Posted on 01/21/2008 7:12:51 PM PST by B-Chan
[CAUTION: CONTAINS VULGAR LANGUAGE]
Knees knocked last week from sea to shining sea as the shape-shifting monster of economic reality cut a swathe of destruction through the markets and financial ranks. The exact nature of this giant beast still remained largely concealed in a fog of accounting gambits, policy blusters, and reporting dodges, but a few intrepid scouts who glimpsed the behemoth up close said it looked like Godzilla with Herbert Hoover's face.
George W. Bush tried to appease the beast by offering each American adult the dollar equivalent of half a month's mortgage payment -- with the exhortation to drive forthwith to the nearest WalMart and blow it on salad shooters and plasma TV's -- but Hooverzilla just laughed at the offering and pounded the equity markets further into the dust of loss, while the "bank-like" guardians of wealth lay in the drainage ditches bleeding from their ears and eyes.
My favorite moment was seeing Treasury Secretary Paulson and one of his fellow shaved-head deputies at a press conference rostrum frantically trying to calm the news media rabble like a couple of extraplanetary high priests from a Star Trek episode -- the batteries having run down in their laser wands, and their incantations ("liquidity! liquidity!) veering into mystifying glossolalia.
I resort to such admitted extreme hyperbole because it may be the only language that an infotainment-drunk society can still process in the face of an epochal calamity that will transform the lush terms of everyday life as we've known it into something like a bleak surrealist landscape in the manner of Tanguy. That crashing sound out there is the armature of confidence needed to support an economy based on faith that borrowed money will be paid back. It's as simple as that. (Doesn't seem so exciting now, does it?)
The United States is so broke, its people at every level from the Federal Reserve on down don't know whether to shit or go blind. The homeowners cringing in the media rooms of their 5000-square-foot personal family resorts don't know how long they can stay put microwaving pepperoni hot pockets with the default clock ticking. The mortgage "servicers" don't know how they will persuade interested parties like, say, the Illinois State Cafeteria Workers' Pension Fund (holder of X-amount of mortgage-backed securities underwritten by, say, Merrill Lynch or Deutsche Bank) to foreclose on properties scattered everywhere from Key West to Bainbridge Island -- or if there is actually any legal mechanism known to man that would make it possible to "work out" the sliced-and-diced collateral. The millions of maxed-out credit card holders and the issuers of their plastic are stuck together paddling a leaky tub in a sea of troubles every bit as wide, deep, and polluted as the one the mortgage junkies and their enablers are sinking in. The developers of malls, office parks, and power centers are weeping into their filing cabinets as the harsh daylight of insolvency stops the orgy of "consumption" and the retail tenants pack up their unsellable goodies for the liquidators, and the rent checks stop arriving in the mail, and the notes on this mall and that mall enter the eerie realm of "non-performance." And, of course, there are the genius wonder boyz and Wall Street playerz whose algorithms and turpitudes underwrote the script of this horror show -- for all I know they'll end up laughing into sugary skull drinks on a beach in the Cayman Islands, or doing Chinese fire drills in federal prison (or simply ass-fucked on the granite countertops of their Tribecca aeries by mobs of angry, repossessed, swindled former American dreamers pouring into Manhattan from the tract house dormitories of New Jersey and Long Island).
There's a lot to be concerned about out there. I don't mean to be too cute about it. But, as the master once said, nothing is funnier than unhappiness.
A whole closet full of "other shoes" is now waiting to be dropped. Surely the biggest clodhoppers in the closet belong to the hedge funds, representing trillions and trillions of dollar-denominated "positions" which, however hallucinatory, had previously yielded enough real "money" year-by-year to keep all the realtors and Humvee dealers in the Hamptons goose-stepping to Goldman Sachs's drumbeat. These "positions" can't help now from moving into counterparty crisis territory, especially as the bond insurers such as MBIA and Ambac go up in a vapor, and if that happens the damage could be so colossal globally that Stephen Hawking might have to be brought in to run the Federal Reserve.
This is going to be a rough week. Fastening your seat belts may not be enough for this ride. Better superglue yourselves to the floorboards and pray for God's mercy.
the ‘stooge writer’ isn’t making the bond insurers insolvent, nor causing the markets to crater worldwide. The problems are real. Is he being hyperbolic? I hope so. I can tell you that I lived through the crash of ‘87 and was unfased by it. I wasn’t too worried about the economy after 9/11. If we can get this thing with ‘only’ a moderate recession, I’ll breathe s sigh of relief.
If the economy crumbles like 1929,you better stock up on guns and ammunition.
Because the Day of the Locusts will be at hand.
A common — and somewhat bizarre fantasy — based on the idea that a crash will somehow require skills largely abandoned in post-industrial economy.
Day of the locusts doesn’t sound nearly as tasty or fashionable as the Day of the raccoons...
Gonna be hella bargains out there. Happy Hunting!
bump
Put another raccoon on the barbie,mate!
Anybody out there know how to make soap?
Anybody?
We’re gonna be a stinky bunch, eh?
The light at the end of the tunnel is that when the rest of the global economy starts to take big hits, money will start flowing back into the U.S.
Praying for God’s Mercy
1 Raccoon
1 bn Celery
3 cl Garlic; chopped
2 lg Red onions; quartered
1 lg Apple; quartered
3 Hot red peppers
1 c Vinegar
3 tb Salt
BE SURE LYMPH GLANDS OF RACCOON ARE REMOVED!!! Have someone who is experienced remove the glands as well as the skin. Pull celery apart and wash. Place all ingredients in pot with enough water to cover raccoon. Bring to slow boil and cook until tender or until fork goes in easily, about 1-2 hours depending upon size of raccoon. Remove meat from pot, cut off front and back legs; cut remainder into four pieces. Place on rack, brush with your favorite barbecue sauce. Place in 400 deg. oven; turn and baste frequently with barbecue sauce until a golden brown, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Serves 6.
True..., but he just might be a secret admirer of Paul Volcker!
Indian shares crash within minutes of opening bell; trade halted for an hour
MUMBAI (Thomson Financial) - Trading in the Indian markets was halted for an hour after key indices extended yesterday's losses to shed more than 10 pct minutes after the opening bell. Trading was halted with the Bombay Stock Exchange's 30-share Sensitive Index 1,716.41 points or 9.75 pct down at 15,888.94,...snip...
Wow,a gourmet chef!
You eat well,sir.I’m a vegeterian!
A good place to track the global index futures:
and http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/futures.html
It looks to me like a moderate sized meltdown is underway (as of 1:55AM EST 1-22-08)
MUMBAI (Thomson Financial) - Indian indices recovered after the markets re-opened at 1055 IST (0525 GMT), an hour after the trade was suspended after India's share market barometer, the Bombay Stock Exchange's 30-scrip Sensex, shed 11.5 pct within minutes of the opening bell.
Local sentiment was battered as shares across Asia tumbled on heightened fears that a US recession could spell doom for the region's exports, but investors were soothed after finance minister P. Chidambaram called for calm. The 'markets will make a new beginning at 10:55 AM,' he said.
At 1058 IST (0528 GMT), the Sensex had recovered to trade 611.17 points or 3.47 pct lower at 16,994.18.
'The worst may be over now; the market has to recover from the lows that it has hit. This sudden panic is rationally unwarranted as the fundamentals of the Indian economy cannot change overnight,' said VVLN Sastry, country head of Firstcall India Equity Advisors. http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/01/22/afx4555531.html Well some good news after the second day of Asian bloodbath. Japanese Markets still down considerably, as well as Indonesian, Australian and others.
Good ‘radar centers’ for tracking this storm’:
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/
and
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
plus the previously noted:
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/futures.html
...in related news, India’s finance minister P. Chidambaram has boarded a plane for the U.S. where he will call for calm on the New York Stock Exchange prior to the opening bell.
This post is actually funny, but absurd.
Oh, sheesh, don’t buy gold. When it crashes, and it will, all the big bad wolves will take all your money and blow your house down.
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