United States Heading towards a Depression?

The top five banks have net current risks and potential future losses from derivatives surpassing $1.2 trillion . The potential near-term losses are $587 billion.

5 biggest banks are 'dead men walking'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090309/pl_mcclatchy/3184724

Much of the AIG bailout billions have found their way to pay off the big bank losses.

As part of the Obama Mortgage Bailout the Treasury Department will double the injection of money into Freddie/Fannie to $400 billion from $200 billion.

Rick Santelli is going to have a hard attack but Freddie/Fannie may need as much as $2 trillion.

 

All the while, I'm sure Frank, Reid and others will urge them to make the same bad decisions they have since both institutions where formed. ARGH!!!!

 

YAY! The recession/depression is finished.

Citigroup says they are able to steal money from private citizens again (rather than through the government), so this is their best time since 2007.

And, the DOW/NASDAQ which never exaggerates reports from CEOs, went up 5%/7% today.

Hooray! The rich are able to steal from us again. The USA is back!

 

I found this post on another forum about the stupidity of quantitative easing that the US and UK are doing (printing money). It made me chuckle
---------------
When I was little I liked to play Monopoly. I would buy up properties aggressively and after a brief struggle my opponents (usually my brothers) would go bust and I would win. But that would stop the fun, so to allow me to achieve my aim of buying every property and having hotels on everything, I would Quantitatively Ease.

I would write new notes for the Bank, and loan them out to my brothers. Of course, that money was not for them to buy assets as that could have threatened my winning position; instead, they would be issued to pay the debts to me, whereupon I would buy more assets. Sometimes I would pay outrageously high prices for properties from them, secure in the knowledge that they were about to give it all back to me as they landed on my wall-to-wall hotels.

I would, if possible, keep this going as long as it took to acquire £1bn or more. I sometimes even changed the rules so I could put new multiple hotels on properties and make new returns when they landed. I think I once built hotels on the electric board, free parking, the lot. All covered by more QE and loans to my opponents.

My opponents were transformed into slaves, borrowing infinitely to pay me and allow me to acquire all capital in the Universe. This was far more rewarding to me than just busting them, which simply meant the game had to be reset and I lost my wealth.

Eventually they would get fed up and that would be the end of that.

---------------------------------------

The conclusion is clear. The only way out is to throw the board over and refuse to play the game.

 

You haven't got a clue.

 

he was being sarcastic.

hey rolf great story. Thats what we need to do, throw bernanke and his criminal banker gang and obamas treasury secretary overboard. Get rid of the IRS out too. That wasn't created until the criminal fed reserve.

 

In 6 months the situation is going to be worse.

Unemployment is expected to reach 10% this year as the number of people collecting unemployement increased to 5.3 million, the most on records dating back to 1967.

The Labor Department reported that first-time requests for unemployment insurance rose to 654,000 from the previous week's upwardly revised figure of 645,000, above analysts' expectations.

An additional 1.4 million people are receiving extented unemployment benefits as well.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090312/economy.html

 

Looks like the treasury secretary and Dumbama got an "F" on the economy according to 46 top economists. Bernake actually pulled out a C.

 

Geithner did his magic on Asia in 97-98 Crisis. Geithner wrote the International Monetary Fund program for Indonesia in that was dead wrong and wiped out many Asian economies.

 

What exactly did he do?

 

There was a run on Asian currencies by hedge funds including Obama backer George Soros. The Asian governments went to the IMF for emergency loans to protect their curriencies and Geithner in response applied a Latin Amercan type solution to economies that had sound public finances. The Asian counties had a capital account defecit rather than a current account defecit as Geithner believed.


The economy of Indonesia was destroyed. The Asian governments that went to the IMF for emergency loans - Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia - were screwed. After what Geithner did to Asia they never trusted the IMF and the US again and built up massive foreign currency reserves.

China, in particular, drew hard conclusions from the IMF’s mishandling of the Asian crisis. It decided that it would never allow itself to be dependent on the IMF, or the US, or the West generally, for its international solvency. Instead, it would build the biggest war chest the world had ever seen.

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/tag/tim_geithner

 

I jsut wanted to quote this guy to remind everyone of what an idiot he is...

 

I speak with a lot of business people in my region. I spent 2 decades doing business with them as a commercial real estate broker.

Here is a recessionary story that was just relayed to me by a friend and long time business owner.

This guy has been remarkably successful. He sells 2 types of consumer merchandise, services them, does repairs and replacement sales. The bulk of his business always has been new sales.

The business is one of if not the largest of its kind in this metropolitan region. In fact he's been so successful that one of his suppliers has had him travel the country teaching and coaching other businesses in the nation on how to better sell the merchandise.

Price points on the merchandise;

Item 1 sells new for between low hundreds to about $900 at the top.
Item 2 sells for in general a couple of thousand dollars.

Business in 2008 and 2009 has been crummy. The real severity comes with credit crunches that hit consumers. They have hit several times over the past 15 months. A vast number of his customers buy on credit. They finance the purchases through credit cards or consumer loans through their lending institutions.

Credit keeps tightening and loosening on his customers. Last year it tightened several times with the worst period being Sept-November. It was tight again in Feb and its slightly looser now.

His sales have plummeted. He carries a pretty high overhead for his business type relative to other local businesses, partly because his business volume has been so large, and partly because with that type volume he expanded services into areas most competitors can't handle.

I've heard these stories from other local business people who deal with the end result of credit. Its a story that has crossed the nation.

Tight credit along with a severe cutback on spending are causing the economy to shrink at faster rates. This aspect adds fuel to the initial problems that started in the real estate world and expanded into the cr@ppy securitized loans that have been sold around the world.

Its why I believe in the stimulus theory​

If the govt doesn't step in credit simply collapses, many underlying aspects of banking collapse and the economy collapses at a faster rate.

The recession of the late 1980's/early 1990's was a credit induced/banking created recession. It occurred because of an enormous volume of cr@ppy bank loans to an unprecidented volume of office buildings that sat dramatically empty. The financial institutions held the loans. Then the institutions started to fail. As the institutions began to fail credit tightened across the economy. All businesses were hit. That is where the recession occurred.

That recession was a drop in the bucket compared to this period of time. Either the World Bank or IMF reported a $50 trillion world wide loss of "wealth". Add tightened credit to that---and what drives the American economy all goes into the pot.

This administration is trying to prime the pump--pouring some spending into the economy. Its also trying to underwrite the financial institutions to help them through the writedowns of bad holdings and their tightening of credit that is causing restrictions on the American domestic economy and thereby the world economy.

I know all steps aren't perfect. I still see it as a mighty effort to stave off an incredible downward spiral.

What I don't see from the far partisan and highly political Right Wing is any effort to deal with the problem. I see lots of complaints and finger pointing. I saw 180 lock stepping Republican members of the House who didn't have an economic plan vote in apparant non-thinking unanimity against stimulus. Did they have a plan? I didn't see it. I saw a program that replicated the economics of the last 8 years--> give more tax breaks to rich people and have a laissez-faire economic policy that doesn't look at or give a sh!t about what businesses do.

Hmmmm.....that didn't seem to work in so far as that is the economic foundation that led to this recession.

As Representative Boehner said during the political debates concerning the stimulus package.... (paraphrased)--we are walking in unknown territory.

That is the reality of the business environment.

 

Time to pay the piper ?​

We, meaning the USA, owe other nations probably more than
we could ever repay them. We operate daily as a nation out
of debt, not profit because we hardly have any manufacturing
base. ( You do not want to hear how much per day
the USA goes deeper into debt. )

Try that with any business and eventually it folds. When our
creditors ( the nations ) say "enough is enough" and dump
the dollar, - it all ends.

How long would you do business with someone that every time
they have a problem with money, they simply whip out their
printer and print up some paper money ? Not long. The USA
has done that since at least 1971.

 

Things to keep in mind next time you vote.

 

America is headed to a recovery. And those of us smart enough to invest now are going to make a killing on the way up. Obama is not much of a socialist (I wish for the country's sake he was a bit more of one - socialism would be a good thing for this country) - he's a pragmatist who believes in the free market. Companies like GM & Citigroup are smart bets.

To the Herbert Hoovers/Rush Limbaugh's of the world: Your negativity is useless. We will accomplish great things without you. You will only become more and more irrelevant with the passing years.

 

Please speak for yourself because you do not speak for me.
Do you really want to pay my mortgage ?


This country did not become great through socialism, now did it ?
The high taxes that brought on the "shot heard 'round the world"
also brought on a select group of men who formed a government to
fight the tyranny that comes from socialistic tendencies.



I propose that all those who want to revert back to being taxed
out of their skulls be made to pay that tax. A truckload of "GM-style"
companies await a "donation". For the rest of us, we choose liberty.
We choose to enjoy the fruits of our labor without the heavy hand
of greedy rich govt pounding us into the ground.

 

It's just a fad Blue Star, don't worry. Socialism right now is just the "new cool thing", very similar to how Ron Paul was the new cool thing for some people.. and to others he represented something deeper than the new cool thing.

When you have no direction, it's so easy to attach yourself to absurd ideas - to feel the pleasures of appearing different and unique. Which is why I'm not concerned, some people just need to be understood a little more.