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9172. marjoribanks - 9/30/2008 1:08:32 PM AC,
Those are solid, fundamental questions.
I am also pessimistic about American economic prospects in the medium term, partly for the reasons you state, and partly because Paulson and Co. are clearly handling this crisis with an eye to get back to status quo (when everything was presumably hunky dory) rather than building a new framework. It is an ideological, psychological barrier (see House vote yesterday) and that does not bode well at all for the Yank taxpayer who will undoubtedly shoulder a burden far greater than the numbers being tossed around now.
Is the real economy harmed? Of course it is. I'd say we're pretty damn perilously close to a run on the dollar, for example. If I were a betting man any more (which I am not, thankfully) today my money would be on the odds that it will happen, and then we're going to see a nosedive into a full-blown recession. No one wants to see it, but can it be avoided with these chumps taking flamboyant stances on "socialism" etc?
But naturally the global picture is much more mixed. From my seat in a surging economy, in an exploding marketplace, it looks like there will be clear winners, and many of them are right here next to me. But the losers will inevitably multiply also, I would not want to be a European central banker right now...it's going to be white-knuckle stuff now, and likely for a few years. 9173. marjoribanks - 9/30/2008 1:10:02 PM As for my team, mentioned above, what we have learned today is that there is no such thing as an offer you cannot refuse! 9174. alistairconnor - 9/30/2008 1:39:34 PM I've always found Thomas Friedman's insights to be shallow and facile, at best. It's a measure of the headless-chicken atmosphere that he now sounds like a visionary :
The point is, we don’t just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream — a house with a yard — because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a “liar loan” from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement.
Green the bailout 9175. marjoribanks - 9/30/2008 2:07:21 PM Well, there's no doubt that it was a flat out mistake for so many of my best and brightest contemporaries to go do MBA's and become finance jigglers of one kind or another. A number of them cashed out, made their "nut." But so many of them are leveraged up to to their ears, and now stuck fighting for a place in the few seaworthy lifeboats.
Two of my brothers-in-law among them. Luckily they (took my advice and) heavily paid down their mortgages in 2006 when they both reaped the benefit of that year of record bonuses.
But why the fuck are they in finance, is the fundamental question. They should not have been, it was the lure of easy money that duped them.
Relatedly, it is going to be really ugly in Britain in the next few months. A huge part of Britain's sustained economic surge was due to record City profits and paydays, and the finance sector sucked in a preponderance of the smartest, best-qualified graduates in the country for a solid 8-10 years. They all went out and participated in the greatest real estate boom that the UK has ever seen - London real estate prices are bat-shit crazy out of control - and now it is going to be very, very bad indeed. 9176. jexster - 9/30/2008 3:35:29 PM Now Angela Snirkel is BEGGING us to pass a bailout. Let the Euros Fail too or make em pay
A shattering moment in America's fall from power
The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over 9177. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 9/30/2008 4:02:07 PM This has been a cheery read!
9178. anomie - 9/30/2008 7:13:12 PM I wish the Euro would fall against the dollar a little. Maybe that's the silver lining in a European recession. 9179. jexster - 9/30/2008 11:52:55 PM Nouriel Roubini's RGE Monitor!
I figger the best way to know if you are, as WONKERS would say, being JEWED is to ask an Ayrab
FREE TRIAL!
9180. jexster - 10/1/2008 2:04:15 AM That's a heapin helpin of bengan bartha
Corporate AmeriKa just lost a chunk of wealth the size of India's economy 9182. marjoribanks - 10/1/2008 6:15:39 AM Wizardo,
I was shimmying back-and-forth in my seat to the great, great calypsonian The Mighty Sparrow's entertainingly wonky tribute to Obama, when I saw one of your images embedded in this video.
BTW, calypso has always been an extremely political musical genre. 9183. marjoribanks - 10/1/2008 6:16:58 AM What happened to my post 9182?
9184. wonkers2 - 10/1/2008 7:23:15 AM Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
9185. wonkers2 - 10/1/2008 7:23:37 AM Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
9186. wonkers2 - 10/1/2008 7:25:14 AM 9187. wonkers2 - 10/1/2008 7:26:16 AM Fire and Ice 9188. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 10/7/2008 4:59:29 AM 
9189. jexster - 10/9/2008 6:58:54 PM SEOUL, Oct. 9 -- With its toxic securities and its insistence on open markets, the United States has a lot of nerve and a lot to answer for. That, at least, is what South Korean Finance Minister Kang Man-soo argued as he prepared to leave for a weekend meeting in Washington of finance officials searching for ways to calm the global financial crisis.
Where is the love?
We liberated them with American blood and just like the French, they spit on Old Glory 9190. alistairConnor - 11/8/2008 1:16:14 AM ha. Heard President (of Europe) Sarko on the radio tonight, after the Euro 27 summit preparing for the G20 in Washington next week. He was making pointed remarks about "we know where this world crisis came from, we who are facing the consequences demand to be heard, we want our place at the table, the days of a single world currency are numbered".
Apparently the Europeans have decided that the new world economic order (regulated capitalism) has to be signed and sealed in 100 days, starting next week.
Should give Polson and Obama something to think about. 9191. alistairConnor - 11/8/2008 1:17:03 AM I just voted... at least I think I did... by fax, from my kitchen table in France.
Midnight here... midday on election day in New Zealand.
I'll follow the counting over breakfast.
I've got a strange feeling it's going to be tight as heck!
(but I'm usually wrong about these things)
9192. alistairConnor - 11/8/2008 1:55:58 AM This full-page ad was in NZ's largest circulation daily today
Starting from the top right corner, counting down six and left two, you can see my elder daughter up a tree, overhanging a beach.
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