I was listening to the BBC (I think...something British) being broadcast on NPR this morning and they were going on about the failures here...AIG especially...and I just keep thinking that the economy is going to be so much worse than everyone is predicting. I really do sort of expect my whole country to collapse...
I don't think this is the big one, I think we've got a few more years yet, but this will be pretty nasty. They won't allow AIG to go down because it's big in China. Nobody can afford for China to get dragged into this, least of all the USA. How many US Treasury bonds belong to the Chinese government? As far as I know it's a very large number. It would be trivial for them to whip the rug out from underneath the US with that, but they won't until they have another viable import market. I would think you'll find your government tiptoeing around Beijing even more as time goes by, though.
Still, the guys who bundled those investments can probably retire happy on the bonuses they earned...
Yeah, the education system is screwed, it's like someone made a list of all the things important for living your life or being able to grasp what the hell's going on with anything and then binned them.
Economics? nah. Law? nope. Politics? Guess at that one. Ability to drive? sort that out yourself. Basic household maintenance? Sorry, too busy identifying geomorphological land features.
Ah, yes, but we'll be laughing on the other side of our faces when terrorists hold the country to ransom and demand to know what a terminal murrain or an oxbow lake is.
I read a really interesting piece on the BBC site which asked a bunch of random experts who to blame for the current financial woes of the world, and the consensus, as one might expect, was on some people basically manipulating a volatile system so they became rich out of chaos. One guy was really interesting, though- he talked about this as the end of a twenty-five year bubble, which coincided strangely neatly with Greenspan's time as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
It's a simple case of working out what things will be worth when it's over compared to what they are now
If you have money to invest for a year or two then you're pretty sorted, especially since interest rates are probably about to crash, meaning savers will be stuffed
Currently it seems like the profits for a lot of these companies are privatised but the losses are nationalised so we pay for their failures and they keep the money for their successes.
I'm not absolutely certain that is fair.
There are things that damn well should be renationalised but I'm confident there are too many snouts in too many troughs for that to happen.
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Date: 16 Sep 2008 14:00 (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Sep 2008 15:43 (UTC)Still, the guys who bundled those investments can probably retire happy on the bonuses they earned...
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Date: 16 Sep 2008 15:09 (UTC)Economics? nah. Law? nope. Politics? Guess at that one. Ability to drive? sort that out yourself. Basic household maintenance? Sorry, too busy identifying geomorphological land features.
Pretty dumb really.
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Date: 16 Sep 2008 15:36 (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Sep 2008 17:54 (UTC)here it is
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Date: 16 Sep 2008 23:29 (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Sep 2008 23:30 (UTC)If you have money to invest for a year or two then you're pretty sorted, especially since interest rates are probably about to crash, meaning savers will be stuffed
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Date: 17 Sep 2008 09:56 (UTC)Still low interest rates work for that as well I guess.
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Date: 17 Sep 2008 12:47 (UTC)no subject
Date: 17 Sep 2008 13:40 (UTC)I'm not absolutely certain that is fair.
There are things that damn well should be renationalised but I'm confident there are too many snouts in too many troughs for that to happen.