I'm still not altogether sure I would actually fit in one of them, however.
It is fun to watch some testing, though:
That's the old saying. It's also been said that America's economy leads the world.
So should we apologize for this?
Share prices dropped sharply on the world's financial markets yesterday amid fears that the year-long credit crunch is entering a dangerous new phase marked by a severe economic slowdown and failing banks.
The FTSE 100 index fell by almost 2.5% as financial market traders braced themselves for a fresh bout of turbulence triggered by concern that weakening growth in Europe, North America and Asia would add to the problems of western banks.
Heckuva job, BushCo...
You're not going to like this guy:
On Sept. 7, 2006, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, stood before an audience of economists at the International Monetary Fund and announced that a crisis was brewing. In the coming months and years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt. These developments, he went on, could cripple or destroy hedge funds, investment banks and other major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
You are probably aware of what's been happening, so you know that Nouriel called that one.
The trouble is that he's still paying attention:
Roubini argues that most of the losses from this bad debt have yet to be written off, and the toll from bad commercial real estate loans alone may help send hundreds of local banks into the arms of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. “A good third of the regional banks won’t make it,” he predicted. In turn, these bailouts will add hundreds of billions of dollars to an already gargantuan federal debt, and someone, somewhere, is going to have to finance that debt, along with all the other debt accumulated by consumers and corporations. “Our biggest financiers are China, Russia and the gulf states,” Roubini noted. “These are rivals, not allies.”
The United States, Roubini went on, will likely muddle through the crisis but will emerge from it a different nation, with a different place in the world. “Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers,” he said, pausing to let out a resigned sigh. “This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.”
Have a nice day.
Tells it like it is, with emphasis mine:
Bushonomics
A new Center for American Progress report released today -- Understanding Bushonomics: How We Got Into This Mess In the First Place -- documents "the extraordinary transfer of wealth that took place between ordinary households and the extremely well-to-do and the effort by this administration to address the consequences of that problem without addressing the root cause." Senior Fellow Scott Lilly argues that while the "economy did in fact grow at a reasonably strong pace through most of the Bush presidency" and "the hourly productivity of American workers" increased by "more than 19 percent," average Americans did not reap the benefits of economic expansion. Instead, President Bush's economic policies redistributed wealth to the richest Americans and left the majority with stagnating wages and declining household incomes. The transfer "drained the American consumer of the resources needed to keep the economy humming" and led the administration to stimulate the economy by expanding credit -- an action that only weakened "our long term capacity for growth," he concludes.
Funny how wealth redistribution is a good thing for W, isn't it?
The sun is going to keep coming up for about five billion more years.
I can only wonder if it's ever going to look different for humanity...
(Tip to Crooks and Liars!)
a.k.a. BAILOUT!
Alarmed by the growing financial stress at the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, senior Bush administration officials are considering a plan to have the government take over one or both of the companies and place them in a conservatorship if their problems worsen, people briefed about the plan said on Thursday.
The companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have been hit hard by the mortgage foreclosure crisis. Their shares are plummeting and their borrowing costs are rising as investors worry that the companies will suffer losses far larger than the $11 billion they have already lost in recent months. Now, as housing prices decline further and foreclosures grow, the markets are worried that Fannie and Freddie themselves may default on their debt.
Under a conservatorship, the shares of Fannie and Freddie would be worth little or nothing, and any losses on mortgages they own or guarantee — which could be staggering — would be paid by taxpayers.
How's that deregulation thing going again?
It's always fun to read him, but I think he's being a bit too optimistic here:
The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades.
Since the Reagan years, free-market cliches have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing.
You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution. The distribution of income and wealth doesn't matter. Providing incentives for the investors of capital to "grow the pie" is the only policy that counts. Free trade produces well-distributed economic growth, and any dissent from this orthodoxy is "protectionism.
Of course, what he says is basically true, but that won't stop the rightwingnuttarium from pushing the failed policies and ideas with a vengeance.
A couple of nice quotes from Barney Frank in there, as well:
Frank also calls for new thinking on the impact of free trade. He argues it can no longer be denied that globalization "is a contributor to the stagnation of wages and it has produced large pools of highly mobile capital." Mobile capital and the threat of moving a plant abroad give employers a huge advantage in negotiations with employees. "If you're dealing with someone and you can pick up and leave and he can't, you have the advantage."
"Free trade has increased wealth, but it's been monopolized by a very small number of people," Frank said. The coming debate will focus not on shutting globalization down but rather on managing its effects with an eye toward the interests of "the most vulnerable people in the country."
If you don't agree with that, what are you doing here?
...doesn't seem to be the economy we want.
At some point over the last seven years, you have probably heard someone — a friend, a business executive, the president of the United States — say that the Sept. 11 attacks sent the American economy into a slump. It’s an understandable enough notion, given that the attacks occurred in 2001 and a recession began that same year.
But it’s simply incorrect. The economy started shrinking in March 2001, largely because of the hangover from the technology bust. The attacks did cause a sharp drop in the stock market, but if you were to go back and look at, say, the quarterly numbers on consumer spending, you wouldn’t even know anything horrific had happened in September. By November, the economy was growing again.
Of course, where the economy is now is the sad story. The hardest part of being so far down in the gutter is realizing that it's going to get better - somehow.
But, hey, at least we're using our stimulus checks!
As I've said, it's all going according to plan...
The best time to plant a tree, it has been said, is twenty years ago. Failing that, today.
The best time to do something about poverty leading to crime is before poverty drives people to crime:
A shudder went through the markets when the Labor Department reported that the official jobless rate had jumped one-half a percentage point in May to 5.5 percent — the sharpest spike in 22 years.
The young people I’m talking about wouldn’t have noticed. These are the teenagers and young adults — roughly 16 to 24 years old — who are not in school and basically have no hope of finding work. The bureaucrats compiling the official unemployment rate don’t even bother counting these young people. They are no one’s constituency. They might as well not exist.
Except that they do exist.
Wouldn't it be nice if the economy were doing as well as W apparently believes it is?