Bush got one thing right in eight years : "this sucker is going down."
Unit472 has gotten one thing right in all his comments on CR - the UK's Blair and the US's Bush were in this together. Brits followed our financial scripts to a tee.
The poor Oompa Loompas will bear the biggest lumps. It always hits the samll, orange people the hardest. Luckily, I have a penchant for short, orange hookers.
I don't know, this just doesn't seem right to me. After all, we Americans are always stealing the big ideas from our British cousins (constitutions, the office, reality shows). How can we be leading them in the biggest show of all? Something is amiss, methinks.
OK, I jokingly asked what would happen if the DOW went down 800 points in the next week and you poked fun at me that's all good.
But the people I work for just had a couple huge advertising accounts pull out of signed contracts, essentially saying come on and sue us for the half million we promised a piece.
After seeing what just went down today in the markets and reading some frightening commentary by some big wigs, I am wondering if we are truly heading to a complete market failure that will have devastating consequences.
Can anyone here give me a non sarcastic comment about what appears to be the beginning of a reality that is the Great Depression Two?
One only need sit with the Tony the Bliar to know in five minutes that he was the puppet on Bush's strings, despite being 10 times as intelligent as the failure of a man. I still cant imagine how he thought it was a good idea to follow so willfully. Must be something about blind idealism and bankrupt ideology.
RationalJeff - I wish I could say everything is going to be alright. But as Ive been one of the many pessimistic folks commenting here the past few years, that has been step by step proven not dour enough, well, I dont have any comforting words for you brother.
"Can anyone here give me a non sarcastic comment about what appears to be the beginning of a reality that is the Great Depression Two?
Is this really happening?
The housing market seems secondary now..."
the housing market is absolutely NOT secondary. just because stocks have big scary intraday charts means nothing. housing dictates consumer decisions, and the spending based on that pushes stocks around.
what exactly do you want? hand-holding, crystal ball readings?
so stocks go down another 10%. it just means the market is discounting a slightly crappier winter, stocks are a better value, and the wealth-destructive effects of this bear get a little deeper.
I was once involved in a big economic slowdown. The company I worked for pulled the hooker budget right before the point I was "there." The accountant ripped the hooker off me and got a face full of goo. Now, that bastard won't leave me alone. I need a permanent restraining order.
Post below shows how to predict tomorrow price (in asia). It is so simply a child can do it! I also did not know that we in the US could trade asian markets via a secret asian future market.
If you are in advertising, it is always a leading indicator. Pull ad budget first. Hooker budger third.
Elvis | 11.13.08 - 1:39 am | #
I am not in advertising but the company I am speaking of makes their money solely from ads, and therefore, that is I how I make my money, and we just had some devastating news.
The advertisers, and I am talking about the big ones BTW, said this week essentially that they are walking away on signed contracts that equal millions and said go ahead and sue us.
They are not concerned. Also I work in the dot com industry for a company that is a household name (I don't say this for respect, just pure perspective)
I am fucking scared, cause I see a world in which major advertiser don't care if they face an onslaught of lawsuits for pulling out of signed contracts.
To be perfectly serious, I think since mid-Septemberish, things have really gone in the crapper. It's not showing up in the personal saving rate yet, but the job losses alone arent enough to have sent income down that much to see spending get killed the way it has. So, my feeling is that we'll see that dreaded spike in the saving rate soon, either with the more recent data, or with revisions.
But I think what is driving it is simple, and oddly enough, it is the rout in stocks on top of vanishing housing values. (just an illusion anyway, but people DO believe in ghosts ya know?)
Anyway, I think about my parents financials...they are pushing toward 70. A few years back, when I took over their finances, I found out that good old shirtferbrains Merrill Lynch was managing there money. Big fat annual fee to do pretty much nothing. Watched most of their money drain away in the tech wreck (yup, 60 yr olds loaded to the gills with junk stocks) and not diversified properly at all. So, as I suspected, they were just basically looting people's money, running a racket on a big PR campaign. They didnt know WTF they were doing, or if they DID, they were thieves.
I digress. My point is that, they probably still to this day have the vast majority of older boomers sitting completely in stock mutuals, and no diversification. So, what happens all the sudden to these people who see their retirement vanish? Yup, spending grinds to a halt. Now, for the 60+ folks, a lot arent working. So they really pull back, and Im not sure how that would even show up in savings rate numbers. I guess it might if all their income is hitting the natl accts - that is correctly. But I suspect its not. Either way, I think we've just killed this economy, since the spending slump is self-reinforcing...less demand, declining corporate profits, falling stocks, less investment, more job losses, rinse repeat.
Unless we find some miraculous way to break this cycle, I see very bad things ahead. I see dead people.
IMO, the UK is simply Iceland on a bigger scale. They had less regulation that the US regarding financial sector; as after Sarbox was passed there was major hoohah in US that financial business would leave for London due to looser regulation there.
Further, manufacturing in the UK is not particularly strong. They don't have a large natural resource base, and have govt surveillance that makes Bush admin's actions look trivial.
When the pound gets pounded and the UK needs financial assistance,they are not going to get a lot of sympathy.
"But could you argue why housing is still number one?
RationalJeff"
Housing affects most commercial paper. When housing goes down, commerical paper goes down. Banks go BK, and pretty little real estate agents go down (for $5 with as many friends as you bring).
As bad as the real economic problems we've created by building too much real estate and overseas production capacity. As well as the lack of high quality workers in the US.
The real problem is still that we've destroyed trust through this credit bubble - we've destroyed the thing that is the foundation of modern civilization because communication is meaningless in the aggregate without trust. It is also the foundation of modern credit that distinguishes 1st world countries from 3rd world countries.
We've destroyed the fabric that binds societies and in turn the credit markets that depend on social integrity.
The deepest foundation of the economy is collapsing.
The reaction you are getting is due to you being a little late to the doom and gloom party.
Times are heading into uncharted water. The Great Depression can be used for corollaries but this really is different. Lots of guesswork from total collapse and anarchy to a "new deal" infrastructure investment plan. Watching the bond market has been terrifying and with the G20 meeting this weekend everyone is on edge as to the future of the dollar.
Buy a few months of food. Arm yourself. Have an emergency plan to get out of dodge if the worst fears come to pass. Keep a job at all costs. Cancel all unnecessary expenses and have some cash on hand. Read CR daily.
History doesn't repeat itself but it sure does rhyme.
Yes, that's yet another point of Whitehead's that we've been pressing here for a while. Fiat is on it's deathbed, and when it goes so does the world as we know it.
RationalJeff: in its most simple form - greedy humans are being taught a lesson.. through a housing collapse, through a contraction in the economy, credit market, and personal and corporate debt. It's everywhere.. and yes.. it's that bad. It will pass, but not before it hurts a lot of people.
Hope you and your firm can hold on through the storm.
"It is also the foundation of modern credit that distinguishes 1st world countries from 3rd world countries."
I don't buy your argument. I would rather have US dollars over Bolivian currency unless Bolivian currency was human currency and they were hot Bolivian women in tight overalls.
"But could you argue why housing is still number one?"
Simple, the house-as-ATM was the dominant paradigm for consumer spending in the past 5 years, much as housing-related fields were the only fields aside from health care and gubmint work with decent job #s.
2/3 of america owns a home, and only about half of that home is now equity. as the market trashes that equity % and the jobs based around RE get vaporized, that drives spending (or lack thereof).
this isn't particularly original or brilliant thinking, but not everyone has had the joy of driving up the 15 corridor in riverside county in the past year, where all of the RE-related businesses in every mini-office park say it all.
VNQ leads the market - the action on that ticker tells you more than even SPY or GSG (though those are also good ones to watch).
What if - purely out of CURIOUS SPECULATION - this entire mortgage debacle was foreseen by a group of individuals with ties to government here and abroad - a group of people with membership in an exclusive and secretive club?
What if these people collaborated together, and fully understood the ramifications for a mortgage meltdown, including the massive devaluation of stock markets across the world (with lesser impact on the United States), and the rapid declination of the oil markets?
Now what if these people allowed the meltdown to occur, precisely because they knew it would destabilize foreign military spending and weaken the economies of nations that weren't open democracies?
Housing was deliberately chosen as the last-ditch credit expansion mechanism to drive the economy to it's Minsky moment. Kind of like handing an alcoholic a bottle of Everclear and the keys to the Ferrari.
AC - agree with you on the significance of trust disappearing.
Soon it will be followed by faith. Not the religious kind, but faith in the truisms that have fueled the stock market for the last 20 or 30 years. I thought this was pretty well gone but had a long conversation with a person, mid-30s who works for a very large funds complex based in Denver. MS in Econ.
He insisted that it was prudent to be buying now because of dollar cost averaging. That I wasn't looking at the data. I explained it was more prudent to stay in cash and then when an upturn was observed, confirmed and sustained, that would be the time to buy stocks again. He thought that was timing the market. In his words, "It'll go back up".
I just couldn't get through to him that buying now as things ride down another 10-20-30 percent makes no sense when you could just stay in cash and then buy in later. That even missing the first 20-25% up of a turning market was better my way than riding it all the way down. Mind you this was about current and forward contributions to 40ik plans, not decisions on current holdings.
So to me there is a huge way to go down here as these people are still thinking this way, and I'd guess advising the sheeple in that vein (although this guy is not on the sales side of the house).
Track these and you'll see the future. Many articles out there with "tinfoil" theories. My favorite theory is the dollar(US) is battling the Euro for Supremacy. I know, I know. Notice the tinfoil tag.
So every response I have read, which is leagues above normality, tells me that we are really screwed.
I have been on this blog for close to a year, but I was still in the "It can't get that bad" camp
and now you all are telling me it will get worse.
I am for the first time in my adult life gonna pull a large amount of cash out and gonna re-think my view of the future.
As sick and twisted as this sounds, I am lucky to be single, cause I have only me to look after.
I really hope you all are wrong(the housing responses are valid) however, everything else I have read and the fact the comment section on this blog the last year has been on the money...fuck...
IMO, the UK is simply Iceland on a bigger scale. They had less regulation that the US regarding financial sector;
And they cut rates due to political pressure because the US was cutting rates after the dot.com bust. Even though they weren't in imminent danger like the US.
Growth in the UK couldn't be allowed to succumb to the ripple effects of the US downturn.
So rates were cut, even though the move was controversial.
The only justification for lowering rates in that situation is to counteract rational concerns about contagion, and stimulate growth by subsidizing risky behavior by discounting borrowing costs and penalizing those who don't lend and keep their money in savings.
The point is to ensure continued economic growth despite troubles in the World's largest economy required the government to encourage insensible, irrational, impulsive, highly risky, and socially irresponsible behavior.
Needless to say rewarding people who make reckless loans and punishing people who make sensible loans guaranteers disaster.
ShortCourage,
I put up a post on that a few minutes ago. Only 5% of CalPERS assets are in what they called their "housing portfolio." They are lying about their true exposure.
Land typically has no value right now. CALPERs is similar to the resy of the world. Holding assets that went Dahlmer on there asses. Eating them alive.
"As sick and twisted as this sounds, I am lucky to be single, cause I have only me to look after."
Yes and no. Try to look after your fellows as well, to the extent that you can. Standing with and for each other is the only real strength or security any of us have. The rest is transient.
You've taken the hardest step by choosing to face the reality that the current culture endeavors to hide from you. Once you get over that shock, it does get easier (psychologically, at least).
Rational Jeff - hey. if you pull cash out and we are wrong.. you still have cash in hand and can throw it back into the market. If we are right.. you still have cash in hand - then yeeehaw.
I must leave so I can pull my shift at 7-11 and then make it to my trading job at Goldman Sachs by 9AM. Peace to all, and, if you use CR's name, I'll give you a half price Big Bite.
only choice that remains is between banking sector insolvency and sovereign insolvency...unless disastrously preceded by attempts to monetize debt and devalue currency. Then it becomes catastrophic systemic and generational immiseration.
The current administration can't decide whether to either throw the banking industry or the entire country under the bus. The next administration won't have the same conflicted emotions.
Given the way banks operate, I'd say yes. History shows us that they don't use monetary control to sustain and/or enrich a people or country, but rather to dominate the same.
"How does one survive without the other?"
IMHO, we're seeing how right now during this transition period. The headlines are rife w/ "New World Order" calls. It will be a global system, dominated by the IB's, and countries will exit in name only, if at all.
It certainly doesn't have to be this way. It's a question of how the idea of money as a tool is used.
Currently Smoking Cannabis | Homepage | 11.13.08 - 2:30 am |
You are right. They aren't mutually exclusive. One does support the other. You have to survive to reproduce. I didn't mean it to be an either/or statement.
Do we not get a craptastic week of economic data prior to the big weekend meeting in DC to better gain support for the 'solution' arrived at? Tin foil firmly affixed...
Thanks, read your blog post about Calpers. I assume you are suggesting that their losses on their RE is much more than 35%... That seems likely, especially if they were investing in land (lots for building houses).
Why does Gordon Brown perceive any relevance for the UK in the NWO?
I don't get it. Failed economy, no manufacturing, no resources, Orwellian society and a third world currency. Capped by a failed attempt to be the nect financial capital for the world. No BS. I do not understand how the UK influences anything going forward.
Kona,
Before you go can I get your thoughts on Obama having Anne Mulcahy (Xerox CEO) on his advisory team? I'm not sure you've been clear enough about your feelings...
Exactly. CalPERS is lying about a lot of things. This is just "housing" not "real estate" exposure. They already own two big holes in the ground in downtown Sacramento that were supposed to be condos. That isn't "housing" and it isn't marked to market either.
Once again, why is it the U.S., the presumed richest country in the Solar System, is so heavily reliant on borrowing money from so many of its poorer peers?
Isn't that a bit like your wealthy uncle constantly coming over to borrow money from you, a lowly laborer? Cuz he needs another sportscar and he'll gladly pay you next Tuesday (as in 30 years from now Tuesday)?
Wasn't it about 18 months ago that Calpers and other pension funds were in the news because the big Wall Street firms were selling them the nasty tranches of CDOs? (As in, the kind of tranches you don't bring home to see your family.)
I'm sure those tranches worked out great for Calpers.
Reading the comments of that post even 1 year ago... seems like we didn't realize just how uncontained the fire was going to get.
ie. One poster saying, "well I'm not losing money if someone next to be does a short-sale", but not taking it to the next level saying that short sale will cause CDS default will cause margin calls will trigger cash raising will wipe out the market...
I seemed pretty glum about the situation back then"
Homeowners with negative equity lose their ability to respond to adverse financial events such as job loss or mortgage reset by refinancing or selling their home, and they therefore become much more likely to default. - GS
The dripping altruism is ruining my laptop. Let's be clear what the problem is here. Lenders lose any leverage over negative equity homedebtors to get them to perform. This isn't about some underwater buyer being forced to disgorge an obligation he cannot afford. This is about lenders getting triple hit with forced asset custody, portfolio write downs and lost revenue streams.
we didn't realize just how uncontained the fire was going to get.
Well, "Rational"Jeff is still trying to either put an order to the difficulties, or prioritize them, or disconnect them. Housing, the stock market, the banks, the loss of confidence, the debt,...why separate them? Everything is going bad and that means everything is going to get worse. It's that old feedback loop, growing stronger and stronger,...and not in a good way.
And I think I pointed out some time ago that pensions and governments were going to be hit hard. Why? Is it because I have any thinking skills or know anything about economics? No, it's because that's where the money is/was; you can't have huge losses unless you find a way to (mis)represent a huge amount of money.
The Walmart in PA is always packed - it's in the ghetto part of town. San Antonio and thereabouts is where auto body shops and assorted industrial work sites are. The store you mention is always filled with Mexican laborers, Asian grad students hiking down from Stanford, and blue collar workers who've been in the area for decades.
Everybody is lying these days, Dawg. The most amazing thing to me is that people are still evaluating this situation in terms of money.
Money means nothing and I'd have thought that it was clear by now.
Real estate means nothing.
Like money, it has no intrinsic value.
What matters is what people make and do. You can issue billions of markers against a cleaning lady's mortgage but in the end, it's only what she does that matters.
The 401Ks are largely meaningless. The home equity is the same.
We consume twice what we make.
All those markers are issued against productivity that doesn't exist.
Markers of a system which was designed to trick you into thinking that something is there.
It's not there, Rob and you don't seem to grasp that yet.
It's not there.
It never was.
The majority of it was a mirage.
And the harder you try to make it real, the more it's going to decline. The harder that guys like Paulson try to make it real, the further it's going to fall as more and more people are drawn into unproductivity activities.
I believe it tapped into what I call The Crawlspace of Reality, that space between Reality and our perception of Reality. I think even then there was subconscious or semi-conscious perception about the increasing delusional state of our culture.
In the last century, members of the British Fabian Society dynastic banking families in the City of London financed the Communist takeover of Russia. Trotsky in his biography refers to some of the loans from these British financiers going back as far as 1907.
By 1917 the major subsidies and funding for the Bolshevik Revolution were co-ordinated and arranged by Sir George Buchanan and Lord Alfred Milner. [no doubt using money from Cecil Rhodes' South African gold and diamond legacy]
The Communist system in Russia was a "British experiment" designed ultimately to become the Fabian Socialist model for the British takeover of the World through the UN and EU. The British plan to takeover the World and bring in a "New World Order" began with the teachings of John Ruskin and Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University.
Rhodes in one of his wills in 1877 left his vast fortune to Lord Nathan Rothschild as trustee to set up the Rhodes Scholarship Program at Oxford to indoctrinate promising young graduates for the purpose, and also establish a secret society [Royal Institute of International Affairs RIIA, which branched into the Round Table, the Bilderbergers, the CFR, the Trilateral, etc] for leading business and banking leaders around the World who would work for the City to bring in their Socialist World government.
Rothschild appointed Lord Alfred Milner to implement the plan.
I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemies eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing:
"Now the old king is dead!
Long live the king!"
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt
And pillars of sand
I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can not explain
Once you know there was never
never an honest word
That was when I ruled the world
Some here have discovered the Fabians. Welcome to the dark side. All you who would disparage those of us who truly know should go now and sit in the corner. Here, put this cap on too. Any turning round to look extends the penalty.
This week, here in the OC, four people have told me to buy a house, cuz they're cheap now. Same asshats telling me to buy in 2005. $700,000 for 2400 square feet? Cheap?
So BHP is still very keen on acquiring Rio Tinto. Could get around anti-trust concerns by spinning off some iron-ore. They have the money they need, but there might be some unorthodox financing of those purchasing iron-ore bits
You have to go back to the height of the British Empire to find such natural resource concentratio
Let's do a twofer -
'This is about lenders getting triple hit with forced asset custody, portfolio write downs and lost revenue streams.'
Or, in the real world we are living in, this is about lenders getting triple hit with forced government bailout money, tax write downs and Fed insured revenue streams.
'Money means nothing and I'd have thought that it was clear by now.
Real estate means nothing.
Like money, it has no intrinsic value.'
Right - which is why feudal system never, ever cared about 'real estate.' I'll grant you that many Americans think 'real estate' is a single family house, but that is in part because Americans have a fairly short history surrounded by land notable for not being owned by people who could defend it.
Hunger may be an illusion, but starvation isn't. Land to grow food on is not an illusion, and trying to make it real won't change the fact that it is real.
w/ US and western europe firmly in recession, we have yet to see the final acts of The Great Unwind in still bubblicious (real estate) regions of india/dubai/parts of china/OZ.
So 2009 will bring in lots of cheers for these regions who fed w/ easy money in unprecedented orgy started believing they fathered their own daddies.
andiron
if that happens in india i will be happy but as you dont know this country has pololation of 115 crores i.e. 1.15 billions so housing market will never drop here.never.Prices only drop by 10 -15 % but they will ultimately correct.bUILDING HOUSE IN INDIA WAS always costly(unless you consider huts as houses).
I will be happy if that happens.
hgf,
You make an argument for the relative value of Indian housing maintaining strength. What are your thoughts on the economy as a whole? If incomes fall then so does housing even though it maintains relative value
Pavel Chichikov writes: Who said anything against friends and community?
If you'll recall, bodhisattva, you were castigating the crowd for not giving positive advice. I gave positive input, suggested solutions.
As for friends and community, I would say our society has positively legislated against them.
Does anyone here have anything else to say but: "All is lost"?
What is this "all"?
This state is not "all".
This society is not "all".
Your prosperity is not "all".
Your life is not "all".
That is your ego talking.
The world will keep spinning, and the seasons will keep changing. Children will be born, grow to adulthood, bear young and die. Heroes will found kingdoms and republics and fortunes. The administrators who succeed those heroes will manage their inheritances with greater or lesser degrees of success.
What changes?
This is all merely dust, bodhisattva. Kingdoms perish, holy men perish, only one thing does not perish -- the glory of a well-wrought deed. Am I speaking metaphorically of your Christian Beaulah Land, or as a classical hero? The statement is true regardless.
Do not confuse humanity with your politicial milieu. Humanity is what transcends milieu. Serve the human part, not the political context.
Watching Joe Kernen on CNBC railing on GM, hates seeing $25 billion going to those UNIONS. GE get $139 Billion, for what? GE parent company of CNBC. Stupid people sometimes get their doors kicked in by poor unemployed people who are hungry. As stupid as it is to bailout GM can anyone tell me the systemic backlash of GE going bankrupt? AMEX $3.9 billion....WHY?
ullpointer writes:
"i am currently patching a cent os box, and installing mysql while the rest of the usa is sleeping ... i am striking out on my own - i am sick of hacking for the man."
Coldplay v L Cohen? I think the old guy has better sight...
"The Future"
Give me back my broken night my mirrored room, my secret life it's lonely here, there's no one left to torture. Give me absolute control
over every living soul And lie beside me, baby, that's an order! Give me crack and anal sex. Take the only tree that's left and stuff it up the hole in your culture. Give me back the Berlin wall give me Stalin and St Paul. I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions. Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul. When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant...
You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little jew
Who wrote the bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further.
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder
EvilHenryPaulson writes:
hgf,
You make an argument for the relative value of Indian housing maintaining strength. What are your thoughts on the economy as a whole? If incomes fall then so does housing even though it maintains relative value
In last 18 years growth in indian economy was due to exports(furnished goods and software).But the number of peoples these fields(organised sectors) have employed is less compared to total population.Western financial crisis will definitely hurt indian economy in short and longer terms.High paying jobs will evaporate.The financial sector of economy which is chiefly controlled by govt institutions(LIC,SBI,RBI,Other govt banks)will grow at very slow rate.As you know,we indians are not very skilled in managing economy,our growth rate will fall back to 5% for many years( 5 or 10).
but coming back to housing,i do not see sharper collapse in prices in metro regions.These areas dont have enough houses.So prices are going to be stable(may be down by 15-20 % ).
The regions outside metros will suffer serious price erosion.Tier II cities dont have adequate infrastructure and they will have few jobs.So a serious price erosion will take place there.
Also loss of jobs in IT and consulting sector will lead to sharp correction in prices in cities like Bangalore,Hyderabad,Noida,Gurgaon,Chandigarh,Jaipur and many cities of gujrat.
Overall i am saying economy will grow at slower pace but housing sector will be stronger in metro cities.
thanks a lot
YLSP writes:
Kona,
Before you go can I get your thoughts on Obama having Anne Mulcahy (Xerox CEO) on his advisory team? I'm not sure you've been clear enough about your feelings...
YLSP,
Sorry to have left, but I came back looking for an old post and saw tour Q/request:
Yes, Xerox represents The Obama Vision to turn back The American Clock to a time when paper ruled and Xerox had a future; picking someone from that cutting edge industry is pure magic and we should all be very happy to have top notch thinkers at the controls -- after years of being dragged through the mud by Bush & Coup. This is refreshing!
make than 80 years
The UK economy is a bit too dependent on the financial sector.. oh well
Hmm, the only comments are blocked by my killfile.
They still don't get it.
The report said that the slowdown could be deeper and longer lasting if banks continued to curb their lending...
I'll type slowly so they can keep up. The 12 step program to get beyond a blind bender is not to keep pouring.
Just go to the bank and borrow more money. It's so simple!
Bush got one thing right in eight years : "this sucker is going down."
Unit472 has gotten one thing right in all his comments on CR - the UK's Blair and the US's Bush were in this together. Brits followed our financial scripts to a tee.
well, the social climate of their last spell with 15%+ unemployment led to some great ska records... one can only hope
1930-2009 = is about 79 years, right?
Average age at death of an American male = 72 (about 3 generations).
Thruthiness still beats the truth.
The poor Oompa Loompas will bear the biggest lumps. It always hits the samll, orange people the hardest. Luckily, I have a penchant for short, orange hookers.
"Brits followed our financial scripts to a tee."
but, to be fair, it isn't our script - it's a japanese classic from 1994, based on an american TV show from 1974
The script was from Season Two of Gilligan's Island.
Well, I didnt say it was an original script, now did I?
I don't know, this just doesn't seem right to me. After all, we Americans are always stealing the big ideas from our British cousins (constitutions, the office, reality shows). How can we be leading them in the biggest show of all? Something is amiss, methinks.
I declare our leaders to be the most moronic collection of misfits to run this planet in at least 230 decades!
OK, I jokingly asked what would happen if the DOW went down 800 points in the next week and you poked fun at me that's all good.
But the people I work for just had a couple huge advertising accounts pull out of signed contracts, essentially saying come on and sue us for the half million we promised a piece.
After seeing what just went down today in the markets and reading some frightening commentary by some big wigs, I am wondering if we are truly heading to a complete market failure that will have devastating consequences.
Can anyone here give me a non sarcastic comment about what appears to be the beginning of a reality that is the Great Depression Two?
Is this really happening?
The housing market seems secondary now...
One only need sit with the Tony the Bliar to know in five minutes that he was the puppet on Bush's strings, despite being 10 times as intelligent as the failure of a man. I still cant imagine how he thought it was a good idea to follow so willfully. Must be something about blind idealism and bankrupt ideology.
"Can anyone here give me a non sarcastic comment about what appears to be the beginning of a reality that is the Great Depression Two?
Is this really happening?
The housing market seems secondary now...
RationalJeff "
If you are in advertising, it is always a leading indicator. Pull ad budget first. Hooker budger third.
RationalJeff - I wish I could say everything is going to be alright. But as Ive been one of the many pessimistic folks commenting here the past few years, that has been step by step proven not dour enough, well, I dont have any comforting words for you brother.
"Can anyone here give me a non sarcastic comment about what appears to be the beginning of a reality that is the Great Depression Two?
Is this really happening?
The housing market seems secondary now..."
the housing market is absolutely NOT secondary. just because stocks have big scary intraday charts means nothing. housing dictates consumer decisions, and the spending based on that pushes stocks around.
what exactly do you want? hand-holding, crystal ball readings?
so stocks go down another 10%. it just means the market is discounting a slightly crappier winter, stocks are a better value, and the wealth-destructive effects of this bear get a little deeper.
I was once involved in a big economic slowdown. The company I worked for pulled the hooker budget right before the point I was "there." The accountant ripped the hooker off me and got a face full of goo. Now, that bastard won't leave me alone. I need a permanent restraining order.
TMI, Elvis!
Post below shows how to predict tomorrow price (in asia). It is so simply a child can do it! I also did not know that we in the US could trade asian markets via a secret asian future market.
Details below.
MarketWarnings: Asian Stock Market Prediction (Tomorrow's Price)
"what exactly do you want? hand-holding, crystal ball readings?"
bgates,
I f you were just a TEENSY bit cuter, I'd pick the handholding, but....
Yeah we're boned. Course that's just my opinion.
If you are in advertising, it is always a leading indicator. Pull ad budget first. Hooker budger third.
Elvis | 11.13.08 - 1:39 am | #
I am not in advertising but the company I am speaking of makes their money solely from ads, and therefore, that is I how I make my money, and we just had some devastating news.
The advertisers, and I am talking about the big ones BTW, said this week essentially that they are walking away on signed contracts that equal millions and said go ahead and sue us.
They are not concerned. Also I work in the dot com industry for a company that is a household name (I don't say this for respect, just pure perspective)
I am fucking scared, cause I see a world in which major advertiser don't care if they face an onslaught of lawsuits for pulling out of signed contracts.
Can someone tell me what a gandalf formation looks like
Rational Jeff..
Lube sale starts Friday, pick up a two pack.
To be perfectly serious, I think since mid-Septemberish, things have really gone in the crapper. It's not showing up in the personal saving rate yet, but the job losses alone arent enough to have sent income down that much to see spending get killed the way it has. So, my feeling is that we'll see that dreaded spike in the saving rate soon, either with the more recent data, or with revisions.
But I think what is driving it is simple, and oddly enough, it is the rout in stocks on top of vanishing housing values. (just an illusion anyway, but people DO believe in ghosts ya know?)
Anyway, I think about my parents financials...they are pushing toward 70. A few years back, when I took over their finances, I found out that good old shirtferbrains Merrill Lynch was managing there money. Big fat annual fee to do pretty much nothing. Watched most of their money drain away in the tech wreck (yup, 60 yr olds loaded to the gills with junk stocks) and not diversified properly at all. So, as I suspected, they were just basically looting people's money, running a racket on a big PR campaign. They didnt know WTF they were doing, or if they DID, they were thieves.
I digress. My point is that, they probably still to this day have the vast majority of older boomers sitting completely in stock mutuals, and no diversification. So, what happens all the sudden to these people who see their retirement vanish? Yup, spending grinds to a halt. Now, for the 60+ folks, a lot arent working. So they really pull back, and Im not sure how that would even show up in savings rate numbers. I guess it might if all their income is hitting the natl accts - that is correctly. But I suspect its not. Either way, I think we've just killed this economy, since the spending slump is self-reinforcing...less demand, declining corporate profits, falling stocks, less investment, more job losses, rinse repeat.
Unless we find some miraculous way to break this cycle, I see very bad things ahead. I see dead people.
bgates, I am not worried about stocks. But could you argue why housing is still number one?
"I see dead people.
Geoff"
Then quit emailing while you are driving and pay attention to the road. Those people had families, you SOB.
IMO, the UK is simply Iceland on a bigger scale. They had less regulation that the US regarding financial sector; as after Sarbox was passed there was major hoohah in US that financial business would leave for London due to looser regulation there.
Further, manufacturing in the UK is not particularly strong. They don't have a large natural resource base, and have govt surveillance that makes Bush admin's actions look trivial.
When the pound gets pounded and the UK needs financial assistance,they are not going to get a lot of sympathy.
"But could you argue why housing is still number one?
RationalJeff"
Housing affects most commercial paper. When housing goes down, commerical paper goes down. Banks go BK, and pretty little real estate agents go down (for $5 with as many friends as you bring).
" They don't have a large natural resource base,"
Hugh Grant is large and in charge. Need I say more?
Ok I;m calling this the Manic Depression, due to velocity of information and corellate velocity of money. Inverse.
CC
Everybody seems to miss the big picture:
As bad as the real economic problems we've created by building too much real estate and overseas production capacity. As well as the lack of high quality workers in the US.
The real problem is still that we've destroyed trust through this credit bubble - we've destroyed the thing that is the foundation of modern civilization because communication is meaningless in the aggregate without trust. It is also the foundation of modern credit that distinguishes 1st world countries from 3rd world countries.
We've destroyed the fabric that binds societies and in turn the credit markets that depend on social integrity.
The deepest foundation of the economy is collapsing.
Everything built atop it will follow.
Is this really happening?
Nobody wanted to consider it in past years, but now that the destruction is in plain sight and building daily the disbelief continues.
Whitehead has a clue -- it'll be a Greater Depression without a doubt.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
RationalJeff | 11.13.08 - 1:48 am | #
The reaction you are getting is due to you being a little late to the doom and gloom party.
Times are heading into uncharted water. The Great Depression can be used for corollaries but this really is different. Lots of guesswork from total collapse and anarchy to a "new deal" infrastructure investment plan. Watching the bond market has been terrifying and with the G20 meeting this weekend everyone is on edge as to the future of the dollar.
Buy a few months of food. Arm yourself. Have an emergency plan to get out of dodge if the worst fears come to pass. Keep a job at all costs. Cancel all unnecessary expenses and have some cash on hand. Read CR daily.
History doesn't repeat itself but it sure does rhyme.
Good luck.
ac,
Yes, that's yet another point of Whitehead's that we've been pressing here for a while. Fiat is on it's deathbed, and when it goes so does the world as we know it.
RationalJeff,
same industry maybe different vertical..auto-20 dealer group told me today all advertising cap at 75k..used to be 40k per store...
I think wage deflation is going to be the shocker..has to happen along with housing, autos...etc
Cobra driver hinted about it happening on service side of bus...this morning..
holding onto your job is best investment you can make today..often repeated by far wiser sages than me..
RationalJeff: in its most simple form - greedy humans are being taught a lesson.. through a housing collapse, through a contraction in the economy, credit market, and personal and corporate debt. It's everywhere.. and yes.. it's that bad. It will pass, but not before it hurts a lot of people.
Hope you and your firm can hold on through the storm.
"It is also the foundation of modern credit that distinguishes 1st world countries from 3rd world countries."
I don't buy your argument. I would rather have US dollars over Bolivian currency unless Bolivian currency was human currency and they were hot Bolivian women in tight overalls.
"But could you argue why housing is still number one?"
Simple, the house-as-ATM was the dominant paradigm for consumer spending in the past 5 years, much as housing-related fields were the only fields aside from health care and gubmint work with decent job #s.
2/3 of america owns a home, and only about half of that home is now equity. as the market trashes that equity % and the jobs based around RE get vaporized, that drives spending (or lack thereof).
this isn't particularly original or brilliant thinking, but not everyone has had the joy of driving up the 15 corridor in riverside county in the past year, where all of the RE-related businesses in every mini-office park say it all.
VNQ leads the market - the action on that ticker tells you more than even SPY or GSG (though those are also good ones to watch).
from a poster on marketwatch this morning
What if - purely out of CURIOUS SPECULATION - this entire mortgage debacle was foreseen by a group of individuals with ties to government here and abroad - a group of people with membership in an exclusive and secretive club?
What if these people collaborated together, and fully understood the ramifications for a mortgage meltdown, including the massive devaluation of stock markets across the world (with lesser impact on the United States), and the rapid declination of the oil markets?
Now what if these people allowed the meltdown to occur, precisely because they knew it would destabilize foreign military spending and weaken the economies of nations that weren't open democracies?
Crazy idea, but it makes you go, "Hmmm."
Housing was deliberately chosen as the last-ditch credit expansion mechanism to drive the economy to it's Minsky moment. Kind of like handing an alcoholic a bottle of Everclear and the keys to the Ferrari.
...weaken the economies of nations that weren't open democracies.
One problem with that. It's likely to have a greater impact on those considered open democracies.
"Crazy idea, but it makes you go, "Hmmm."
cd"
And what it mf penis was a dum dum sold around the world and you were sucking it right now. "What ifs" are so stupid.
AC - agree with you on the significance of trust disappearing.
Soon it will be followed by faith. Not the religious kind, but faith in the truisms that have fueled the stock market for the last 20 or 30 years. I thought this was pretty well gone but had a long conversation with a person, mid-30s who works for a very large funds complex based in Denver. MS in Econ.
He insisted that it was prudent to be buying now because of dollar cost averaging. That I wasn't looking at the data. I explained it was more prudent to stay in cash and then when an upturn was observed, confirmed and sustained, that would be the time to buy stocks again. He thought that was timing the market. In his words, "It'll go back up".
I just couldn't get through to him that buying now as things ride down another 10-20-30 percent makes no sense when you could just stay in cash and then buy in later. That even missing the first 20-25% up of a turning market was better my way than riding it all the way down. Mind you this was about current and forward contributions to 40ik plans, not decisions on current holdings.
So to me there is a huge way to go down here as these people are still thinking this way, and I'd guess advising the sheeple in that vein (although this guy is not on the sales side of the house).
vineyard does some back room deal...
no bff for them...
Vineyard National to be acquired by firm formed by chairman
Vineyard National to be acquired by firm formed by chairman - MarketWatch
Crazy idea, but it makes you go, "Hmmm."
cd | 11.13.08 - 2:03 am | #
Financial warfare, cyber warfare, conventional warfare.
Track these and you'll see the future. Many articles out there with "tinfoil" theories. My favorite theory is the dollar(US) is battling the Euro for Supremacy. I know, I know. Notice the tinfoil tag.
MS in econ, hm. Well, somehow, his irrational side didnt get the snot beaten out of it in school, or else he was in one of those math-lite programs.
cd--
That sounds like terrist talk. I've emailed DHS about you spreading un-American tin-foilery.
It's talk like that that's ruining Christmas, and on that note, I've emailed Bill'O Reilly and Santa as well.
Onward Christian Soldiers:)
(christ it's late. getting punchy....)
Elvis, I wish I could afford to tip CR. Then, when I said you are worth the price of admission it would mean something. Thanks for all you do.
What's a republic.
One problem with that. It's likely to have a greater impact on those considered open democracies.
Comrade Bear (tj & the bear)
I disagree Kibbutznik Bear. This debacle is far more likely to severely impact the United States rather than any of the open democracies.
a dum dum...too much fun here tonite..adios
So every response I have read, which is leagues above normality, tells me that we are really screwed.
I have been on this blog for close to a year, but I was still in the "It can't get that bad" camp
and now you all are telling me it will get worse.
I am for the first time in my adult life gonna pull a large amount of cash out and gonna re-think my view of the future.
As sick and twisted as this sounds, I am lucky to be single, cause I have only me to look after.
I really hope you all are wrong(the housing responses are valid) however, everything else I have read and the fact the comment section on this blog the last year has been on the money...fuck...
...
IMO, the UK is simply Iceland on a bigger scale. They had less regulation that the US regarding financial sector;
And they cut rates due to political pressure because the US was cutting rates after the dot.com bust. Even though they weren't in imminent danger like the US.
Growth in the UK couldn't be allowed to succumb to the ripple effects of the US downturn.
So rates were cut, even though the move was controversial.
The only justification for lowering rates in that situation is to counteract rational concerns about contagion, and stimulate growth by subsidizing risky behavior by discounting borrowing costs and penalizing those who don't lend and keep their money in savings.
The point is to ensure continued economic growth despite troubles in the World's largest economy required the government to encourage insensible, irrational, impulsive, highly risky, and socially irresponsible behavior.
Needless to say rewarding people who make reckless loans and punishing people who make sensible loans guaranteers disaster.
CR, gotta do a post on this:
From the WSJ$, comes this gem....WTF were those morons at Calpers thinking? Using leverage to buy RE investments in a pension fund?
Calpers Confronts Huge Housing Losses
Public Fund Faces Billions in Lost Value After Aggressive Push Into Real Estate
Calpers Confronts Huge Housing Losses - WSJ.com
God help the State of California.
repost
zoom | 11.13.08 - 12:43 am | #
Acquisition of material goods to ensure dissemination of your genes is history itself.
Is that copyright.
I'll be using it copyright or not.
ShortCourage,
I put up a post on that a few minutes ago. Only 5% of CalPERS assets are in what they called their "housing portfolio." They are lying about their true exposure.
Dawg,
Did you miss where I said "those considered"?
Land typically has no value right now. CALPERs is similar to the resy of the world. Holding assets that went Dahlmer on there asses. Eating them alive.
"As sick and twisted as this sounds, I am lucky to be single, cause I have only me to look after."
Yes and no. Try to look after your fellows as well, to the extent that you can. Standing with and for each other is the only real strength or security any of us have. The rest is transient.
You've taken the hardest step by choosing to face the reality that the current culture endeavors to hide from you. Once you get over that shock, it does get easier (psychologically, at least).
Rational Jeff - hey. if you pull cash out and we are wrong.. you still have cash in hand and can throw it back into the market. If we are right.. you still have cash in hand - then yeeehaw.
Kona | 11.13.08 - 1:47 am | #
Coke now @ $43.25
Real value =
EPS of $2.57/.03665 (10 yr TR yield) = $27.28
Kona,
dont get the above.
Where is the EPS of 2.57 from
Logic of 10 yr trsy yield.
Cash in hand is great around pretty little real estate agents.
Monty Python visits Oscar Wilde
YouTube -
Elvis,
You absolutely need to look at xhamster
Maybe, virility will know no bounds.
I must leave so I can pull my shift at 7-11 and then make it to my trading job at Goldman Sachs by 9AM. Peace to all, and, if you use CR's name, I'll give you a half price Big Bite.
comrade sbarrkum | Homepage | 11.13.08 - 2:14 am | #
Original but based on my evolutionary psychology views. Humans do everything based on survival or reproduction. Free will is a myth.
Fun thinking experiment:
Imagine any behavior and trace the motivation back to either of those instincts.
comrade sbarrkum ,
That EPS is the ttm and 2009 EPS is projected to be $3.32
I may toss that estimate out, but whatcha got in mind?
only choice that remains is between banking sector insolvency and sovereign insolvency...unless disastrously preceded by attempts to monetize debt and devalue currency. Then it becomes catastrophic systemic and generational immiseration.
GOT AUSTERITY?
xhamster sucks.
Pornhub is where its at.
The current administration can't decide whether to either throw the banking industry or the entire country under the bus. The next administration won't have the same conflicted emotions.
Is it really an either/or proposition?
How does one survive without the other?
A little stupidity from CNBC.
GM "bounces off 65-year low"
'night all.
Is it really an either/or proposition?
We won't know until we try.
Well I hope the Fed will lend direct if we opt to throw the banks under the bus.
"Is it really an either/or proposition?"
Given the way banks operate, I'd say yes. History shows us that they don't use monetary control to sustain and/or enrich a people or country, but rather to dominate the same.
"How does one survive without the other?"
IMHO, we're seeing how right now during this transition period. The headlines are rife w/ "New World Order" calls. It will be a global system, dominated by the IB's, and countries will exit in name only, if at all.
It certainly doesn't have to be this way. It's a question of how the idea of money as a tool is used.
Again, imho
No savings + no loans available + no job = riots in the streets
I've got my bag ready.
Currently Smoking Cannabis | Homepage | 11.13.08 - 2:30 am |
You are right. They aren't mutually exclusive. One does support the other. You have to survive to reproduce. I didn't mean it to be an either/or statement.
Oh no... my battery is dead in my calculator .... ROTFLMAO
My models are as good as Goldman's now...
Flatlining calculators. A sign of the times.
"It will be a global system, dominated by the IB's, and countries will exit in name only, if at all."
Exist, not "exit"
and with that, it's time to stop typing. Later on, folks.
Do we not get a craptastic week of economic data prior to the big weekend meeting in DC to better gain support for the 'solution' arrived at? Tin foil firmly affixed...
Gordon Brown calls for new world order to beat recession - Telegraph
CSC,
This is a low moment for me...
I guess I can use Google but at this point, nothing matters
What are the next administration's options, really? Keynesian stimulus is a recipe for complete and utter destruction of the dollar.
Devastating, I know, Kona.
Perhaps a sign it is time to retire for the eve.
Be well, dudes.
Tomorrow we BURN THIS MOTHERF*CKER TO THE GROUND!
Rob Dawg,
Thanks, read your blog post about Calpers. I assume you are suggesting that their losses on their RE is much more than 35%... That seems likely, especially if they were investing in land (lots for building houses).
I agree, I'm fried
Is their PM Terry Jones? Nice...
Why does Gordon Brown perceive any relevance for the UK in the NWO?
I don't get it. Failed economy, no manufacturing, no resources, Orwellian society and a third world currency. Capped by a failed attempt to be the nect financial capital for the world. No BS. I do not understand how the UK influences anything going forward.
Currently Smoking Cannabis
Agreed Pornhub,
at least a new place .
Kona,
Before you go can I get your thoughts on Obama having Anne Mulcahy (Xerox CEO) on his advisory team? I'm not sure you've been clear enough about your feelings...
Exactly. CalPERS is lying about a lot of things. This is just "housing" not "real estate" exposure. They already own two big holes in the ground in downtown Sacramento that were supposed to be condos. That isn't "housing" and it isn't marked to market either.
Make it 300 years...
ShortCourage,
Not pumping my blog but I've been tracking CalPERS for a while:
Exurban Nation
gives several juicy links.
Let's just hope we the people (you and me) don't have to replenish the Calpers shortfalls from our savings that was invested more carefully.
Let's just hope we the people (you and me) don't have to replenish the Calpers shortfalls from our savings that was invested more carefully.
They've already warned of a potential 4% rise in participant contributions.
Chuck Norris will save UK economy.
Rob, good stuff.
Thanks, and good night.
Shame about the British. Hell of a Navy.
Once again, why is it the U.S., the presumed richest country in the Solar System, is so heavily reliant on borrowing money from so many of its poorer peers?
Isn't that a bit like your wealthy uncle constantly coming over to borrow money from you, a lowly laborer? Cuz he needs another sportscar and he'll gladly pay you next Tuesday (as in 30 years from now Tuesday)?
Just asking.
Nice post ~ 1 year ago in the CR archives... click me!
Goldman now puts the odds of a recession in 2008 at around 40%, and they see the unemployment rate rising to 5.5% by the end of 2008.
Heh, smartest folks indeed!
Wasn't it about 18 months ago that Calpers and other pension funds were in the news because the big Wall Street firms were selling them the nasty tranches of CDOs? (As in, the kind of tranches you don't bring home to see your family.)
I'm sure those tranches worked out great for Calpers.
Reading the comments of that post even 1 year ago... seems like we didn't realize just how uncontained the fire was going to get.
ie. One poster saying, "well I'm not losing money if someone next to be does a short-sale", but not taking it to the next level saying that short sale will cause CDS default will cause margin calls will trigger cash raising will wipe out the market...
I seemed pretty glum about the situation back then"
Homeowners with negative equity lose their ability to respond to adverse financial events such as job loss or mortgage reset by refinancing or selling their home, and they therefore become much more likely to default. - GS
The dripping altruism is ruining my laptop. Let's be clear what the problem is here. Lenders lose any leverage over negative equity homedebtors to get them to perform. This isn't about some underwater buyer being forced to disgorge an obligation he cannot afford. This is about lenders getting triple hit with forced asset custody, portfolio write downs and lost revenue streams.
we didn't realize just how uncontained the fire was going to get.
Well, "Rational"Jeff is still trying to either put an order to the difficulties, or prioritize them, or disconnect them. Housing, the stock market, the banks, the loss of confidence, the debt,...why separate them? Everything is going bad and that means everything is going to get worse. It's that old feedback loop, growing stronger and stronger,...and not in a good way.
And I think I pointed out some time ago that pensions and governments were going to be hit hard. Why? Is it because I have any thinking skills or know anything about economics? No, it's because that's where the money is/was; you can't have huge losses unless you find a way to (mis)represent a huge amount of money.
USDJPY trying to creep up to 96...
I'm really interested in seeing what the double-short folks are made of... greedy enough to see if SKF hits 200?
WMT rally tommorrow!
Meh.
"Up to 2 percent" That's nothing. Hasn't Roubini said our will drop 3% in the last quarter of this year? Those Brits are just a bunch of whiners.
I went to a Wal-Mart in Palo Alto yesterday and it was packed!
The Walmart in PA is always packed - it's in the ghetto part of town. San Antonio and thereabouts is where auto body shops and assorted industrial work sites are. The store you mention is always filled with Mexican laborers, Asian grad students hiking down from Stanford, and blue collar workers who've been in the area for decades.
Exactly. CalPERS is lying about a lot of things
Everybody is lying these days, Dawg. The most amazing thing to me is that people are still evaluating this situation in terms of money.
Money means nothing and I'd have thought that it was clear by now.
Real estate means nothing.
Like money, it has no intrinsic value.
What matters is what people make and do. You can issue billions of markers against a cleaning lady's mortgage but in the end, it's only what she does that matters.
The 401Ks are largely meaningless. The home equity is the same.
We consume twice what we make.
All those markers are issued against productivity that doesn't exist.
Markers of a system which was designed to trick you into thinking that something is there.
It's not there, Rob and you don't seem to grasp that yet.
It's not there.
It never was.
The majority of it was a mirage.
And the harder you try to make it real, the more it's going to decline. The harder that guys like Paulson try to make it real, the further it's going to fall as more and more people are drawn into unproductivity activities.
this is totally cliche, and i feel dumb for saying this, but "the matrix" was as prophetic as orwell.
this is totally cliche, and i feel dumb for saying this, but "the matrix" was as prophetic as orwell
I believe that The Matrix phenomenon ( and it was a phenonemon, check out the memegraph...
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=movie_memes
it persisted for six solid years)
I believe it tapped into what I call The Crawlspace of Reality, that space between Reality and our perception of Reality. I think even then there was subconscious or semi-conscious perception about the increasing delusional state of our culture.
In the last century, members of the British Fabian Society dynastic banking families in the City of London financed the Communist takeover of Russia. Trotsky in his biography refers to some of the loans from these British financiers going back as far as 1907.
By 1917 the major subsidies and funding for the Bolshevik Revolution were co-ordinated and arranged by Sir George Buchanan and Lord Alfred Milner. [no doubt using money from Cecil Rhodes' South African gold and diamond legacy]
The Communist system in Russia was a "British experiment" designed ultimately to become the Fabian Socialist model for the British takeover of the World through the UN and EU. The British plan to takeover the World and bring in a "New World Order" began with the teachings of John Ruskin and Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University.
Rhodes in one of his wills in 1877 left his vast fortune to Lord Nathan Rothschild as trustee to set up the Rhodes Scholarship Program at Oxford to indoctrinate promising young graduates for the purpose, and also establish a secret society [Royal Institute of International Affairs RIIA, which branched into the Round Table, the Bilderbergers, the CFR, the Trilateral, etc] for leading business and banking leaders around the World who would work for the City to bring in their Socialist World government.
Rothschild appointed Lord Alfred Milner to implement the plan.
bh-
we are in the same neighborhood, as it were.
i am currently patching a cent os box, and installing mysql while the rest of the usa is sleeping
i am (i am guessing) 10 yrs younger than you, but i see the writing on the wall.
i am striking out on my own - i am sick of hacking for the man.
The Matrix as prophecy
Here's something very interesting. The latest album from ColdPlay. Check out the cover art...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/611o6ExTUbL.SS500.jpg
Check out the lyrics...
I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemies eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing:
"Now the old king is dead!
Long live the king!"
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt
And pillars of sand
I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can not explain
Once you know there was never
never an honest word
That was when I ruled the world
but i see the writing on the wall
Bad things happen if too many people exit The Matrix all at once.
bh-
coldplay is a little too "normal" for my tastes, but that cover art rocks my liver.
Today's Lesson
If you can't beat old money and their connections, bet with them and a bail-out is never more than a bell's ring away
Some here have discovered the Fabians. Welcome to the dark side. All you who would disparage those of us who truly know should go now and sit in the corner. Here, put this cap on too. Any turning round to look extends the penalty.
.....last three week ...US futures remained higher while the Asian markets are opened ....
and after clsosing the markets....futures goes down again.....con game here and there.....
....Asian investors are pretty upset by this...not a new scam , but worse than before.....
.........CR .....would you mind asking SEC to investigate this scam?......
ullpointer-
I think Orwell is just a subset of The Matrix maya. They are both equal, but the Matrix is somewhat more equal.
.........CR .....would you mind asking SEC to investigate this scam?......
Jay D | 11.13.08 - 6:57 am
Why should he? And to what end?
You should know, and if you don't then wise up, the market is a fools errand. You play at your own peril.
There, investigation over.
What about shorting Big Brother?
"We've destroyed the fabric that binds societies and in turn the credit markets that depend on social integrity."
Of course. To repeat, the fundamental problem is not financial or economic.
This week, here in the OC, four people have told me to buy a house, cuz they're cheap now. Same asshats telling me to buy in 2005. $700,000 for 2400 square feet? Cheap?
Is CRVIX really at 36?
Ghost town here. Everybody's out buying a house? Capitulation?
So BHP is still very keen on acquiring Rio Tinto. Could get around anti-trust concerns by spinning off some iron-ore. They have the money they need, but there might be some unorthodox financing of those purchasing iron-ore bits
You have to go back to the height of the British Empire to find such natural resource concentratio
BH / Nullpointer - like I bin sayin, we have a comprehensive conversational failure.
See Grice and truth-conditional content.
The superstructures of finance and economics are dependent on reliable trustworthy conversations. The foundations of commercial law demand this.
It's busted. And a long road back.
CC
Let's do a twofer -
'This is about lenders getting triple hit with forced asset custody, portfolio write downs and lost revenue streams.'
Or, in the real world we are living in, this is about lenders getting triple hit with forced government bailout money, tax write downs and Fed insured revenue streams.
'Money means nothing and I'd have thought that it was clear by now.
Real estate means nothing.
Like money, it has no intrinsic value.'
Right - which is why feudal system never, ever cared about 'real estate.' I'll grant you that many Americans think 'real estate' is a single family house, but that is in part because Americans have a fairly short history surrounded by land notable for not being owned by people who could defend it.
Hunger may be an illusion, but starvation isn't. Land to grow food on is not an illusion, and trying to make it real won't change the fact that it is real.
I wonder how this will affect crushings at football matches?
The security camera bubble has burst.
w/ US and western europe firmly in recession, we have yet to see the final acts of The Great Unwind in still bubblicious (real estate) regions of india/dubai/parts of china/OZ.
So 2009 will bring in lots of cheers for these regions who fed w/ easy money in unprecedented orgy started believing they fathered their own daddies.
I love Otto's take on the Brits. Check this video out. Start it at 0:36.
YouTube -
You English are sooooo superior......
Love it!!
andiron
if that happens in india i will be happy but as you dont know this country has pololation of 115 crores i.e. 1.15 billions so housing market will never drop here.never.Prices only drop by 10 -15 % but they will ultimately correct.bUILDING HOUSE IN INDIA WAS always costly(unless you consider huts as houses).
I will be happy if that happens.
Of course. To repeat, the fundamental problem is not financial or economic.
Where did we think continually intensified and reinforced self-interest would ultimately get us, but this?
hgf,
You make an argument for the relative value of Indian housing maintaining strength. What are your thoughts on the economy as a whole? If incomes fall then so does housing even though it maintains relative value
OK, I finally think I see some evidence of capitulation, at least in the press. This headline is a quote from Barrons Stockwatch blog:
Even In One-Horse Town, Best Buy Fails; GM Too Big To Whatever
Jobless claims not 100% unemployment, jam 'em on that!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pulling this forward from last night:
Pavel Chichikov writes:
Who said anything against friends and community?
If you'll recall, bodhisattva, you were castigating the crowd for not giving positive advice. I gave positive input, suggested solutions.
As for friends and community, I would say our society has positively legislated against them.
Does anyone here have anything else to say but: "All is lost"?
What is this "all"?
This state is not "all".
This society is not "all".
Your prosperity is not "all".
Your life is not "all".
That is your ego talking.
The world will keep spinning, and the seasons will keep changing. Children will be born, grow to adulthood, bear young and die. Heroes will found kingdoms and republics and fortunes. The administrators who succeed those heroes will manage their inheritances with greater or lesser degrees of success.
What changes?
This is all merely dust, bodhisattva. Kingdoms perish, holy men perish, only one thing does not perish -- the glory of a well-wrought deed. Am I speaking metaphorically of your Christian Beaulah Land, or as a classical hero? The statement is true regardless.
Do not confuse humanity with your politicial milieu. Humanity is what transcends milieu. Serve the human part, not the political context.
They've already warned of a potential 4% rise in participant contributions.
Worse. That's 4% of payroll. This is going to slam CA hard.
Watching Joe Kernen on CNBC railing on GM, hates seeing $25 billion going to those UNIONS. GE get $139 Billion, for what? GE parent company of CNBC. Stupid people sometimes get their doors kicked in by poor unemployed people who are hungry. As stupid as it is to bailout GM can anyone tell me the systemic backlash of GE going bankrupt? AMEX $3.9 billion....WHY?
Colleges and universities now want THEIR sharp of the TARP!
Colleges Want a Piece of Next Stimulus Bill - Government - The Chronicle of Higher Education
ullpointer writes:
... i am striking out on my own - i am sick of hacking for the man."
"i am currently patching a cent os box, and installing mysql while the rest of the usa is sleeping
Are you available for freelance work?
New thread full of gloomy news.
CNBC: Jobless Rise More than Expected, Up 32,000 to 516,000. Trade Deficit at $56.47 Billion. (story developing)
Coldplay v L Cohen? I think the old guy has better sight...
"The Future"
Give me back my broken night my mirrored room, my secret life it's lonely here, there's no one left to torture. Give me absolute control
over every living soul And lie beside me, baby, that's an order! Give me crack and anal sex. Take the only tree that's left and stuff it up the hole in your culture. Give me back the Berlin wall give me Stalin and St Paul. I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions. Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul. When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant...
etc.
You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little jew
Who wrote the bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further.
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder
Serve the human part, not the political context
Sigh.
Marry me?
We're not even close to capitulation. I have my own indicator...
Rob Dawg.
When he stops scheming to make money off The Crash and worrying about his CALPERS fund, THAT is capitulation.
Check out this nifty memegraph. Look at how "money" rises in the public's mind after the 1991 recession...
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=mo_money_and_sex
Very cool, yes?
Good morning Blonderengel!
Broward Horne writes:
Sigh.
Marry me?
Already taken, and I'm not generally drawn to boys. But I am flattered, thanks. =)
EvilHenryPaulson writes:
hgf,
You make an argument for the relative value of Indian housing maintaining strength. What are your thoughts on the economy as a whole? If incomes fall then so does housing even though it maintains relative value
In last 18 years growth in indian economy was due to exports(furnished goods and software).But the number of peoples these fields(organised sectors) have employed is less compared to total population.Western financial crisis will definitely hurt indian economy in short and longer terms.High paying jobs will evaporate.The financial sector of economy which is chiefly controlled by govt institutions(LIC,SBI,RBI,Other govt banks)will grow at very slow rate.As you know,we indians are not very skilled in managing economy,our growth rate will fall back to 5% for many years( 5 or 10).
but coming back to housing,i do not see sharper collapse in prices in metro regions.These areas dont have enough houses.So prices are going to be stable(may be down by 15-20 % ).
The regions outside metros will suffer serious price erosion.Tier II cities dont have adequate infrastructure and they will have few jobs.So a serious price erosion will take place there.
Also loss of jobs in IT and consulting sector will lead to sharp correction in prices in cities like Bangalore,Hyderabad,Noida,Gurgaon,Chandigarh,Jaipur and many cities of gujrat.
Overall i am saying economy will grow at slower pace but housing sector will be stronger in metro cities.
thanks a lot
YLSP writes:
Kona,
Before you go can I get your thoughts on Obama having Anne Mulcahy (Xerox CEO) on his advisory team? I'm not sure you've been clear enough about your feelings...
YLSP,
Sorry to have left, but I came back looking for an old post and saw tour Q/request:
Yes, Xerox represents The Obama Vision to turn back The American Clock to a time when paper ruled and Xerox had a future; picking someone from that cutting edge industry is pure magic and we should all be very happy to have top notch thinkers at the controls -- after years of being dragged through the mud by Bush & Coup. This is refreshing!