Goddamnit Nemo, How do you do that?

Inside the meltdown? We are ringside: down goes Frazier.

We will never know whether the claim that action was necessary within days to prevent a meltdown was necessary.  By their own admission they didn't know what to do.  I'm always suspicious when somebody selling me something screams "act now!" 

Nice deer in the headlights look.

The real reason for fear:

This is a middle class depression, following a fake real estate bubble that trapped tons of them into servitude to the owners of RMBS- a ton of which will be fodder for walkaways.

Now, talk about pissed, well, I will never vote republican until my balance sheet is repaired.

As for wall street- they are lucky not to be strung up from lampposts.

How is that for a bad mood?

Just wait until summer, it will not improve much with high temps due to no money for cranking up the air conditioning.

Someday this war's gonna end...

Wow.  Frontline does not pull punches.  This should be good.

Just take CR's and Mish's post and put them to video.

This thing on CNBC is actually pretty entertaining.
Comrade Tech Sargent Chen | 01.30.09 - 8:30 pm | #

I do not pay for cable.  Torrent?

The title should be "Meltdown Part I" When the bankers find out they won't be made whole at very little expense to themselves, "Meltdown Part II"

"We need regulators to schedule out losses..."

Means we prefer play nice regulators, who will make the losses known slowly, on Fridays, when not too many will hear of them and when they will surely be eclipsed by some happy news on Sat. or Sun. or Mon.

TARP is an official sponsor of the Superbowl via GE because NBC didn't get the advertising they banked on

give the NHL a cut too please

I find it interesting that the Frontline preview seems to be focusing on the past, like it's all behind us now.
Jillayne | Homepage | 01.30.09 - 8:38 pm | #

You niggling naboob of negativity, of course it's all behind us!

I kind of feel cheated, I got home too late for the bank failures...I did have pizza for lunch in honor of BFF though..I am now embarking on a White Russian binge...

Jillayne, they're still hating on Krugman for the Princess thing..

If the WSJ says it, it must be true
mwah | 01.30.09 - 8:38 pm | #

Could be, I know where I got my numbers...

Interesting Times writes:
Is it just me, or does Krugman always look like a deer caught in the headlights on TV? Another way of putting it: Economist caught in a depression.

Interesting Times | 01.30.09 - 8:20 pm | #

LOL. I was thinking the same thing.

tj,

At least you ain't claiming Nemo is a Time Lord.

Nostrovia,

Evil Henry Paulson, well at least he's a bit fluffy.

Jillayne,

"scone I think it's all happening too fast for mainstream media."

A snail riding a three toed sloth on Valium is a twitch too fast for the MSM.

Nostrovia,

Congrats Misean, I just sprayed my White Russian on the screen...

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle
mwah | 01.30.09 - 8:42 pm | #

Too many old white dems for all the appts to have worked out well.  O' dodged a bullet with Tim.

Dear Comrade Misean is Dope,

I only wish I could listen to the blogs and comments while I'm in my car. Though that may be a bit overkill.

scone I think it's all happening too fast for mainstream media.
Jillayne
.
Too fast for me, I barely have time to go potty before 300 comments whiz past.

visitor for Zendor,

Please please tell us what is coming our way, your lord.

Where I work MSM means men having sex with men.

you probably won't think about MSM in the same way again.

Rob Dawg writes:
We will never know whether the claim that action was necessary within days to prevent a meltdown was necessary. By their own admission they didn't know what to do. I'm always suspicious when somebody selling me something screams "act now!"
Rob Dawg | Homepage | 01.30.09 - 8:18 pm |

Rob I know there is no particular reason to credit me any more than you would credit some random guy on the internet, but I do have some perspective on the question of whether action was necessary. The view at my firm was that if AIG was not bailed out then GS and MS would have gone bankrupt, probably immediately. We started preparing papers for that eventuality since we did not know if AIG would be bailed out.

The thinking also was that a GS and MS bankruptcy would have led to a chain of bankruptcies throughout the system and after that all bets were off.

Now, our thinking could have been wrong. But I think it was consistent with what other people in the industry and in Washington were thinking at the time. In other words, we may have been wrong, but we weren't BSing on the question of whether we thought there would be an actual meltdown.

Personally, I think that what happened after Lehman does show that additional bankruptcies of critical clearing banks would have really been a disaster.

He's never at the meetings.
Rob Dawg

Secret chatroom meetings? Mmhmmm...

morvo loves to eat free ponies!

If you cant get cash out of your atm it affects you.

Citizen AllenM writes:

This is a middle class depression..
Now, talk about pissed, well, I will never vote republican until my balance sheet is repaired.

agreed

the republican party of Lincoln bears little resemblance to the party today...

republicans appear to have great disdain for almost all regulation and appear to want to see the supremacy of corporations over civil society and elected government

am i wrong?

i wish i was

CR and the bloggers here called the meltdown long before September 2008.

Rob I know there is no particular reason to credit me any more than you would credit some random guy on the internet, but I do have some perspective on the question of whether action was necessary. The view at my firm was that if AIG was not bailed out then GS and MS would have gone bankrupt, probably immediately. We started preparing papers for that eventuality since we did not know if AIG would be bailed out.

Personally, I think that what happened after Lehman does show that additional bankruptcies of critical clearing banks would have really been a disaster.
Loudocracy | 01.30.09 - 8:50 pm | #

Thanks for that.  There's a lot of deep experience here and kudos for sharing.  I understand the idea of serial counterparty failure but net-net out those tens of trillions and the actual exposure is far less.  That would have been the alternative; supervised unwinding of positions rather than backstopping and preserving positions. 

If you cant get cash out of your atm it affects you.
Loudocracy | 01.30.09 - 8:53 pm | #

THAT level of bad, might have been good in the long run, as many bankers and GS would be dead.

morvo loves delicious crunchy investment bankers!

If you cant get cash out of your atm it affects you.
Loudocracy | 01.30.09 - 8:53 pm | #

BTW, thanks for your posts.  They are always calm, objective and your knowledge adds a great deal to this board.

Krugman == Democratic Rove

Is it just me, or does Krugman always look like a deer caught in the headlights on TV? Another way of putting it: Economist caught in a depression.

Interesting Times | 01.30.09 - 8:20 pm

He reminds me of Richard Dreyfuss in "Jaws"
YouTube -

Thanks for the few well-thought-out comments here (Loudacracy, Dawg, mock turtle...).

One wonders if they will look as far back as 1987.

"At the end of the day it'll be perfect fare for the lefty whitey crowd that pays the bills for PBS. Nothing too sensational, just an overview that will show that "both sides" have dirty hands with the Republicans' hands that much dirtier. Just a hunch.
tew | 01.30.09 - 10:49 pm | #"

How shall I say it? The Bush Administration.... embraced the darkness.

That said, Lawrence Sumner makes me want to spit up green ichor.

With Sen. Chris Dodd providing the insights, as the PBS video seems to be indicating, we will soon be getting to the bottom of this.

slago writes:
This discussion forum has become inane....it needs to be filtered. Reading it is almost a complete waste of time.

I agree!!! Let's start with filtering slago.

Just kidding slago (you stupid a** moran)