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NismoZ
08-04-11, 12:06 PM
...ahhh, never mind.

cameraman
08-04-11, 12:41 PM
You made me look.

All the broader indicies off 2.5% at the moment. Peachy.

NismoZ
08-04-11, 12:50 PM
Yeah, KEEN. I suddenly had a flash of a blamefest, so I opted out. After all, it IS Thursday...:rolleyes:

TravelGal
08-04-11, 01:50 PM
TravelGuy is stalking the house, looking for something to kill, I think. I'm staying here in the back office!

dando
08-04-11, 01:58 PM
To correct you're spelling, it's the DOWn. :gomer: :saywhat:

EDIT: and I mean DOWn! :(

-Kevin

dando
08-04-11, 01:59 PM
TravelGuy is stalking the house, looking for something to kill, I think. I'm staying here in the back office!

Send him to DC, please. :irked:

-Kevin

stroker
08-04-11, 02:10 PM
screw stocks. I'm buying some land with a source of fresh water and stocking up on ammo.

KLang
08-04-11, 02:45 PM
Glad I don't need any of that 401K for a while. :cry:

KLang
08-04-11, 04:02 PM
-512!

Gulp. :yuck:

Gnam
08-04-11, 04:30 PM
Round 2 tomorrow?

Insomniac
08-04-11, 04:33 PM
Glad I don't need any of that 401K for a while. :cry:

+1

Ankf00
08-04-11, 04:49 PM
no worries, the printing press will maintain the artificial floor

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj251/SushiHorn/2011HS.gif

KLang
08-04-11, 05:24 PM
Round 2 tomorrow?

Not likely to be a good Friday jobs report. Probably another tough day.

Insomniac
08-04-11, 05:56 PM
Ahhh. Technical charts. Some people declare that resistance, others say when it goes through there, look out. It's going down a lot more.

NismoZ
08-04-11, 06:16 PM
Well, it's Friday by now someplace, isn't it? What is Asia telling us? NO, don't tell me!

cameraman
08-04-11, 06:18 PM
All I know is our rice and soybeans are happy and healthy (and irrigated, thank God for my father's investment in wells & equipment 50 years ago). The prices look pretty good as so many other people are being droughted or flooded out:\

As for my 403b:yuck:

Ankf00
08-05-11, 08:59 PM
in related news, S&P downgrades US tbills to AA+ now.

KLang
08-05-11, 09:01 PM
Monday should be interesting. :saywhat:

Ankf00
08-05-11, 10:25 PM
news released after the bell.


hooray corporatism.

nrc
08-05-11, 10:46 PM
I'm way ahead of 'em. I reduced our withholding this year because I don't trust them to pay our refund. :gomer:

Gnam
08-06-11, 12:16 PM
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/5092/thunderdome.png

Do credit ratings ever go back up?

Racing Truth
08-06-11, 12:54 PM
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/5092/thunderdome.png

Do credit ratings ever go back up?

They CAN. Will they? Ehhh...

If our political class were smart, they'd all revisit the "Grand(er?) Bargain." Congress, as an institution, is ridiculously unpopular (high anti-incumbent sentiment VERY high), POTUS, etc all took a hit after the debt ceiling debacle, and we got downgraded (by one agency, Moody's and Fitch don't seem inclined to follow suit yet). For once, it seems to be everyone's interest to do this.

But that's assuming our political class gets this.:shakehead

Insomniac
08-06-11, 04:52 PM
They CAN. Will they? Ehhh...

If our political class were smart, they'd all revisit the "Grand(er?) Bargain." Congress, as an institution, is ridiculously unpopular (high anti-incumbent sentiment VERY high), POTUS, etc all took a hit after the debt ceiling debacle, and we got downgraded (by one agency, Moody's and Fitch don't seem inclined to follow suit yet). For once, it seems to be everyone's interest to do this.

But that's assuming our political class gets this.:shakehead

Now the S&P try and provide real ratings? Didn't the government learn you just need them on your payroll and it's AAA heaven?

Ankf00
08-06-11, 07:44 PM
France is likely next for AA apparently and Germany's threatening to pull out of the ESFS.

Thunderdome is coming, indeed.

nrc
08-06-11, 09:21 PM
Don't worry, here comes [political commentary] to save the day.

http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2392/madmax2list.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/839/madmax2list.jpg/)


Didja really think that was gonna pass? :shakehead

NismoZ
08-06-11, 09:46 PM
Improved National credit rating? 9-18 yrs per S&P honcho. Not holding my breath, anyway!

miatanut
08-06-11, 10:27 PM
I have trouble taking them seriously.

Back in 2007 Business Week was running these articles on how you could mix these junk mortgages into the bonds, cross-collaterialize, divide them into tranches and wallah! The junk has no impact on the bond overall.

It made no sense to me. You take something that's pristine, throw some garbage in it, and it's less valuable than it was before you did that. I don't have a PHD in math, but part of my business is working for commercial mortgage lenders on underwriting. Our role is helping them keep the garbage out of the system. These are multimillion dollar deals where one mortgage equals one bond sale, so the whole thing is a lot more transparent, but the basics are the same. Good underwriting = high bond rating, bad underwriting = low bond rating.

At the time I wondered what Warren Buffet thought of this supposed magic and when a reporter asked him, he said it didn't make sense to him. Years later he said 'Don't be so hard on the rating agencies, because nobody could have seen this coming.' I think he had it right in 2007.

miatanut
08-06-11, 10:42 PM
Interesting tidbit from Warren:


Berkshire Hathaway Chief Executive Warren Buffett was publicly critical of the downgrade, saying it made no sense.

"In Omaha, the U.S. is still AAA," he told Fox Business. "In fact, if there were a quadruple-A rating, I'd give the U.S. that."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-us-debt-rating-20110807,0,6289122.story?page=2&utm_medium=feed&track=rss&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20latimes%2Fbusiness%20%28L.A .%20Times%20-%20Business%29&utm_source=feedburner

I think it will make a fuss for a day or two and after folks take a longer view, it will be a non-event.

Ankf00
08-06-11, 11:59 PM
it is and it isn't.

on the one hand our debt service cost has now increased. on the other, we still have the best t-bill around compard to the alternatives (Italy is #3 bond seller, they're not exactly a legit flight option)

Insomniac
08-07-11, 09:44 AM
S&P is a joke. The Mortgage debacle and now this:


In a document provided to Treasury on Friday afternoon, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) presented a judgment about the credit rating of the U.S. that was based on a $2 trillion mistake. After Treasury pointed out this error – a basic math error of significant consequence – S&P still chose to proceed with their flawed judgment by simply changing their principal rationale for their credit rating decision from an economic one to a political one.

S&P has said their decision to downgrade the U.S. was based in part on the fact that the Budget Control Act, which will reduce projected deficits by more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years, fell short of their $4 trillion expectation for deficit reduction. Clearly, in that context, S&P considers a $2 trillion change to projected deficits to be very significant. Yet, although S&P's math error understated the deficit reduction in the Budget Control Act by $2 trillion, they found this same sum insignificant in this instance.

In fact, S&P’s $2 trillion mistake led to a very misleading picture of debt sustainability – the foundation for their initial judgment. This mistake undermined the economic justification for S&P’s credit rating decision. Yet after acknowledging their mistake, S&P simply removed a prominent discussion of the economic justification from their document.

http://www.treasury.gov/connect/blog/Pages/Just-the-Facts-SPs-2-Trillion-Mistake.aspx

SteveH
08-07-11, 09:48 AM
The downgrade is more of a political statement rather than a credit risk evaluation, perhaps.

dando
08-08-11, 10:36 AM
A good take on the S&P's epic fail:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/why-s-p-s-ratings-are-substandard-and-porous/

-Kevin

Gnam
08-08-11, 04:42 PM
Down 635 points.

I look forward to tomorrow. :irked:


Cosmo: Posit: people think a bank might be financially shaky.
Bishop: Consequence: people start to withdraw their money.
Cosmo: Result: pretty soon it is financially shaky.
Bishop: Conclusion: you can make banks fail.
Cosmo: Bzzt. I've already done that. Maybe you've heard about a few? Think bigger.
Bishop: Stock market?
Cosmo: Yes.
Bishop: Currency market?
Cosmo: Yes.
Bishop: Commodities market?
Cosmo: Yes.
Bishop: Small countries?
Cosmo: With luck, I might even be able to crash the whole damned system. Destroy all records of ownership. Think of it, Marty. No more rich people, no more poor people, everybody's the same, isn't that what we said we always wanted?

[/sneakers]

Ankf00
08-08-11, 05:07 PM
Nov 2009 levels. almost 2 years of gains gone.

I have some kind of morbid fascination watching it all burn.

Insomniac
08-08-11, 06:23 PM
Down 635 points.

I look forward to tomorrow. :irked:

So that's why people are stockpiling gold! :)

SteveH
08-08-11, 06:44 PM
Retirement is over rated

Tifosi24
08-08-11, 09:20 PM
Asian markets are down steeply this morning/evening. Apparently there is some Chinese data coming out in the next hour or so which Asian traders are hoping will stem this slide in equities.

US futures are sharply down right now as well, but they don't mean a whole lot with 12 hours before the open.

The only bright side right now, US WTI Crude is solidly below $80 a barrel.

stroker
08-08-11, 09:56 PM
If only the .1RL could implode so quickly....

cameraman
08-08-11, 11:03 PM
This gives new meaning to fubar...

nrc
08-08-11, 11:29 PM
Last year I was concerned that we might see another dip so I moved some money into a set of funds that I felt would retain value in that situation. That set of funds is still up a decent amount on the year. Wish I'd moved more. :irked:

Indy
08-09-11, 10:36 AM
Didja really think that was gonna pass? :shakehead

Well, maybe that was a little over the line. But when I saw the Speaker of the House bending over for the guys from Mad Max, I decided to go 100% money market. So it isn't necessarily about politics, but it IS about destabilizing forces being dangerous to markets (regardless of the ideology those forces represent).

So now it is a question of when to jump back in. I am thinking it may have to be November 2012. Or not, depending on how things go.

NismoZ
08-09-11, 11:17 AM
Rats, I missed that one!

Ankf00
08-09-11, 12:51 PM
The only bright side right now, US WTI Crude is solidly below $80 a barrel.

http://www.bestweekever.tv/bwe/images/2011/02/OPRAH-CAR-GIF.gif

I mean, hydrocarbons keep things flowing down here, but 3 figure crude is insanely unsustainable for the rest of industry

NismoZ
08-09-11, 05:32 PM
Wow. I drove to Denver back in '68 and was SO pissed I had to pay .40/gal. For Exxon somewhere in Iowa. The ol' Corsa got 24.4 mpg, too! (I keep records!:gomer:) Wonder what oil was going for then?

Gnam
08-09-11, 07:49 PM
Now all we need is a large scale power outage during a heat wave and the riot can begin. :\

cameraman
08-09-11, 11:27 PM
Well the sun did make a half-hearted attempt to take down the grid with an X6.9 Class Solar Flare today but all it managed to do was scramble some radio communications. One of these days it'll get it right. (or wrong depending on your pov)

SteveH
08-09-11, 11:55 PM
Largest flare in 4 years

Ankf00
08-10-11, 05:04 PM
Now all we need is a large scale power outage during a heat wave and the riot can begin. :\

dallas has a multiple week streak of 105+ days going, Austin & Houston have been 100+ similarly. and the ERCOT grid is isolated from the western & eastern US interconnects...

last week, I think Wed or Thurs, we surpassed 68K MW, ERCOT is 70K MW max even w/ the combined cycle gas plant boom in the last decade, state agencies were scrambling to shut down to lessen the load, rolling brownouts, etc.

trish
08-10-11, 06:37 PM
In other news, the credit union I'm a member of has informed us they will no longer be paying out interest. Nice!

cameraman
08-10-11, 06:59 PM
Does it matter? Mine is paying 0.025% aka 25 cents a year on a $1000 balance.
Why bother:shakehead

KLang
08-10-11, 07:07 PM
There was a report the other day about some bank in New York charging some of their bigger customers a fee for parking large sums at the bank. That nuts.

Gnam
08-10-11, 07:12 PM
NASDAQ and GOLD racing to 2000. Where can I bet on the outcome?

In other news, Monopoly games will now come with US dollars and "Monopoly money" is now legal tender.

devilmaster
08-10-11, 08:56 PM
There was a report the other day about some bank in New York charging some of their bigger customers a fee for parking large sums at the bank. That nuts.

Very Good, Mr Brewster! :D

Ankf00
08-11-11, 04:30 PM
There was a report the other day about some bank in New York charging some of their bigger customers a fee for parking large sums at the bank. That nuts.

BNY Mellon charging 0.13% for deposits over $50M.

USD capital flight? I think not.

miatanut
08-11-11, 06:25 PM
BNY Mellon charging 0.13% for deposits over $50M.

USD capital flight? I think not.

What is the logic there? It's money they can lend, should they choose to.

Tifosi24
08-11-11, 08:14 PM
What is the logic there? It's money they can lend, should they choose to.

What is happening now is the classic definition of a liquidity trap. USBank is charging people if they don't make enough deposits into their accounts starting in a couple months. Once you enter a liquidity trap, there is very little left that the central bank or government can do. This is turning into Japan 1990, part 2. It could be worse, France is about to have Lehman Brothers, with French subtitles.

miatanut
08-11-11, 09:33 PM
What is happening now is the classic definition of a liquidity trap. USBank is charging people if they don't make enough deposits into their accounts starting in a couple months. Once you enter a liquidity trap, there is very little left that the central bank or government can do. This is turning into Japan 1990, part 2. It could be worse, France is about to have Lehman Brothers, with French subtitles.
Now I'm REALLY confused!

Some banks are saying 'we are going to charge you to keep large amounts of money with us' while others are charging if you don't?

I actually understand the second one. Our threshold for free business checking has gone up a bunch in the last year, but it hasn't been a problem for us.

SteveH
08-11-11, 10:18 PM
Because these are demand deposits (meaning here today, possibly gone tomorrow) the limited investment opportunity these banks have (overnight Fed funds) pay so little that the income generated does not cover the insurance premium charged by the FDIC which is based on deposits. Consequently, a bank loses money on these deposits.

If you have a free checking account you may not in the future.

miatanut
08-11-11, 10:31 PM
Because these are demand deposits (meaning here today, possibly gone tomorrow) the limited investment opportunity these banks have (overnight Fed funds) pay so little that the income generated does not cover the insurance premium charged by the FDIC which is based on deposits. Consequently, a bank loses money on these deposits.

If you have a free checking account you may not in the future.

But that would just apply to the portion they have to keep in reserves, wouldn't it? The rest they get to lend out at 3%-5%, don't they?

SteveH
08-11-11, 10:48 PM
But that would just apply to the portion they have to keep in reserves, wouldn't it? The rest they get to lend out at 3%-5%, don't they?

The amount on deposit effects how much they must keep in reserve. And since these funds are not term based, a bank would not lend the money even for a short term. They need to match maturities between liabilities and assets. There is no maturity on this type of account, it could all be gone tomorrow. Most banks have more available to lend than they are willing to lend in this economy (more likely) or have the demand for (less likely). Very few banks are eagerly pursuing deposit growth today.

Ankf00
08-12-11, 01:02 AM
this atlantic piece still ringing true. "usa, banana republic"

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/7364/

and this one from the wapo, "america, world's scariest emerging market"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/25/AR2009032502226.html

NismoZ
08-13-11, 09:42 AM
I say we start a solar flare SUPERFUND! Who's with me!?:gomer:

NismoZ
08-18-11, 10:25 AM
Here we go again! Down about 500 in the first hour.

Gnam
08-18-11, 11:52 AM
E-ticket ride on the vomit comet! :yuck:

NismoZ
08-18-11, 05:00 PM
Yeah, as Frank Barone said, "C'mon COMET!":thumbup:

Gnam
08-19-11, 03:59 PM
Today's truth nugget...


Do not try to change gold. That is impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. There is no dollar. Then you will see it is not gold that changes, it is only your mind.

- The Matrix :cool:

Gnam
09-22-11, 02:48 PM
down 400 points?

...but Fall isn't supposed to start until tomorrow. :cry:

dando
09-22-11, 03:16 PM
And it ain't even October yet....when all of the fund managers grab for profits. :saywhat: :shakehead

-Kevin

KLang
09-22-11, 04:47 PM
Keep repeating to yourself: 'Dollar Cost Averaging' :cry:

NismoZ
09-22-11, 06:05 PM
Hard to average what ain't there. Now gold is way down at the same time. What's left, the " full faith and credit!?" :rofl:

racer2c
09-22-11, 09:56 PM
Hard to average what ain't there. Now gold is way down at the same time. What's left, the " full faith and credit!?" :rofl:

Some think canned foods, firewood and water. Wish I were kidding. :confused:

cameraman
09-23-11, 01:59 AM
Let's see now. The plan is we don't tax the "job creators" so that they will pull the economy out of its tailspin. Today the "job creators" hired Meg Whitman to run HP.

I'd say the markets got it right...

nrc
09-23-11, 10:08 AM
Let's see now. The plan is we don't tax the "job creators" so that they will pull the economy out of its tailspin. Today the "job creators" hired Meg Whitman to run HP.

I'd say the markets got it right...

<sniff> <sniff> Smells like politics.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre using Forums (http://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?packageid=com.newnessdevelopments.forums)

cameraman
09-24-11, 01:45 AM
No it is anger at the quarterly dividends trumps long term corporate health attitude of the current crop of corporate "leaders". Or in the case of HP, highly compensated abject ineptitude.

Indy
09-25-11, 04:39 PM
As well as being an indictment of the corporate leader as hero mentality.

For the censors, that is politics free. Just an observation that most people are morons, including CEO-people.

nrc
09-25-11, 08:15 PM
No it is anger at the quarterly dividends trumps long term corporate health attitude of the current crop of corporate "leaders". Or in the case of HP, highly compensated abject ineptitude.

Right. What does taxing "job creators" have to do with that? You can't make that point without stirring in the political talking points of the day?

cameraman
09-25-11, 10:39 PM
Right. What does taxing "job creators" have to do with that? You can't make that point without stirring in the political talking points of the day?

It isn't the taxing, it is the concept that "job creators" exist as a class.

Ankf00
09-28-11, 11:11 AM
surely you can't be serious.


A new study from a Swiss university finds that financial traders are more uncooperative than psychopaths and that they have a greater tendency for lying and risk-taking.

As part of their executive MBA thesis at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, forensic psychiatrist Thomas Noll, a chief administrator at the Pöschwies prison near Zurich, and co-author Pascal Scherrer studied the behavior of 28 financial traders in a decision-making game, comparing their performances with those of people who were diagnosed as psychopaths.

They expected to find that, like the psychopaths, the traders would be uncooperative with others, but that they’d perform better at the game because, as Noll said, traders “are supposed to be good at making money. In social interactions, they’re supposed to be good at performing.”

But the two authors were shocked to discover that the traders were actually more uncooperative and egocentric than psychopaths when playing a prisoner’s dilemma game -- a type of gaming scenario where participants can choose to cooperate or betray each other.

Moreover, even though the traders lied and took risks more than their psychopathic counterparts, their performance at the game was about the same as the control group. This means the traders not only didn’t play well with others, they also didn’t do any better at the game than regular Joes.

In their master’s thesis, Noll and Scherrer write:


“The outcome seems to indicate that bank traders are even more prone than psychopathic individuals to rely on strategies that do not optimize their own total profit but considerably harm the profit of their gaming partner. Healthy controls achieved the same profit on their own part as traders and psychopaths but used a strategy that led to an equal profit of their partner and hence led to the highest overall profit, whereas the lowest overall profit was achieved by the traders.”

Interestingly, the traders scored much lower than the psychopaths did on cold-heartedness and the externalization of guilt, meaning they didn’t place the blame on other people when they failed.



:rofl:

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/27/7993962-traders-more-reckless-than-psychopaths-study-shows

Gnam
09-28-11, 12:19 PM
:D

Nature or nurture? Does the job attract psychos or create them?

Indy
09-28-11, 08:01 PM
My experience says its mostly an attraction.

Sort of like cops -- if you want to be one, you shouldn't be one.

But you can't discount the psychological permission that being in a business context grants to people to behave badly. "I hate to have to do this, but it's my job." or "We have to do what's best for the company." or "It's just business." Fundamentally, it's why regulation is necessary. A truly free market will produce perverse outcomes because people are fundamentally flawed.

Napoleon
09-29-11, 02:26 PM
surely you can't be serious.

That is one of those studies that makes you think "someone spent money on a study on something this obvious".

If I had a week to put together quotes, op-ed pieces, audio and video clips that I have read and seen since Lehman's collapse the make it clear that the financial sector and the people in this country in the top 1% in wealth are populated by sociopaths I bet they would number around 100.

Heck, from this week alone we get this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/poll/2011/sep/27/shocked-stock-market-trader-alessio-rastani?newsfeed=true

Napoleon
10-12-11, 12:54 PM
I guess this is as good a place to put this as anywhere.

This is interesting. It has long been know that the occurance of numbers in anything (with the exception of arithmetic sequences, like dates) follows a certain pattern that is described in something called Benford's Law. It is also well know that humans are absolutely terrible at being able to fake randomness (although the link I give does not mention it, it is only implicit in the discussion).

So this person, an assistant professor of finance at WU in St. L., applied Benford's Law to US corporate accounting data, and what do you know, for some unexplained reason over time these accounting results have varied more and more from what they should be according to Benford's Law.

http://econerdfood.blogspot.com/2011/10/benfords-law-and-decreasing-reliability.html

Gnam
11-01-11, 01:45 PM
Beware bearing gifts to Greeks, or something like that.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/01/markets/world_markets/

Ankf00
11-01-11, 06:32 PM
I guess this is as good a place to put this as anywhere.

This is interesting. It has long been know that the occurance of numbers in anything (with the exception of arithmetic sequences, like dates) follows a certain pattern that is described in something called Benford's Law. It is also well know that humans are absolutely terrible at being able to fake randomness (although the link I give does not mention it, it is only implicit in the discussion).

So this person, an assistant professor of finance at WU in St. L., applied Benford's Law to US corporate accounting data, and what do you know, for some unexplained reason over time these accounting results have varied more and more from what they should be according to Benford's Law.

http://econerdfood.blogspot.com/2011/10/benfords-law-and-decreasing-reliability.html


http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/10000/8000/200/18252/18252.strip.gif

Indy
11-01-11, 09:53 PM
Beware bearing gifts to Greeks, or something like that.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/01/markets/world_markets/

Here is an interesting take on things. I think I agree with him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/greek-budget-cuts_b_1069742.html

Gnam
11-02-11, 02:30 AM
Some leaders lead, while others take a poll. Neither one is necessarily wrong. But, the idea that the Greeks can stand on principle without consequences is nonsense. I think Reich minimizes the downside of rejecting the bailout. Although they didn't create this mess alone, they are risking the financial security of serveral powerful countries. Not usually a winning strategy.

Ankf00
11-02-11, 12:14 PM
Some leaders lead, while others take a poll. Neither one is necessarily wrong. But, the idea that the Greeks can stand on principle without consequences is nonsense. I think Reich minimizes the downside of rejecting the bailout. Although they didn't create this mess alone, they are risking the financial security of serveral powerful countries. Not usually a winning strategy.

it's either a poll, or hand over sovreignity to brussels to cover the bad bets of private corporations in other countries. what are germany, france, and UK going to do, invade?

the only solution is Greek default, even if Greece endures 10 years of austerity measures, their debt to GDP will come down to 120%.

chop456
11-02-11, 02:50 PM
I'm going to buy the Acropolis for pennies on the dollar. Maybe an Eretrian fixer-upper, too. I know a guy.

Ankf00
11-02-11, 04:54 PM
I'm going to buy the Acropolis for pennies on the dollar. Maybe an Eretrian fixer-upper, too. I know a guy.

too bad you'll be stuck remodeling the damage from the last tenants the owner had

NismoZ
11-03-11, 12:25 PM
Sounds like it's gonna be "some leaders lead and others just quit." ?

cameraman
11-03-11, 06:33 PM
Quit or more likely shown the door.

What is amazing is beyond the fact that the Greek government conspired with US firms to illegally hide their debt issues is the actual spending levels that the Greek government/people are trying to pull off. Their programs are truly insane and the population has come to expect & demand this stunning amount of cash to come flowing from the government. You would have to take the most profligate spending program the US has ever had and multiply it by a thousand to get to the Greek level of public spending. Their definition of austerity does not get their spending down to equivalent US spending levels and I don't know too many folks who consider overall US spending to be anything like austere. And if anyone tries to limit anything the whole country goes out on general strike.

So you have epic Wall Street weaseldom combined with certifiably insane expectations from the population. It takes some serious skilz to create a mess this big.

NismoZ
11-04-11, 04:33 PM
Oh, so those Greek public pensioners demanding they continue receiving 14 "monthly" payments per year, instead of just 12, must be in that last group? They were pissed enough to fire bomb a few banks last summer (killing a young pregnant employee) Criminally insane at least to some, people spontaneously rising up to demand their rights, and money, to others. Your assessment of the "population" seems spot on and has certainly been created by political design.

Not sure about the levels of Greek spending you mentioned (thousands worse!?) but I've heard their dire debt problems are actually LESS serious for the Euro Union than California's is for the US? Now THAT is frightening! In other words the California economy is a much larger part of the US economy that the Greek economy is to the European economy. Bailing out the UAW is one thing, bailing out California, New York and Illinois is another story. Time is running out, I fear.

Gnam
11-05-11, 04:47 PM
An Occupy Oakland protester staged a one man play about the Greek Financial Crisis. In this scene, the part of Greece is played by the young man in the white t-shirt crossing the intersection against the red light. The part of the real world is played by the Mercedes.

ypN5EhyBMF0

NismoZ
11-05-11, 05:31 PM
Ah, when anger overcomes good judgement. Both of 'em.:shakehead

SurfaceUnits
11-15-11, 04:32 PM
MF Global is gone 2 b fun 2 watch. The chief of the oversite board had to recuse himself because surprise, he is friends with everone at MF

RTKar
11-15-11, 10:30 PM
I'm going to buy the Acropolis for pennies on the dollar. Maybe an Eretrian fixer-upper, too. I know a guy.

Something in a Greek Revival style maybe

Ankf00
01-13-12, 04:11 PM
France is likely next for AA apparently and Germany's threatening to pull out of the EFSF.

Thunderdome is coming, indeed.

and the shoe drops

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-13/france-to-lose-aaa-from-s-p-afp-says-citing-state-official.html

Tifosi24
01-13-12, 07:32 PM
and the shoe drops

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-13/france-to-lose-aaa-from-s-p-afp-says-citing-state-official.html

The downgrades were inevitable. The more important news that I heard today is that the Greek debt talks have been put "on hold." This is of greater concern to me since this could signal the start of an involuntary debt default of some kind. Granted, we all know that Greece's situation is a disaster, but the main issue with an involuntary default is that it triggers credit default swap scenarios, whereas a voluntary default holds those events off. If the involuntary default happens, then we might finally know which players in Europe will be caught with their pants down.

cameraman
02-12-12, 04:56 PM
Seems tonight is a good night not to be in Athens:shakehead

http://t.co/mtOSLN6H

TravelGal
02-12-12, 05:23 PM
Ouch. It works pretty well, the link that is, not Greece.