[Ayame]

Doesn't sound very good.

[PolestaR]

Every X months there is a news article like this. Whatever is fueling the western economies currently (China/India most likely) is helping to keep the shit afloat, and will, until they start to slow down.

My prediction.. wait until China hosts the Olympic games (which they are spending billions preparing for)... not long after that.. KABOOOOOOOOM.

[Jack]

2008+ might well be a perfect storm.

China will be finished with the Olympics. The U.S. presidential election will be over, which means that two years of stimulus (2007, 2008) will be wrapping up, with an economic hangover to follow. 2008 is the date mentioned in the Corps of Engineers report, and seems to be the midpoint of a family of peak predictions.

Good point, PolestaR. Thanks for mentioning it.

[PolestaR]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', '2')008+ might well be a perfect storm.

China will be finished with the Olympics. The U.S. presidential election will be over, which means that two years of stimulus (2007, 2008) will be wrapping up, with an economic hangover to follow. 2008 is the date mentioned in the Corps of Engineers report, and seems to be the midpoint of a family of peak predictions.

Good point, PolestaR. Thanks for mentioning it.

[dukey]

Bankers probably salivate at the thought of doom and gloom and a large recession. As of couse when you go bankrupt and still have a mortgage to pay off, who gets your house ?

If there is a hard recession there will be a huge reallocation of wealth, to the banks.

[Chaparral]

It should be worth noting that last week, the COT report showed the commercial hedgers holding a 5 year record net short positon on the British Pound. It might be an interesting play for any FOREX traders.

[Sixstrings]

You have to admit, the UK press tells it like it is.

Not all the cotton-candy press release spin we get over here.

From the article:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')lbert Edwards, a strategist at Societe Generale, likened the British economy to a Ponzi scheme — a fraudulent debt mountain like that allegedly used by the New York hedge fund manager Bernard Madoff.

“What I find amazing is that people aren’t really nailing Gordon Brown and [Bank of England Governor] Mervyn King for this,” he said. “At least in the US they had the excuse of the arrival of sub-prime — a new sector of the market. We didn’t really have anything similar but we ended up with a bigger national Ponzi scheme than the US.”

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'Y')ou have to admit, the UK press tells it like it is.

Not all the cotton-candy press release spin we get over here.

[idiom]

Bush will get the Hoover hat and Obama will get the FDR hat.

No matter how deep Obama digs the hole the new revealed depths will be blamed on Bush.

According to most media pundits, the government, especially a democratic government, can't make things worse. Suggesting the government could make the depression worse is just UnAmerican.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')Sounds like all this would have happened anyway then, even without sub-prime mortgages. Larger forces at work here, methinks.

[Sixstrings]

ReverseEngineer wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou are just getting this? I've been hammering down on this for months! Do you just ignore what I write? You gotta read it in the MSM for it to sink in? What?

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '[')b]ReverseEngineer wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou are just getting this? I've been hammering down on this for months! Do you just ignore what I write? You gotta read it in the MSM for it to sink in? What?

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '[')b]ReverseEngineer wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou are just getting this? I've been hammering down on this for months! Do you just ignore what I write? You gotta read it in the MSM for it to sink in? What?

[Sixstrings]

Anyway, back on track..

I think I made a valid observation. In the US it's all being blamed on sub-prime. The UK had no sub-prime issue, yet they're in the same boat. I found that interesting.

If I were to look into this further (which I have no reason to), I could use that comparative data to make a case that it is NOT the poor Black folks who didn't pay their bills fault.

This is an issue that matters, as there are those in the American press slyly slipping that thought by, that it's all the fault of the poor who should never have gotten mortgages in the first place. Well if that were so, then the UK wouldn't be in a mess.

[Tyler_JC]

Play nice or take it to the HOF.

And try to stay on topic.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '
')and there are people here who have been saying it for years RE.

People who do not shout wolf at every hurricane that comes up the Gulf.

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'T')his is an issue that matters, as there are those in the American press slyly slipping that thought by, that it's all the fault of the poor who should never have gotten mortgages in the first place. Well if that were so, then the UK wouldn't be in a mess.

[seldom_seen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'Y')ou have to admit, the UK press tells it like it is.

Not all the cotton-candy press release spin we get over here.

[jdmartin]

The root of this entire situation can be summed up in one word: jobs. More specifically, the outsourcing of millions of US jobs, and to a lesser extent, Western European jobs, to countries that formerly had most of their citizenry sloshing around in rice paddies.

Without shipping those jobs to the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indians, they would not have started using lots and lots more oil. It also wouldn't have created a situation where the great masses of Western workers had to rely on credit to continue to live the same middle class lifestyle, because they lost their $20 factory job and had to get a $10 job at Wallyworld.

I've never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but a discussion on another forum I'm a part of has convinced me that there is a goal among TPTB - to create a permanent world ruling class that cuts across geographic boundaries. This is why everyone gets pissed when rogue nations full of people that don't give two shits about flat screen tvs don't play by the rules of the game, and so we go bomb them back into the stone age. It's hard to create a permanent slave class if they won't subscribe to your method of chains - in this case, tied to the almighty buck.

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', 'T')he root of this entire situation can be summed up in one word: jobs. More specifically, the outsourcing of millions of US jobs, and to a lesser extent, Western European jobs, to countries that formerly had most of their citizenry sloshing around in rice paddies.