MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“What’s next for the U.S. of AA+”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, August 14, 2011
The free market’s in free fall! Wait, it’s zooming up again! Hold on a second, the stocks are tumbling now! But not for long they aren’t! Here comes another U-turn!
You enjoying AA+?
Since Standard & Poor’s took America’s AAA away, Treasury bill yields have grown cheaper, not more expensive like they were supposed to. And the stock market has turned into a whiplash machine. Does anyone anywhere know how to play this game? Those of us who’ve been writing about it keep running out of exclamation points and question marks.
There comes a moment in times like these — here it is — when the only sane response is to cover our ears, lower our expectations and pray we get out alive. Yes, the ride’s been breathless. No, no one has a clue when or where it will end.
Here’s what we do know, and it isn’t very much: We know the 12 senators and representatives on the debt-cutting super committee. We all know that all their government whacking won’t create new jobs. We know our houses aren’t worth what they used to be. We know retirements are further and further away.
And we know something else, too: No matter how much we fret about it, here it comes.
JUST IGNORE IT
1. Falling real estate
2. Shrinking retirement
3. Growing debt
4. Expanding waistline
5. Shriveling self-esteem
THE NEWS IN SONG:
All we need is some relief.
Matchbox Twenty, “These Hard Times.”
tinyurl.com/timeshard
ASKED AND UNANSWERED:
Which is it, Joe Mondello? Is the Republicans’ Nassau County redistricting map “fair and equitable”? Or does it give 
GOP candidates “a little bit of a leg up”? Can both really be true? . . . Sir Bill Bratton? . . . Shootout in a Holbrook gas station? What would have happened if one of those bullets hit one of those pumps? . . . Really, how hard is it to say, “I’m sorry”? It took a lawsuit, but Stony Brook U president got the words out. . . What’s the strongest argument FOR moving the Islanders to Queens? Is it that geographic technicality: “Well, Queens is kinda Long Island”? Or is it the Jersey card: “The Giants and the Jets still 
claim New York”? . . . Can this marriage be saved? Ron Stack and Ed Mangano? The NIFA chief and Nassau exec are TRYING to get along . . . We’re a hot spot – for mortgage fraud? Thanks for the honor, FBI! . . . How come the really, really big ones never seem to swim to our side of the Sound? Off Westbrook, Conn., Greg Myerson just pulled in an 82-pound striped bass, which the old-timers at Jack’s Shoreline Bait are calling an all-tackle world record.
LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK:
GEORGE DAW
This one was just too dumb to stand: Good-guy school-bus driver George Daw, getting fired for picking up three 
stranded police detectives stuck in a hailstorm on the side of the road. That’s a firing offense? Not for long, it wasn’t, at the chastened Educational Bus Transportation company in Hauppauge. Not after Daw, the cops and the United Service Workers Union brought some sanity and publicity to bear. The Good Samaritan driver had been sacked on the technicality of picking up strangers with kids still aboard. Now that the rest of the story’s been told, Daw said he is weighing other job offers.
E-mail ellis@henican.com.
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Ellis: The stock market is a casino the only slight advantage you have is being shrewd on your portfolio and anticipating rough times, countering with a more conservative and defensive mix of securities but that strategy is not foolproof. I had a 403B plan (govt 401 K) and I retired at 56 on an offer so that I could form my writing business. I immediately rolled over the 403B into my Traditional IRA which resided in an account at a wonderful Internet broker where the laptop does not give you the hard sell.Now instead of being restricted by what I could buy and the time frame to buy or sell I could change the old portfolio to a defensive one in minutes. I knew we were going to sink and volatility set in because this faux bull market had one underpinning, earnings achieved by no hiring and cut backs. So months ago I kept my Dow stocks which will never leave and added safe income mutual funds in federal bonds and quality corporates. For my troubles I am sent $300-400/month in dividends and I sleep well at night. I am not licensed but 25 years experience investing.