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9164. jexster - 9/29/2008 8:49:53 PM Let Europe FAIL! 9165. jexster - 9/30/2008 2:14:19 AM Guardian: US Vote Throws World Markets N2 Turmoil 9166. jexster - 9/30/2008 3:08:32 AM Americans are SO provincial and self absorbed that they NEVER see the larger picture or the danger
1. Sarkozy welcomes Chavez
2. Russia sends squadron to Venezuela
3. SPANISH financial giant Santander buys belly up brit bank Bradford and Bingley
Now how does that fit your worldwide Spanish conspiracy Mandrake??? 9167. jexster - 9/30/2008 4:21:30 AM Wall Street crisis spreads through Europe's banks
Governments forced to bail out banks as turmoil widens 9168. wonkers2 - 9/30/2008 4:38:09 AM Cap'n Dirty sez "Grab yer ass!" 9169. marjoribanks - 9/30/2008 7:01:35 AM Signs of change:
1) My daily newspaper here - I live in a (very) small city in a (very) small state in the subcontinent - carries a front-page article recommending that locals pounce on real estate bargains in the USA and points out that two-bedroom apartments in decent neighborhoods in a half-dozen pleasant Yank cities are far cheaper (sometimes less than 1/3 the price) than here.
2) I advise a publishing house that is franchisee of a major global brand. Today, we got offered the mother ship! And it was easily affordable! And we sat around talking about it seriously for two hours, and turned it down because no one wants to move! And I'm the oldest on this team by three years! What the fuck is happening?
The world has just turned on its head in the span of less than three weeks, totally to the advantage of the younger generations in India and China.
All I can say is Holy Shit. 9170. alistairconnor - 9/30/2008 10:58:12 AM Hang in there a few more weeks... they'll come back cap in hand at a cheaper price... that's the plan eh?
It's an ill wind etc. 9171. alistairconnor - 9/30/2008 11:10:11 AM So, is this a localised US meltdown, or the start of a global depression?
Is the drop in the price of oil a realistic measure of medium-term drop in global demand, or simply the result of panicked speculators dumping contracts?
Is the real economy of the US seriously harmed by the meltdown? Or is it just financial parasites getting blown away?
The reason I am pessimistic about US economic prospects in the medium term, and uncertain about world prospects, is that this is, surely, the moment when the US has to come to terms with the fact that it has indeed been living beyond its means. Hugely profitable investment banks and an army of rich Wall Street traders were the equivalent of the millions of people who used their houses as ATMs. Fundamentally unsustainable, pumped up with foreign loans. 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
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