The coming financial crisis

[Seabiscuit36]

what is hilarious is listening to the morons who write into the news or call and they play their thoughts, the public has no farging clue what is at stake other than no one is there to bail them out.  The major issue is the fact that our currency is losing its value daily, and that the credit market is freezing, which means small business owners are farged, and spending will slow.  Im just happy i have a gun, and a decent amount of cash saved up.  Yay Depression.  I might move to the woods with Dio in WV

[Geowhizzer]

Party at Dio's cabin!

[MadMarchHare]

Of course, the other possibility is Bush is using scare tactics (not Bush....) and, while bad, it's not the end of the world.

Thank God it failed.  Of course, my dumb farg congresswoman baaed yes.  Yay me.

[Diomedes]

More federal debt is not the answer.  All the talk about soup lines and great depression may actually come to pass and it may not.  I don't know.  I don't think it's as bad as Bush Co. says. but call me crazy, so what if it is.  The country survived the Great Depression and it will survive the next one. 

We've got to get off the teat of the money lenders.  A federal bailout only postpones the crisis by getting us deeper in.  We're crack heads saying to ourselves..all we gotta do is smoke the biggest rock ever and our jones will go away forever.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

our currency is losing its value daily

Dollar posts biggest gain in 15 years


People just don't understand economics.  Prices were already wildly inflated due to easy access to debt-based spending.  The crash is due to the realization that much of that money will never be repaid, and frankly, it absolutely has to happen to ensure the long-term stability of the economy.

It would be a lot better to be let down easy, but how much of your tax money are you willing to spend just to have the band-aid come off a little more gently?

P.S.  I'm still astonished that Dio and I seem to agree almost completely on this.

[Cerevant]

We built a mortgage investment bubble on top of a real estate bubble to save us from the internet bubble.

Time to pay the piper.

[Phanatic]

Someone on NPR had a fairly reasonable idea of changing the conditions on peoples loans to where they could afford the payments and interest rates on them thus making this mortgage mess manageable. If payments are being made it's worth something. Granted this doesn't work all the time but it doesn't have to. They were calling Paulson an idiot for just throwing money at it too.

[Cerevant]

If you watched the Daily Show last week, that is exactly what Bill Clinton said.  He had several ideas for how the bailout could be an investment that could reduce the deficit/debt long term.  As someone else said, it is weird to remember what it was like to have a president with a clue.

[Seabiscuit36]

I also could care less about the fargs that took out arm loans and have their rates out of control right now, bunch of morons who dont deserve to stay in their houses.  Mostly it pisses me off i was responsible, and didnt behave like a moron and get a house well above my means

[Geowhizzer]

I also could care less about the fargs that took out arm loans and have their rates out of control right now, bunch of morons who dont deserve to stay in their houses.  Mostly it pisses me off i was responsible, and didnt behave like a moron and get a house well above my means

Pretty much.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

This guy is smarter than anyone in Congress.

[rjs246]

Let them all crash and burn... unless my parents lose their retirement money and try to move in with me. On second thought, maybe this bailout is a good idea afterall...

[SD_Eagle5]

More federal debt is not the answer.  All the talk about soup lines and great depression may actually come to pass and it may not.  I don't know.  I don't think it's as bad as Bush Co. says. but call me crazy, so what if it is.  The country survived the Great Depression and it will survive the next one. 

We've got to get off the teat of the money lenders.  A federal bailout only postpones the crisis by getting us deeper in.  We're crack heads saying to ourselves..all we gotta do is smoke the biggest rock ever and our jones will go away forever.

The FDIC is what's preventing the Great Depression part 2. First thing people did when the market tanked was run to the bank and take all of their money out. No need to do that now.

[reese125]

This guy is smarter than anyone in Congress.

his theory of basically letting all the companies go bankrupt in hopes of the market fixing itself in time could be a little short-sighted. Those hundreds of billions of bad credit dollars by declining companies left out there to get bought by SOMEONE still feeds the problem because they are worth peanuts. Its creates another loop to this mess

Its a nice philosophy in a smaller arena,  but that kind of bankruptcy would also also cause millions of job losses, that would cause a major trickle-down effect in all areas of business, and in turn feed right back to a worsen economy

Bottom line--you need a bailout plan of some sort or shtein gets worse for all of us and our 401K's

[rjs246]

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Government intervention just relocates the problem to the taxpayers, allows the companies that should be failing to keep doing business and encourages similar risky behavior in the future. Why not partake in risky behavior when there's absolutely no risk? The government will just bail them out.

"You make me laugh, Tom. What were you gonna do? All I'd have to do is squirt a few and you'd let me go."*

All a bailout does is delay the inevitable market correction. I'd rather let the markets tumble now and get back to their natural levels (rather than have them continue to be artificially propped up by panicked government finagling) than have the markets tumble 20-30 years from now when I'm trying to retire and or pay for my kids to go to college.

This needs to happen eventually, now is as good a time as any. Especially since it coincides with an election where the incumbant party needs so badly to be ousted.


*Random, only barely related, Miller's Crossing quote.