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Low interest rates, a strengthening dollar, 6% unemployment, positive economic growth. Sure looks like the brink of a depression to me. But the news on the bail-out package will make for a bad day on Wall Street tomorrow. We'll survive.
Yeah, the dollar is "strengthening" to the point that the oil exporters are seriously considering "de-coupling" from the dollar--which, were that done, would send the US into an inflationary tizzy that would make every American's head spin.
Even if the bailout package even does pass, which is up in the air right now, it will still trash the dollar. Unemployment at 6% would have been considered unacceptable just a few years ago--pretty soon we will look back at 6% with complete nostalgia.
I would be delighted if I was dead wrong and we escape from this mess, but I'm not Pollyannish enough to think that is very likely at all. One of the main reasons for my pessimism is the very fact that far too many Americans aren't even willing or able to acknowledge that a) we have a huge problem; and b) we still haven't figured out as a country what led to this brink of disaster. We all think that things can just go on as they have been, and things will be OK. They can't and they won't.
There were plenty of people, including the President of the United States, who said the economy in 1929 was fundamentally healthy--right up to the point that it collapsed.
PS--Most people survived the Great Depression, too, but it sure as hell wasn't much fun for them. This won't be for us, either.
DENVER — Saying uncertain economic times require tough measures, Gov. Bill Ritter on Thursday announced a freeze on hiring new state employees and ordered a halt to new construction.
Gov. orders hiring freeze, halts new construction : State and West : Boulder Daily Camera (http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/sep/25/gov-orders-hiring-freeze-halts-new-construction/ - broken link)
The insanity of the Paulson plan is becoming apparent, thanks to millions of people with the gravitas to write/fax/call their lawmakers.
Don't stop now. Keep calling.
One of the most coherent statements I have heard. Finally, one guy who enough of a statesman to tell the American people that the people responsible for this mess should be held fully accountable for it. And that, painful as that may be for all of us, letting the bubble deflate is essential for the long-term viability of our economy. I hope this group of Republicans sticks to their guns, and gets the support to kill the bailout as it is now structured.
So far, these shortages are concentrated in the Southeast, but even a minor problem in the production/refining/distribution chain could send this region into a crisis, too.
Several decades of stupidity, greed, rabid consumption, non-existent management or conservation of resources (financial or natural), and misinvestment in an unsustainable living arrangement are now fomenting very real and dire consequences. I think we have already seen the events that are pushing us past the "tipping point" and will set a chain of forthcoming events in motion that will be amazing in their rapidity, damage, and scope.
Few people on this forum were around Colorado in 1973 when gasoline shortages battered the local economy. I was--and it was no fun. What's coming will make that look like a walk in the park. It's going to get bad--very bad.
You need to listen to someone else besides Genn Beck. I've got a bunch of old Harry Browne books about the financial crisis just around the corner. They were written 15-20 years ago. Alarmist nonsense like this caused me to miss many a good opportunity. Relax and look for some good buys.
You need to listen to someone else besides Genn Beck. I've got a bunch of old Harry Browne books about the financial crisis just around the corner. They were written 15-20 years ago. Alarmist nonsense like this caused me to miss many a good opportunity. Relax and look for some good buys.
This post makes me wonder what looked like a good buy to a bubble-crazed investor around Sept 1929. Or in 1932 when FDR declared the Depression over, for that matter.
I find it funny, in a macabre sense, that so many people seem to think that we can buy our way out of the ugliness to come by writing a $700 Billion check to the pigmen on Wall Street (for reference, that's more than the total monetary cost of the Iraq war to date) and getting on with business. The bankers will hoard the money we give them in the current environment, and come right back to the trough demanding more--count on it.
Six months ago, in this thread, there were people calling Jazz and I things like socialist, alarmist, Chicken-Little etc. Now we have headlines every day telling us we're now in the biggest financial crisis since the [First] Great Depression. The writing is still on the wall, and I strongly believe we're just seeing the first gale-force squalls of this financial hurricane. That's not coming from an alarmist...just a guy that can do math. We cannot borrow our way to prosperity.
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State hiring freeze
