We are on the precipice of a major financial calamity...

origen01 · May 6, 2012

Hollande with be the new French president. Do you think he'll led a populist revolt against austerity and the demands of international bondholders? If so, I fear dark clouds are on the horizon again.

If there is anything the fall of Lehman Brothers taught us--do not fuck with the market. Leaders who think there is an easy way out are in for a rude awakening.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...n-signals-end-of-Merkozy-austerity-drive.html

I fear I am beginning to fear again...

Distant Lover · May 6, 2012

origen01 said: ↑

Hollande with be the new French president. Do you think he'll led a populist revolt against austerity and the demands of international bondholders? If so, I fear dark clouds are on the horizon again.

If there is anything the fall of Lehman Brothers taught us--do not fuck with the market. Leaders who think there is an easy way out are in for a rude awakening.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...n-signals-end-of-Merkozy-austerity-drive.html

I fear I am beginning to fear again...
Click to expand...

Austerity is not the way to reduce chronic high unemployment. It has not worked in Greece or Spain. In the United States the Great Depression was ended by expansions in government spending and hiring.

Pussy Shark · May 6, 2012

It's alright! I've played enough post-apocalyptic survival games that I know exactly how to get along!:excited:

Draegus · May 6, 2012

Pussy Shark said: ↑

It's alright! I've played enough post-apocalyptic survival games that I know exactly how to get along!:excited:
Click to expand...

Let me guess you have no less than three exit strategies. Know where to get a nice stash of weapons from no less than six different places. Lastly know where to head to start the re-population of the human race.

Pussy Shark · May 6, 2012

Draegus said: ↑

Let me guess you have no less than three exit strategies. Know where to get a nice stash of weapons from no less than six different places. Lastly know where to head to start the re-population of the human race.
Click to expand...

Well, first I have to pick my name, then what I look like, and then how many points I'm going to allot to my firearms and scavenging skills! But yeah, at some point I'll hook up with some scantily clad Maxim Top 100-looking girl to repopulate!:excited::excited::excited::excited::excited:

Draegus · May 6, 2012

Pussy Shark said: ↑

Well, first I have to pick my name, then what I look like, and then how many points I'm going to allot to my firearms and scavenging skills! But yeah, at some point I'll hook up with some scantily clad Maxim Top 100-looking girl to repopulate!:excited::excited::excited::excited::excited:
Click to expand...

Yep that sounds like the right plan to have. LOL

origen01 · May 7, 2012

Distant Lover said: ↑

Austerity is not the way to reduce chronic high unemployment. It has not worked in Greece or Spain. In the United States the Great Depression was ended by expansions in government spending and hiring.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately European countries are not in a position to be running high deficits. They simply do not earn enough to argue the notion that their debt would be re-paid with interest. Bondholders will hound them like any other country running high deficits at the moment. The United States is the only exception and that is mostly related to the fact that most global capital outflows come from the United States.

The fall of Lehman Brothers reiterated the necessity of maintaining market confidence and stability.

smcaaphd · May 7, 2012

As long as people need wool to protect them against the cold, I shall remain financially unstable.

*thinks*

Sorry - mixing two different terms there: financially secure and mentally unstable.

That's all, carry on *bugle*

stumbler · May 7, 2012

If there's one guy that thinks the elections in France and Greece are good news its Paul Krugman. And this is I think a really good interview with him that explains why rejecting austerity is a good idea and what we should be doing .

Paul Krugman on How to Fix the Economy - and Why It's Easier Than You Think

Four years after the start of the Great Recession, nobody would mistake U.S. economy for a thrumming engine of growth, prosperity, and human flourishing. Sure, we're officially out of "recession." But the recovery is painfully slow and uneven, and 24 million Americans are still unemployed or underemployed. There's a lot of pain out there, and a lot of potential going to waste.

The worst part? It doesn't have to be this way. Or so says Paul Krugman. In a new book, End This Depression Now!, the Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist makes an urgent, even passionate case that our economic problems are, at root, fairly simple, and we have the knowledge and the tools to solve them. We've been here before, Krugman argues, during the Great Depression, and the actions that got us out of that crisis will get us out of this one, too.
The basic issue, says Krugman, is a lack of demand. American consumers and businesses, aren't spending enough, and efforts to get them to open their wallets have gone nowhere. Krugman's solution: The federal government needs to step in and spend. A lot. On debt relief for struggling homeowners; on infrastructure projects; on aid to states and localities; on safety-net programs. Call it "stimulus" if you like. Call it Keynesian economics, after the great economic thinker (and Krugman idol) John Maynard Keynes, who first championed the idea that government has an essential role in saving the free market from its own excesses. Whatever you call it, it worked in the late nineteen-thirties and forties, when the U.S. government started shelling out on the military in the build-up to World War II, bringing an abrupt end to years of economic misery and laying the foundation for decades of prosperity. Krugman is not calling for an increase in military spending, much less a global war! But the WWII example shows that large-scale government spending can kick-start the economy. It worked then, he says, and it will work now.

Krugman's diagnosis and prescriptions cut sharply against the conventional wisdom in Washington, according to which "austerity," – throttle back on government spending, tackle the budget deficit now – is the way to get the economy back on track. Not only is this wrong, he argues, it's making a bad situation even worse. He writes: "Now is the time for the government to spend more, not less, until the private sector is ready to carry the economy forward again." On the positive side, people are starting to look at the train wreck that is Europe, where austerity has failed – and how – to produce growth, and at our own protracted slump, and concluding that people like Krugman – who, truth be told, has been right about a lot in recent years – might be onto something. "All indications are that the economy will remain weak for a very long time unless our policy makers change course," he writes in his introduction. "And my aim here is to bring pressure, by means of an informed public, to get that course change and bring an end to this depression."

Krugman, who dedicates his book to "the unemployed, who deserve better," spoke to RollingStone.com by phone the other day from his home in Princeton, New Jersey.

Passion isn't something we expect from economists, but this strikes me as a passionate book.
It's easy to become deadened to this depression. But I think it's really important to step back and think and realize that, hey, this is an ongoing terrible thing that does not have to be happening. Everyone, unless they're completely secluded, knows somebody who's suffering terribly. The passion is not always there for me because, like everybody else, I get used to days and weeks going by when nothing much changes. But I need to keep hold of it and I tried to tap into it for this book.

You say we’re in a "depression," but isn’t the economy improving?
A depression is being down for an extended period, even if there are ups and downs along the way. What we call the Great Depression actually contained two recessions and two recoveries. We're technically not in a recession anymore, but things are deeply depressed, and the economy is operating well below its productive capacity.

And the basic problem is a lack of overall demand?
The economy is suffering because there isn't enough spending. Not because there aren't enough resources out there. Not because of hard choices we're refusing to make. But because there isn't enough spending. It's really that simple.

Really?
A lot of people find emotionally unacceptable the idea that economic suffering on this scale could have a relatively trivial cause. But this has happened again and again through history. And it could be fixed fairly easily, by having government step in and spend.

Something else a lot of people find emotionally unacceptable is increased government spending! And anyway, didn't Obama already try to juice the economy with the "stimulus" and come up short?
Well, the Obama administration’s stimulus didn't work as well as many people had hoped – but it didn't work any worse than other people, myself included, predicted. When the stimulus was being promoted and discussed, I was very publicly tearing my hair out, saying this is way inadequate. And sure enough, it was.

Even so, this is tough sell politically.
It is. But you have to keep on hammering on the right argument, even if it appears that it's a political nonstarter right now. Things change. If you give up on making the point that's right, you have no hope at all. Also, I think we're approaching a watershed here – there's been a palpable change in the last seven or eight months in the discussion of deficits and austerity.

Because of what's happening in Europe?
Yes. In Europe, the failure of austerity, which has been obvious for some time, has suddenly reached the threshold where everybody's saying it. Two years ago, it was, "Slash now, or you'll turn into Greece." Now people are saying, "If you do austerity at a moment like this, you'll turn into Europe." So the background noise has changed.

Given that, what are the chances the congressional GOP will come around to your way of thinking?
I don't think John Boehner is going to announce next week that Republicans were wrong and we need more government spending, but I do think that some time next year we might be able to have a discussion that turns around at least some of the mistakes that were made in the past few years.

OK, so where would you start?
You could get a lot of stimulus, about $300 billion, just by providing aid to states and localities so they can reverse their budget cuts. That would create a million jobs, including those 300,000 schoolteachers that were laid off.

Don’t you worry about the impact on the deficit?
The deficit is way overstated as an immediate action-forcing issue. It's something to worry about over the next decade, but not something that should be dictating your policies right now. And the fact of the matter is that austerity, when you're in depression economics, doesn't even work from a fiscal point of view. Slash government spending and the economy contracts and it cuts into the economy's long-run prospects.

You’ve criticized Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke for not doing enough to right the economy. He's lowered interest rates to the basement. What more can he do?
It’s true that the interest rates the Fed controls directly are as low as they can go. But Bernanke could change expectations about the Fed's future behavior and convince people it will hold off on raising rates. If somebody's thinking about borrowing for a project or a business is deciding whether to sit on cash or invest it, it makes a big difference whether you think that money you borrow now will be paid in dollars that have less purchasing power than they have now. If you can convince people they can borrow at 2 percent interest right now and the rate will stay at 2 for 10 years, and inflation will be 4 percent, then borrowing becomes a much more attractive proposition than borrowing at 1 percent with 2 percent inflation. It's just textbook economics applied to a very nonstandard situation, which just happens to be world we live in. The depressing thing is that the Fed has basically said: We wash our hands of this.

You say in the book that higher inflation would be a good thing. That’s not something you hear very often.
There’s nothing in the Fed's charter that says inflation has to be at 2 percent. Back when Ronald Reagan was president they used to consider 4 percent perfectly OK.

You’ve called Obama out on his too-timid approach to the economy. How hopeful are you that he’ll get religion on this?
You never know, but my sense from talking to people in the administration and watching their behavior is that they and he have had something of a defining moment. At some point, they finally appreciated that the people they were negotiating with were not negotiating in good faith. They're looking at the news coming in from Europe and understand that we've had a rather drastic demonstration of the wrongheadedness of the policy approach that's been dominating our discussion. I think the chances that they'll do the right thing are reasonably good.

And the chances they'll play hardball?
Also pretty good. It's going to be rough. We have to expect more scorched-earth politics until something changes about the nature of the modern Republican Party, but I think the notion that a second Obama term would be just like the disappointments of the first is probably wrong.
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Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...-easier-than-you-think-20120502#ixzz1uDaKiFRo

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...-easier-than-you-think-20120502#ixzz1uDaCQMW8

Distant Lover · May 7, 2012

stumbler said: ↑

If there's one guy that thinks the elections in France and Greece are good news its Paul Krugman. And this is I think a really good interview with him that explains why rejecting austerity is a good idea and what we should be doing .

Paul Krugman on How to Fix the Economy - and Why It's Easier Than You Think

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...-easier-than-you-think-20120502#ixzz1uDaKiFRo

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...-easier-than-you-think-20120502#ixzz1uDaCQMW8

Click to expand...

Paul Krugman of The New York Times, and E.J.Dionne of The Washington Post are my favorite columnists. The first is a Nobel Laureate. The second is a Rhodes Scholar.

The Republican Party caused the debt problem with the dishonest promise that tax cuts would create so much economic growth that they would balance the budget and pay off the national debt. No amount of contrary experience can cure Republicans of that delusion.

Now the Republican Party is using the increases in the national debt they caused in order to reduce domestic spending programs they have never liked. The infuriating thing is that they might succeed.

snreu105 · May 7, 2012

It's all ending in December anyway!

Pussy Shark · May 7, 2012

snreu105 said: ↑

It's all ending in December anyway!
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This is true!! On the 21st! So no problem!:excited: I say let it come!

stumbler · May 7, 2012

snreu105 said: ↑

It's all ending in December anyway!
Click to expand...

Wanna bet?

I'll bet you any amount of money you want.

Come on. Where's the courage of your convictions?

In fact I'll take on any betters that world wide catastrophe won't end the world in December 2012.

Time to put up or shut up you doomsayers.

origen01 · May 23, 2012

Many analysts are predicting a Greek default this weekend. The time has come.

ALL major indices are falling ATM...

RandyKnight · May 23, 2012

origen01 said: ↑

Many analysts are predicting a Greek default this weekend. The time has come.

ALL major indices are falling ATM...
Click to expand...

Hell from almost a double in the markets in the last 3 years .....

The last 10 days fell...EXCEPT Monday was up....

EURO has been falling but only 1.26

50% chance Greece leaves the EURO

The big joke has been the FaceBook IPO

stumbler · May 23, 2012

RandyKnight said: ↑

Hell from almost a double in the markets in the last 3 years .....

The last 10 days fell...EXCEPT Monday was up....

EURO has been falling but only 1.26

50% chance Greece leaves the EURO

The big joke has been the FaceBook IPO
Click to expand...

But never to worry the conservative/Republican/Tea Baggers are still intent on running the US economy off a cliff.

CBO: Coming Fiscal Cliff Will Devastate The Economy (CHART)

A giant austerity bomb is timed to go off at the beginning of next year, and the threat of significantly higher taxes and lower spending has Republicans running around the Capitol sounding more like John Maynard Keynes than John Boehner.

Automatic, across-the-board reductions to domestic and defense spending, combined with the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts, will dramatically consolidate the budget in the next calendar year, if Congress does nothing. And despite bemoaning deficits throughout the Obama years, the GOP’s suddenly come around to the view that cutting government spending is a job killer.
Just listen to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).

“Just when you thought the economic news could not get much worse with slow economic growth, with reduced wages because of higher costs, and with many people simply giving up looking for work with the lowest labor participation rate we’ve had in some time,” Cornyn warned reporters in the Capitol Tuesday, “we have an entirely predictable and preventable jobs crisis approaching in January, where because of the sequestration [automatic spending cuts], my state alone will lose 91,000 private sector jobs — and there are about a million private sector jobs at risk if the sequestration goes into effect on January 2.

This marks the return of the Defense Keynesians — Republicans who admit that government spending supports job growth in a weak economy, if and only if that spending is directed toward the military.

As luck would have it, a new Congressional Budget Office concludes Republicans are right about the economic consequences of defense cuts — but that their other fiscal priorities are just as perilous for economic growth.

If all the fiscal tightening scheduled for the beginning of the year is allowed to take effect, it will take a huge bite out of the projected deficit for the coming fiscal year. Unfortunately, it’ll take a similarly large bite out of GDP — enough to threaten a new recession. And the resulting job losses would reduce tax revenues and increase spending on jobless benefits enough to undo billions of dollars in direct deficit reduction.

Per CBO: “Taken together, CBO estimates, those policies will reduce the federal budget deficit by $607 billion, or 4.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), between fiscal years 2012 and 2013. The resulting weakening of the economy will lower taxable incomes and raise unemployment, generating a reduction in tax revenues and an increase in spending on such items as unemployment insurance. With that economic feedback incorporated, the deficit will drop by $560 billion between fiscal years 2012 and 2013, CBO projects.”

Conversely, if all of current policy — the Bush tax cuts, the payroll tax holiday, federal spending, etc — is extended, economic growth will boom next year. If Congress picks a middle ground approach — extending the Bush tax cuts but nixing the automatic spending cuts — CBO forecasts modest growth, but no major economic hit.

They obliquely conclude that the wisest economic path for Congress to take would be to defer most or all of the scheduled fiscal restraint, while simultaneously enacting deficit reducing legislation that won’t take effect until the economy’s on sounder footing.

“What would happen if lawmakers changed fiscal policy in late 2012 to remove or offset all of the policies that are scheduled to reduce the federal budget deficit by 5.1 per- cent of GDP between calendar years 2012 and 2013?” CBO asks. “In that case, CBO estimates, the growth of real GDP in calendar year 2013 would lie in a broad range around 4.4 percent, well above the 0.5 percent projected for 2013 under current law. However, eliminating or reducing the fiscal restraint scheduled to occur next year without imposing comparable restraint in future years would reduce output and income in the longer run relative to what would occur if the scheduled fiscal restraint remained in place.”
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http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...ongressional-budget-office.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

Old Tool · May 26, 2012

RandyKnight said: ↑

Hell from almost a double in the markets in the last 3 years .....

The last 10 days fell...EXCEPT Monday was up....

EURO has been falling but only 1.26

50% chance Greece leaves the EURO

The big joke has been the FaceBook IPO
Click to expand...

I don't get what all the fuss is about this IPO, besides the extreme over-exposure in the press

It did exactly what an IPO is supposed to do - raise capital for a company. After collecting over $6.2billion in new cash, I'd say it was a raging success!

For those who thought they would play quick flip games I say fuck 'em - I'm glad they got their asses handed to them for speculating

nArcotic_rules · May 26, 2012

This is all game of Illuminati :O

RandyKnight · May 26, 2012

Old Tool said: ↑

I don't get what all the fuss is about this IPO, besides the extreme over-exposure in the press

It did exactly what an IPO is supposed to do - raise capital for a company. After collecting over $6.2billion in new cash, I'd say it was a raging success!

For those who thought they would play quick flip games I say fuck 'em - I'm glad they got their asses handed to them for speculating
Click to expand...

As a way to take money out of the market and put it in the insider stockholders pockets it was successful.

over issued and over priced as to the my view for the new investor/speculator

FB CFO did a number on Morgan Stanley....:excited:

mrblonde74 · May 27, 2012

Everything Must Fall

Everything falls so others can grow, its history over and over again

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We are on the precipice of a major financial calamity...

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