[deMolay]

Black Swan Author This is Greatest Crisis in History:
Could this be the Great Die Off rather than the Great Depression starting? http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/modul ... 2008&seg=5

[hillguy57]

I watched the interview on PBS. Talk about your somber attitude.
If he even is right on half of what he thinks could happen, we're in for a long long downturn.

[WyoDutch]

But John McCain says we're winning in Iraq and will bring the troops home in "victory".

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('WyoDutch', 'B')ut John McCain says we're winning in Iraq and will bring the troops home in "victory".

[Eli]

Yeah, this is what is coming.

The way the world used to work is about to stop.

Go long guns and Ammo and canned goods. Look at the extraordinary steps taken already. They cannot stop the blow up of 64 trillion in CDS market, the world is over leveraged.

[Revi]

I watched another video about the downturn in state revenues and the fact that medicaid providers aren't being reimbursed.

We are talking about a really scary situation.

In our state they are going to cut 100 million from education next year.

What has happened to this money? It's simply disappearing.

I never expected the beginning of the troubles to look quite like this.

It's looking like a deflationary depression, with a lot more people.

[emeraldg40]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') watched another video about the downturn in state revenues and the fact that medicaid providers aren't being reimbursed.
We are talking about a really scary situation. In our state they are going to cut 100 million from education next year.
What has happened to this money? It's simply disappearing. I never expected the beginning of the troubles to look quite like this.
It's looking like a deflationary depression, with a lot more people.

[dinopello]

I like how he understands about over-optimization. It comes at the expense of robustness.

[frankthetank]

Now that is spooky. A person doesn't need ghosts when you can read about this.

[Eli]

Dino can you explain what he meant by that so that a 10th grader could understand it?

Not for myself of course I totally see what he meant by that, but I would like to be able to explain it to others who might not be as smrt as me.

[nobodypanic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', 'D')ino can you explain what he meant by that so that a 10th grader could understand it?

Not for myself of course I totally see what he meant by that, but I would like to be able to explain it to others who might not be as smrt as me.

[eastbay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', 'D')ino can you explain what he meant by that so that a 10th grader could understand it?
Not for myself of course I totally see what he meant by that, but I would like to be able to explain it to others who might not be as smrt as me.

[crabnebulous]

After Israel does its thing with Iran, oil goes up stocks go down.

[deMolay]

It looks like the effects of momoculture farming, in my minds eye. You plant only one species of corn for example all over the world. A disease arrives. Because you have no diversity left all the corn in the world gets wiped out. You starve.

[deMolay]

A quote from his homepage. "My classical metaphor: A Turkey is fed for a 1000 days—every days confirms to its statistical department that the human race cares about its welfare "with increased statistical significance". On the 1001st day, the turkey has a surprise."

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', 'D')ino can you explain what he meant by that so that a 10th grader could understand it?
Not for myself of course I totally see what he meant by that, but I would like to be able to explain it to others who might not be as smrt as me.

[Ferretlover]

IOW, it doesn't really matter how many "Atta boy"s you earn, it only takes one "Aw, sh*t" to take you back to zero.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ferretlover', 'I')OW, it doesn't really matter how many "Atta boy"s you earn, it only takes one "Aw, sh*t" to take you back to zero.

[Delphis]

IMHO, it seems the real unknown Nisser was getting at is the effect on the social infrastructure, well if you can call it that. The world used to be based largely on the notion that if you don't have the cash, you can't buy it. With the advent of "credit" becoming available to the masses, e.g. small business owners, we entered a world where very few mom and pops, medium sized operations, and certainly a miniscule amount of large corporations owned their inventories. Car dealerships floor their vehicles, parts inventory and pay large debt service not only on their real estate but the actual franchise. The same is true for every, Domino's, Mc Donalds, Thirty-One Flavors etc. Most of those lucky enough to buy the franchise long ago have ever-leveraged themseleves and now own multiple locations and operate on a very small margin for error. Without the backstop of a new line of credit to make it through the trough(s)...they will fail. I know a few of you will say that not everyone operates that way and I concede. But in a world where constant expansion of everything we need was accepted as the "only" possibility, it seems we may very well have just set foot on a unmapped continent and are staring right down the beak of a Black Swan...

[evilgenius]

Delphis is onto something very important. It only takes a small percentage of over-leveraged small business owners (the kind that aren't likely to get bailed out) to ruin any local economy. Imagine how many more unemployed a 2% failure rate would bring.

Then extrapolate their being chronically unemployed, not spending much into the local economy, for well past a year. How many more small businesses would fail then? How many would cut employees or ask for wage concessions? I think it is going to turn out to be a blessing and a curse that the minimum wage was raised, just in time for the deflationary spiral.