Financial Crisis?***Warning! Potential for Political Discussion and Debate!!

Obama aide promotes job plan, warns automakers


My favorite line? "Axelrod couldn't resist taking a jab at the Big Three executives, who left Congress empty-handed last week after flying into Washington in corporate jets and pleading for money. "I hope that they will come back to Washington in early December ? on commercial flights ? with a plan," he said."


lol...totally.

 

Government plans massive Citigroup rescue effort

 

Our mortgage is through Citimortgage, I'm assuming that is an off shoot. For the last 9 mos. our checks are clearing faster & faster, Nov. only took 4 days to mail & clear my bank Before it would take 10 to 12 days no problem.

So I assume they are getting less & less payments?

I know we have to keep the banks going, if not the Federal Reserve will have to pay out the money in peoples accounts anyway, but gosh. Is Billion the new Million? That's a lot of $!

 

so is a thousand the new hundred? man that would suck...that would make the dollar the new penny.

 

With the up coming inflation, yeah. That how its going to be.


As I expected. The dow is seeing a minor rally at the announcment of the Obama financial team.

 

I thought this was a really interesting article on what a new depression could look like:

Depression 2009: What would it look like?
A modern economic collapse would look much different than 1930s America.
By Drake Bennett

THE BOSTON GLOBE


Sunday, November 30, 2008


In the past few months, Americans have been hearing the word "depression" with alarming regularity. With Wall Street and the broader economy in crisis, might we be headed that way again? The financial crisis tearing through Wall Street is routinely described as the worst since the Great Depression, and the resulting economic recession has raised questions about whether a new depression might be a possibility.

Most experts consider that highly unlikely. And even if one were to occur, it would probably be quite unlike our visions of the Great Depression.

Open a history book and the images will be familiar: mobs at banks and lines at soup kitchens, stockbrokers in suits selling apples on the street, families piled with all their belongings into jalopies. Families scrimping on coffee and flour and sugar, rinsing off tinfoil to reuse it and mending pants and dresses. A desperate government mobilizing legions of the unemployed to build bridges and airports, to blaze trails in national forests, to put on traveling plays and paint social-realist murals.

But we are separated from the 1930s by decades of profound economic, technological and political change, and a modern landscape of scarcity would reflect that.

What, then, would we see instead? By looking at what we know about how society and commerce would slow down, and how people respond, it's possible to envision what we might face.

Unlike the 1930s, a depression circa 2009 might be a less visible and more isolating experience. Television makes it easier to kill time alone, and free time is one thing a 21st century depression would create in abundance. Instead of dusty farm families, the icon of a modern-day depression might be something as subtle as the flickering glow of millions of televisions glimpsed through living room windows, as the nation's unemployed sit at home.

The swelling ranks of the unemployed probably would change the landscape of the country. Home prices probably would sink further and not rise, dimming the appeal of homeownership, a large part of suburbia's draw. Renting an apartment ? perhaps in a city, where commuting costs are lower ? might be more tempting. And although city crime might increase, many suburban areas have already seen upticks in crime in recent years, which would only get worse as tax-poor towns spent less on policing and public services.

"You could have a sort of desurburbanization phenomenon," said Michael Bernstein, a historian of the Depression and the provost of Tulane University.

The migrations kicked off by a depression wouldn't be in one direction, but a tangle of demographic crosscurrents: young families moving back to their hometowns to live with the grandparents when they can no longer afford to live on their own, parents moving in with adult children when their retirement incomes can no longer support them. Some parts of the country, especially the Rust Belt, could see a wholesale depopulation as the last remnants of the U.S. heavy manufacturing base die out.

"There will be some cities like Detroit that in a real depression could just become ghost towns," said Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard economist and member of the National Bureau of Economic Research committee that declares recessions. Frankel said he considers a depression unlikely.

At the household level, the look of want is different today than during the last prolonged downturn. The government helps the unemployed and the poor with programs that didn't exist when the Great Depression hit ? unemployment insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security for seniors.

Beyond that, two of the basics ? food and clothing ? are a lot cheape

 

I think it paints a pretty picture. We all sit around watching tv and getting fat...oh, and the cream of the crop become civil servants and bureaucrats. Sounds like heaven.

 

Would you prefer I post some of the doom and gloom stuff?

 

That article sounds like how I live today, so not much would change for me if I keep working *crosses fingers**

 

We are "officially" in a recession...declaration made today.

 

lol, I kept thinking the same thing while I was reading it.


....secondhand clothing? Check.


...fairly adequate rebuilt computer? Check.


...high fat food intake because fresh produce and meat are astronomically unaffordable? Check.

 

Agreed. Complete with government job, because I was tired of getting laid off ot taking jobs in companies that were going nowhere.

It's kinda funny, or sad, but it seems like terms like recession or depression don't really matter to a person until it hits them, then it's suddenly a big deal. So when people in the media, or NYC Washington DC have to tighten their finances, then it's finally a resession.

 

Humbled U.S. automakers plead with Congress


I think there needs to be a lot more groveling and begging.

 

I heard an ad on the radio today for a Colorado Springs car dealer and it was some crazy low interest rate plus the dealership pays the first 18 payments. Not deferred, they pay them. I would wait if I was gonna buy a car, its only bound to get better for the consumer. Hopefully we wont all loose our jobs, so we should still be able to benefit from it.

 

A dealership in Florida has a "buy one, get one" deal on for Dodge trucks. Pay full price for the first one, and then tax, title and tags for the second (~$3000) and it's yours.

 

Employers cut 533K jobs in Nov., most in 34 years


Wow. And it just keeps getting worse every single day. Wow.

 

You can't say that until we have nuclear winter or a zombie apocalypse. THEN it's getting worse every day.

 

lol, I suppose you are right about that. Hey, I never knew you were such an optimist. From now on I am going to say, "Well, it could be worse...at least Zombies arent trying to eat my brains."

 

America's premier institute of higher education, Harvard University, is bleeding (crimson) red.



So, basically they use their big brains to gamble with the endowment? Lol, looks like its coming back to bite em in the tender parts.

 

The Big Three's Bailout Plan Report Card


This guy basically grades their proposals, lol this just keeps getting funnier.

 

Deal to Rescue American Automakers Is Moving Ahead

I disagree with this decision...vehemently.

 

QFT. Go bankrupt before we bail you out.

 

Abso-frickin-lutely.

 

There's been a lot of bad behavior and bad decisions made in Detroit, the biggest one is not being forward-thinking enough to see this coming (loss of market share) or the shift in technology, especially after the 1970 Clean Air Act and the 1973-4(?) OPEC Oil Embargo. They should've never produced an SUV after the Suburban and Explorer, period.

 

The problem comes in that for me at least I come from a state where the SUV form factor (aside from the insanely poor mileage) makes sense. Snow a good portion of the year (I've seen 6+" every month except August), lot of mountains and other terrain that often requires a large 4x4, and little enough to do that families often get quite large.

Rather than saying the SUV itself was the problem, rather in my opinion that particular problem is in the mileage. We have hybrid SUVs now, so my thought is that the technology to lower gas mileage in any way should've been more heavily explored. The form factor of the vehicle doesn't truly matter, there are some cars that get ***** gas mileage, it's the engines and efficiency that they failed on.