Markets open in 5 mins. Waiting for the bad news.

Funny thing, I looked up Black Monday on wiki, and of the 14 black Mondays that people keep track of did 4 occur in 2008. A negative trend, if you ask me.

 

Well, the ibovesta had 2 circuit breaks during the day, but managed to end with -5,56% (at some point of the day it was -16%!!!)

But the dollar currency is getting worse. Finished the day with 1 dollar = 2,20 Reais.

 

Thank God they hastily voted on that shitty bailout plan! :thumbsup:

 

That cannot solve the problem: Bad credit behaviour of the people.
This was also the cause of the implosion in the 1920ies.

 

They can stop loaning to people who don't have a chance in hell of paying back what they owe.

BANKRUPTCY CHING CHING

 

Who does have a chance to look into the future, more than 1 year?
The middle class, with 2,3,4 jobs?

 

Well, who knows how bad it will be exactly. I'm more worried about the rest of my family than for myself, as I'm in a pretty good spot financially (as long as I don't lose my job somehow.)

You know, you can shift blame both ways. But who really is at fault here? Is the consumer at fault, for taking a loan on a $7000,000 house when they only make 35K a year? Is the bank's fault for giving that loan in the first place? Is it the government's fault for allowing them?

The repeal of Glass-Stegal was a fully bi-partisan decision, so you can't blame this one on any particular political party.

Ultimately, the blame rests with the system, one in which rich people are allowed to go on these types of financial adventures with our money without being held accountable. When a poor person invests in Furry trout fisheries and jackalope farms, you don't see the government bailing them out.

It's bullshit.

 

I hate discussions like this, so I'll bow out. Hawanja made a bunch of good points, so an internet cookie goes to you, sir.

 

IMO the people borrowing money are at fault. It is their responsibility. They are adults. That is real life. If they can't afford the loan they take out, then they are accountable for their own actions. No one is forcing them to take out the loan. It is their choice.

This is part of what is wrong with the world. Too few want to be responsible and too many blame everything but themselves.

We should not have to bail out the greed that encouraged this crazy situation though. I do feel bad that it has fucked up so many retirements/college funds though. That is a shitty thing to have happen.

Thank goodness I am a young man out of uni!

 

I agree that our system needs to change. I hate to use a metaphor, but what needs to be done to our government and economy is like renovating a house. You can put up some new paint and re-face the cabinets in the kitchen, but that doesn't fix the rotting wood and rusted screws. We need to rebuild our system into something that works better, and hopefully the candidates seeking election recognize that.

 

Well, I look at it like this:

If you make something available, people will take it, especially if what you're making available is free money.

Who doesn't want to live in their own house? Who doesn't want to own a business? This is like the American dream. So when you go the the bank and they tell you that you can have a piece of that dream and not to worry about that variable interest rate, you can't blame someone for taking it.

You know, it used to be hard to get a credit card. That is hard to imagine nowadays. They give them to children now for crissakes. In my opinion it's that kind of reckless non-regulated type of business that caused this mess.

In real life, someone who makes 35k should not be allowed to get a loan for a house that's seven hundred grand. A bank is a for-profit entity with a responsibility to shareholders. You notice that the traditional banks are not going under right now, it's the investment banks who speculated in bad home loans that are disappearing. It's an accumulation of 30 years of government deregulation.

It's funny how all the right wingers so easily throw around the term "Wealth redistribution" whenever it comes to helping poor people, yet they have no problem redistributing 700 Billion of our wealth upwards. And it's not like this is the first time a major industry has got a bail out, it's just the largest. Remember the S&L crisis? What was that, $500 billion in 1989 dollars? That's over a Trillion today.

But everybody panics when the stock market tanks. Maybe it should be tanking right now.

 

I wouldnt put all the blame on people's overspending, specially since real state prices have long surpassed the average income (in the US and elsewhere) thanks to overspeculation.

Want to blame somebody? blame the real state, construction and decoration conglomerates, they are the fuckers who pumped the prices up, forcing even a upper-middle class family to look around for a hefty mortgage.

 

Taucias takes the opposite line, that we're all adults capable of making our own decisions. I think this crisis has proven that there were plenty of innumerate idiots out there who were incapable of wrapping their heads around their own finances. Even if we don't have a responsibility for these people, we're still suffering the fallout. I don't know, seems like it might've been a better idea not to have lent them money they couldn't afford to pay back in the first place. But that's just my take on the situation. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I've avoided joining in on this discussion so far because I knew I'd end up spouting off about the dangers of unrestricted, laissez-faire capitalism, so I'll just say that I agree with you here and leave it at that.

 

Yeh. It's both the banks and borrower's fault. Thats why I opposed the bailout plan. You know they are going to put out more bail outs soon? Apparently the 700billion isn't working.

We are digging ourselves deeper into a hole.

 

Hmm the UK / Japanese exchange rate has been up and down more times in the last 2 days then a $20 whores knickers. Going from 188 down to 182 then plummeting to 174 slowly climbing back to 182 before falling and holding at 178. Although the UK / Australian Dollar exchange rate has increased by over 15 cents. Which is good as that is where I am going to next.

 

I find it (in a sad way) hilarious how the bailout isn't even doing what it was supposed to do:
Ease the minds of investors for a short term fix on an economy that is desperately trying to readjust itself.

But now, we keep going down... down... down...

Oh well, he tried to tell everyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBVB1Uc0nko

 

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6650.html

Iceland Going Bankrupt?

The focus of the financial storm now shifts to the small North Atlantic Island state of Iceland, a country with barely 330,000 inhabitants that saw its banks in recent years expand across Europe as they played and rolled the dice in the global derivatives market, financed on leverage from financial institutions across the globe that were eager to lend on the back of cheap low interest rate carry trade financing which delivered profits for nothing i.e. the difference between the rate borrowed and charged on the interbank market for a near limitless exponentially rising over the counter derivatives bubble that passed $500 trillions, that's trillions NOT billions!

 

Well if we are going to be crushed under a mountain of hyper inflation... Really good time to be maxxing out those credit cards! Woo hoo!