investment/currency flow. Currency Flow is the Life Blood of Systems and blocking it and/or trying to control it, will always put one in Clear and Present Danger of a Catastrophic Retaliatory Strike, for who or what would give them the right to decide and dictate terms, on a sum requested for something which they may not understand but for which funding has been publicly vowed and provided, for that very purpose ..... Regenerating the Economy and Fixing the Broken System .

    Some Souls can very easily Decide exactly what they Need and Want for themselves and others and do not require any Other Outside Guidance, which would invariably only be cynically designed to Offer a Third Party Control of a First Party Enterprise. In Virtual CyberSpace Environments are such Shenanigans a Real No-No and only Invite Punitive Damage. Hell ....... it is a simple fact that you cannot take wealth with you and it cannot be destroyed, only converted into another form and transferred, so that means that All of the Wealth of the World since Time and Space began is Always Currently Available, and to Imagine any of it as belonging to anyone or anything is the Height of Absurd Nonsense and a Certifiable Madness which is Exercised to Enslave and deliver Disadvantage and Inequitable Advantage, subject to the Whim of a Few.

    And for a currency to consider itself too big and ubiquitous to fail by virtue of the fact that it only prints itself and paints itself as too big to fail, because it was so specifically designed to Create such a Mountain of Debt which will and can never be repaid, is a Delusional Hubris built upon the Quicksands of a Certain Madness hoping for Ignorance as a Saviour in a World and Virtual Environment of much Smarter Communicating Machinery ....... Global Operating Devices sharing Alternate Reality Truths for Present Placement of Future Roots .

    Such Hubris did for GM, did it not?

    *The Smarter Banker will immediately realise that that is not Option it can afford to Ignore/Turn Down/Reject for the Myths which sustain the System are being exposed/torn down/evaporating and to defend them and/or expect things to remain pretty much as they are and were, is suicidal and real dumb in Better Beta Worlds ....... for Mankind has made AI and a Quantum Leap in Consciousness.

    Which you will notice is not a Question.

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