Banks...............

[El Nino]

http://digg.com/political_opinion/So...A_year_ago_who

[bklynboy]

Folks:

Everyone is good at pointing fingers. At least Obama came out with a six point plan that he had formulated a while ago. McCain did what is called a misdirection. He is for less government, yet called for a commission similar to a 9/11 commission. Guess what. They'll find the usual . . . greed avarice and stupidity. A waste of taxpayer money.

It all comes down to us, the little folks, who can decide the fate of the economy. I am a believer in what I call the Joseph Theorum. Seven years of good will be followed by seven years of suffering. Myself, who has always been conservative and put myself through college and graduate school, I was dumb when it came to my girlfriends and that's why I am in the position I am in. I can only blame myself for that mess.

Regardless, like most, I am going to pay for what Gramm's politicking and ramming through a swaps deregulation bill did. And the government was asleep at the wheel. A shell game was afoot and no one was smart enough to stop it. It went like this. A bank would convince good ol' mom and pop to take out a mortgage or a second mortgage. Buy a second house. Buy a third. Take the money and invest it somewhere. Too bad mom and pop didn't have the collateral to pay for it, but what the heck, right? Times are good and people are rollin'. When banks, who probably knew getting even 50% paid back was impossible, they packaged these loans as some new fandangled financial instrument. Then in a stroke of brilliance, as per the Gramm bill, investment banks bought these packaged duds and borrowed on a 30 or 40 to 1 ratio meaning for every dollar they had in assets, they could borrow 30 or 40 dollars to pay for these and insurance against default. Well guess what. People panicked big time. So did the banks. A small fire became a forest fire real fast. So the Lehmans of the world were left with worthless paper. Their assets became worthless when the shorts forced their stock prices down. Why? Greed, hatred. Because any punk who thinks he is a geek and got shit upon by life wants to take his revenge and sits behind a computer all day to day-trade, that's not mention the hedge funds who should be illegal.

The upshot? Because of Gramm, deregulation, stupidity and greed, innocent hard working people are now bankrupt, or close to it and jobless. And if you don't think the jobless rate is severely understated, guess again. AIG . . Lehman . . .Bear . . .Merrill. Did you see Gov. Patterson of NY State saying that's 11,000 jobs right there? Innocent, bottom-rung, salt of the earth hard working people. That then extends to the service providers - temp agencies, cab companies, food service, security, etc. We call that economic rings.

By the way, for those of you who don't know, short selling is the act of borrowing stock, selling it and rebuying it at a hopefully cheaper price to pay back the stock. Naked short selling means you have no stock in a company at all, sell it and hopefully buy it back at a cheaper price. Say company x's stock is at $100. You sell 10 shares you've borrowed so cash in hand, minus fees is say $900 ($100 for fees). When enough people do that with vast quantities of stock, as per supply and demand, stock price falls. At the close of the market, company x's stock is now $85 a share. You buy it back for 10 shares x $85 and you pay $850. You bank the $50. Do that with enough shares and you can make plenty of money. It should be illegal. You are betting against America and companies. Want to gamble? Go to bleepin' Vegas. You don't like company x or y? Buy shares and complain to management and fellow shareholders, or sell the stock and buy something else. These people should be strung up by their balls. I want these assholes to go to jail and be barred from security trading for a minimum of 2 years. You want to see more of this happen, vote McCain.

Now, I know a lot of you out there will be hurting. We all will be. So be smart, budget and do what you need to in order to save money. How can Hung Angels help? Well, I'll get straiffed and excoriated for this, but $30 to go to a party is more than some can afford. $15 drinks ain't gonna help either. Would you rather have 10 people at $30 a head, or 10 at $15 a head spending more at the bar and having more people come and more customers staying late.

Think about it.

[NYBURBS]

http://digg.com/political_opinion/Someone_predicted_this_economic_collapse_A_year_ag o_who

Yes he did, the man is right on the mark.

[NYBURBS]

blame greenspan he made some bad choices in the 90's and now it is coming back to haunt us all!!!!

It's not about any one specific man or event, but rather a large combination of factors. We continue to engage in bad practices and policies as a nation and now it is biting us in the ass.

[chefmike]

If John McSame had his way, that'd be our social security money Wall St. is losing:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-n..._b_126968.html

[glenntinnyc]

There is nothing wrog with with short selling, the problem lies in the removal pf the uptick rule, which was put in place after that market crash of 1929. Once this rule was eliminated you had an overwhelmomg case of "naked Shorts" which in turn caused a downward spiral. Also the practice of mark to market accounting took a heavy toll on the capital markeys. When Merril divested a portion of their sub prime loans at 22cents on the dollar all other subprime loand were instantly worth 22cents on the dollar, so in essence evrey other bank looked at their assests in the mortgage buisness drop by 78% instantly. Now if you take into coniseration that fact that we had derugulation in the industry on a whole , the removal of Glass Stegal which separated Comerrcial banks from Investment banks , etc you have a scenario in which all of the financial institutions are intertwined.

It is doubtful this will lead to a depression however. on a whole things will get a bit worse befor ethey get better. As for what it means personally, fdic insures deposits up to 100k in your bank. SPIC acts as the insurance agency for the investment banks, and these banks are not permitted to use investors stocks, bonds wtc to cover debt, so your portfolios if at Lehman will be moved to whomever buys them, as will your portfolios at Merril.

The fact is I would love to blame this administartion for everything but this was brought on by both parties, and the lack removal of oversight that had been in place since 1929 to prevent this exact scenario. On a bright note there are still very bullish areas of the market right now, ie biotech, tech, healthcare etc, so when u get lemons make lemonade.

[DJ_Asia]

it means that maybe the intellectual midgets who came up with the idea of sub-prime loans have caused a worsening financial crisis that is actually affecting the entire world, not just the US. THeres going to be another depression if we cant figure out a way to turn it around, and my memos to the WHite House that $300 tax breaks arent going to fix it have all been returned.

Got news ...its going to be WORSE than the Great Depression! Why?
From Gerald Celente:

WITH EVERYONE RUNNING TO TREASURIES AND INTERNATIONAL MARKETS ON SEPTEMBER 15, 2008, WHAT IS THE BOTTOM LINE TO THE IMPLICATION OF WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

We’re going into the worst depression that any living person has ever seen. It’s going to be worse than the Great Depression of 1929 and I’ll give you a some reasons why.

1) In the 1929 Depression, not many people owned homes, so they weren’t carrying that heavy mortgage load. The people who did have homes did not have something called ‘home equity loans,’ which is more money owed on top of the other money. They used to have something else back then called a ‘second mortgage.’ If you had one, you were a loser.

2) Back in the 1929 Depression days, people didn’t have things called ‘credit cards.’

3) The United States didn’t have $14 trillion worth of debt.

4) We still had a manufacturing base in the United States so that when WWII broke out and the economy improved afterwards, we were still able to produce more so than any other country in the world. But now, the U. S. off-shores so much manufacturing now.

5) Back in the Great Depression of 1929, the U. S. government was not $14 trillion in debt and they had a trade surplus, not a trade deficit.

6) We weren’t fighting two wars that have sapped already $2 trillion from our American treasury and it’s getting worse.



“Dragflation”

So, we’re going into a downturn as America is sinking. This is ‘dragflation,’ a term that we at The Trends Journal have coined. When you had stagflation you had a declining and stagnate economy; you had rising inflation. But you also had rising wages. People remember back in the 1970s, they got a 10% cost-of-living increase in our wages.

Now wages are declining, you’re lucky to have a job, the median American household income is below 1999 levels. So we’re in for a devastating crash and people are not prepared for it.

[hondarobot]

Yup, this is gonna be a bad stretch of road for awhile. I'm curious how it will effect adult entertainment in general. From my employment prospective, I think I'll ride this storm out pretty well, strippers and booze will probably be in even more demand then ever. Fortunately, I also have no debt, but I'm pretty much the only person I know who can say that. This is not a good time for owing anyone money (unless it's a bank, because they might just shut down, ironically).

Fasten your seat belts. . .

[Minutemouse9]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/in...-of-the-Titans

[Buzz]

I think this is the interview with Gerald Celente that DJ_Asia was quoting from:

Economic 9/11
http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1473

It's a frightening scenario, but it's no longer hypothetical anymore. It's happening now, and gathering momentum.