Mathew952:
America lost 700 BILLION dollars yesterday.The entire stock market lost 4.4 percent of it's worth. Why? remember all of those banks that got bailed out a while back. They missed some. and one just went bankrupt.

"They missed some" on purpose. You can't bail out every institution. After having to step in to save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it makes sense for the Federal Reserve to step back for a while (for what it's worth, I think the Bear Stearns bail-out was probably a mistake, but I can see how it might've made sense at the time). The financial services industry needs to lose some of its bloat. That means stuff will get worse before it gets better. But the alternative -- entangling American taxpayers even more than they are already entangled -- is far worse. Let the investors swallow the loss for a change (unfortunately "investor" does include "regular person with a 401k," so the situation still sucks).

-- Alex

"god,it's getting so a country can't blow trillons of dollars on a war and expect to have a stable economy anymore."-Stephen Colbert.

you know it's getting bad when america's god is saying stuff like that.

ElephantGuts:
Well maybe if that damn meteor would hurry up and blow up the Earth we wouldn't be having this problem right now...

lol maybe it thought this place was so screwed up already it would hit mars instead

Alex_P:

Mathew952:
America lost 700 BILLION dollars yesterday.The entire stock market lost 4.4 percent of it's worth. Why? remember all of those banks that got bailed out a while back. They missed some. and one just went bankrupt.

"They missed some" on purpose. You can't bail out every institution. After having to step in to save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it makes sense for the Federal Reserve to step back for a while (for what it's worth, I think the Bear Stearns bail-out was probably a mistake, but I can see how it might've made sense at the time). The financial services industry needs to lose some of its bloat. That means stuff will get worse before it gets better. But the alternative -- entangling American taxpayers even more than they are already entangled -- is far worse. Let the investors swallow the loss for a change (unfortunately "investor" does include "regular person with a 401k," so the situation still sucks).

-- Alex

Very true, but that's life. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place, so we're going to have to make the best out of a shitty situation.

What really torques my jaws though is the CEOs expecting some kind of severance pay for driving their business into the ground so hard, the government has to step in. I'm glad the Housing Agency told them to get fucked; one of the rare instances I was proud of my government.

The problem is almost everyone in the western world is in debt. Credit cards, car payments, etc etc etc. The world is just starting to realise that they've sold everyone their products but nobody has the money to pay them back...

The Spilly:
The problem is almost everyone in the western world is in debt. Credit cards, car payments, etc etc etc. The world is just starting to realise that they've sold everyone their products but nobody has the money to pay them back...

To borrow a page from maths, it's time to start canceling out our like terms!

*cocks shotgun*

LETS HIT THE ROAD!

God damn baby boomers.

how does this bode for ireland

Imitation Saccharin :

SilentHunter7:

Aside, does anyone here wonder what will happen if Bank of America goes under? If everyone makes a run on the banks, We'll be in another Great Depression. The FDIC wont be able to cover all the withdrawals. Not with the Treasury is such a sad state.

Welp, then I vote for the NDP, get the border flow closed, and engage in Operation "Canada is self-sufficient", laughing at all you poor Yankees.

why don't you look at what the ndp did to ontario in the early 90s, they almost bankrupted the province because they spent a ton of money. the reason they will never get into power is because of what bob rae did to ontario

cleverlymadeup:

why don't you look at what the ndp did to ontario in the early 90s, they almost bankrupted the province because they spent a ton of money. the reason they will never get into power is because of what bob rae did to ontario

Pfff. The liberals pissed away how much on the Quebec thing?

I say everybody gets 1 scandal per decade. In fact, they're due for another.

Most places arn't like the US and can just ignore the deficit. if NDP got anywhere close to even a minority government it would become operation 'self-destruct'

NDP is for socialism the same way the Bloc is for Quebec. They will never get anywhere except the few seats they do get will still allow them to buddy up with somone so their major issues get air occasionally.

I love being debt free, sucks to be you America.

i bid 10 AUD for US...

$350 Canadian for California and Alaska. I'll throw in another $200 for Hawaii.

Khell_Sennet:
$350 Canadian for California and Alaska. I'll throw in another $200 for Hawaii.

You are aware the California economy is bigger then the Canadian economy?

I see the credit crunch as one of the birth pang for the information age. Currency and markets have always been about faith and ideas, but in recent times this has really gone to the next level. Different perspectives and ideas are radically altering our ideas of markets and value.

(Incidentally, I'm not a stock broker or a serious investor. Do your own research instead of trusting me.)

The "sub-prime" loan crisis itself wasn't just the result of high-risk lending. It was the result of novel structures. I don't think we would've seen the same kind of bubble and meltdown if banks just offered mortgages to marginal borrowers using the traditional model.

The thing is that the usual mortgage lending business developed into a bond market. So instead of the bank giving you money and you agreeing to repay it over time with interest (and a mortgage insurer being ready to cover the bank's loss if you fail), your bank takes your promised repayment and turns it into more money by selling it like a bond. Selling this bond means they have more money right now to lend out to some other person, too. So not only is the bank hoping you'll repay your loan, but other people are investing in the probability that you will pay back that loan. Regardless of how "risky" each individual mortgage is, just doing this makes everything riskier.

Whatsmore, the firms that are investing in these bonds aren't just investing in straight-up bonds. They're playing fancy new games with derivatives. The various type of derivatives allow you to bet on more than just the value of a company going up over time. You can sign a contract that will benefit you if a stock drops in value, for example; or you can sign a contract that will give you money if the stock changes sharply either up or down but won't pay out if it stays stable; or... all kinds of stuff. The sky's pretty much the limit. And that's the problem. This stuff started out as a way to protect yourself against risk (hence the "hedge" in "hedge fund") but now people are using in very risky ways, too.

Derivatives also allow you to play with other people's money. If we're two huge investment companies, I can sign a contract that lets me borrow some stock you own and do whatever I want with it for a certain period as long as I promise to return it; in other words, I can borrow something from you and gamble with it for a while as long as I promise to give it back -- sounds really risky, doesn't it? You can make it even weirder and more abstract, too.

Well, so far most of the regulation of this stuff has worked like this: "Okay, derivatives are really risky and you can end up owing a lot of money on a deal, so you have to have a lot of money before you can get into this game." Of course, this is kinda like putting a bunch of billionaires together at a no-limit poker table: they're going to play for ridiculously high stakes.

So, what's going on here is that new levels of indirection are making it very hard for regulators and regular investors to keep up, while confusing even the people who invented these weird "investment products" just enough to make it really hard to figure out just how exposed you really are.

Did you know Goldman Sachs actually made money during the credit crash by short-selling? The firm literally bet on the market going to shit and won.

-- Alex

I was watching a show the other night and they talked about an incovenent truth about america, America's Broke.

No seriously, if Lech going under isn't a clear sign imagine this, in 20 years every dollar will go to one of two things paying retires and hearthcare. That's means that we won't have any money to pay for national energy, national education, utilities, postal service, local goverments, law enforcement, fire and rescue, homeland security, and even national defense(yes, we won't be able to afford an army!). If you need a clearer picture of what is coming, look at what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. America is heading head first into socialism unless we do something NOW! NOT LATER NOW!

Personally I think this is a huge issue but I keep having a feeling that the world is going to end around 2012, just like the Mayan's predicted.

Now i'm one of America's Neighbours to the North and I'd like to look from an outsiders view.

For one: This is your President's fault and i'm sure you all see this. This "war" of his has cost you the tax payers nearly $555 000 000 000. Now even for countries budgets that is a huge amount of cash gone for 5 years.

Second this has killed any faith the world has had for pure capatalistic economies because Canada( I love using my country as an example) is far from perfect but the mixed economy we have allows many of our banks to be goverment controlled and if a company happens to go tits up we don't lose all our hard earned cash.

Third of all: America's Arrogance You as a society have been King Shit for too long and you were arrogant about it. I compare it too your reveloutionary war. You had an oppresive Brit gov't and you threw off the yoke and then became your own superpower. Now think of the British Empire and how many countries and societies they screwed over. Now think of your country: Softwood lumber dispute BSE scare. You've fucked over alot of countries too it's like history repeating.

P.S sorry about the rant but Politics and economics are my specialty

Lost In The Void:
Second this has killed any faith the world has had for pure capatalistic economies because Canada( I love using my country as an example) is far from perfect but the mixed economy we have allows many of our banks to be goverment controlled and if a company happens to go tits up we don't lose all our hard earned cash.

What defines a "pure capitalistic economy" in your eyes?

I don't really see how a nation with a complex regulatory system and deep government investment (e.g. the government-sponsored enterprises) qualifies as "pure" capitalism.

-- Alex

Wasn't it Eddie Izzard who explained the US's national debt so well?

'Hey, Mr Bush, its China, we're gonna need that money back...'
'Umm, hey China, uhh, we don't have it'
'What?? What could you have spent so many billions of dollars on?'
'All these nuclear weapons'
'oh...ok, well, I guess we don't need the money back RIGHT now.'

As for canadian lumberjacks, just dress up like the Monty Python ones, and the rednecks will be too scared to come near Canada. :D

On a slightly more serious point, I was a little concerned to see Palin essentially saying, 'ooh I cant WAIT to go to war with Russia if we get in'. Ok, it was more 'We shall not flinch from confronting Russia if necessary' but you get the idea. Surely, if your economy is screwed, maybe you should hold on before making any new enemies?

Sure human life and all that, but you can't expect politicians to consider that, cash, tho, wars cost a lotta cash, and I think anyone wanting more war should be campaigning as 'I'll make gas $50 a gallon in a year!

Imitation Saccharin :

Khell_Sennet:
I'm just here to point out that maybe it's about time the banks toppled. A bank loans money as OP says, based on risk. They risk, but never lose, because the government will always bail them out when they fuck up.

Because if the government doesn't cover bank liquidity, people start what's call a "run on the bank". This is a cascading effect that destroys the economy as all Western banks use fractional reserve banking and are thus usually unable to cover the costs should all their lenders withdraw their money at once.
So once the banks close, the driving force of investment falters, and the whole system kind of goes "clunk".

Is what caused the great depression. Well that and dust.

Khell_Sennet:

If a company, essential to the nation or not, is such a colossal screw up that they can't stay in business, WHY can't we just let them fail?

Because I like eating corn for .50 cents a cob.

Khell_Sennet:

It's the same with banks, better actually. Borrow money from a bank, it goes SoL, you don't have anyone to repay. You're free of that debt. Now someone who invested in said bank, or had money in said bank, will lose their cash. BOO F'ing HOO! You invested and/or stored your finances in a company that was incompetent, should we care?

Where are YOU storing your finances?

Khell_Sennet:

Were you not paying attention to the news?

A run on the bank can take as little as a few hours. Probably seconds in the modern era what with the internet and all.

I agree with what he said, including the bank run taking a few hours. Done right in can be over in LESS than an hour. IF DONE RIGHT, and someone was purposely trying to crash that stock, it would take minutes, but yes, two or three hours is a good estimate.

unabomberman:

needausername:
My aunt was staying with some one this weekend, on Friday he had stocks worth $2 million, by Sunday just $12 000. You have to feel sorry for him, now he is bankrupt.

Whoa...that's heavy stuff.

Yep. My mom looks at the statement from her retirement fund every month. She's lost about a $1000 a month the last couple months, because it was in a mutual fund, which means the stock market.

I can't remember what I was reading last week, but they were looking at the economic numbers and it turns out that almost all the economic growth since 2001 pretty much came from people turning their houses into ATMs. The way the market was, they thought the equity would just keep growing, so they pulled out lines of credit and second mortgages, and the Fed kept dropping the rates so that people could keep on doing it. Unfortunately, just like the Dot Bomb, the combo of hype and greed was too much.

You could argue that this crash is Dot Bomb II: Bomb Harder. The Dot Bomb hit in 2000-2001, and the stock market crashed after everyone realized that www.ihaveatotallycoolstartupidea.com was never actually going to make any money, and they'd invested a lot of stupid capital in a lot of dumb websites. So the Fed keeps dropping the prime interest rate so that people can keep borrowing to keep buying to keep the economy going on the same damn fiscal vaporware that got it in trouble in the first place.

You could reach back even further to the Black Monday Crash of 1987, when the Fed cut rates to keep the economy from stalling out, and kept doing so in response to each economic crisis all the way through the 90's. I remember all my friends deciding to buy their first homes in 96-98 because no one could believe the interest rates and they just kept going down.

We've been working our way up to this crisis for a long time. It'll be interested to see if we have finally hit bottom on this crisis, or if the next president is going to grab a shovel and keep on digging (until we strike oil, maybe?) or somehow find a way to get us out of this mess without just reaching for another national payday loan to make it through until the next crash.

And yes, the world is going to end in 2012. That's when Microsoft finally, really, truly, no seriously, we mean it this time, cuts off Windows XP and forces everyone to upgrade to Vista.

I do have a lot to say on this but as I am supposed to be studying it will come later....

Also... That Hurricane could not have come at a worse time I'm assuming

Khell_Sennet:

It's the same with banks, better actually. Borrow money from a bank, it goes SoL, you don't have anyone to repay. You're free of that debt.

Umm, if the bank goes out of business, it's because it can't pay *its* debtors. Which means those debtors get whatever is left of the bank. That includes money the failing bank was owed by its debtors. All a bank failing means is that you're going to owe someone new, at least as far as I know.

Now someone who invested in said bank, or had money in said bank, will lose their cash. BOO F'ing HOO! You invested and/or stored your finances in a company that was incompetent, should we care? Were you not paying attention to the news? Were you totally unaware of their flaws? If it was an investment, well there's risk in investing, you gambled, you lost. If it was that you simply banked there, you should have seen signs of their ineptitude and thus you should have acted sooner.

(1) This was tried. It failed. That's why the current system exists.

(2) Those investors put their money in there during a time when the bank was insured by the FDIC. A government bail-out was one of the reasons the investors put their money there in the first place.

(3) When people stop investing their money the capital markets lose the ability to loan out that money. Which means less entrepreneurial activity. Which means everyone is poorer because less businesses can take a shot at doing new things that cost money.

See, to make it really simple, banking works by taking your money and giving you x% for it, and loaning it out to someone else at x+y% where y is the bank's profit. If no one is putting money in the bank, the bank can't function as a pooling institution for capital, which means no one can use the bank as a place to go and get a loan.

Khell, you really need to get a little more informed before talking so much.

Less typing, more reading.

C Lion:

BTW www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com if you want to keep tabs on it

That site made me lol. I almost bookmarked it until I realized how retarded that would be.

I e-mailed all of my family and friends with it...

And do you know why this happened?

Because George Bush got rid of the precautions put in place after the Great Depression.

Well, that's what I heard from my (overjoyed at America's EPIC FAIL) Commerce teacher, anyways.

I was just watching the news and it was saying if the federal reserve hadn't brought out the banks it did, the market would have gone down more than 1000 points those days.

Off to Europe! Hi-ho silver!

ElephantGuts:
Well maybe if that damn meteor would hurry up and blow up the Earth we wouldn't be having this problem right now...

First of all, that guy has possibly the most useless input in this section.

Secondly, Yea the situation is pretty bad, things will get tight. But we have had economic pressure before, so maybe, a big maybe, the people in charge will learn from the pasts mistakes? OR, it could make it worst!

Khell_Sennet:
YES! Rome is finally falling!

Have fun with your dark ages.

Alex_P:

Lost In The Void:
Second this has killed any faith the world has had for pure capatalistic economies because Canada( I love using my country as an example) is far from perfect but the mixed economy we have allows many of our banks to be goverment controlled and if a company happens to go tits up we don't lose all our hard earned cash.

What defines a "pure capitalistic economy" in your eyes?

I don't really see how a nation with a complex regulatory system and deep government investment (e.g. the government-sponsored enterprises) qualifies as "pure" capitalism.

-- Alex

A Pure capatalistic economy is what you've based your economics off of. As the Philosapher John Locke said "People are most free when they are governed less." If you take a look through history, Yes it has worked to a degree. It's very short term because anything can go tits up in a second because a very large percentage of your business is privatized and exposed to the fluctuations of a volintile world economy all i'm saying is no systems perfect but the way you have yours set up this recession or "Second Depression" is going to get alot worse for you