The McLaughlin Group: Is it time to open the window and go to the ledge?
By Nicole Belle Sunday Nov 04, 2007 6:06pm
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Mort Zuckerman from U.S. News and World Report doesn't have a lot of faith in the strength of our economy. He depicts our state as "the worst potential financial crisis since the Depression." Not exactly rosy. Of course, Pat Buchanan has to bluster about (that's his job, right? Professional blusterer), but host John McLaughlin asks the line that many of my friends in the finance industry have been asking themselves: "Should we open the window and go to the ledge now?"
Hale Stewart explains why--despite the isolated points of positive news--this is the worst economy of our lifetimes.
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Hey. I can't argue with the 'worst times' analogy. My kid is earning min. wage. We're paying for her to have healthcare. She's got 700 a month in student loans. How's a person to survive?
O/T
Here's the video link to the waterboarding demonstration done in DC today. *HORRIBLE*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlLfRCkZuxQ
I've always said the only way to mitigate the damage the tax cuts is for the ultra class to take a flying leap.
The road to national fiscal recovery is paved with estate firesales!
But hey, at least the $ billions are still flowing to Iraq.
... and our retirement plans (401k) are at the mercy of the stock market.
I have no frickin clue what the hell Mort was talking about but when the entire McLaughlin group panel is talking like that it's something we should be worried about.
You know it's bad when a "Super Model" dumps the $. http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=66231
Peace
No need for the window...
But we are at the point where the hundereds of Government Whistleblowers across the country need to call a press conference and announce that they will advise "the good candidates" and will then help protect them as they travel throughout the United States.
other monitoring.. http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/faq
I do volunteer work giving groceries to families in need in a small town. Today we did 5 times the normal volume.
if it comes from Zuckerman, i don't believe it
Buchanan might be a drama queen, but he made sense in this column yesterday. It's a No Duh column, but he explains it well. Just wait for Krugman to explain it again in a more sophisticated way.
If only Zuckerman would follow his own advise, the world would be a much nicer place.
I'll bet the free-spending, Bush enabling Republicans will say it's Bill Clinton's fault.
I have to kind of agree with the first commenter over at HuffPo.
A slowdown of our country's recent over-indulgence does not necessarily mean doom and gloom.
I am rather looking forward to a period of fewer McMansions and Monster trucks, less pollution, and better use of resources.
This slowdown will affect some negatively in the short term, but perhaps we can emerge stronger, with more responsible consumption patterns (hopefully mirrored in Chindia) the result.
Frugality is the new black, baby!
It's certainly time for McLaughlin to open the window, go to the ledge -- and jump.
Did y'all know he started out as a Jesuit priest? Eons ago he was on a panel show with Gore Vidal and Gore caught him in a lie, saying "Lies, priest! Look to your immortal soul!" He left the "calling" shortly thereafter and became the Publi Boradcast shit-server we see today.
Not to worry, Fer folks like me who never get up to the rarefied corporate heights, a jump from the ledge is only about four feet. One of the bennies of bein' poor is that there's no way to go but up.
The repugnacans will be blaming the next administration for the coming mess. Monkey boy is doing everything he can to hide how bad things are. They don't even report how much paper money they are releasing into circulation.
Wow. Where's that guy from the Moyers thread-Devil's Advocate-complaining about tax $$$ going to fund Moyers? He didn't mentioning this decades-old shite fest that is carried more often than the Moyers.
IOKIYAR, I guess. Or an asshat. Or a thundering herd of asshats. If they need help, I'm sure I could muster some pushing energy once they're out on the ledge.
if any of these profiteers wants some initial horizontal velocity off the ledge, i'd be glad to impart some onto them.
David Ehrenstein @ 14:
Shit what scary guy he'd be in the confessional "WRONG! You took the Lord's name in vain 12 times, miss_kitty!!!"
Interesting, Bush is saying the complete opposite. He says the economy is strong.
Kind of funny though. The day after he said the economy was doing great following a quarter percent interest rate drop, CitiBank or CitiCorp (whatever one, can't recall) tanked and the Dow went to a low.
I don't know anything about Economic stuff. Probably less the Bush, but stuff is getting too high - gas prices, utility costs, college education is gone up like 30 to 40 percent. Price of milk is getting high.
Yea, the economy is great if you are rich like Bush is, but us mere mortals are just making it from day to day. Can't save anything up. What I do save goes into retirement and future college education but can't save anything for the near term. I feel sorry for our kids who have to make a heck of alot of money to make it on their own when they are adults.
17 & 18 stole my thunder - I think there are plenty of us who would line up to give them a little push.
Zuckerman is absolutely right. It's amazing more people aren't talking about this. Most Americans probably don't know that the US dollar is collapsing on world markets.
I have some US $$ in a bank account. A few years ago, they were worth $1.50 each in Canadian funds.
Now? The US$ is worth 93 cents Cdn. Your dollar, the world's reserve currency for the past 60 years, has fallen by almost 40% against Canada in less than 4 years. In the past 9 months alone, the US$ has fallen 25%. The same thing is happening with the Euro, the Yen and most other currencies.
For many years, the US has been borrowing more than $2 Billion every single day from China and Japan, just to fund its deficits. This public debt gets bigger and bigger every year. This means your standard of living is being subsidized by the sale of US Treasury bonds to America's economic and strategic rivals.
Now the private banking system, riddled with bad debt as a result of years of artificially low interest rates and shoddy credit standards, is starting to fall apart.
Massive write-offs at Citicorp and Merrill Lynch are only the beginning. Defaults on sub-prime mortgages won't peak for another 6 to 8 months. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Very scary stuff.
And the timing is exquisite, jumping-off-ledge time should get serious just before Christmas, another sign that 'He' works in mysterious ways.
Tens of thousands of some ultimate millions will be thrown out of 'their' homes, and the headlines will read 'Homeowners lose billions, all their wealth, 'invested' in 'their' homes.
A bit of hyperbole, for if you 'Buy' a $200,000 home for $300K because you 'got great financing' with very little down, in a Ponzi scheme set up by many banks, including Citibank, at interest and payment rates you will not be able to afford as soon as a year or two passes, what have you 'bought'? What 'wealth' do you 'own'? Nada, zip, nothing!!
And who'd gonna help these idiot 'investor-homeowners' recoup their nonexistent losses? And 'save' them from being 'thrown out' of 'their' homes?
If you pay taxes for this boondoggle, you're as stupid as the 'investors',
The Dems should only have (and need) one campaign slogan/question for '08.
'Are you better off now than you were 8 years ago?'
I listened to that segment and all the back and forth and blathering, and was somewhat impressed that Zuckerman seems truly worried all of the sudden.. Not that I really give a shit about Zuckerman actually.... But all that really came to mind was.... gee hows that NAFTA shit working for all you high rollers now......Hell, maybe a few Trump types taking the big final leap might be what it takes to wake certain econ types up from this supply side nafta cafta outsource the nations monetary soul bullshit.... know what I mean??? Like jobs and such...
It all comes down to the canundrum of making big macs as cheap as a dime... But noones even got ten cents... and the chump change everyone is carrying around or stashed in the bank or in 401's or property or whatever 'financial plan' ain't even worth its face value anymore... Billionaires jumping off ledges???.. Hell, those bastards have shoved the middle class off that ledge already...
Beginning to look like we're all gonna crash and burn financially before its over due to these brainy fucks and their get rich quick schemes at the working persons expense.......JD
Chip @ 20:
Huh. You maybe don't remember . . . I do very well, although the timeline has gotten fuzzy. I think it was actually before 9/11 when we were first realizing the economy was a bit soft in the head, every time Bush went on TV to talk it up, the stock market actually shed value AS HE WAS TALKING. It got to be so funny but it was a verifiable phenomenon. People were actually wishing he'd just SHUT UP.
silence is complicity @ 1:
I have an idea.....why don't we challenge some of these wingnuts to go through that. After all, according to them it's just "having a little water poured on you".
V V
Ronin Tetsuro @ 2:
Actually, what we need is MASSIVE taxation of the upper class-like 70 percent over say 500K......also possibly retroactive about 7 years. This includes the Estate tax.
V V
slippytoad @ 26:
I might add that I find the sound of Bush speaking to be so unpleasant that I let him get out about two syllables in that phony jerk-off Texas accent of his before I switch off the TV, or the Radio.
The only time I was able to watch was the other day he started throwing an infantile shit-fit on TV about how Congress was impeding his progressin' and not respecktin' his Authoratiah! I actually was able to watch, maybe because for the first time in about six years I'd seen someone manage to wipe that jackass smirk off his stupid face. Maybe that's what America is really pining for.
ATTENTION SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: would you please, please make it your job to keep that stupid smirk off Chimperor's face for the rest of his term? If you would, I would forgive you for so many failures.
The Bush/Cheney Junta along with The Republican Crime Syndicate have put this nation on the path to economic destruction.
Its gonna be ugly!
There were all kinds of people saying the savings and loan scandal was going to be the worst financial disaster in the history of the USA, but does anyone remember that big depression caused by the savings and loan scandal? No one remembers doomsayers if they are wrong. Only if they were right.
ldzppln @ 4:
The plan for our retirements is to drop a ton of worthless paper on us.
We are witnessing the natural conclusion of a fiat currency printed into oblivion anchored by nothing real.
Dr. Gloom @ 31:
We've been in collapse since the end of the Vietnam War. We have used our military supremacy to force others to accept our green paper for real stuff. We call it being "the world's policemen" but otheres view it for what it really is, "the world's mafiosa".
Vitam Vas @ 28:
Unless you can extract oil or any other valuable consumable from them it won't do much good. Nothing is produced by taxation, it is just blips on screens being moved around.
It is the money belief system that is about to collapse. Some people that god wrote a book and some people believe that there is something real inside their Charles Schwaab account.
The Truth Hurts @ 3:
And right into Halliburton and KBR's treasuries. And after all, isn't that what's important here?
Human @ 6:
Iraq tried that and we invaded the country. I think we need to attack her.
slippytoad @ 29:
Wow! your easy to please...I would have demanded she clean his cage once a week !!!
I think it's a great Idea for the suits, get on that ledge motherfuckers and jump, and let the rest of us who have nothing keep on going because we are used to it, just another day in paradise.
milquetoast @ 37:
You have to contemplate what keeping the smirk off his face means -- it means they're keeping him from getting what he wants.
If they don't jump, let's throw them through their corner windows. They knew what they were doing. They fleeced the corporate trust and lined their pockets at the citizens expense.
Vitam Vas @ 28:
Not that I dont think the rich should be taxed but...
there is no way (for the federal govt) to tax their way outta this one.
the federal reserve corporation...(a privte group of banks that creates our money out of thin air)...has made their decision.
they have already pulled the plug and the ship is gonna tank.....(slowly)
the federal reserve dollar has lost its hedgemony as the worlds oil medium...
the euro is taking over.
its just a matter of time...even supermodels know...
slippytoad @ 39:
ahhh..."I see"(said the blind man)
Annoyed Canuck @ 22:
Buy Canadian dollars. And if you want proof about the Canadian dollar, go onto eBay and find something from a Canadian seller. If the item is marked $1 Canadian, it takes more than $1 in U.S. funds to buy it. In Maine, we got a little boomlet in the Canadian tourists this year who are getting a better deal for their money.
We all know that in 30 second sound bites, people such as Buchanan sounds like bluster, but on this issue, he has written position on the matter, and I generally agree with him, except I do think the budget deficit, as opposed to the trade deficit, is, in itself, going to cause inflationary pressures because printing money is about the only way to deal with it.
The Republican philosophy has shifted from advocating a balanced budget to the notion that "deficits don't matter". Well, we heard a while back, during the Nasdaq run up that "earning didn't matter", and found out that they did. Similarly, I think that these deficits will prove to matter, and as everyone knows, about the only way to deal with these deficits is to print money, which will cause inflation. (The Republicans may think that God will miracle away the budget deficit.)
We're also hearing from the corporate media and corporate owned candidates that free trade is working, even as we have record trade deficits year after year. I wonder if Bush's biggest foreign policy blunder, instead of Iraq, was to give communist China financial leverage against the U.S. by causing this country to be a debtor nation to China. Now, these foreign countries, with their surpluses of dollars, are looking for equity interests in the U.S. which will result in your corporate owned politician being increasingly foreign owned, beholden to a world order, rather than to the American public.
I always wondered whether Bush would be Nixon, or Hoover. Maybe, with Bush, we get the two wrapped into one.
Only one candidate even brings up this issue: guess which one?
That's right, Ron Paul.
Way to go Ron Paul! Raised more than $3.5 million in one day, on line...this November 5th.
Pffsh they are barely touching the tip of the ICE BERG....
Do you guys seriously understand what the future is going to look like???
Think about it...long and hard...
Take in as many sources as you can...
Understand that the future is not what "they" sold us it is...
Y'know, it's easy to write off McLaughlin because of his histrionics, especially after Dana Carvey's skit ("Eleanor, gee I think your swelleanor!!!"), but we should give the man his props. He did a lengthy bit about the dangerous circumstances in Pakistan last week, ahead of the martial law action. That's pretty timely, and he's also good at focusing on issues and broader trends that the MSM won't touch, like legalizing drugs or the disappearing middle class. As talk host hosts/clowns go, he can be worth the time, sometimes.
And man, Buchahan is a strange enigma. He completely turns me off with his "cultural war" shtick, but he'll often make points I completely agree with, like the fallacy of the "they hate us for our freedoms" line. It's amazing to hear a true Conservative admit that it is the effect our policies have on Arabs in their part of the world, not who we are, that is the motivation for the attacks on us.
f Arthur Laffer for his stupid Reaganomics blueprints. Reagan Bush 41 and Bush 43 looted the treasury to help the leisure class
To be less tangential to the topic of this post, what scares me the most economically is the Baby-Boomer retirement. For decades now the gov't has raked in much more in SS than it paid out. But the excess never went into a "lockbox" or "trust fund", it just got spent, always. In less than 2 years that excess is going to start to dry up, maybe even at exponential rates. So that money we've been spending all along isn't going to be there. What's going to fill the gap? We aren't doing anything to address this, and running up massive deficits is the absolute WORSE thing to be doing.
What a day when the pedulum swings. What a day when the well runs dry.
It may not be time to get out on the ledge, but it is definitely time to buy TWM! If you haven't bought yours yet, it's not too late, just average in and you will be fine.
John McLaughlin is still alive? What sort of Cthonic sorcery is this?
rduke @ 48:
It is not a picture I would choose to hang on the wall
The possibilities are in a chaotic swirl, what coalesces from that is anybodies guess but judging by the present refusal to consider anything worthwhile or pragmatic as a solution to myriad problems doesn't instill much hope for the future. That is still no reason to give up, there is always an unknown consequence or occurance that could change the dim view we seem to share.
Having said that, it would be best to prepare for utter fucking insanity on the part of all, because if it comes down how I see it in my mind, it will be an extremely violent time and I wish I were younger so I could live longer as protector of my family.
The screaming show again. I'd forgotten about these guys. They give me a headache.
It doesn't look good. I don't need to be an economist. Spend more than you make for too long, and trouble comes knocking. That's what the USA, at every level, in every capacity, and in every nook, has been doing for ages now.
Dietrich @ 52:
Some dark secret of his time with the Jesuits, no doubt. (Hey, he has a masters in English and philosophy, and a Ph.D. in philosophy I just noticed. Of course, the last philosophy doc I met was a dishwasher... something about too much acid... pity... I somehow don't think that'll be a problem for John.)
But I do like his work. I wish to hell Mort would just chill out though. He was starting to freak me out tin that clip! Panic is NOT what we need now. Things are serious, but have some faith. Yeah, sure drag out your old Y2K supplies if you must. But we are better positioned now than ever before for something like this. There are no guarantees, but for every summer there is a winter and for ever winter there is a spring. We may just have to make the best of winter while it lasts, that's all.
Anyway... I still think McLaughlin one of the sharpest in the business. I'm sure glad he still does the show, I just WISH it was available entirely online somewhere, dang it.
This has been coming our way for over 2 or 3 years. I'm not a genius but I recognized the seriousness of this country's problem back then. I pulled what little I had out of the market and just two weeks ago quit my job to get my hands on the savings I had in my 401K, taking a 10% hit but it's worth it.
As the problem increased, I decreased everything I could in the way of debt and "luxury" items and services.
At the moment I'm working on finding something I can do that is not "working for the man" to support myself. Remember the Waltons, well we are all headed that way.
Vitam Vas @ 28:
The dollar has been falling dramatically over the past month or two, but it has been orderly. The big unknown if one of these days (maybe today) the dollar has a disasterous day, say losing 10% of its value for instance. Nevertheless, absent a panic move, a prolonged drop in the dollar is a good thing for the U.S. over the long term. At some point in the near future, the U.S. will probably lose its position as the world's reserve currency and make way for some sort of combo between the Euro, Yen, Yuan perhaps. When this occurs, the days of easy money in th U.S. will be over. No more no-questions-asked refi's and the like.
The long term drop in the U.S. dollar will enable us to get back to basics - rebuild a manufacturing base, invest in better capital inputs, etc. We'll adjust to less deficit spending out of necessity and though no one seems to want to acknowledge it here, exports will begin to grow significantly. Even if our currency is valued like a third-world country, we will still have a first world infrastructure (despite some deterioration) and money would pour in from the rest of the world once again. So are we in for some pain? Yes. But the freak-out scenarios will seem silly ten years from now. Unless of course that unexpected crash does happen...just pay attention I guess in case something does happen so you're not caught off guard.
Naw, don't waste time opening the window.
Just jump out, let the shards fall where they may.
If the Democratic-controlled Congress isn't using "whistleblowers" to gain credibility then there's no way competing presidential candidates will. Who gets to decide who the "good" candidates are? Always thought that's what we have elections for...
Worst economy? it's hanging by a thread, and if we go it's going to collapse the global economy.
Another mission accomplished by George Bush and company.
Everybody can agree that all stupid Reslugs should line up and follow the biggest moron Buchanan out on the ledge.
One thing no one has mentioned is what will happen if the chimp gets the US in a shooting war with Iran?
In tandem with their 'doom & gloom' marketing, we should start a wide, grassroots campaign to promote the viability of vigorously stimulating the economy in all sectors by eating the rich. It'd be the 'gobble up' theory.
I mean it, start printing cookbooks on fatcat barbecue recipes and get them on the NYT Bestseller list.
He depicts our state as “the worst potential financial crisis since the Depression.”
Um.. The depression had a war it could use to prop itself up and get the country moving again. The coming Armageddon has a war to blame and not a chance in hell of ever paying back the monstrous debt that chimpy and darth have robbed from this country.
cheneybush scums have taken a page from Germany during the 1920s, when the Germans repaid massive war reparations to England and France with a devalued and worthless currency.
THAT is how the sociopathic neocons expect to pay off our US national debt and deficit to China and the world: with worthless dollars, laughing all the way.
ldzppln @ 4:
Say what?
Ever hear of money market accounts?
How about 80 percent over say 400K and retroactive to date of birth?
Preacher Boob @ 59:
Check the Building Code, it might specify tempered or other safety glass.
Keep passing the open windows ... for now. But then JUMP!
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