Here's What's Happening to the Economy

American Thinker ^ | March 12, 2009 | Randall Hoven

[ChessExpert]

To summarize in round numbers, we can approximate the blame by time periods:

* Housing crisis (Jan-Aug 2008): 10% market decline.

* Financial failures (Aug-Sep): 5% decline.

* The Paulson/Bush bailout (Sep-Nov): 20%.

* President-elect and President Obama (Nov-Mar): 30%.

President Obama described the stock market as having "gyrations," saying it "bobs up and down day to day." I recommend you not bob for apples with President Obama.

[ChessExpert]

This is a nice attempt to summarize economic events. It includes some good quotes and embedded links.

[norraad]

Also, I think many people realize they've been "conditioned consumers" and maybe they have pretty much everything they need already.

I know that's why I've cut spending to the bone.

And our cars now really can last a long time with a little extra care ( care that a good neighborhood mechanic who needs your biz. would love to help provide).

It's become a bragging rights thing among my friends of who has the oldest w/the most mileage.

Care to join in the fun? How old/miles is yours?

[an amused spectator]

Also, I think many people realize they've been "conditioned consumers" and maybe they have pretty much everything they need already.

Same here.

Isn't it "interesting" that in February, consumer spending "went up"?

I think the powers that be jiggered the numbers to make it look that way, but I'm not buying it - or much else for that matter...

[Disambiguator]

Care to join in the fun? How old/miles is yours?

Both our main vehicles are late 1990's vintage (one with 82K and the other with 105K miles), and we have one 20 year-old project truck that has 150K miles on it. I just spent $1k on repairs for one, but it's got to last me at least five more years, so I figure that's still less than car payments would be in the long run.

[olivia3boys]

I would much rather spend my money on vacations than cars. (And I do.)

We have two older cars, good quality, bought them used in the 1990s for cash.

So instead of “ugrading” to a new car for $30K, I could spend the same money on about ten week long vacations for the 6 of us: Hawaii, Disneyland, Washington DC. And that’s what we do.

A car is just transportation. Kids just kind of trash up new cars anyway. Vacations are experiencing life!

[Dan(9698)]

We bought a 94 Lincoln Town Car with 130,000 miles on it.

We bought it on Ebay for $2,500.

We ran it until it has 275,000 miles. It still runs fine. It gets 24 miles to a gallon.

We recently bought a 2003 Lincoln Town Car with 70,000 miles for 10,000. For the same money we could have bought a new Hunday.

[blackie]

"Care to join in the fun? How old/miles is yours?"

'90 Ford full size Bronco -- 95K miles

'01 Ford F-150 SVT Lightning -- 27K miles.

'01 Suzuki SV650 -- 1K miles.

[sionnsar]

Japanese. 1992. Still young at 150+k miles (another 100k until retirement at the mileage where I retire my Japanese cars).

[Notary Sojac]

From the linked article:

The housing trouble was becoming apparent in early 2008

Wrong, WRONG, WRONG. A stupid statement like that throws doubt on the whole article.

Anybody who was paying attention to the run up housing prices and refi's, and the kinds of loans being written, saw it coming 2-3 years earlier.

Robert Shiller, Ivy Zelman, and Nouriel Roubini saw it coming back then.

I saw it coming and I'm not nearly as smart as those three. Here's my house on Zillow, and the dollar sign icon shows the point at which I sold it.

The bankers, mortgage lenders, local governments, and builders who had a huge ve$ted intere$t in a continuing housing bubble didn't see it coming. Or if they did, they kept their mouths shut in anticipation of the bailouts to come.

[norraad]

My friend has an 87' Honda w/275,000 ongoing.

I think the late 80's & early 90's gave us some uber-excellent machinery that will never be matched because anemic corps. are dialing back quality and masking the cheapness w/gimmicks, n'est pas?

[Notary Sojac]

1999 Nissan 120k miles

2003 Buick 90k miles

We plan to get at least five more years out of each.

[ex-snook]

When we start making product instead of buying from other countries our employment will improve and then our economy. Measuring the economy is bottom up not top down.

[Guenevere]

bttt

[norraad]

My Dad has an old Buick that’s a keeper, I can sure understand why they’ve become a big hit in China.

[CRBDeuce]

The housing trouble was becoming apparent in early 2008, and by July 11, IndyMac, a large mortgage lender in Southern California, failed. By August 11, the S&P 500 closed about 10% below its 2008 starting point. The market didn't like the housing trouble, but it was not causing a full bear market.

to elaborate a little on the above, the housing market peaked in October, 2006. Shortly thereafter, the 2006 Dem Congressional landslide 'opened the door' to socialism on a scale never before seen. (with 20-20 hindsight for most of us). The Pension Relief Act of 2006 passed congress, signed by unsuspecting President Bush (requiring ALL corporations to establish 90% funding for ALL employee pensions....all but guaranteeing massive layoffs). A new 'investment style' was invented (perhaps by Soros?). 'The pirate short'. This exploited the housing market by selling naked short shares of banks, while buying (on the cheap, at the time) the Credit Default Swaps on that bank. This 'investment' took off on a massive scale. Some began calling it a Bear Raid on the banks...resulting in Bear Stearns going under eventually, and Lehman going bankrupt. The biggest payer of Credit Default Swaps...AIG (obviously also biggest recipient of 'free government money' to pay off the pirate shorts. No, not a conspiracy, just some good old fashioned financial terrorism. The only real solution would be to put the names on the naked shorts lists together with the names on the Credit Default Swaps payee lists. Where the names are the same, you have the names of the pirate shorts. Their tax rate should be at least 90% on those illegal gains! (I'm guessing that Americans could have about a 1 year tax holiday if Congresscritters had enough brainpower to 'get in the game').

[Neidermeyer]

Care to join in the fun? How old/miles is yours?
*****************************************************
I just sold a 98 Taurus w/230K and the original tranny for $1000 and bought a 95K 2000 crown vic fleet car (ie. regular maint done) for $1500 ,, not bad paying only +$500 for a car with 300K more miles left in it especially as the taurus needed at least that much in a/c work (the taxi fleets usually run crown vics/town cars to about 400k)

[Chgogal]

“At each step, the markets gave us an estimate of the damage done. The housing trouble was becoming apparent in early 2008, and by July 11, IndyMac, a large mortgage lender in Southern California, failed. By August 11, the S&P 500 closed about 10% below its 2008 starting point. The market didn't like the housing trouble, but it was not causing a full bear market.”

Here is your conspiracy theory:

Feds cite Schumer in collapse of IndyMac
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/07/feds-cite-schum.html

“The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter to the OTS and the FDIC from Senator Charles Schumer of New York. The letter expressed concerns about IndyMac’s viability. In the following 11 business days, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts.”

Backup site:
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/12308/

Also at least one of Schmuckiy’s friends got rich shorting Indymac:

http://houstonconservative.com/2008/07/chuck-schumer-causes-indymac-bank.html

“One has to wonder if Chuck Schumer has been selling IndyMac stock short, or if he has had any business dealings with the New York based Aurelian Management, LLC or it's president, Brian Horey. Aurelian was short-selling IndyMac shares to gain from declines in the days prior to this takeover by Federal Regulators.”

[norraad]

A taxi driver told me one of the tricks to long tranny life is flush the fluid about twice as often as you might think.

Is that what you did(or any other tricks you might know of)?

[ChessExpert]

Thanks for advancing the thought and doing the research.

I wouldn’t put it past Schumer to sell IndyMac short, or to work with others who did so. The left thinks the world is corrupt, so now it’s their turn to cash it. It is a corrosive world view. The courtroom standard is to presume innocence. It’s not a bad standard for the rest of us, not that Schumer practices it.

[tiki]

I think they may have been right, I think people are stocking up while they can.