Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
An interesting thing happened in the store today....
I went in to buy a couple sets of tires, and asked if they had a certain type of snow tire. They told me that all the snow tires are backordered and they can't get any.
I didn't know if this was just a lazy clerk, or whether the tires are really backordered, so I went to Wal-Mart. They didn't have anything for the truck, and only one set of summer tires for the other car.
These are both very common sizes of tires....which got me to wondering if the local tire distributor might be having some problems with credit.
I came home and ordered a couple sets off of tirerack. They were all available to ship, but people who wait until the last minute to go buy snow tires might find some bare shelves if retailers or a distributor is effected by the credit crunch.
Things are starting to get interesting.
Last edited by sterlinggirl; 10-07-2008 at 09:22 PM..
Reason: grammar
Well, the Nikkei finished almost 1,000 points down overnight in a spectacular 9% swan dive. Hang Seng (China) down another 7% overnight.
I think this is the global systemic meltdown Roubini and others have been warning about.
I keep hearing people ask "is my money safe?" If they mean, will the XXX dollars I have in the bank still be there after the smoke clears, the answer is yes. But what nobody is asking is if those dollars will be worth anything at end-game.
The worst nightmare scenario is not losing a huge chunk of a 401k that was make-believe stock market wealth to begin with...it'd be discovering, as Weimar Germany did in the 30s, that our fiat currency, backed only by the clever tinkering of guys like Paulson and Bernanke, could prove worthless. Bennie and the Feds are already a good way down the road towards that outcome. The economic version of CTRL-ALT-DEL.
If simply printing money were effective in preventing these explosive deleveraging collapses, as BB seems to postulate in his postgraduate writing, then Zimbabwe should already be a world economic superpower by now instead of, well, Zimbabwe.
Should be yet another "interesting" day here in Colorado and all across the looted plains.
Considering the current situation, here's a potential money making idea......Put all of your money into a company that makes wheelbarrows. In the not too distant future, we'll be trading our wallets for wheelbarrows. Everyone will need a wheelbarrow to cart around all of our worthless paper money.
Considering the current situation, here's a potential money making idea......Put all of your money into a company that makes wheelbarrows. In the not too distant future, we'll be trading our wallets for wheelbarrows. Everyone will need a wheelbarrow to cart around all of our worthless paper money.
NewAgeRedneck: See post #39 in this thread... It'll be Chinese wheelbarrows, since we don't actually make anything here any more.
Anyone noticing that, despite the fact that the stock markets are still headed south, the long bond yield is going up, and quickly?
To me, this smells like capital flight...very bad juju...the treasury is now being forced to pay higher and higher prices to fund all this debt they're (we're) running up, and if it goes on for very long at all, we could see long term interest rates (read mortgages) spike up into the double digits. That'll do a lot of good for the housing market, eh?
TED spread was a record again this morning--420 basis points. Yesterday's rate cuts had no effect on confidence in the credit markets. Iceland's banking system and currency completely collapsed overnight. Russia's stock market is down almost 90% this year, is closed, and they're talking about having to ship close to $200 Bn in emergency cash to their banks to keep operating. Indonesia has shut down their stock market for the third time this week. Every time it reopens, it plummets.
Ten U.S states are now down to less than six months of reserves for their unemployment insurance programs (no Colorado isn't one of them...yet). Get ready for soup lines, folks.
And tomorrow is settlement day for God knows how much in credit default swap derivatives related to the Lehman failure. This one has the potential to put another 1,000 point down day on the Dow record books. Because of the lack of transparency in the Wild West of OTC derivatives, nobody knows for sure. Tomorrow we'll know.
Yeah, future's so bright. Where did that guy go, anyway? LBear...do you find it surprising that both the republican US President and the republican presidential nominee are pushing us as hard and fast as they can into...socialism??
I heard he lapsed into a comma from a massive overdose of St. John's wort...
Better than lapsing into a semicolon, I guess.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
A good investment!
It'll be Chinese wheelbarrows, since we don't actually make anything here any more.