economy in crisis..

[jablinko 0]

THE IRONY THAT THE LENDING INDUSTRY SHUT DOWN PERSONAL BANKRUPTCY, STUDENT LOAN AND CREDIT CARD AMNESTY, AND IS NOW GETTING A HUGE BAILOUT AT THE TAXPAYERS EXPENSE WOULD BE FUNNY IF IT WERE NOT SUCH A SYMPTOM OF JUST HOW UN-DEMOCRATIC THE U.S. HAS BECOME

 

THE FEDERAL RESERVE IS NO MORE FEDERAL THAN FEDERAL EXPRESS - THEY JUST LEND MONEY TO THE GOVERNMENT AT INTEREST

 

FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IS ONLY SOMETHING BROUGHT OUT WHEN WORKING PEOPLE OWE THE BANKERS MONEY

 

SORRY FOR THE CAPS - RENDERING

[ClintVideo 1]

pixelthief, clinton was also a big proponent of deregulation and barak will probably be one as well (since his cabinet will be much of the same people).

 

 

Change!

[parallax 0]

Oops.

[the_Monkey 8]

The thing that kills me is that you don't have to be an economist to have seen this coming.

You don't have to be the future vice president to know

when you hear it, either.

 

-m

[Guest Sao_Bento]

Paul Krugman had a great line on Real Time with Bill Maher this week - “Like the saying ‘there are no atheists in a foxhole’, there are no libertarians in a financial crisis”.

 

Conservative writer Andrew Sullivan went on to compare the hardcore Friedman free marketers to communists because of their adherence to a dogma that doesn't work in the real world.

[supaidaaman 0]

Hey, at least we aren't graphic designers.

 

Pretty much everyone I know from art school is unemployed or working at starbucks. Their myspace bulletins begging for work.

[pamunoz 0]

With what money.. No ones even buying our debts. Maybe we could pillage canada (sorry canada).

 

 

LOL - sux 2 be us!

 

Wish I was rich! Now would be a good time to buy your country.

Edited September 23, 2008 by pamunoz

[parallax 0]

You don't have to be the future vice president to know

when you hear it, either.

 

-m

 

It still amazes me to see Cheney as a 'thinking man'. How does one change from that to someone who only blurts out nonsense?

[scott frizzle 0]

Paul Krugman had a great line on Real Time with Bill Maher this week - “Like the saying ‘there are no atheists in a foxhole’, there are no libertarians in a financial crisis”.

 

Conservative writer Andrew Sullivan went on to compare the hardcore Friedman free marketers to communists because of their adherence to a dogma that doesn't work in the real world.

 

The inevitable ideological battles from this mess will be unproductive; even dangerous, especially if one "side" wins the spin battle. The problems here are broad based and systemic; blaming the crisis solely on the free market or solely on government intervention misses the point. As far as the comments from Krugman and Sullivan go: considering that the centerpiece of this collapse was the failure of two monolithic quasi government entities, it hardly stands as proof that free marketers have been wrong all along. I don't know of anyone who would support a system with absolutely no government oversight, and I don't know of anyone who would support a system that was fully controlled by government. Finding the right balance is the key.

[parallax 0]

2 words:

 

Greed & growth.

 

Or to quote economist Kenneth Boulding: Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

[jazman 0]

I thought you learned as a kid that if you can't afford something, then you shouldn't buy it.

 

It's not quite that simple. Everybody's situation is different.

[mete_shop 0]

For further education. A fantastic interview on Bill Moyer's Journal with Ken Phillips: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09192008/watch2.html

[RustyAce 0]

may I be the first to say, wtf?

 

I used the ignore btn on him a long time ago, (Z that is, not fishface)

Edited September 23, 2008 by RustyAce

[the_Monkey 8]

"The ugly thing about this is this is privatizing gains and socializing losses."

 

"So when things are going well, the managements make out, the shareholders make out, the counterparties are fine. All the private sector people do well. But when something goes wrong, when decisions are made that turn out to be bad decisions, the U.S. taxpayer has to take on the problem."

[silatix 0]

"The ugly thing about this is this is privatizing gains and socializing losses."

 

Ya i heard that line in a pizza place yesterday. Must be the buzz line of the week. Though, true..

Edited September 23, 2008 by silatix

[parallax 0]

It's not quite that simple. Everybody's situation is different.

 

Unfortunately, it is that simple.

 

Mind you, i'm not talking about education or (housing even). Too many people take on loans for consumption, that's just plain stupid.

[scott frizzle 0]

Unfortunately, it is that simple.

 

Mind you, i'm not talking about education or (housing even). Too many people take on loans for consumption, that's just plain stupid.

 

I agree. Once it becomes too much to ask for people to behave like responsible adults, the jig is up.

[Guest Sao_Bento]

Unfortunately, it is that simple.

 

Mind you, i'm not talking about education or (housing even). Too many people take on loans for consumption, that's just plain stupid.

For the most part, this is correct. It's funny to hear talk radio filled with people calling in and complaining that no one in their right mind should have given them a loan. I expect that this may bring about a new level of respect for the concept of living within your means - however that's going to be bad for the American economy.

[the_Monkey 8]

Must be the buzz line of the week. Though, true..

I've been hearing a lot of Financial Steroids.

Maybe Congress would get to the bottom of the Subprime Mortgage Scandal (aka Credit Crisis) if we called it Financial Steroids.

 

BTW, I've listened to both the Bill Moyers and This American Life podcasts that were recommended in this thread and I would add my vote that both should be required listening for everyone. Excellent journalism.

 

This thread has offered a great deal of education, perspective, and catharsis.

 

-m

[Duder 0]

You know, I'm pretty much sick and tired of these corporate pigs running our country. This isn't what the U.S.A. is about.

 

I miss the 90's :glare:

[weikee 0]

imagine 8 years of al gore instead of the bush administration.. would this still be happening?

 

it seems that economies closely industrially and commercially aligned to china (germany, sweden, australia etc) have weathered this storm reasonably well so moving to china might be an option. the real estate markets in these economies are also fundamentally different from the situation in the us and i guess in europe, to the most degree uk and spain.

 

the middle east and growing economies like china and india will come out of this a lot stronger which might be a good thing in the long run.

[monovich 0]

imagine 8 years of al gore instead of the bush administration.. would this still be happening?

 

Yes, and you can fill in any name in there that you want. it would still be happening. to blame this on a president is naive. there were much stronger forces at play here: nobody would have stood in the way of the stampeding horses of economic growth and the proof of that is that very very few (if anyone) did - in any of the three branches of government (or the Fed). You can blame deregulation on the republicans, but I think this was ultimately caused by the american people's relentless appetite for borrowing and the american corporation's addiction to borrowed money. When a car company is willing to lend you 20k for 0% just so you will buy its car, is it so hard to see how that is going to come back around and bite everybody?

 

Now people are all on the talk shows complaining about how they all saw it coming? We all probably saw it coming but we all probably thought we could ride the wave until just before it crested.

 

America isn't founded on the constitution anymore, its founded on credit cards, H2s, plasma TVs, Cribs, TMZ, and lobbyists.

 

This NPR story that aired last Wednesday was one of the most lucid explanations I'd heard so far of the whole thing, and after listening to it I drew my own conclusions about what was going to happen down the road and started shuffling the few cards I have to play if/when it does.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=94686428

 

---

 

I was five days from closing on a half million dollar home in LA in 2006 (in the ghetto). My loan agent was screaming "sign! sign! sign!" Nobody had given me any numbers of the loan, but they all said it would be no more than I was currently paying for rent ($1600).

When I finally saw the numbers four days from closing, they had put my income at 20k per month, the NEGATIVE AMMORTIZATION loan payment was about 5k a month, but I'd still be in the red 1k per month on the overall loan. The loan would have adjusted in a few years, and the rate/payment would have gone up. Nobody verified any of my information, just my credit score.

I did some reading about the market, and found that it was just starting to soften, so my promised 20% yearly gains weren't going erase the 12k in debt the loan would have added every year.

 

I remember pulling out of that house (and pissing a bunch of people off) and thinking to myself "This shit is about to pop".

 

If a stupid mographer with no college degree could figure that out and pulled out of that fake economy, I wish our elected officials could have done it also.

[aspekt 0]

there was a story on cnn a while back basically saying the same thing . how a lady making 50k a year bought a house for 500k...seriously, how the hell are you gonna cover something like that. And then she was trying to sue the loan officer for getting her approved for the loan. it's so stupid you almost want to see it go down on judge judy.

[ClintVideo 1]

The scary thing is how far this has spread throughout the banking industry; like that podcast pointed out, people were bundling these worthless mortgages into securities with a safe rating, then selling those. They've sucked in so many people, companies, and facets of our economy that it's going to be hell trying to sort it out.

 

Once these guys were able to make up these securities and sell 'em, that's when it appears to have run away on them. Think of that guy in the podcast who was simply trying to find out who to negotiate with on his mortgage but couldn't actually locate a single entity that owned it. So many funds, banks, investors, whatever have their money tied up in these worthless mortgages, that everybody's anchored to it. Yikes.

 

Cf

[microdot 0]

I can totally see the high power money men checking their secret account for that last payoff, before they board the leer jet to party

with Ken Lay on a secret beach somewhere.