The McLaughlin Group: The Economy Tanking
By Nicole Belle Saturday Jan 19, 2008 9:01pmGuest blogged by Heather, cross posted at DailyKos
The panel of Mort Zuckerman, Eleanor Clift, Monica Crowley and Pat Buchanan on this Friday's The McLaughlin Group sat down for a discussion on whether our economy is tanking and whether or not it's in part due to Iraq.
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Mort Zuckerman paints as gloomy a picture of the economy--as we heard the other day from Jim Cramer--but he refuses to admit that the occupation in Iraq might have anything to do with the economy tanking now. Zuckerman is also completely dismissive of Ron Paul's arguments about the economy during the ABC GOP debate.
Of course, Buchanan and Crowley think it's only a minor drag on the economy and Crowley goes so far as to start spouting off about how great the economic growth is in Iraq. How's that occupation and genocide going for you, Monica? Oh the economy is booming....it's wonderful.
We do have a real mess on our hands with the sub-prime lending industry and the economic forecast is looking very dreary, to put it mildly, but I don't understand how anyone can completely separate our irresponsible borrowing and spending on the bottomless pit called Iraq from the state of the economy in general we're facing now. The conservatives' answer to our problems is to lower taxes and cut government spending (code for gut Medicaid and Social Security) but that war spending, no problem.
Transcript below the fold
Zuckerman: I don't think it's an exaggeration. It's an understatement. You've heard me say here I think we are facing the worst financial crunch and crisis since the Great Depression. You have the entire banking system now that is virtually frozen and there are not just the sub-prime mortgage thing. There are other things called credit default swaps where they're going to lose as much money, 250 billion dollars on. The banks are frozen. They're not making loans because they have such huge debts that they have to take onto their balance sheets and nobody knows how to deal with that because you had a dramatic...you had two bubbles that have burst at the same time. The housing bubble which has collapsed in this country. The first time since the Great Depression that housing values have gone down for a year since the depression and it's going to go down even more next year. The credit crunch, you've just exploded the whole credit system in this country. We were way over leveraged. The banking system was over-leveraged. People didn't even know about it. The bankers didn't know about it. They didn't access the risk. Now that risk is piling in and every body's going to pay the price. Uh it's going to stimulate nothing other, I mean it's going to de-stimulate the economy. Nobody has money to lend. They're saving all their money to pay off their debts. They're borrowing money or looking at uh the rest of the world to enhance their capital and it's still not going to solve their problems.
McLaughlin: Okay this worthy tried to pull it together. Why is the economy tanking?..............Is Ron Paul right? Do you have to deal with the monetary issues before you deal with anything else to account for deficit spending?
Zuckerman: You know, I'm ah, Mitt Romney starts your program and he says he's going to do something about the economy. When he was Governor of Mass. he had 1/2 of one percent increase in employment in the four years he was Governor while the country's employment went up by 5 1/2 percent. He left the state with the highest unemployment rate of any state in the union. So his words are just phony words. This guy doesn't even know what he's talking about. Romney does know what he's talking about he's misleading.....
[crosstalk]
.....He has pulled nothing together. He's just pulled words together.
McLaughlin: You don't think the Iraq war?.....
Zuckerman: I'm not saying the Iraq war was, was an economic boom. All I'm saying to you it does not deal with the problems that this country is facing.
McLaughlin: Despite the trillion dollar cost of the Iraq war?
Zuckerman: We had five years of this war and the country was booming. The reason why the country is going down is because of the credit system, not because of the war.......
Clift: First of all, Romney went to Michigan and pandered. He promised them 20 billion dollars if he's president to revive the auto industry so I'm not going to heap praise on him. Ron Paul is the closest thing we have to a Ross Perot. He is out there hammering away on this issue. I think he has a point to make and the American people if they really do link a wasteful war in Iraq with problems at home then the politicians will really be up against the wall.
McLaughlin: What do you think about what Eleanor said?
Crowley: Well the UN this week came out with a report projecting that in Iraq, the Iraqi economy this year and next year will grow at the rate of seven to eight percent. The US economy right now is growing at the rate of 1.5 percent. So all of these little stimulus packages and Hillary Clinton just recently said she's going to tack on a forty billion dollar rebate package along the lines of what President Bush is suggesting too.
McLaughlin: What do you want to do?
Crowley: Look none of these problems address the long term issues in this economy about job creation and growth. I want to see a cut, I want to see the Bush tax cuts made permanent. I want to see a roll back of the tax rates across the board and I want the most important thing John is cutting federal spending.
[crosstalk]
McLaughlin: I want a villain here. I want culpability. Why should it be this way? I haven't heard it yet.
Buchanan: ..John look, the United States is completely tapped out. We borrow from Europe to defend Europe. We borrow from the Arabs to fight a war to bring democracy to Iraq. We borrow from the Chinese and the Japanese to defend their oil lifelines. The United States saves nothing. We are now, we've got five trillion dollars abroad. It is coming back to bit us....Citibank.....
McLaughlin: This goes back to Bush and it goes back to the White House. Is that right?
Buchanan: Well it goes back to 1992, John. There is five trillion dollars abroad. They're moving it into sovereign wealth funds. They are snapping up Citibank, Morgan Stanley, 3Com, all these other....crosstalk......
McLaughlin: It's traceable to overspending by the government...[crosstalk]......and misspending by the government.....
[crosstalk]
Clift: I agree the government is tapped out but is not the time for the ideological hobby horses. We're not going to solve the problem of sovereign wealth and we're not going to make the Bush tax cuts permanent....[crosstalk]... They're going to do some quick and immediate fixes that are needed for average people.
McLaughlin: Multiple choice on the Iraq war. Is the cost of the Iraq war A: a major drag on the economy, a medium drag, a minor drag, or no drag? Pat Buchanan.
Buchanan: It is a minor drag, John. There's five trillion dollars in American dollars out there that foreign countries have and they're coming back to buy America.
Clift: We wouldn't be reliant on those foreign countries to the extent we are if we weren't funding a trillion or two trillion dollar war. Major drag.
Crowley: Minor drag in the whole context of this dynamic American economy that's having some serious problems.
Zuckerman: You know we've had four booming years while the war in Iraq has been going on. It's no drag at all. The problems we're having now have nothing to do with the war in Iraq.
McLaughlin: A major drag. We'd have that trillion dollars to spend here at home if we didn't have Iraq.
1.2 trillion spent in Iraq and they don't think it would make a difference.
Zuckerman: I don’t think it’s an exaggeration. It’s an understatement. You’ve heard me say here I think we are facing the worst financial crunch and crisis since the Great Depression.
-----------------------
He is correct. There is a 500 trillion dollar derivatives bubble. Read that number again.
It is not a typo. 5 0 0 T R I L L I O N
Worst stock bubble since the Great Depression.
Worst housing bubble since the Great Depression.
Worst credit bubble since the Great Depression.
Great Depression is the common theme.
Couldn't be. I mean . . .Insanity said it was in GREAT shape!!!
That show's still on?
Why? The joke's not funny anymore.
If we want to keep the economy alive and strong, we need to add business courses to our grade school curriculum. Also, we need to establish social programs to teach adults how to make businesses of their own. If more people can create jobs of their own instead of waiting around for others to make the jobs for them, then the economy will not need to worry about such strife in the future and this will solve our welfare problems in the long term.
A trusim from Ron Paul:
"It doesn't matter what you think about the Iraq war - we can't afford it."
War Profiteering & Bank Fraud -- the two principal enterprises of the Bush Crime Family.
What's the surprise?
They've been doing it for nearly a hundred years .. HERE .. in America.
And no one noticed? Until now?
Who set up the money-laundering scheme that allowed Fritz Thyssen (and the Bushes) to get their war profits out of Nazi Germany?
BUSH CRIME FAMILY
Who were the architects of the $1.4 TRILLION Savings & Loan Scandal during the Reagan Administration?
BUSH CRIME FAMILY
How can so many idiots get so much face time on these shows?
i think the only real way to deal with this is to have the government interview with the banking network.. and for finical responsibility, and not in the form of tax cuts.
When there's a problem, you manage the budget.. sadly no one has done that yet.. The very first priority is to help the normal people.. and let's not allow banks to try and suck people into credit debt. Debt should not be the source of our currency.
I don't think businesses should get a tax break.. because let us face it. If this country go under, they can move to somewhere else.
I miss Fred Flintstone.
I mean Tony. I miss Tony.
It gets tiresome to hear psychotic idiots like Monica Crowley, et al spew their economic psychobabble. Trickle down economics has no track record of success, except to the wealthy. King George the 1st had a perfect phrase for it---voodoo economics. Mort has a good point about the subprime problem being a major problem. But the 1.5 trillion we pissed away in Iraq would have sure helped us. And the ridiculous idea about giving everybody $800 to spend so that we can stimulate the economy---why not just bail out the ocean with a thimble? Why not reduce the national debt? These people must live in an alternate universe.
These idiots are a joke.
Mid to high six figure incomes (before investments and assets) and none of them have a clue is more like it.
How far does Monica Crowley have her head up her behind? I have rarely heard such an ignorant wingnut.
bmw 528 @ 11:
They do because they have money. They might lose a little in the market, but they will never suffer like the little guy.
The US has just a bad culture problem.
It’s all about success and winning.
Same for the people, same for the government. Both can’t stand losing.
So even if you broke.. don’t cut back; just borrow and spend.
The future is not important. Only the “me” and “now”.
It’s infantile behavior.
Spoiled little brats.
Marcus Aurelius @ 6:
It's funny, how good ol Mort said Paul had no idea what he was talking about. Seriously what credibility does Zuckerman have?
I think it's also worht noting.. having a trillian dollars spent for the common good of americans would have help us a lot.. Instead, it goes towards the soldiers we wound, the mercenaries who spend it all themselves.. and to people who managed to smuggle a couple millions of it.
Pawsie @ 17:
How about billions.
Through a friendship with Pat Buchanan, McLaughlin became a war supporter and a speech writer/advisor to President Richard Nixon.
Nuff Said
We need the Truth if we are going to recover from this mess. Hopefully more in the media will start providing it. Enough happy talk and blindness to the corruption going on.
L.A. Confidential @ 19:
The McLaughlin Group. Sponsored by GE.
what kinda show is this? old croaks shouting at the top of their lungs to make their point. no wonder the public as a whole doesn't give a shit about important issues
Orangutan. @ 20:
Beginning of the end
http://tinyurl.com/ys4cfn
If we aren't going to talk about the creation of the Federal Reserve, The Truth about JFK, MLK, and other assassinated leaders, Corruption in Government, etc, then we are getting what we deserve. People need to face the facts and quit pretending we are this great country that can do no wrong and will inherently prosper.
L.A. Confidential @ 23:
Or even:
http://www.historiasiglo20.org/prehistory/fire.htm
The Sept. 11th attacks and our subsequent idiotic responses have cost this nation trillions. Whoever said Osama has won was right. This country is so much worse off after Sept. 11th. We've lost our morals, we've bankrupted our economy, we've given up our freedoms.
God how I hate ideologues.
Blindness masquerading as wisdom.
"Zero effect" my ass.
Orangutan. @ 26:
United Serfs of America
Crowley wants the taxes made permanent she is sooooo clueless maybe she should be an anchor of a morning show or something maybe the view where she can spew this nonsense the taxe cuts for the wealth were paid for by the middle class and the poor via the looting of social security ( which is just another hidden tax)
This segment offers no insight into the problems plaguing the economy. Our ruling class are a bunch of ivory-tower dwelling idiots.
Kabuki dance galore.
From the Bushco perspective, they've succeeded.
Nearly everyone who paid into Bushco got their investment back.
The 1% got richer.
Oil and defense industry profits are through the roof. Halliburton got paid. Blackwater got paid.
Foley is not in jail, Haggard is not in jail, Craig still has his job, Libby is not in jail, Cheney is not in jail, Rove is not in jail, and those names are just the tip of the iceberg.
The thug class intends to make us goose-step in front of them the final 365 days of their death march.
I think that Zuckerman, being rich enough to own US News, doesn't give a sh!t about the middle class. If he thinks that RP is throwing words together, then doesn't get it or doesn't want to get it.
Romney has never said anything remotely factual about the economy, just overblown mis-truths about what he has done...
Save us Ron!!
At bayonette point.
King of Kings @ 30:
This shows motto should be.
We shuck and jive for you.
"There is a 500 trillion dollar derivatives bubble. Read that number again.
It is not a typo. 5 0 0 T R I L L I O N"
How do you substantiate that? According to the New York Stock Exchange the market value of the listed companies on the NYSE is $27 trillion. So this bubble is 18 time larger that the total market value of the NYSE? I find that rather hard to believe. The GDP of the world is what $50T so the bubble is 10 times world GDP? I also find that rather hard to believe.
I love John McLaughlin. He's hilarious... and usually right.
...and how will we deal with stagflation this time...?
Been saying it for years now and while a good little Zionest like Zuckerma can't bring himself to admit it, history says you CANNOT HAVE a guns and butter economy and not think the train would fall off the tracks. Over one trillion for a needless war and over 500 trillion in derivitives built on nothing more than quicksand and the never ending greed of Wall Street Bankers. Just imagine what one trillion dollars could have done to create new jobs and make much needed infrastructure improvements. This administration should be hung on the White House lawn.
Since the Bush administration repeated exactly what Cooledge did in the 20's - tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy - why is the result a surprise? Bush thinks the stock market is the economy and as long as it's humming everything's great. Until it collapses.
As an American, I don't give a fuck if Iraq's economy is booming, I care about the fact that this America's Economy SUCKS. And it mostly sucks because of Bush's God-Damn war.
It makes me sick to see these pundits sitting there screaming about how it's not that big of a drag, when our infrastructure is crumbling, our jobs have gone overseas and we are looking at a terrible non existent Health Care system for Middle Class Americans.
No one on that panel has seen 'middle class' in many years. If ever.
Orangutan. @ 26:
True that.
I watched this video thinking wow, lots of yelling, but very little substance.
That Zuckerman guy is the worst....he actually thinks that wars bring prosperity. He simply has no clue that correlation does not mean causation. That's the biggest problem in mainstream economics. All they do is statistical regressions, but there is very little if any strong, sound, economic principles and theory.
Ron Paul was educated by the very best economists in the world, because the people he learned from look at the economy from an individual's perspective and then work out from there. They also treat the economy as it should be treated, as a system of voluntary exchanges among cooperating individuals. That's what true economics is. Anytime you introduce a force into this system of voluntary exchange, be it theft, fraud, taxation, counterfeiting (central bank), these economists know what is going to happen because they can see the responses of individual people in the face of such an environment. Free market economists are not blindly putting faith into free enterprise, on the contrary, they are analyzing the market at a much more philosophical and long term basis using principles that are true because they must necessarily be true by the nature of man's actions.
[Edited. Too long. You may not print or reprint lengthy text from your own works or those of others, including news articles. You may link to them. If you edit yourself, then the siteteam won't have to-Sitemonitor]
The solution is simple:
ALLOW COMPETITION IN THE CREATION OF MONEY.
Right now we are slaves to legalized counterfeiters, and we don't even know it. How in the world can anyone who is smart, industrious, and innovative, compete and become successful if they are competing with people who have access to a printing press? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. That's why the military complex is so big and strong. They have access to the government market, and the government has access to a printing press. They don't have to go out and earn their money by satisfying us the people, they can just create a billion dollars and give it to Halliburton and Blackwater.
THIS is why fiat money systems always fail in the long term. The unfortunate thing is that the people in charge do not care about life after they die. To them even their kids are unimportant. They are psychopaths who must be stopped, because at this rate, the US is going to end EXACTLY like the Roman Empire did.
Roman Empire spread too far and printed money to finance themselves, in order to fight the barbarians. Their currency eventually was rejected, and that's how they crumbled overnight. Look at 2007 now, the similarities are scary.
We are an empire, we are all around the world, we print money to finance everything. Instead of barbarians, we have "terrorists". We will fail just like the Romans did if we don't stop this insanity now. We MUST elect someone who is going to do something about the monetary system. If we don't, all of us are going to lose EVERYTHING.
>We do have a real mess on our hands with the sub-prime lending industry
It's not just subprime, that was just the first area to show up as a problem.
It's the whole credit industry. Houses, cars, credit cards.
As Karen Carpenter would say, "We've only just begun".
But we got pickem-up trucks and abortion is evil and don't forget gay marriage!!!!
Oh yeah, Jeebus will be back soon.
...but none of this is bushs fault or the republican party....end of show.
If you listen carefully to Zuckerman, he was actually spot on. He was saying that the particular crisis we face right now is the subprime/property bubble mess which has created a credit crisis affecting all areas of our economy.
Yes, sure, wasting a trillion or two on the Iraq War is a factor and even the oil increase is a factor - but, the disarray and crisis we see now is traceable to the subprime/property bubble.
And, all of this can be traceable back to the deregulation of Ronald Reagan.
zzman
NoBuddy @ 36:
Derivatives aren't stocks. Nor are they part of the GDP. Their value is based on something else. Like options. Or futures.
Derivatives are a point in the future. A kind of simplistic derivative is currency purchase. Say tomorrow, you buy yens because you think in 6 months they'll be worth more.
Nick Leeson actually caused the fall of the oldest investment bank in the UK by hiding derivative losses on a hidden page in his ledger (Basically that was how he did it).
So don't believe it, if you don't want to. Essentially, derivatives can be based upon anything, and are not the thing themselves. It's a gamble, a bet on the future. And traded on paper, between LARGE investors with a stated value on that piece of paper. That's how you can have a $500t bubble coming up.
My sister has a finance degree and a broker's license and wouldn't even try to explain it to me. But she did give me the currency example.
zzman @ 47:
BS
Neocons and Texans, leave those in charge of your country and guess what, you're screwed.
The Bush Crime Family's fortune should be frozen to help pay down the debt Chimp has bestowed upon this nation. Likewise that war profiterring killer terrorist Dick Cheney should have his Halliburton stock that has increased 3000% since the Iraq war frozen and put into the US Treasury.
Then they both should be frog marched out of the White House and tried for high treason against the United States for, among other things. outing Valerie Plame and held accountable for the resulting sure deaths and/or capture of other undercover agents associated with Plame who simultaneously had their cover blown as a result .
After a sure guilty verdict is handed down for numerous high crimes and misdemeanors ,and for wrecking the nation, Bush and Cheney should taken to the same gallows where Saddam faced his justice.
2 hours of electricity in Iraq is "economic growth" to Crowley. The aluminum from her hair dye has gone into her brain
Hmmm, imagine that. Ron Paul is right, again. And it seems everyone is missing a huge point; the privately owned Federal Reserve is destroying our great nation. They keep printing money out of thin air. It is the same thing as counterfeiting. This is why our Dollar is falling.
It is not about Right or Left people, it is about Right or Wrong. Ron Paul is the only candidate speaking truth to power and offering true solutions. Wake up folks, before it is too late.
I just voted for Ron Paul here at the caucus in Las Vegas. I had been a Democrat for over 25 years before becoming a Ron Paul Republican. But you know what; I don’t care about party affiliation anymore, I woke up, you should too. Don’t buy what MSM is selling, do your own research and then vote your conscience.
We, as a nation, are in no position to withstand any depression...much less a Great Depression.
The big question will come down to feeding ourselves. During the Great Depression, a very large number of Americans were still small farmers. They were poor; they went years without new shoes, but they never went hungry. And they fed a lot of other people because they could and it was the right thing to do. Even in the cities back then, people (a lot of them immigrants) still cultivated kitchen gardens and raised chickens.
Today, we are almost completely dependent on a centralized agricultural system that itself depends on huge industrial inputs and transportation costs. The Soviet Union experienced a similar agricultural situation. However, because that system obviously did not work for fulfilling the dietary needs of the population, the Russians had gone back to mostly feeding themselves. Some historians have now looked back and credited the dacha gardens with managing to keep Russia stable during the Soviet Union's downfall. Or, they were prepared for the worst case in a way similar to American society before/during the Great Depression.
A family friend was recently commissioned by a government agency who shall remain nameless to calculate how many people rural America can absorb from urban population centers in the event of an exodus from the cities. During the Depression, lots of people left the cities...but they were hardly the death traps that they'll be this time around.
I'm cynical to the bone, but everything about this situation looks like the worst case scenario. And i'm afraid that its gonna happen quick. Like one morning we're going to wake up and find out that we are now officially, no more fudging the statistics and having an opulent facade, a third world nation.
Miss Kitty says "Nick Leeson actually caused the fall of the oldest investment bank in the UK by hiding derivative losses on a hidden page in his ledger (Basically that was how he did it).
So don’t believe it, if you don’t want to. Essentially, derivatives can be based upon anything, and are not the thing themselves. It’s a gamble, a bet on the future. And traded on paper, between LARGE investors with a stated value on that piece of paper. That’s how you can have a $500t bubble coming up."
I'm not questioning that there may be a derivative issue, just the amount. Leeson had a $1.3 B derivative problem, so I read. I am just wondering how the amount of $500T is being calculated, how the amount can be substantiated.
Whoops - screwed up the italics.
RAISE the taxes on the rich!! Make them help pay for the mess, the creation of which, they have supported!!!
Maybe I'll be glad we have a lot of property so I can grow our family's food. Right now I'm just glad my unemployment checks for the month will cover or damn health insurance.
NoBuddy @ 57:
Ya, can't read it....
can you change it?
thanks a bunch...
hahaha
These fascists are a joke.they`re the P-U-N-D-I-T-S.WHO HAVE ENGINEERED THE iraq WAR BY THEIR VERY SILENCE.They are the enemy not the Iraqis.
Ron @ 9:
They are used to shape public opinion and to control where the discussion goes. That's why a candidate like Ron Paul is so dangerous: he doesn't follow the script. Which is why he has been so roundly ignored first and then savagely attacked as a racist -- which he definitely isn't -- or described as a loon, like Mort the commentator did.
I no longer watch the news to be informed, but to see how stories are being spun. If they tell you about it, it is because they want you to know about a story. In this case, the economy will be tanking, big time, but they want to position themselves first.
Everyone should be reading Naomi Klein's Disaster Capitalism immediately!! I would bet it pretty much spells out exactly what is going to happen in America, and soon.
NoBuddy @ 56:
You add up all the numbers that represent dollars amount on all the derivatives that have been issued. I assume those numbers are found buried in annual reports, tax returns corporate statements. It's a presto changeo form of money.
Look If I make $20,000 a year, and have a bunch of credit cards worth $10,000 each, say 5, and I max them out, I have $50.000 in debt. And no REAL money to back it up.
That's how derivatives are traded-fake money. It does not exist. Except on paper.
Conservatives: When the economy is good you can't raise taxes (on the rich) it will drag the economy down. When the economy is bad you can't raise taxes (on the rich) it will keep the economy down.
Essentially the answer for conservatives is always to cut taxes to the rich. No matter what the economy is doing.
By the way I love the people who say Iraq isn't doing anything at all to hurt the economy. Uh, huh. Sure and by the way I have a wonderful bridge near San Francisco you can buy from me really, really cheap.
I'm sorry to say that this is only the beginning. It will get much worse. I don't believe that the cause of this recession will end up being from only the prime-loan scandal. It's the result of many years of bad policy finally running its course. Next up will be a credit card company crisis. So many people have been living off of their credit cards just to get by in this flourishing bush economy in hopes that things will get better but they're just getting worse. Nearly every average middle class American is one crisis away from financial disaster. It's going to get real ugly.
" Could This Be "The Mother of All Wakeup Calls"?
Orangutan. @ 25:
NoBuddy : You are CORRECT to ask this question - see below !
The number for derivatives in question IS 2.1 trillion dollars - see below. people have the habit of not-posting the source links. Most of the time, b/c of some 'magic'..
NoBuddy @ 37:
Subprime crisis is small potatoes - these pesky US derivatives are the NEW/NEXT problem piggybacking on subprime, US Iraq'd, etc - coming soon to every US household near you. Taxpayers payola time for those too ..
It seems we've been had much more than anybody would say aloud w/ALL markets related .. And, the more mess, the more $$$ printed/"injected" by FedRes, the more they are paid in "fees", for the mess they didn't minimally regulate ! Talk about conflict of interest/ fox guarding the chicken-coop.. S&Ls were a super-mini joke in comparison.
Too bad we don't have the Bastille here - would be filled very fast. We (taxpayers) pay any which way the wind blows .. with our liberties also - so they can steal more w/out being held accountable ..
""Posted On: Sunday, January 20, 2008, 2:59:00 PM EST
" Could This Be "The Mother of All Wakeup Calls"?
Author: Jim Sinclair
http://jsmineset.com/
... Pop Goes the Weasle of derivative madness in the form of 2.1 trillion dollars. I see this entire matter as the crime of all time, not simply the Great Train Robbery.
.... When will people realize that these companies could never perform on the products they sold even when they were flush with money?
Default swaps and derivatives were always a scam if you consider their inability to do what they had contracted to do. No one ever imagined that multiple credit problems could occur simultaneously. That means no one ever did or considered the “What If” in this whole fiasco. All that existed was world class unbridled GREED.
How thick can people be that they can't see that the entire financial world is now threatened with a problem for which there is no practical solution?
Tax cuts, lower interest rates, and putting $800 in every consumer’s hands is not going to put a dent in this juggernaut of unwinding derivatives that are hell bent on producing a Financial Apocalypse.
The potential now is akin to the Weimar Republic case study. Yet many sleep comfortable in their imaginary world, seemingly immune to what's about to happen.""
More from the economist.com:
Huge NEW problems in the capital markets?
I truly believe the sinking of the economy by the Bush administration was not caused by incompetence, but was intentionally sunk in order to yield a death blow to Social Security and other social programs and to privatize as much of our government as possible.
if a government were spending $15 BILLION U.S. Dollars PER MONTH in the endless qWagmire of Iraq for an illegal war based on a pack of lies, would you trust that governments assessment of the situation and would you want to invest in that governments economy?
Yeah, I didn't think so...throwing good money after bad never works, bushs days are numbered.
Bush had his defining moment, when last week Keith Olbermann refered to him as president hoover.
enough said, george w bush Worst President Ever!
pol @ 67:
You might be right. If they go this way though, we'll have a civil war. Based on income and wealth distribution (top quintile vs. the bottom) the US is much beyond what is considered 'safe'. Since Clinton years.
Unfortunately this is NOT satire any more.
NEW BUSH COINS
I don't know who is worse. the wealthy talking heads of the talk show circuit who spout crap about the U.S. economy not being so bad, or the people here who whine about the U.S. economy being so bad.
Oh...both are equally bad, because neither group is doing anything to actually solve the current financial crisis.
At least the talking heads will still be wealthy when the shirt hits the fan. But it's the poverty lines for the rest of the whiners because that's all they can do is whine.
Country going to Hell, and you all just keep talking nonsense instead of taking action on the barricades.
Cowards.
People & Power - Death of the dollar 2 - 19 Dec 07 - Part 1
[FIFY-Sitemonitor]
whatyaafraidof @ 71:
So, what are YOU doing about it???
As far as a workable short term solution to this mess I think "Scott in Chicago"@ 72 says it best.
whatyaafraidof @ 71:
Barricades are the FRENCH specialite de la maison. We used to be 'can do', but for a while now specialize in victimhood. Didn't you see Hillary weeping crocodile tears over herself ? it gave her win in NH. United Sheeple of America went for it.
On the other hand any revolution costs more in lives/property of the 'little people' than unaccountable abusers, so it's not the best solution. I personally am at a loss what the solution would be, we are totally up the creek, and no paddle. None in sight. An alcoholic and robot with their fingers around the nuc button. Last May booosh signed an executive order re: martial law, taking the power totally OUT of hands of our chicken-crap KongreSS and governors. I didn't hear up till now that anybody from KongreSS got any access to this document - NOBODY saw it except of Cheney-bot. And, they still don't talk abt impeachment. I don't blame Pelosi - her hands were chopped off the moment Steny Hoyer was 'elected' by idiot dems as her #2. She fought against it, was overruled.
Btw, Hoyer has almost the same corpo-'donors' as Hillary, so more 'unity' is on the way ..
United Sheeple of America: we deliver.
Zuckerman's statement about how we had a booming economy for five years of the war is reason to believe that the war had no drag on the economy makes about as much sense as saying that there was enough gas in the car to go 250 miles at top speed so the car should be able to keep going for another 250 miles at top speed without stopping for fuel.
Rest in peace America. I once used to love you.
Today I find rejoice in being a currency trader selling your beloved dollar.
Bring back the guillotine!
Rasputin @ 78:
Hey... this could make for a really good "reality show" and geeze you don't even need to hire a guild writer!
Just put a guy up there to say, "Arrrrgh ye bastard... do ya have any last words?"
Then Kachunk!
Followed by another, "Arrrrgh ye bastard... do ya have any last words?" and so on. Maybe a bit of slo-mo and instant replay.... oooh... almost forgot judges, but not a trial, just scoring... best last words, best blood spatter etc. etc.
"I spent a trillion dollars on a war in Iraq and I didn't even get any lousy oil"
http://www.printfection.com/account/store_section.php?mode=move&storeid=...
I used to enjoy the shouting match that is the McLaughlin Group. Since they brought Monica Crowley on board, I have quit watching it. She is as partisan a hack as Sean Hannitwit.
Oops, my bad link:
http://www.printfection.com/shockteez/Shirts/_s_90140
The Asian stock markets are crashing as you read this. Next week may be the epic crash we have all been waiting for.
How bad is it? A bad day for the market is a 1% decline. A really bad day is a 2.5% decline. I just looked at Hong Kong. Down 6.9%, and still an hour to go. Hold on to your butts!
Some of these party partsans will continue to ignore the Iraq war spending the loss of industry that unbalanced our GDP, the absolute lack of Americans ability to attain decent health care, the cost of education, the trouble with what your education (degree) can realize in America anymore. That Average Americans cannot and do not have millions of dollars that they can invest in offshore investments.
They will bring this country down to a oligarcy with their selfish concerns of continuing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest which in these times will not go to producing jobs. Bush is to blame for much of this with things like transforming America into a War Economy that has to purchase its bullets from China and paying high salaries to halibuton and alike corporate CEO's. Paying them witht he peoples taxes and them not providing what they are contracted for.
This is deep and it is the Republicans to blame in the blame game. Which means to me we need someone other than republicans to straighten all this out.
They sometimes make it sound like Wall Street is being foreclosed on and they will be homeless whereas it is the people out of work, health costs, or ballooned interests that are too high to pay that are in fact already out in the cold and have lost everything without the ability to have some Saudi prince come in and bail them out as some of these companies are in fact bought and the CEO's walk with a absurd retirement.
They will continue to cry for the wealthiest to get those tax breaks and we can start building pyramids
for our pharoahs. It makes me feel that Hillary, and Obama aren't progressive enough to swing this county's pindulim back from the fascist right swing it has overly swung.
Where is America and where are the Americans? I'm not seeing them anymore............
Ask a republican and they will tell you Clinton and Abortion are the reason we are in this mess.
Read the Arab editorial written and published while Bush was in Saudi Arabia. Yow.
The Iraq War and Afghanistan War(somehow forgotten by these wonks) haven't had the drag on the economy YET, since they're being waged with borrowed money, which is what Buchanan was alluding to. Now we need to do some serious borrowing and money creation and we just can't anymore. None of them touched on this.
CappuccettoRosso @ 70:
This could've happened with a Republican Congress and a majority of state governors being Republican. It could just still happen with a K Street bought complacent Democrat Congress and Bush.
The McLaughlin Show is not what it used to be, still it remains rather interesting. Not that I catch it with any regularity and there are moments that offend me deeply, basically anytime Monica Crowley opens her mouth, but I find myself lately doing those Scooby-Do double-takes, you know when your ears pop up and you go whooo? Did I just hear what I heard sort?
Though hard to fathom how it happened but suddenly I find myself in concurrence with John McLaughlin and on more than one occasion. Eerie but has John McLaughlin become a liberal or is it that he is a realist and not necessarily blinded by ideology? Whatever the case, it is refreshing to hear honest answers from at least two members of the panel, John and Eleanor Clift.
The war in Iraq is a major drag on the economy and on the nation in other not so subtle ways. But on the question of what's wrong with the economy, the problem is not as simple as blaming the war for all that ails us. The war is a major drag on the economy, but it isn't the only drag on the economy. Iraq is a colossal waste of money, money that could be better spent elsewhere no doubt but what is wrong with the economy is that the band-aid fixes espoused by the Federal Reserve in lowering interest rates every time Wall Street need a quick fix are coming home to roost. The asset price bubble (in home equity, commercial real estate and stock prices) which has been building since the mid 1990s are the result of the monetary policies pursued by Greenspan and followed by Bernardke. At the same time policy decision made in the late 1980s and early 1990s have made Wall Street a more dangerous place and we should rethink the separation of investment banks and commercial banks. It is rather interesting that the banks with the biggest problems are the banks with both large investment and commercial operations. Citibank and Bear Stearns. The regulatory environment failed because it no longer exists.
Then there is the free trade agenda which is sending good paying jobs overseas, converting those jobs to lower paying jobs for largely low-income Asians with nearly all the savings in the equation being absorbed by the corporations. You get a lower price DVD player or HDTV set but your neighbor loses his job and Wall Street profits handsomely. Real wages in the US are at their lowest since 1970.
With wages falling Americans have however been insulated from a decline in living standards by a doubling of home equity every 8 years. Previously home equity doubled more on the order of 20 years. With such wealth to be tapped, Americans rushed to borrow and spend. People aren't stupid and home ownership is the American dream and enter stage right the subprime mortgage mess. Home loans were sold by both commercial banks and mortgage brokers to less credit worthy individuals on a floating interest rate. With rates rising and home prices dropping, people suddenly had negative equity in their homes. Coupled with the inflation that has come as a result of the deficit spending (lower taxes, more military spending), Americans find themselves earning less, paying more for goods and services due to inflation, and owing more than their assets are worth.
The errors are many: poor regulation of the financial markets as result of the convergence of commercial and investment banks, poor fiscal policy by the Fed that played to near-term Wall Street concerns not long-term financial prosperity, a tax code that can only be described as moronic, a trade policy that only serves to increase corporate profits but not create domestic jobs, unrestrained borrowing by both the US government and the US consumer to finance an unparalleled military spending boom that is really little more than a transfer of wealth from the public sector to the private sector. It's welfare for billionaires.
John Edwards for President
CoIntelPro @ 2:
WRONG! That's like saying a new BMW wouldn't affect my ability to pay my bills!
http://tubearoo.com/articles/60600/SNL_Dana_Carvey_The_McLaughlin_Group....
miss_kitty @ 62:
I may be mixing the english expressions here, but futures could also play a part.
For instance: Trader 1 has agreed to buy x amount of stocks at May 31 2008, from Trader 2, at a price agreed upon at November 30 2007. (For a fee at the time, or not, as this is gambling, after all)
When May 31 arrives, Trader 1 is forced to actually buy the stocks at agreed price, potentially causing him to pay vast overprice for a huge amount of stocks, resulting in a massive loss for his business. Now, this goes both ways, so some will make a profit, but say a bank who takes alot of these losses, on top of all the other stuff happening, will be in trouble, adding to the downwards spiral.
One thing to remember here, when they talk about bubbles like this, is that it will not be 100% loss, and what some lose, others gain, but the distribution of said losses/gains, will cause trouble, as losses might make people lose jobs, and businessess go bankrupt, but businessess earning money here, will most likely not hire up enough to make up for it, and the obligations companies who go bankrupt have, will not be taken over by companies winning.
Ron @ 9:
Bingo, but we ain't seen nothin' yet.
Wait til they get a load of this and
this.