I mean seriously, while all of you in here are trying to one-up each other and prove that the other guy is the bigger idiot, tweeting and whooping over this persons alias or that persons excised comments, how about just one of you, JUST ONE of you come up with something concrete and realistic to explain how our economy has fallen into the toilet as badly as it has.
Oh sure... the lefties will whine about Bush and the Republicans, the righties will whine about Obama (or Clinton) and the Democrats, someone will blame the Arabs and the oil companies, you can lay odds someone will blame the Jews and Israel, and the rest of you will sit there completely clueless because you can't think beyond your ability to get a woody and call a hooker.

In Pasadena California this morning you could see a line of people going around the block TWICE waiting for the IndyMac bank to open up so they could withdraw as much of their cash as they could.

Stop with the fucking bullshit bickering already, wake up and smell the fucking coffee!
Everybody is so fucking busy pointing fingers at the other guy they've all completely forgotten about adressing the problem itself.

Or are you all really nothing but the pathetic bunch of political losers you come across as to the rest of us?

-- Modified on 7/14/2008 8:39:33 PM

Prozactly what I've said since I discovered this little haven for the sullen, unapproacable children that generally inhabit this forum.

On topic: What's the answer?

It's most definately not the 'fault' of any one person or party.

There IS in fact much brainpower in here, I would hope someone has constructive thoughts.

I'm not deep enough to solve the problem economically, however I am certain that name calling and sniping will get us nothing.

Someone? Anyone?

for some of the negative events and effects you are observing.

Case in point. . .
IndyMac bank and Senator Chuck Schumer

Whether reading this board, other boards, CNBC, or any media outlet, everyone needs to take deep breath and relax. I'm not here to minimize the economic turbulence we are experience, which is a direct result of the credit crisis, but we tend to lose sight that we have been through similar downturns in the past, some worse, some not so worse.

Doesn't anyone remember the 2001-2002 recession, and the tech bubble explosion? The S&P, DOW and other indexes dropped significantly more than the current bear market. How about the S&L crisis in the late 1980s, the number bank failures and recession? In So California, home prices dropped over 40% and took 7 years to recover. How about the 1987 market crash? How about the 1970s with gas lines, double digit interest rates and inflation? I remember buying my first house in 1980 with a 10% assumed 1st mortgage, and 2nd mortgage @ 15%. Today's rate of 6% would have been  unheard of back then.

There is gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands, and blood in the streets. Some banks will fail, others will be acquired. BAC, WFC, C, LEH, and others will survive. There are a lot of great companies whose share prices have been taken out to the woodshed. In a couple of years this will all be a distant memory.

If you were attempting to be non-partisan in your thread, your picture of oil companies screwing the American public shows a lack of understanding of free markets. Then again, oil companies tend to be the poster child du jour for evil. Your picture is a bit dated as Texaco doesn't exist, and CITGO is owned by Hugh Chavez, oops I mean the Venezuelan govt.

When the Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006 thats when things started going down drastically..
The gas companies don't make half what the Government makes per gallon of gas..

financial markets. In this case, it was a shitload of sub-prime mortgages that should have never been approved. The blame falls on both the borrower and lender, and throw in Greenspan with his aggressive rate cutting following the last recession. I am not a fan of the Democrats, especially the incompetent Pelosi and Reid, but this downturn would have happened irrespective of what party was in control.

We give politicians way too much credit and blame for the economy.

I don't understand your last sentence. When you remove taxes, the price of gas is about the same in the U.S. and Europe. European countries add about 80%. Comparatively speaking, gas is still cheap here  compared to other countries, exclusive of course to those 3rd world countries that subsidize the price.

The no new exploring, no new drilling, no new refineries, no new nuke plants crap has to end.  

Windmills can only supply about 1% of our energy needs in a best case scenario so you democrats have to stop acting like the Man of LaMancha chasing after windmills.

We must grow.  And that shale oil in the Rocky mountain states is economically viable whenever oil is over 40 per barrel so at 140 per barrel, it's fantastic.

Rep Michelle Bachmann says we can get gas back down to 2.25 per gallon in 3 years so lets get going.

It's just that simple.  This global warming crap is a hoax.  It's nothing but a power grab by the dems.  

THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING.  CASE CLOSED.

World war II recessions have closely followed an oil-price spike. No news there. For each $1/BBL price rise amounts to a gross tax of $7 Billion per year. Though I do agree with St Croix to a certain extent the credit crisis has added violatility to the current economic storms.

Those are the facts. However, rather than bark about the politics as your bullshit thread drones on and assigning blame on the usual suspects show some self-intiative i.e. stop sniveling.

Use the news to your advantage. Eight years ago, I dropped out of the Dot.com craze and invested heavily in railroad stocks and construction. Four years ago I invested in commodities. Currently, I am keeping my assets liquid. Why? because though I support Senator McCain for President I am a realist and respect Senator Obama's acumen for politics and beguiling the American people.

Senator Obama, will undoubtely raise the capital gains tax and other taxes. To prepare for this nightmarish scenario, I am looking at the prospect of offshore funds and waiting to invest after the election. Why?

Because an Obama Presidency will be preceded by the biggest sell-off of stocks since probably 1929. When that happens, there will be bargains. In the meantime, look at the bright side:

1) High fuel price is producing what the market expects it to do, produce products that use less energy. It's coming. In the next two years, General Motors will be marketing the plug-in electric vehicle. Ford will be producing vehicles with carbon-composite materials.

2) High fuel prices equals less gas emissions. Vice President Gore and other environmentalists should be thrilled.

3) The increase in the housing inventory supply curve will match the demand curve to produce a price equilibrium that will mean more affordable housing.

4) We suckered the Chinese and Euros in buying our securitized mortagages to build our infrastructure.

So don't you fret, little one things are getting better.

I'm not sure how to sensibly address a post that implies it is looking for adult talk and then says "the economy is in the toilet." That's an obviously emotional term, often used hysterically and never by economists.

Unemployment is still at historic lows, despite the fact we have 10-20 million illegals running around. If they were gone the jobless rate would be close to zero and wages would rise naturally, which would give pay raises to Americans and legal aliens. We worry about the uninsured? Illegal aliens comprise about 80% of those who are counted as uninsured. Rising prison populations? Forty % in fed prisons are IA's there for a crime other than their immigration status. Dollar drain to the Arabs? More money is sent to Latin America for families than the MidEast for oil. The cost per pupil in schools is through the roof and yet kids learn little of value to them or society. IA's.

The illegal alien issue is the #1 domestic economic problem we have but when it is addressed the name calling begins. If the illegals were Norwegian, Irish, English, Italian I would still think the same way. For me, it has nothing to do with ethnicity. An illegal working under the table, driving down wages, sending money out of the country, using public services and not paying for them is an enormous drain on working people. The rich don't give a shit, they're rich!

Take me for example , a typical barn cleaner .. before illegals showed up I was getting raises yearly .. Now that they are here , shoveing  horse manure for less my wages have stagnated..

I seem to remember when it didn't matter what you said about a bank. I remember The Economist doing a story questioning the soundness of Freddie and Fannie two years ago.

If banks are dying due to the exercise of free speech, it's due to the fact that they are not stable to begin with. Like the whisper that starts the avalanche.

They allowed investment banks to move into consumer markets, but even worse, they let banks self-insure their own securities. Moreover, they didn't regulate mortgages, or (the other shoe) credit cards. There's a huge amount of public and private debt that has to work out of the economy.  

Otherwise, the economy has suffered from a combination of other bad policy (ethanol, NAFTA) and extremely bad luck (oil prices).

Besides that, Breaker is right. Eventually, things should work themselves out, though it might be a long time, and calamities like this tend to change the world. Anything can happen.

For myself, I'm positioned pretty well now. I've avoided the worse crisis sectors. If you're a working stiff, I suggest you get a job in collections. It'll be a booming market.  

That fuckin' Idiot & his policies that are to blame for our current financial crisis.

"4) We suckered the Chinese and Euros in buying our securitized mortagages to build our infrastructure"

If things really are so gloom and doom as many here insist then the Chinese and Europeans did us a favor by buying our worthless paper, and if their investments prove profitable then things here aren't so bad after all.

To anyone over 40 with at least an equal IQ this is just another cycle. To children and morons, every economic downturn is cause for panic and finger pointing.

"To anyone over 40 with at least an equal IQ this is just another cycle".

but Chukie's comments were reckless. You can't equate the comments of one of the most powerful Dems with simple free speech.

Government back mortgages aren't in nearly as bad a shape as you are led to believe. My problem is the Dems and many in the media have been cheerleading a recession for quite some time now. Sure the slow down is real (not a recession yet), but you can't deny is can be made worse by the actions and words of those in government.

you are the antithesis of deep. I don't think you or your ilk are deep enough to solve anything, much less anything that requires work or thought.

I have a question for all you libs. Have any of you ever run a company, made a payroll, or done anything to better yourself or this country?

If anyone should be happy about bad news, it should be Zin.

Anyone with an ounce of sense realizes how resilient the market is. We had a bubble, it burst. For every loser there will be a winner. The fact that people with no money and bad credit defaulted on their loans should not surprise anyone. Well anyone who doesn't believe that socialism is a good thing at least.

Indymac makes horribly bad investments for years, and at the end it's important to suggest a liberal shot the gun. If a liberal said investments were unwise, and then the bank continued to make bad investments for years, you would still find a way of just suggesting that the liberal might have caused it through the insidious lack of faith that had grown for years.  That would follow the "Iraqi fiasco" scenario.  

Cheerleading for the recession? That is just sick to suggest.  Liberals have been out of power watching conservatives and their centrist enablers screw this country, hoping that Republicans would discredit themselves before the damage they did was irreversable. You call that CHEERLEADING?

It's more like watching the other team go on an insane rampage and hoping they don't burn down the stadium by the end.

There is more to Love of Country than simply police and military and a guy at the top with dictator powers who's trusted not to abuse them. And fiscal responsibility is different that tolerating greed.



-- Modified on 7/16/2008 7:31:40 PM

See what was predicted from that. Maybe we can't skip the pain. I accept that. But in 1929, we couldn't predict all the upheaval, nor could we predict that it would take fifteen years before all the upheaval bottomed out.  

I'm sitting pretty myself now.