The Falling American Economy

Off-Topic Off Topic
#21

Since everyone is minding his money, I thought it would be
appropriate to inform you all of some new stock market
lingo. Just so you’re not left in the dark.

CEO- Chief Embezzlement Officer

CFO- Corporate Fraud Officer

Bull Market- A random market movement causing an
investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

Bear Market- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no
allowance, the wife gets no jewelry and the husband gets
no sex.

Value investing- The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E Ratio- The percentage of investors wetting their pants
as the market keeps crashing.

Broker- What my broker has made me.

Standard & Poor- Your life in a nutshell.

Stock analyst- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

Stock split- When you ex-wife and her lawyer split your
assets equally between themselves.

Market Correction- The day after you buy stocks.

Cash flow- The movement your money makes as it
disappears down the toilet.

Yahoo- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker
for $240 per share.

Windows- What you jump out of when you’re the sucker
who bought Yahoo at $240 per share.

Institutional investor- Past year investor who’s now
locked up in a nuthouse.

Profit- An archaic word no longer in use

#22

I hope the bottom fell out today, and things begin to stabilize…

#23

Actually Herman2, not all countries are going bankrupt, Australia should scrape out alive, by what our p/m told the public. Australia is still going quite well and were still a rich country, Touch wood. Truce

#24

Hope all you like, but I don’t think we’ve hit the bottom yet.

This is a slow motion train wreck that’s been going on for a year, and it’s probably got a way to go yet. It’s hard to stop mob panic.

#25

Hey Aly J…
I read this article in your News Weekly from Austrailia of few yrs ago…I quote…
When the then Prime Minister Paul Keating warned 18 years ago that Australia faced becoming a “banana republic”, he could well have used the experience of Spain to illustrate his warning.

In 1986 Australia’s foreign debt was around $78 billion, now it is $403 billion.
In his historic treatise, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, David Landers expressed his concern at the growing foreign debt of today’s United States - Australia’s is proportionately worse - and warned that, ultimately, its fate could be similar to that of 16th-century Spain.

#26

Hey Herman, Likley back in those days you were right, but right now where not doing to badly for ourselfs… Cheers

#27

The fu^%$#@*ing Dow JIA is down again, after a period of modest rebound! Euro and Asian stocks are in the pisser, and it’s all gloom where I am…

When will the roller coaster selling and buy backs end on Wall Street?

#28

Cheer up, marra, it’s only money. :cool:

#29

About the U.S. owing China Billions, I think most folks here would like them to come over, and take back all of their stuff thats cluttering up our stores. That should even the score…:slight_smile:
As for the markets, there will be alot of high/low going on for a bit, everyone buys in low, and sells when it rebounds to make some quick dosh. It’ll sort itself out shortly. Things may well be as good as ever in a couple months.:Note To America: Quit buying so much stuff from China!!:evil:

#30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl6NfQyNLto

#31

My Dollar sank to 79 cents!..BooHoo Hoo…there use to be a day only 6 mths ago that the USA Greenback was lower than the Canadian dollar. …I use to walk with Pride in Buffalo laying my high paying Dollar on the table for Buffalo wings and fee rich…now I can hardly afford the gas to go to the States and if I do, I’m getting 20% less!!!..It’s not fair I tell you!

#32

Oddly enough gas prices have fallen dramatically. Here in Jacksonville, Florida gasoline is as low as $2.50 a gallon.

Mind you it was over $4.00 a gallon for a brief period in early September after hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast. It had been in the $3.50+ range for quite some time.

#33

Gas prices in Atlanta are under $2.50/gallon. I paid $2.49 today. OPEC is lowering production to compensate. Man the world economy is fkin insane!

Say what one will, the fall of the US economy can be traced to greed and stupidity. In testimony on Friday Greenspan admitted he(and other experts) expected market to “police” itself. “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,".http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html?ex=1240459200&en=3fafc8aefc36a9b7&ei=5087&excamp=GGBUgreenspantestimony&WT.srch=1&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_id=BI-S-E-GG-NA-S-greenspan_testimony

In Beijing others proclaim " Asian, European leaders say rules guiding the global economy should be rewritten" http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081025/as_asia_europe.html

Wow I am floored by the timing of these statements.:shock:

Lemme get this straight. The leading economist in the US(before this affair) expected de-regulation would promote growth in financial markets and oh by the way regulation would not be necessary due to the inherent “self-correcting” factor.

I think he really believed his assumptions. I will never understand how and why he came to those conclusions.

It is unfair to blame a single person for the state of affairs. He certainly is partly at fault. There are plenty of others who bear responsibility. The true culprit is the US congress IMO. The politicians fail the test of honesty and integrity along with the apparent inability to balance a checkbook or comprehend a balance sheet. Simple economics. Bah

#34

A total collapse crash had already been programmed since 1971 with the final dissolution of any physical standard. I don’t know if this is it yet, but it smells like it. Our money system is based on exponentially growing debt (seriously, how stupid is that, I am always stunned that the people who actually work in that system seem to believe this can go on indefinatly because it worked a couple of decades). It is bound to fail big time in the end. Complete failure of the money system is already bad if it only happens locally (like our hyperinflation), but since we now essentially live in one world this final reset will be more ugly than anything we have ever experienced.

The chinese sure know how to curse. May you live in interesting times.

#35

Greenspan’s position seemed to be that he expected that a sense of institutional self-preservation would ensure that CEOs would be prudent to ensure that their corporations survived, rather than exploiting the corporations to profit themselves.

What he failed to see, which suggests that like any economic or other zealot he must have been blind to human nature and corporate behaviour, was that CEOs have been rorting their corporations for the past few decades to generate short-term appearances of profit by any means possible to ensure that they got their performance bonuses and increased the stock value so they could exercise their stock options.

I agree that no individual can be blamed for the current problems, but the class of individuals who should be blamed most are the rapacious CEOs and senior managers of corporations all over the world whose greed is most responsible for the mess. They are the modern robber barons but, unlike the nineteenth / early twentieth century robber barons the modern lot don’t put their own capital on the line and they can’t lose, so they lack the restraint that is involved in using one’s own money. If stocks go down they don’t exercise their options and if they go up they do, but meanwhile they’re paid silly amounts every day they’re in office.

In the early 1980s I was in a senior position in a major Australian capital institution. Our CEO was an old school man who drove his own modest company car when CEOs of comparable and lesser companies were starting to use company funded chauffeur driven limos. Our CEO always stressed the point that the corporation was, effectively, the trustee of the shareholders’ funds and he judged every decision against what was genuinely in the best interest of the shareholders, which included looking at long term growth rather than current year manipulation of figures to impress the market and give himself a bigger bonus while buggering the long term future of the company. After he retired the next CEO was less concerned with that approach, and the next couple of CEOs got well into the short term aims. A major company which had been around for over a century got taken over a few years later by a foreign corporation, and what’s left of it has never been half as good since as it was under the old school CEO.

#36

Behold! the Anti-Christ draws nye.

#37

Nah!

We’re only talking about Mammon here, not denial of Christ etc.

The problem with Mammon is greed, not money.

While it’s usually wrongly quoted as “money is the root of all evil”, it’s the love of money (above faith in context) that is the problem:

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Timothy 6:10

The biblical parallel right now, if there is one, is Jesus throwing the money changers and sacrificial animal sellers out of the temple to cleanse it of “a den of robbers”. Sounds about right to me at present.

#38

This thread title should be changed to the falling World economy…I’ve been told that if people left their money in the bank during the great depression of the 30’s in the end they would have made 5%. I sure would love to see some of these CEO’s spend a little time in the gray bar hotel…

#39

Perhaps, but if they had enough money to snap up the bargains which cashed up people had then, they’d have been grinning by 1939, laughing happily during the war, and pissing themselves laughing by 1955 with vast growth in their wealth.

#40

Only this time there won’t be such a rebound. The people in 1929 ff were in a vastly better position than what we are in.