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Well, I guess I could sit here and pump "Dow 20,000!!" and take my place among the rest of the lemmings.
It might make you rich. An idiot by the name of Harry Dent predicted a dow of 40,000 in one of his books. People obviously like that crap becasue he sells alot of books.
"Hope for the best, and expect the worst" has always worked for me. I prefer to be pleasantly surprised (and I am, semi-regularly) than caught flat-footed in a disaster.
Very similar to my philosophy, except that mine is more like, Hope for the best, expect the best, then accept and deal with whatever happens.
The obscene leverage...borrowed, non-existent illusory money...that made us look fabulously affluent is disappearing like this morning's snow cover on a bright sunny day in Colorado Springs. Most people are in denial about the consequences, and rather than preparing and restructuring the world we live in to live within our means, I think we are more likely to lash out violently because we're pi**ed off about losing something we never really had.
They will come out of denial only when they are ready to do so. You can't force them ( though the economic reality is likely to wake em up sooner rather than later ) to come out of denial so whay keep harping on it.
Without that leverage and the smoke-and-mirrors illusion of fabulous wealth, we can't afford a lot of stupid extravagant things any more. $4 Starbucks coffees...I mean really, are you kidding me, three times the price of a loaf of bread for a cup of coffee??! $3,000 televisions with screens so big you need a 20-ft long room to get far enough away to fit the screen within your field of vision. $50,000 luxury cars that are worth $15,000 after three years. $500,000 houses with enough square footage to house three families that will probably soon be worth more like $200,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. And all on borrowed, illusory money.
Personally I'm with you. I've never spent $4.oo on a cup of coffe and have no intention of ever doing so. I have a 21 inch TV that I bought 5 years ago for $119, and it suits me just fine. I drive a 10 yr old car and live in a 28 yr old home with less than 2000 sf. That being said, if some crazy idiot wants to spend $4.oo on a cup of coffe, and/or buy a $3000 TV let the crazy idiot do it.
I was looking at intraday trading ranges on the Dow yesterday, after seeing Thursday's 10.5% wild ride. I've long held (and posted here way back in this thread) that these high-percentage swings in the equities markets are something unique to serious economic crises, and in fact the history shows about half of those days occurred in late 1929 and in the mid 1930s.
You'r predictive skills rival those of the great Nostradamus!
I think we're going to see a multiple-day stop-limit down dive in the markets very soon now. The accumulation of uncommonly dire economic indicators...massive layoffs and spiking unemployment, serious real pullbacks in consumer spending as easy credit associated with the illusion of fabulous wealth vanishes, and a housing market that's still 30% overpriced in relation to wages...leads me to that conclusion.
The economy sucks, not doubt about it. We got some serious problems and obviously we're in for some rough times. That's been well established for months now, so why keep harping on it. Seems like you're just pouring gasoline on the fire and adding more negativity to the steaming cauldron of negative emotion.
Add to that the fact that the Fed has lost traction. The last TAF auction early this week offered $150 Bn stopped at around 0.5% and saw only an 8% takeup rate. Ben can cut rates to zero now with no real effect. We're stuck in a liquidity trap now a la 1990s Japan, and the door is slamming shut behind us. All he can do now is print money and inflate, and once the rest of the world sees him doing that, they will run from the dollar, drive long-term treasury debt into the double-digits, and possibly bankrupt the US as it reaches a tipping point where it cannot service the interest payments on mushrooming national debt at something north of 20%.
I agree, the FED sucks and Bernanke is stealing our money form under our noses. We can complain all we want, but as long as we contine to pay our taxes, in truth....we are supporting the big rip off.
Last edited by CosmicWizard; 11-15-2008 at 02:28 PM..
They will come out of denial only when they are ready to do so. You can't force them ( though the economic reality is likely to wake em up sooner rather than later ) to come out of denial so whay keep harping on it.
Because different people reach the threshold of disbelief at different rates. New nonbelievers in the capital Ponzi schemes of Wall Street are converted every day. If some enlightened countervailing opinion can accelerate that process just a little, it's worth it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CosmicWizard
Personally I'm with you. I've never spent $4.oo on a cup of coffe and have no intention of ever doing so. I have a 21 inch TV that I bought 5 years ago for $119, and it suits me just fine. I drive a 10 yr old car and live in a 28 yr old home with less than 2000 sf. That being said, if some crazy idiot wants to spend $4.oo on a cup of coffe, and/or buy a $3000 TV let the crazy idiot do it.
I would agree only if the masses of crazy idiots didn't get to socialize that cost to the rest of us, which is what is happening now. Paulson now wants to use part of that $700 Bn he extorted from the taxpayers to shore up reams of bad credit card and consumer loan paper. So you and I will get to help pay for that dumb-sh**'s $3000 plasma TV.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CosmicWizard
You'r predictive skills rival those of the great Nostradamus!
Thank you. Some of my friends tell me the same thing. Especially the ones who listened and got their money out of the equities market in the last year before the doo-doo started to hit the fan.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CosmicWizard
The economy sucks, not doubt about it. We got some serious problems and obviously we're in for some rough times. That's been well established for months now, so why keep harping on it. Seems like you're just pouring gasoline on the fire and adding more negativity to the steaming cauldron of negative emotion.
My message is not that the economy sucks. It is that the consumption patterns and capital structures in the US economy are fashioned in a way that is patently unsustainable, and if we don't wake the #### up, there may not be an economy or a country to sustain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CosmicWizard
I agree, the FED sucks and Bernanke is stealing our money form under our noses. We can complain all we want, but as long as we contine to pay our taxes, in truth....we are supporting the big rip off.
As long as the average guy on the street continues to carry a blind faith in Wall Street, nothing will change. And THAT is precisely why I continue to speak out about the disaster before us.
Minds can be changed, even if only a few at a time. It isn't as simple as just putting your thoughts out one time or in one place for people to see. Persistence and repetition is key...the right message delivered at the right juncture, when a person finally sees that his illusions of wealth are in fact only make-believe, that's when heads are turned and people wake up to the fact that the banks have taken ownership of their government, and are sucking the lifeblood out of them.
When enough people figure it out, it won't be very respectable or very safe to be a mortgage broker or a banker in America.
Monday Morning "I hate to burst your bubble" Report
Well, Jazzlover, I guess you'll have to wait some more to witness a "tapped-out consumer" driven collapse of Colorado's ski resort economy.
Apparently the boneheads and pseudo-athletes were out en masse for a fine weekend participating in one of the world's most over-priced, environmentally-damaging, fossil-fuel consuming sports.
9NEWS.com | Colorado's Online News Leader | High country sees big crowds, lines (http://www.9news.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=104028&catid=346 - broken link)
(Don't get me wrong folks, I might go skiing again one day if someone comes up with a viable "clean energy" method of transport to the slopes. In the meantime, I'll be doing real sports for real men and womyn).
Cross country skiing requires no fossil fuel to get to the slopes or to the top of the run. The cross country skiier ( a real athlete! ) supplies all of the power, usually generated from the consumption of organically grown food which is also kinder and gentler to the environment than a MacBurger diet that many downhill skiers subsist on.
Cross country skiing requires no fossil fuel to get to the slopes or to the top of the run. The cross country skiier ( a real athlete! ) supplies all of the power, usually generated from the consumption of organically grown food which is also kinder and gentler to the environment than a MacBurger diet that many downhill skiers subsist on.
Does all the hot air they spew to inflate their egos help lift them to the top of the hill?
Does all the hot air they spew to inflate their egos help lift them to the top of the hill?
Good one!
I can only speak for myself. It's been more than 30 years since my last cross country outing, and since I had lots of good ( flat ) frozen lakes to ski on in British Columbia I did all of my skiing on the lakes. I had no hills to climb, but maybe all of the hot air inflating my big ego propelled me across the lake.
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Monday Morning "I hate to burst your bubble" Report
