Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Now, what news on the Rialto?
noddy
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by noddy »

When a firm produces quality goods which find a demand in the market, but are financially bankrupt, you may close them up or you may clear the mess by giving them money to pay their excessive debt. If you close them up, you lose everything, if you give them money to clear the mess, you only spend some funds. The question is: if you give them the money will they go back to their old mistakes, or not?
what quality product do the central banks and incompetent governments of europe produce ?

why should the people get smothered in taxes to cover debts they created ?
You seem to see a bankruptcy as a deserved punishment for financial sins, but that's mixing up economics with morals... Very Calvinistic...
????? where the hell did you pluck that from

its not sin, its incompetence, different situtation - i dont go to doctors that kill people, i dont take my car to mechanics that cant put them back together, i dont trust my country to people who cant count.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Parodite »

Simple Minded wrote:
Parodite wrote:
Allowing for bankrupties in the market is what cleans out the mess and what in the end creates wealth because the healthy performing players survive. To subsidize failures is economic euthanasia. Yearly around 8000 businesses go bankrupt in the Netherlands which is a normal number... where you think we would be if they were put on life support? It would kill the healthy business.. and we would all eat nothing but potatoes again.
Amen. A self-correcting process that only exists in free markets. Once the pols get involved, corruption results.
Indeed. Governments borrow too much money in order to sell fanatasies.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Parodite »

Endovelico wrote:Parodite,

You mixed up Ireland and Iceland several times in your post. Will you want to go back to it and correct your statements?...
I noticed that.. my bad, but as far as I can tell I confused Ireland/Iceland only once, and it doesn't change what I said about Iceland and the need for bankruptcy being a normal mechanism to clean out mess, and that sovereign nations with their own currency are better able to defeat a financial and/or economic crisis. And the graph I posted about Iceland's trade balance with a prolonged deficit before the crisis hit them proves my main point: even going into the worst financial crisis with a trade deficit, as Iceland did, can be dealt with effectively by a sovereign nation with its own currency.

I don't think you understand trade deficits. They are not a bad thing; at least if they don't exist for too long because then they will backfire on the economy as now in the US, and Japan is still battling with it.

And being in a surplus doesn't mean the economy is less vulnerable. Being in a surplus but with still a huge debt to pay off for instance... the debt can grab you by the throat in an instance and drag you down. Compare it with having a considerable mortgage in your house, a huge debt, but you manage with two incomes to be in a "trade surplus" (more money comes in then goes out) nevertheless. But then something major happens: 1 income is lost (can happen for many reasons) and in no time you will slide into a "trade deficit": more goes out than comes in. This doesn't need to be a disaster immediately because deficits can be sustained and resolved if their is a sound plan to crawl-fight out of it. And if that doesn't work either.. there is bankruptcy. Not as a "punishment".. but as the only sound solution left! Unless, of course... you are of the opinion that the socialist armed police-core should ring peoples front doors and force them at gun point to hand over cash to save your precious victim of bankruptcy... because "all he needs is a little money".

What happened in Ireland as I understand it.. is that they initially lived above their means borrowing way too much money (heard that before?) and that all went almost wrong as in Greece.. but did the right thing just before falling off the cliff, notably by keeping wages low and flat - which is a way to "devaluate" and regain your competitive edge. They applied austerity... but not too much. But they had a period of sacrifice. Now they are back on track, and don't like the latest move of the ECB at all of course, since now that they are member of the well-to-do-North... they will pay for the mismanagement and failures of the South and feel that their sacrifices and hard work will now be wasted on far away people who can't get their act straight.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Endovelico »

Parodite wrote:I don't think you understand trade deficits. They are not a bad thing; at least if they don't exist for too long because then they will backfire on the economy as now in the US, and Japan is still battling with it.
Trade deficits lead to external debt - as well as budget deficits if they are financed by external sources - and external debt leads to disaster, as we are witnessing. A country with a balanced trade and capable of financing its budget deficits may be a less well to do country, but it will never be at the brink of disaster. That's why I think that a balanced trade is a country's first priority. Once that achieved then it will have all the time in the world to increase its productive capacity, in order to increase its GDP and its people's standard of living. Of course countries are pushed by richer countries into debt, because debt is what feeds banks' profits. Any properly ruled country should refuse being dragged into that bottomless debt pit.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Parodite »

Endovelico wrote:
Parodite wrote:I don't think you understand trade deficits. They are not a bad thing; at least if they don't exist for too long because then they will backfire on the economy as now in the US, and Japan is still battling with it.
Trade deficits lead to external debt - as well as budget deficits if they are financed by external sources - and external debt leads to disaster, as we are witnessing.
It only leads to disaster if you don't pay back your debts in time. And it always is your own choice (as an individual, a company, or a country..) to go into a deficit, to spend more money than you make, to import more than you export. The only way to import more than to export is by borrowing money. If the Portuguese people decide it is a good thing to have a trade deficit and use borrowed money to import more than they export... it is their own choice, responsibility and risk. If my neighbor decides to live above his means not just for some months but for decades... borrowing more and more money mostly used for spending on consumer fun-and-luxury goods and thereby sliding down the slippery slope ending up in debt-trap.. why should I be responsible for and subsidize his behavior?
A country with a balanced trade and capable of financing its budget deficits may be a less well to do country, but it will never be at the brink of disaster. That's why I think that a balanced trade is a country's first priority.
A balanced trade where the value of import = value of export - which is I suppose you mean with "balanced"... does not exist so it even can't be a priority.
Once that achieved then it will have all the time in the world to increase its productive capacity, in order to increase its GDP and its people's standard of living.
Achievement doesn't start with an amount of money, borrowed or abundantly waiting in your own surplus bank account to be spent... it doesn't matter. It starts with a good business plan and the right people to execute it.
Of course countries are pushed by richer countries into debt,
Governments push their own countries into greater debt because political careers advance better if they promise more than they can deliver and the better they succeed in blaming others at the next round of elections.

Banks however do like to push people, countries into more debt. Because that is how they make their money! They are especially happy when the bank's risks and failures are payed for by the tax payer. All you have to do is screaming: "But I am much too big to fail!" Then they have us all by the balls, the north as much as the south. It is the big elephant in the room.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Parodite »

Highly recommended and relevant:

tNsC_U7kQoM
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

.


Where do they live ?

Coutries with the lrgest share of wealthiest 47 million people.gif
Coutries with the lrgest share of wealthiest 47 million people.gif (44 KiB) Viewed 2137 times

.

Obviously billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg are part of the 1%. But who else is? According to Credit Suisse, another 47m people - everyone with wealth of $798,000 (£530,000) or more.

That includes many people in rich countries who may not regard themselves as particularly wealthy, but who simply own their house outright or have paid off a significant chunk off their mortgage.

Among them are:

18m people in the US - the country with more members of the 1% than any other
3.5m people in France
2.9m people in the UK
2.8m in Germany

Germany has the biggest economy in Europe. The reason it has fewer wealthy people - by Credit Suisse's measure - is that it has lower levels of home ownership.

There are two Asian countries with more than a million people in the top 1%:

4m in Japan
1.6m in China

The country with the largest proportion of its population in the 1% per capita is Switzerland. One in 10 Swiss residents - 800,000 out of 8m - have assets worth more than $798,000.

It doesn't take into account how much it costs to buy goods in each country, for example. Half a million pounds might buy a one-bedroom flat in central London, but in other countries it could buy a mansion.

It also doesn't take into account income. As a result, many well-paid young people in Western countries may fall into the bottom 50% of wealth - either because they still have student debt to pay off, or because they know how to live well, and spend all their income.

If entry into the 1% does not guarantee a jet-set lifestyle, this is even truer when it comes to the cut-off point for the wealthiest 10% - for this you only need $77,000 (£50,000) of assets.

And the figure required to be in the top half of the world's wealthiest is just $3,650 (£2,400).

Net worth of $ 798,000 makes you one of those 1 % :? .. :oops:

Something wrong

In Vancouver, you can't buy a house for $ 798,000, would make every house owner in Vancouver one of those 1%

.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

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bYkl3XlEneA
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

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Federal Reserve :: Severe Deferral
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

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Wall Street Rises Again

Be afraid. Be very afraid.
William D. Cohan



Dec 28 2014, 7:43 PM ET

You may not have noticed amidst the continued, public grumbling of its leaders, but Wall Street, indisputably, is back. The flow of complaints from Wall Street executives that post-crisis reregulation has hurt their moneymaking prospects has not abated, but the flow of money itself has long since resumed. In fact, the big banks that survived the events of 2008 have entered a new golden age. As incredible as it may seem, this new age is marked not just by the immense profits and hefty bonuses common to prior times of plenty, but also, because of the sheer size of the banks, by an increase in the power that Wall Street wields in local, state, and national politics.

A quick refresher: In the weeks and months following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, in September 2008—and also following the near-collapses of Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Wachovia; the meltdown of Washington Mutual; and the massive bailouts of AIG and Citigroup—there seemed to be a consensus that the basic architecture of the financial industry was deeply flawed and in need of a redesign. Wall Street was both morally and literally bankrupt. If ever a system cried out for reform, this was it. Wall Street’s reliance on short-term financing, leaving it insolvent the moment overnight lenders grew fearful of its prospects, needed a reboot, as did Wall Street’s compensation system, which rewarded bankers, traders, and executives for taking big risks with other people’s money.

But instead of fixing Wall Street’s broken architecture, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury made it their overwhelming priority to reestablish the status quo as quickly as possible. Shotgun marriages were arranged between the failing banks and the surviving banks. The federal government force-fed Wall Street hundreds of billions of dollars of new capital, whether or not Wall Street needed, or wanted, the money. Trillions of dollars of credit were made available to keep operations running and capital flowing. Similar sinecures were not made available to homeowners struggling with underwater mortgages or to Americans thrown out of work by the bad behavior of Wall Street bankers and traders.

Then, after Congress failed to stimulate the economy sufficiently, the Fed designed the so-called quantitative-easing program as its own form of stimulus for those at the top of the pyramid. Under this program, the Fed bought huge amounts of distressed debt and Treasury securities, bidding up their prices and in the process artificially driving down interest rates (the return on a bond moves in inverse proportion to its price). At the peak, the Fed was buying $85 billion in bonds each month, a huge windfall for Wall Street: traders found a ready buyer in the Fed for all sorts of squirrelly securities, at increased market prices. And, because short- and long-term interest rates had been forced down to levels rarely seen before, the big Wall Street banks were able to get their short-term capital essentially for free, and their long-term capital nearly so. The Fed, which expanded its balance sheet from less than $900 billion before the onset of the crash to some $4.5 trillion today, might as well have been paying Wall Street traders’ bonuses directly.

These gifts to Wall Street came without a requirement that it change any of the most fundamental aspects of the way it does business. Yes, regulators demanded that Wall Street banks keep higher capital reserves and abandon certain business lines, such as proprietary trading and investments in private-equity funds. But the flawed architecture of the industry remains intact. As Fed officials admit, the banks’ funding model—giving big institutional investors a daily vote about whether to keep the banks in business—has not meaningfully changed. (In August, Eric Rosengren, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said that the continued prevalence of overnight financing to keep banks solvent is one of the “financial stability issues that still really scares me.”) And of course, the “heads, I win; tails, you lose” compensation system also remains in place. Bankers and traders have every incentive to swing for the fences in order to get multimillion-dollar bonuses. If their bank blows up because of their shortsighted or overly risky actions, their own capital is not on the line.

Consider what all of this has meant in practice:
•Competition on Wall Street has been reduced to a bare minimum. Where hundreds of big banks and securities firms once competed against one another for client business, now there are only a handful. And several of the biggest former competitors—Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch—are gone. Their remnants, if there are any, are now tucked inside even bigger banks. As a result, Wall Street banking has become an oligopoly. According to The Wall Street Journal, American banks earned $40.24 billion in the second quarter of 2014, the second-highest total profit in at least 23 years (the highest was in 2013). JPMorgan Chase alone earned $6 billion in the second quarter and just a whisker less in the third quarter, even after a $1 billion charge for future litigation. All in all, 2014 looks likely to have been, at an absolute minimum, one of the most profitable years on Wall Street, ever.

Better times still are very likely around the corner. As the economy continues to recover from the Great Recession, corporate demand for equity and debt financing, and for advice on mergers and acquisitions—all hugely profitable banking functions—is growing steadily. The volume of global M&A activity for the first nine months of 2014—$2.7 trillion—was up $1 trillion from the previous year, and was on pace for the biggest year since the heady days of 2007. And of course, fewer banks are now splitting the massive fees from advising on all these deals.

One principle of economic theory is that when firms make unnaturally large profits, competitors will rush in, stealing market share and cutting those profits down to size. But that doesn’t seem to apply to Wall Street. While high finance is still somewhat competitive for the existing players, new entrants are few and far between. Barriers to entry are immense, thanks partly to the huge amount of capital required to trade and underwrite securities. And the European banks, which once provided a modicum of competition, are in retreat thanks to the scorching they endured during the financial crisis and, in its aftermath, from regulators. Rather than retool, they are more or less walking away.
•The market for risky financial products has undergone a great revival. As happened in 2005 and 2006, investors are searching desperately for good returns on their investments—a natural reaction when returns on savings accounts and high-quality bonds are so miniscule. As a result, risk is once again being badly mispriced by the debt markets. The yield on junk bonds—representing the credit quality of the riskiest companies—is typically about 10 percent. These days junk bonds yield about 6 percent, a sure sign that too many investors are chasing dicey securities and not getting properly paid for the risks they are taking. Given these favorable conditions, junk-bond issuances have soared: at the time of this writing, new junk bonds totaling $290 billion had been sold in 2014, on par with 2013 and nearly on pace with the record issuance of $345 billion in 2012.

Wall Street doesn’t always play a huge role in creating demand for risky securities—for the most part, market conditions do that. But Wall Street’s army does get rewarded for trying to come up with creative ways to meet market demand. And that is exactly what this army will keep doing as long as the markets will allow. For various reasons, Wall Street’s cut on transactions involving risky debt securities is higher than on investment-grade debt securities; accordingly, the few remaining big underwriters are unlikely to raise much of a ruckus about the mispricing of risk.
•The compensation system on Wall Street, as noted, remains unchanged. Big bonuses are still paid out to the people who generate the most revenue. While these bonuses may not soon be as big as they were prior to the financial crisis, it’s hard to think of any other group of public companies besides Wall Street firms that pays out as compensation between 40 and 50 cents of every dollar in revenue—immediately, based on a single year’s results alone. This ratio has remained remarkably high in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Instead of taking a deep breath, paying less across the board, and reorienting pay to reward safer behavior, Wall Street banks prefer to lay people off, keep the pay as high as possible for those who remain, and base that pay largely on short-term results.

Reduced competition, funding that’s almost free, thriving markets for risky securities, the usual high pay—it’s fabulous to be on Wall Street today. But what is fabulous for the employees of Wall Street firms will spell trouble for the rest of us.

During the inevitable next financial crisis, when the economy again goes into a tailspin, overnight investors will again threaten to stop rolling over the big banks’ short-term debt, and the federal government will once more be faced with the question of whether to bail out the few remaining Wall Street behemoths that caused the problem. The Dodd-Frank Act promises no more bailouts. That feels awfully hollow. The four biggest U.S. banks—now JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—control a total of $8.2 trillion in assets, an increase of 28 percent from the time before the crash of 2008. The assets of these banks alone are nearly half the size of America’s gross domestic product.

Does anyone really think the federal government would allow any one of these big banks—to say nothing of Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley—to fail? The truth is, these banks are too essential to the proper functioning of American capitalism to be allowed to disappear, no matter the reason. (And yes, they are still too interconnected as well.)

In any event, the acid test will come soon enough. In the meantime, Wall Street will be minting money, and the bankers, traders, and executives fortunate enough to work there will continue to see their bank accounts swell. For the rest of us, sadly, the best hope is that the next crisis will be sufficiently existential to finally force fundamental, long-overdue change to the way Wall Street does business.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Endovelico »

Parodite wrote:
In Europe we sometimes nationalize banks. Maybe Americans should try that too sometime...
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

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Endovelico wrote:
Parodite wrote:
In Europe we sometimes nationalize banks. Maybe Americans should try that too sometime...
To nationalize banks itself is not a cure and not enough. Oligarchs tend to do a carousel going in and out of commercial and public positions making sure the dirty show can go on.

The easiest cure and get the beast back into the cage is to make simple law that says that all bankers need to be personally liable for losses of their banks. This is obvious, as pointed out by Stiglitz and also by this Cohan.

Anecdotally, Cohan discussed this once with Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman-Sachs asking him if investment banks would not behave less reckless if the top management had their own personal wealth tied to the risks taken by their banks. He answered Cohan that that was true but would not happen, because he knows his business and the huge risks they take. In other words.. Blankfein does not want to expose his own wealth to the risky behavior of his own business...

To make it law that no banker/ceo can run a bank without having his own personal wealth tied (with a minimum of say 50% liability) to the health of the bank should technically be easy. As easy as making it a requirement to have a driving license before you are allowed to drive a car. Brilliant and simple. No 2300 pages of Dodd-Frank act are needed, which is just another smoke screen and delay tactic.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

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Parodite wrote:The easiest cure and get the beast back into the cage is to make simple law that says that all bankers need to be personally liable for losses of their banks.
Trouble is that with offshore banking and the possibility of putting all your property in the name of your spouse and children, being personally liable means next to nothing...
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Parodite »

Endovelico wrote:
Parodite wrote:The easiest cure and get the beast back into the cage is to make simple law that says that all bankers need to be personally liable for losses of their banks.
Trouble is that with offshore banking and the possibility of putting all your property in the name of your spouse and children, being personally liable means next to nothing...
Of course all law invites people to find tricks to avoid consequences of bad behavior. That is what criminality is all about and why we need independent courts, investigators, monitoring etc. But it starts with making something law and then put the tools in place not letting them get away with it, as with all crime. It is relatively easy to do and the axe at the Achilles heel of these crooks.

More on this: Why S.E.C. Settlements Should Hold Senior Executives Liable

Same principle of course can be applied to governments that ruin their country. Way too many politicians get away with very destructive behavior whose only "punishment" is that they won't be re-elected. That is not enough. In Iceland they went to jail and/or under house arrest.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

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It is more than a little odd that people responsible for the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression are still the ones in charge.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Typhoon »

Image

Economist | Safe as houses
If mortgage lending is so risky, why are bankers so keen on it? The answer lies partly in public subsidies for mortgages, which have boosted home-ownership across much of the rich world. (America is one of the worst offenders, allowing home-owners to deduct the interest on their mortgages from their taxes, as well as insuring most mortgages to shield investors from losses.)

More important, changes to international regulations on bank capital since the 1970s have also increased the supply of mortgages. Under the Basel I rules, which were first adopted in 1988, mortgages were deemed to be half as risky as corporate loans; some national regulators adopted even more skewed risk-weightings. The savings in capital this allowed brought banks higher rates of return on mortgages than on other forms of lending across the rich world. This explains why mortgage lending as a proportion of output has risen even in countries such as Germany and Switzerland, where home-ownership rates have not risen by much since the 1950s. It also explains why central banks the world over have found it easy to stimulate mortgage lending since the crisis, but not corporate borrowing.
An astute observation in the comment section:
PROCYON | Jan 31st, 03:30

The article misses a very critical point that the debt issuance by corporate through the bond route has risen sharply in recent times because the issuance had the primary objective of funding the share buyback programs. While most of S&P 500 was sitting on a pile of cash, there was a brisk activity for bond issuance as the cash was never used for share buy backs. The low interest rate regime offered a perfect ground for this to quickly jack up the stock price without any change in the fundamentals of the business.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:Image

Economist | Safe as houses
If mortgage lending is so risky, why are bankers so keen on it? The answer lies partly in public subsidies for mortgages, which have boosted home-ownership across much of the rich world. (America is one of the worst offenders, allowing home-owners to deduct the interest on their mortgages from their taxes, as well as insuring most mortgages to shield investors from losses.)

More important, changes to international regulations on bank capital since the 1970s have also increased the supply of mortgages. Under the Basel I rules, which were first adopted in 1988, mortgages were deemed to be half as risky as corporate loans; some national regulators adopted even more skewed risk-weightings. The savings in capital this allowed brought banks higher rates of return on mortgages than on other forms of lending across the rich world. This explains why mortgage lending as a proportion of output has risen even in countries such as Germany and Switzerland, where home-ownership rates have not risen by much since the 1950s. It also explains why central banks the world over have found it easy to stimulate mortgage lending since the crisis, but not corporate borrowing.
An astute observation in the comment section:
PROCYON | Jan 31st, 03:30

The article misses a very critical point that the debt issuance by corporate through the bond route has risen sharply in recent times because the issuance had the primary objective of funding the share buyback programs. While most of S&P 500 was sitting on a pile of cash, there was a brisk activity for bond issuance as the cash was never used for share buy backs. The low interest rate regime offered a perfect ground for this to quickly jack up the stock price without any change in the fundamentals of the business.
good post. Those born in the 1920's had very different ideas about debt that those born post 1970.

Thankfully, my parents were born in the 1920's and passed on the advice about "never borrow money for ANY PURCHASE other than a house," and "your total monthly expenses should NEVER exceed two weeks take home pay."

30-50% down on a house and a history of consistent employment used to be the norm. Homeowners were considered the pillars of society because they demonstrated stability. The late 1980s, the 1990's, and the early 2000's looked like the drunken sailors were the bartenders to those of us raised with a different sense of "normal."

Sub prime and the messes resulting from deficit spending should not have been a surprise to anyone. The desire for free lunches usually cause indigestion.

Chicken or egg question: Did greedy, foolish people (the masses) who wanted to live beyond their means corrupt bankers and politicians (oligarchs), or bankers and politicians corrupt the masses?

The only products that are marketed are the products in demand. Unpopular politicians are removed from office. Unpopular bankers will go out of business. Big difference in what different generations view as cause and effect.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by noddy »

the only thing more frightening than the over investment in the eat-your-children housing industry is the anger and denial you get from westerners when you try and discuss it.

"trigger warning"
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Simple Minded »

noddy wrote:the only thing more frightening than the over investment in the eat-your-children housing industry is the anger and denial you get from westerners when you try and discuss it.

"trigger warning"
In regards to debt obsession.... Paraphrasing Flip Wilson: "The banksters/oligarchs/car sales person/guidance councilors/politicians/Koch Brothers/real estates sales person/me-1%ers made me do it!"

Just another mania attributable to human emotion. Next one is just around the corner.

According to Harry Dent, Australia's real estate prices should hold up the longer than most in the west.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

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Simple Minded wrote:According to Harry Dent, Australia's real estate prices should hold up the longer than most in the west.
yep, we just import middle class immigrants to buy them, dont need to make them affordable to locals, so we can ignore the downturn for aslong as their are rich europeans and asians escaping the motherland.

china is chock full of corruption money looking for an escape -canada is experiencing simmilar.

genius plan, what could go wrong, its never worked out bad when an entire generation of kids are strangers in their own country and dont have reasons to care for the future has it ?
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

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noddy wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:According to Harry Dent, Australia's real estate prices should hold up the longer than most in the west.
yep, we just import middle class immigrants to buy them, dont need to make them affordable to locals, so we can ignore the downturn for aslong as their are rich europeans and asians escaping the motherland.

china is chock full of corruption money looking for an escape -canada is experiencing simmilar.

genius plan, what could go wrong, its never worked out bad when an entire generation of kids are strangers in their own country and dont have reasons to care for the future has it ?

.


"Stolen money" most welcome .. As long as it is from China, Iran or China, no question asked

and

everybody relax .. there is no extradition treaty with those sh*t countries


.
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

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"Stolen money" most welcome .. As long as it is from China, Iran or China, no question asked
ah, thats explains it :-)
ultracrepidarian
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Typhoon
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by Typhoon »

Economics Compacted - John Kenneth Fredbraith Speaks

The curmudgeon's perspective . . .
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
noddy
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Re: Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

Post by noddy »

another variation on the discussions we had a while back.

here to there is still a long long way off.
ultracrepidarian
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