How bad it is in the US now

reminds me of the netherlands when they introduced the euro.. no-one in the working class could afford to live anymore, they set up stores where people could shop for free once a week or something like that..

i fled the country just before so maybe someone of our dutch members can tell firsthand what it was like (might still be that way even?).

 

Shit, still $2.29 here.

You guys are forgetting this whole recession-that-they're-afraid-to-call-a-depression has just started, it's less than two months old. We'll see if we're all sitting pretty a year from now.

I'm counting my blessings now as it looks like my job isn't going anywhere for the next year at least, but I can pretty much kiss any raises goodbye. Plus in this day and age giant megaconglomerates such as the one I work for tend to hemmorage staff at the drop of a hat, so just becasue there's a ton of work for me to do doesn't mean I have any kind of security.

Sucks, but this is the kind of environment the conservatives wanted (not to get into politics here, but dammit it's true.) Better start buying gold, or something.

 

Not to sound all smug, but I foresaw this crisis almost two years ago when the housing bubble peaked.

It was obvious: prices didn't go down, they stood at that point for a time, which isn't good since you have no growth nor investment opportunities. Plus real state was already off the chart, with owners asking for prices that nobody could pay, and to make it worst taking mortgages on those imaginary values.

At the end you had inflated house prices, then the real state market panicked, which made the mortgage market panic too since suddently all those debts had no collateral (or just a fraction of the original) making payments rise to the point that owners could not pay them, creating a massive financial failure.

 

ehh they were invited that just shows what cheap asses we are. I'll consider it bad when 40,000 people show up UNinvited and take every sliver of food.

 

It's all part of the media hype to scare people. Not that much is changing.

How often does a farmer offer free food on TV? I am not surprised it got a huge turn out at the weekend. All you see on TV right now is woebegone bullshit scaremonger talking heads debating how quickly things will crash and burn. The problem is, people really listen to this horseshit, then it really happens because people react the way they are told to react.

 

its all a big conspiracy!

 

It's real, just exagerated since IMO the worst is already happening, there's no apocalypse around the corner.

But I agree there's a self-fulfilled prophecy factor in all this.

 

Right, we are in a slump but it is not the end of the world. This is all cyclic. In a few years we will see an up turn and in 5 years people will be back to maxing out their credit cards, driving oversized SUVs and minivans and picking out giant mansions they can ill afford. People have very short term memories when it comes to money and little respect from where it comes from.

 

Alright I'll bite..

How exactly is the current economic environment beneficial to the conservative movement? Please take into consideration that The Economy was a given reason that persuaded many to vote for Obama and we have a long running democrat majority in Congress.

Why doesn't anyone ever remember the 80's???

 

What are you talking about? That is the biggest bull shit story I have ever heard, and yes I am Dutch.

The dutch Gulden was kinda of underrated when it went into the euro, I'll admit to that, but there were never things such as: ''the working class couldn't afford to live anymore'' nor did we ever have stores where we could shop for free one a week.

It wasn't that way, it isn't that way and it will never become that way. God, it's not Africa. Are you even dutch or were you a foreigner living in The Netherlands?

 

Your such a nice guy...

 

I read that, but if he really lived there then it makes me wonder even more where the got these crazy ideas from? I meant by my question if he was a dutch who fled the country, or a foreigner who returned home.

 

heh.. this shit was all over the news back when, why the fuck would i make it up?

sadly my dutch isnt good enough any more to properly search out any articles to back me up, i also remember a huge ammount of people that got deeply into involuntary debt when it happened.
heres an article about how the debt has increased since the changeover, if you check the comments youll see people referring to the gulden era and what the dutch finances were like then.
http://www.depers.nl/economie/183719/Ruim-miljoen-huishoudens-zitten-krap.html

dunno if youre just a kid that doesnt know better or if your one of those typical arrogant "deskundige" assholes that made me want to leave the country in the first place.

 

So who signed up for their free dr pepper?

 

Sadly is true, people just can't stand austerity for too long, and living in a consumerist society doesn't help.

Yeah I know, in fact this crisis may not be as harsh as that decade was, even when the stock crisis of the '87 wasn't as bad the current one.

 

Aren't you the one that started the "why the iPod will fail" thread... not to mention many other horribly-summed-up-false-assumption claims... like Sega being able to easily jump back in the HW market?

Are they not offset by the quality smoke?

 

What type of job do you work?

 

ipod sales are actually slowing down in Q2, go check it out.

 

:lol:
Yeah, what a failure the iPod's been, eh? You're full of ridiculous claims yet you always pretend like you've got the scoop.

 

iPod is more or less THE synonym for mp3 player now, i would call that a success.