Five YEARS of recession?

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/ ... 6112.shtml

According to this expert, we're in the third inning of a massive debt collapse, with credit cards and auto loans next. What will we do once we're all homeless and starving?

We learn fiscal responsibility?

aww. . .I have been homeless and starving several times in my life. Although it was frightening and cold and very, very lonely, and hungry, oh, my goodness gracious you can not believe how it feels to be hungry. .. I did get over it. I did go though it. I did come out the other side of it and ate regular again. I found out how to stuff your clothes with newspapers to keep out the bite of the wind, and how to only carry as much as you could run with.

I don't recommend it for anyone, though, but there IS a life after. . .if you survive.
I hope we all survive.

Merle

We can make little villages together like in the Great Depression. Except instead of calling them "Hoovervilles" to criticize president Hoover we call them Bushvilles.

or simply live in the Bushes. . .

im not worried. im happy that i bought my new fire agate recently in the recession. the guy even told me i got a fantastic deal and in normal times he wouldnt have sold it so cheap. hopefully this summer prices will still be low when i get it set

revolution

revolution

revolution

The white collar world is very, very corrupt. Not at all like blue collar America.

The bad stuff blue collar people can do are called "crimes" and encoded in the criminal justice system, and police and society pick up the burden and cost of enforcing criminal laws.

Sometimes, the bad stuff white collar people can do is covered by "civil" law, and prosecuting them is optional, up to the damaged person to hire a lawyer and pay tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars to sue. Other times, the bad stuff white collar people do (in business) is covered by "regulations" which are usually inadequate and poorly enforced.

The white collar world is full of snakes, thieves, perverts and con artists, and that is regular business, regular politics and regular high finance.

In some countries (like Japan, Korea, Germany), the white collar culture is more honorable than ours, in some countries, the white collar culture is more corrupt (like Russia, Italy, Mexico).

Why don't all the homeless gatecrash the White house! There must be enough food and space in their for at least one state's worth!

so, how would they get there? walk? Where would they sleep and what would they eat along the way? What would they do to shelter them from the frigid cold on the way? The White House could not hold them all, and neither could Washington, D.C.

Look up the Bonus Army on wiki. A group of WW1 vets, at least in the thousands, walked to DC and camped along the rivers in 1932, looking for a bonus that had been promised to them in the 20s. Instead, the army sent tanks and cavalry to kill them, then burned their camp.

I think a decade. Who would not walk away when the payment doubles and the value drops by half?

Consumer losses are minor. They bought on margin, and got cheap rent. Those who held mortgages, mortgage backed securities, put up real money for the full value. Try selling those and see what you can get on a falling market.

Money parked in Treasuries when gold was $340, now over $800, 60% loss.

Money in the stock market, 50% loss,

Money in mortgage backed securities? No market.

Money in cash has more value, and most are keeping it.

If all of the business, banks, stock markets, vanish, that is 25% of the economy.

We The People are 75%, and that is where spending has slowed. We buy less, drive less, pay off debt, and invest in insured bank deposits.

The article is about housing, but the mortgages held by banks are going to lead to more banks failing for five years.

The investors are pension funds, the rich, banks, money managers, who should have learned from the past.

Never invest money with someone named Bernie.

Leverage works on a rising market, $1,000,000 will buy $10,000,000 of assets. A 10% drop, all is lost.

Generations worked and saved to get that $1,000,000.

Banks and Brokerages are broke, even after a bailout, and just bought some time with more debt.

The Stock Market is being propped up, for if it falls, people sell, where will the money come from to pay them?

Auto production is planned years in advance, the new models are bubble cars. The market has dropped by half, so how can the Big 3 keep producing? It is nothing new, Detroit has been shrinking for years.

Labor and materials for a Chevy Suburban are $6,300, it sells for $50,000, the rest is to service their debt. The bailout is to the people who loaned money to the car companies. Dupont has a lot to do with it.

Unemployment has to rise, higher than we have ever seen. Credit cards will be bigger than Wall Street. They cut people's credit limit, what to do with a maxed out card? Lost the job, lost the house, living in the car, hiding from the repo man, should I pay my credit card?

Credit cards loaned their credit, paid for the purchases, now they owe for it all, and no more cheap and easy credit. A house of cards.

I think there are a lot more guys named Bernie.

it's precisely because they don't want a revolution that Congress and the new President will act. You won't see any baby carriages bouncing down the Capitol steps any time soon...

I agree that it could be a while before we're out of this. I'm wondering more what releasing a trillion or more dollars will do to the economy in terms of inflation...

A trillion is 300 points on the DOW, we are down about 7,000.
A trillion is maybe 1% on housing, overall, we are down 33%,
that is an easy $50 trillion that evaporated.
oil, grain, in a falling market all is worth much less, more trillions vanished.
Another 20% down is expected in housing.
By late 2009 more than half of mortgages will be underwater, oweing more than the property is worth.
During the same time we are going to see the most foreclosures, layoffs.

Over a hunderd trillion in defaltionary pressure, a shrinking money supply.

Bush and O'Bama $2 trillion, and that going to their friends, as a thank you for electing them.

What we have here is a massive failure of government.

Some of our largest internationl investment was in Fanny and Freddie, high quality mortgages, if not part of the government, a government sponsored monopoly, with strict oversight.

When the government took them over, they made the common stock worthless.

That was trillions in international investment, now who in their right mind would invest in America?

Fanny and Freddie still hold the mortgages, most are performing, the managment put in place by the government could only steal past income, but the government put up a few billion, and stole trillions from international investors?

What next? Cancelling all Treasury Bonds? Printing new money and declaring the old worthless?

When in the course of human events....

Face it, they are not going to put each other in jail.