meazza Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 http://www.economist.com/finance/displaySt...atures_box_main My favorite magazine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
molson_golden2002 Posted September 15, 2008 Author Share Posted September 15, 2008 http://www.economist.com/finance/displaySt...atures_box_main My favorite magazine. These stories are not exactly being written to bolster confidence, are they?? EVEN by the standards of the worst financial crisis for at least a generation, the events of Sunday September 14th and the day before were extraordinary. The weekend began with hopes that a deal could be struck, with or without government backing, to save Lehman Brothers, America’s fourth-largest investment bank. Early Monday morning Lehman filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It has more than $613 billion of debt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meazza Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 These stories are not exactly being written to bolster confidence, are they?? Why should they? It's the truth. The biggest worry is the effect on derivatives markets, particularly the giant one for credit-default swaps. Lehman is a top-ten counterparty in CDSs, holding contracts with a notional value of almost $800 billion. On Sunday, banks called in their derivatives traders to assess their exposures to Lehman and work on mitigating risks. The Securities and Exchange Commission, Lehman’s main regulator, said it is working with the bank to protect clients and trading partners and to “maintain orderly markets”. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Typical TBD Guy Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 Thank you . Your post is an oasis of competence in the PPP desert of McKinley'sCurse/StupidNation economic stupidity. Oh yeah, I forgot about you. Funny that it was not too long ago that this board seemed overloaded with illogical right-wing zealots, but now it looks like you partisan left-wingers have organized yourselves well....and are here to stay. So be it. If PPP can't have intelligent discourse, then at least it can meet the "balanced" part of "fair and balanced." The majority who have posted here seem OK with government regulation of trade, based on the notion that some industries are "too big to fail" and that the valleys of the economic cycle are too low to tolerate without some sort of moderating influence, i.e. government. Regarding industries "too big to fail," my question is this: where do we want to set the limit of what's too big and not too big? So far, people are OK with investment banks being too big to fail. A lot of people will lose money in their retirement savings, although investing (like life) always comes with a level of risk. The rule of thumb is to "diversify, diversify, diversify" to lower the risk level. But how about the Detroit automotive industry? If us taxpayers don't bail the mismanaging car execs out, lots of Detroit autoworkers will lose their jobs. How about small computer software businesses that fail? Collectively, they are a HUGE segment of our national economy. Do we bail all of them out? Or just some? How do we select which ones get the help and which ones don't? Getting even smaller, how about individual American citizens who realize they took out too many student loans and can't pay them back? Regarding government intervention to lessen the lows of the economic cycle, a really good discussion of this is probably well beyond the scope of PPP (save a few like DC Tom, BlueFire, etc), for I doubt many here have taken college courses in microecon/macroecon. But to get started, look up the debate over the causes of the 1930's Depression. In particular, pay attention to the Keynesian analysis (too little government regulation) vs. Austrian analysis (too much, especially concerning the nation's money supply) of what happened. The left-leaning mainstream media (with the notable exceptions of Fox News and WSJ) has done a very effective job of portraying laissez-faire economists as lunatics in the post-Reagan era, yet a few of these lunatics did manage to squeaze out enough good ideas to win Nobel Prizes on what happened in the 1930's. A summary of the basic laissez-faire premise would be that unnatural government interference in the economy actually makes these cycles MORE severe and not LESS as the great economic scholar, Barack Obama, would have you believe (of course, McCain really has no !@#$ing clue either). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExiledInIllinois Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 Oh yeah, I forgot about you. Funny that it was not too long ago that this board seemed overloaded with illogical right-wing zealots, but now it looks like you partisan left-wingers have organized yourselves well....and are here to stay. So be it. If PPP can't have intelligent discourse, then at least it can meet the "balanced" part of "fair and balanced." The majority who have posted here seem OK with government regulation of trade, based on the notion that some industries are "too big to fail" and that the valleys of the economic cycle are too low to tolerate without some sort of moderating influence, i.e. government. Regarding industries "too big to fail," my question is this: where do we want to set the limit of what's too big and not too big? So far, people are OK with investment banks being too big to fail. A lot of people will lose money in their retirement savings, although investing (like life) always comes with a level of risk. The rule of thumb is to "diversify, diversify, diversify" to lower the risk level. But how about the Detroit automotive industry? If us taxpayers don't bail the mismanaging car execs out, lots of Detroit autoworkers will lose their jobs. How about small computer software businesses that fail? Collectively, they are a HUGE segment of our national economy. Do we bail all of them out? Or just some? How do we select which ones get the help and which ones don't? Getting even smaller, how about individual American citizens who realize they took out too many student loans and can't pay them back? Regarding government intervention to lessen the lows of the economic cycle, a really good discussion of this is probably well beyond the scope of PPP (save a few like DC Tom, BlueFire, etc), for I doubt many here have taken college courses in microecon/macroecon. But to get started, look up the debate over the causes of the 1930's Depression. In particular, pay attention to the Keynesian analysis (too little government regulation) vs. Austrian analysis (too much, especially concerning the nation's money supply) of what happened. The left-leaning mainstream media (with the notable exceptions of Fox News and WSJ) has done a very effective job of portraying laissez-faire economists as lunatics in the post-Reagan era, yet a few of these lunatics did manage to squeaze out enough good ideas to win Nobel Prizes on what happened in the 1930's. A summary of the basic laissez-faire premise would be that unnatural government interference in the economy actually makes these cycles MORE severe and not LESS as the great economic scholar, Barack Obama, would have you believe (of course, McCain really has no !@#$ing clue either). Hey... I have been here for 6 years... This place has always been over-run by right wing lunatics... Was a real hoot before the war, too bad that board was lost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef Jim Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 If Bush couldn't get this when the stock market was sailing along on cruise control, there is no way in hell it would have even the 40% of support it did back then. Obama would have a field day bashing this Note, I'm just looking at the politics of this Just because people are too dumb to realize that investing your long term retirement money in the stock market is the best thing to do is no reason to continue to press for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
molson_golden2002 Posted September 15, 2008 Author Share Posted September 15, 2008 A summary of the basic laissez-faire premise would be that unnatural government interference in the economy actually makes these cycles MORE severe and not LESS as the great economic scholar, Barack Obama, would have you believe (of course, McCain really has no !@#$ing clue either). Unnatural? Now economies and government are part of nature? And I have to say some notably laissez-faire economic downturns were pretty damn harsh. Leaving aside whether the 1930's were or were not LF caused or extended, the 1890's were pretty low on government interference and the depression was pretty harsh. It was the "Great Depression" before the 1930's took its place. What downturn have we had since the new deal? Surely all the government interference in the economy must have had some affect one way or the other. Yet I don't remember a depression happening since then. Is this downturn "bad?" And how do we define "bad?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meazza Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 Just because people are too dumb to realize that investing your long term retirement money in the stock market is the best thing to do is no reason to continue to press for it. Is it? I wouldn't put a penny in anything anymore the way things are going. Merryl, Bear and Lehman are gone and ther will be more as the time passes. The financial sector up until last year was bulletproof... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef Jim Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 Is it? I wouldn't put a penny in anything anymore the way things are going. Merryl, Bear and Lehman are gone and ther will be more as the time passes. The financial sector up until last year was bulletproof... So one sector of the market has issues to the maket as a whole is not worth investing in. I'm sending another large check to my SEP today! And you can invest in T-bills and we'll see who has more money at retirement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erynthered Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 Anyone want to take bets on who's next? AIG http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gxDCrL...hzEIgglMoJw-hRw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YellowLinesandArmadillos Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 AIG http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gxDCrL...hzEIgglMoJw-hRw Over negative 400 at one point, now at -350... not good, not -500 but not good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef Jim Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 AIG http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gxDCrL...hzEIgglMoJw-hRw This is where they made their big mistake: The company is also the largest sponsor of the Manchester United soccer club, having signed a 101.2 million dollar deal with the club in 2006. Sponsoring a soccer club/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erynthered Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 This is where they made their big mistake: Sponsoring a soccer club/ The Buc's owners the Glaziers, who own Man U, are not gonna like that if they fail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meazza Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 This is where they made their big mistake: Sponsoring a soccer club/ Man Utd is the richest club in soccer and for one player was offered 90 Million Euros... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef Jim Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 Man Utd is the richest club in soccer and for one player was offered 90 Million Euros... But it's still soccer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meazza Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 So one sector of the market has issues to the maket as a whole is not worth investing in. I'm sending another large check to my SEP today! And you can invest in T-bills and we'll see who has more money at retirement. It's not just one sector of the market, it's what that sector is. Financials like I said before are supposed to be bulletproof. Safe bets that fluctuate a little not go bellyup previously having a value of 170 USD last year now having a value of 10$ (BSC US Equity). At the moment I simply buy stocks of the bank I work for with my employee plan (which is minimal), and invest in Money Market and T-Bills just because I'd rather stay indoors as the storm washes away all the garbage... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pine Barrens Mafia Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 So one sector of the market has issues to the maket as a whole is not worth investing in. I'm sending another large check to my SEP today! And you can invest in T-bills and we'll see who has more money at retirement. I personally am making a KILLING off the bad news of the market. Here's to hoping it keeps on falling apart. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meazza Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 But it's still soccer. Soccer clubs are amongst the most profitable second only to the NFL I believe... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef Jim Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 I personally am making a KILLING off the bad news of the market. Here's to hoping it keeps on falling apart. EIA's make no money when the market goes down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef Jim Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 Soccer clubs are amongst the most profitable second only to the NFL I believe... Profitability has nothing to do with watchability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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