US Economic Crisis

Yup, that just came up about 10 minutes ago.
They may have to sweeten it a bit before it passes the House, but it depends on how much pressure Senate puts on them.

And still, it's lacking accountability. *sigh*

Because the $US is generally acceptable in most African countries (even being preferred to the local currency in some places,) whereas even some of the money exchange folks don't like taking $Aussie, because they have little chance of selling it on locally- same in the UK, we've always been told travelling to get $US, rather than take £.

Makes you think, really..

I think the worth of the dollar is abstractly tied to the amount of foreign investment in it. I forget how it works exactly but if our economy does bad our investment is bad and so on.

Also directly tied to the dollar would be that we're printing more money, or simply making up more (it's all basically numbers anyway) but it's value hasn't changes so the dollar continues to lose value.

This bill is a red herring it does nothing to benefit us it will make our national debt worse. Some times you gotta let stuff run its course.

Not so much anymore, though. The Taj Mahal, for example, recently changed its policies. The Dollar is no loger accepted, although the Euro is.

The U.S. has to learn that military might no longer builds empires. With Europe investing more in infrastructure and less in military, their economy is incredibly strong with a lower per-capita GDP. In other words, Europeans enjoy better hours, more vacation time, better benefits, and better public services than Americans because they aren't dumping over 50% of their government budgets into their military.

The thing is that in the last two weeks, the U.S.'s status as a superpower has ended. But the U.S. is acting as if it's blissfully unaware of this. Hopefully, Obama will behave accordingly with a massive cut on military spending, focusing on DEFENSE and not OFFENSE.

But we Americans, unfortunately, have too much pride tied in with waving the Flag around while we wave our weapons around, too.

If anything, the US (government/senate) really understand one thing: How to create a drama

House plans second vote on bailout



What is it now? I thought the bill finally passed yesterday?

muahahaha - somebody's playing evil here...

Tom, no one is playing evil at all.

You have to understand our gov't structure.

It went to the House of Representatives originally, who voted it down.
When they voted it down it was up to the Senate to create one that would be agreeble.
Senate had to amend and vote on it twice before it would pass back to the House of Representatives for a final vote, which was made late this afternoon...and they passed it.

Which is really unfortunate because, what wasn't included in your article but is rampant here, is that it went from $700 billion to $850 billion (no joke). The additional $150 billion came from what is called Pork Barrell spending. When Senators lobby for additional funds from the government for stupid for their states. I kid you not, this bill about the bailout came with an adendum promising Oregon $2million for wooden arrowheads for children.
What that has to do with the bailout is a mystery *but* it stopped the lobby process on it and got an Oregon Senator to pass the bill.
There are many more additions like this too.

And who is supposed to fork out all this money?
Tax payers.
Ones like me who actually are not stupidly in debt and who pay their taxes, on time even.
There are no words for how angry I am.

Dontcha love our politics?

Last I checked, the Taj Mahal wasn't in Africa
Seriously though, it probably is changing there too, but it's going to take a while to convince folks in rural areas who don't have that much access to financial news that Euros area just as valuable- never mind the possibilty of being more valuable- than the currency they've traditionally wanted. I mean, the first time someone comes into your village and tries to give you a bit of paper you don't recognise and tells you it's worth a lot, you're gonna be sceptical (try giving a new style Scottish £20 note to a shopkeeper in a small english village, you get the same effect..)

Jimmy Carr made me laugh the other day with some satirical comedy:

Now, I know this economical crisis seems hard to understand, so let me try and explain it for you; Think of the economy as a giant fan... Now imagine that fan...

...Covered in sh!t.



I would offer more knowledge on the current financial situation, but it's one of those things that if I ignore it, it goes away. Just like political views, Ex-girlfriends, Huge bills...

the downfall of a world superpower in our lifetime due to failed economic management.

imagine that.

makes feel like playing a Real time stratergy game

Geezus Crikeys...

The Dow just broke 10,000. In the wrong direction. We haven't been all the way down here in a LONG time.

Ok, so since the US economy is having a trip down toilet lane....can someone please explain how the Aussie dollar *was* worth $US0.96 but is now down to $US0.70 if it's the US with the crap economy?

In personal news, there goes those funky shoes I wanted to buy

If you recall, the filing for bankruptcy at Lehmans initiated the entire crisis.

ok, I'll just take that as "cos it's all intertwined..."

Point being (I understand your confusion, sometimes it full scale Babylon to me either) is that a weaker currency helps the local export, because the local goods get cheaper for foreign customers. Unfortunately you're exporting raw materials and importing refined goods... something about Australia that I always had trouble to get into my head.

However, it would be helping the tourist industry, as travelers will be ready to spend more bucks in your country...

So yes, it's all interconnected...

I have some questions - can anyone answer them?

What caused the wall street crash of 1929?
How did the world (and US) recover from it?
Can the lessons learnt there be brought forward?

The answers to that are available on the net, Pink... just use exactly that phrase.

Meanwhile I get more and more disgusted with short term traders, pushing us deeper and deeper into recession.

In the meantime, the price for oil is down to 82$ a barrel (you may remember that we were talking about high prices for crude oil (up to 120$ I guess) being the reason for economic slowdown... however, did the prices on gas stations adjust? nope.

And we're facing a global panick in regards of stock trading that is very rare... Governments try their best to restore order and pour in a trillion Dollars but people seem to be happier living with a loss, withdrawing more cash from markets.



Some are making great profits right now by betting against reality - as usual... I guess we need to rewrite the rules of economic (stock) trade... there is no reason behind what is going on. I'd suggest to suspend trading for a month ANYWHERE. Lay them off.

and here might be one of them:

an article by a very smart venture capitalist on what to look for when investing into stocks

All I know is I hope I am as prepared as I can be if a econimic depression happens. The last depression was a cake walk compared to what could happen if one occured now.

In the last depression many rural farmers and country people barely even were effected because they didn't rely to much on the economic system, they relied on themselves and their community. If you talk to old folks in eastern canada they said when the depression was going on, they never understood what the big hub bub was about, sure they couldn't afford to buy a massy fergunson tractor, or buy parts for their farm equipment, but they still knew how to tend their crops with oxen and draft horses. Today nearly everyone depends on technology and banks.

I know I can sustain myself in the short term living off the land and hunting/fishing if I situate myself in a good part of the country. but how long can I keep that up?

I hope this all gets settled without to much fallout. I don't understand economics well, ive read some posts here that put it into pretty good terms (thanks pele and others for your well informed posts which people like me can understand)

I have a tendancy to expect the worst though, and I don't have a good understanding of economics. Im well adapted to living without much money. but a lot of that is living off the waste of excess. Like I eat for free when im around big citys because I am a master at dumpster diving food. If the *$^& hits the fan, ill be in competition with everyone else who figures out the tricks to living off next to nothing.

Hey all! It's Pele posting from a wonderful deck sipping coffee in Sydney on FlashFire's computer, so I have no clue what is going on up to the minute as I did even last week.
But there are a couple questions here I can answer.

Rouge, while I am currently celebrating the exchange rate, understandably I can see why you are not.
This was actually on Aussie television yesterday morning. Evidentally because of how reliant on import/export Aus is, it also means the economy is largely based on oil and stocks of international companies. Stocks fell and oil prices fell which means that the export money coming into Oz dropped which made the value of the dollar drop. It makes sense, if you have no worth backing the dollar anymore, it can't be worth as much.

Pink, the cause in 1929 was literally the exact. same. thing. Now of course differences will be made for era appropriateness but the banks purchased properties which became toxic (and yet, they maintained deregulation which has allowed it to happen again). There was also an increase in impoverished immigration (which prompted alot of policy change in that area). So, overall, the gov't allowed the banks to go unchecked, the banks literally wasted peoples money.
It was fixed by a governmental buy-out of the toxic holdings, exactly like what is happening now.
Obviously they didn't learn from it then or else it wouldn't have happened now.
Can they learn from it and recover?
Whomever gets into office this election had better prove that he learned from it this time and put new pollicies into place and end this deregulation crap. It is absolutely possible, but whether or not it will happen is anybody's guess.

Last time the gov't ended up making money on it by holding the toxic properties until the economy straightened up, then selling them at a tidy profit. I know this is the plan once again. My fear is that if they know they can make a profit from this, despite the fact that the process hurts the country in the long run, why would they want to change it? I don't really think many in politics truly care about the people when the bottom line comes with a big price tag in their favor.
But I'm jaded.

Railspinner, I agree. We are capable of being live off the land sustainable as well. However as we charge headlong into what is promising to be a really turbulent (weather wise) winter I wonder how feesible it will be. We can't afford to move, obviously, and winter survival is ten times harder so how long we could sustain that, I am not sure.
If I stop and look around my neighborhood, or even at my friends, I also wonder how many would be able to do that even for a short time.
Not many I think, and it makes my heart sink.

I have also been thinking about how the term "depression" is a relative thing. We look back at the 1929 Great Depression and use that as our scope because we have no other thing to gauge it against, meanwhile people have such a luxury way of living (seriously, not cooking is truly a luxury).
So, they say this will be worse than the Great Depression, but they don't anticipate soup lines and the homelessness of that era.
Could this perhaps be forcing people to live within their means? To take public transportation instead of owning oversized gas guzzling vehicles they don't need? To cook at home? To not have cable television and the latest game system?
What are we truly faced with losing?
Those of us who did things correctly will keep our homes. We have been talking about coverting two of our extra rooms into "for rent" spaces to our friends. It would serve to help us all really.
So we make a small concession in space and our quality of life doesn't change because we chose not to live above our means.
I seriously don't know because it's such foreign waters.

Here's what I do know.
We had a meeting at work my last day there before my holiday.
I work for Xerox International in a testing department for their new machines coming out. One of our largest clients was Wachovia, the firm that just went under. In one fell swoop we lost millions. Other smaller companies had their financing fall through because of this, we lost millions more (our machines cost $500,000 each, btw). In one week my division lost over a hundred million dollars.
BUT Xerox already has a plan. They are going to "liquidate assets" or retire them, which means they are written off but kept as "junk" to help offset losses. Now, we will take a loss in the 3rd and 4th quarters, and they are planning for it. Come tax eval season, those losses will be balanced against the write offs and liquidations and actually give us a profit in the 1st quarter of next year. Doing this allows us to keep our jobs.
However, they can't keep doing that if we keep losing millions like blood from a gushing wound.
I know, at least, I have my job for the next year.
I am afraid for after that.

I also own two businesses. Body art and Performance art. They are HUGELY dependent on people/companies having extraneous income. My hope is that companies will allocate extra spending to advertising and wooing clients because competition for peoples money will now be insanely fierce and advertising will be ramped up. That is potentially good for me.
Potentially.
My main clients however are everyday people who buy tickets to the shows, tip the shows, pay for the body art. No disposable income means no income for me. The competition for small business grants will increase now. I refuse to take out loans. I fear that after so many years, I am not sure how I will be able to keep my businesses afloat. And this was after this year which was so awesome I was even concidering expansion into next year, and now I can't.
I am *terrified* because these businesses are my babies.

It all makes me wonder how much blood can be squeezed from a stone?

enough of this...back to my (prepaid for) holiday!