Avoiding Black Friday

Although tradition has it that Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year, this isn't necessarily so. Nevertheless, the thought of all those bargain crazed crowds and the ensuing melee doesn't appeal to CrackedPot who won't be venturing near any stores this day.

Caffeine crisis

Not being a coffee drinker, CrackedPot, (who prefers tea, and caffeine free herbal teas at that), has never set foot in a Starbucks. Sugar³ is a big coffee drinker, but prefers to brew his own at home. We may be the only two people in the country who have never been to Starbucks. But Starbucks has apparently reached the saturation point. After growing like gangbusters for the past few years, the company reported huge losses for the third quarter.

Black Tuesday

October 29th, "Black Tuesday" was the culmination of a three day financial meltdown in 1929 that abruptly ended the the Roaring Twenties and marked the start of the Great Depression of the 1930's. The stock market didn't completely recover from the great stock market crash until the mid 1950's.

Black Monday for Friday

Twenty years ago today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average took a nosedive, plummeting over 500 points in one day. The 1987 crash was the largest single day drop in stock market history, resulting in a nearly 23% decline, which in turn triggered stock market crashes around the world. Because so many factors contributed to the crisis, to this day, astrologists economists can't agree on why this crash occurred.

Many Gekko "Greed is Good" investors from the late '80s lost their tailored shirts that day. CrackedPot remembers news coverage of distraught investors leaping from their high rise corner offices, or of unhinged investors shooting their brokers.