Larry Kudlow of CNBC Reporting of Emergency Federal Reserve Meeting Tonight

CNBC television | 7/23/2002 | Larry Kudlow

[lwoodham]

$23.4 trillion ain't chicken feed.

Yeah. $23.4 trillion here, $23.4 trillion there ... pretty soon you're talking about real money!

Yep, $23.4 trillion is a stack of $1000.00 bills 313.4 miles high.

[unixfox]

Blame it all on the Bush tax cut.

[USA21]

The Role of the Financial Institutions In Enron’s Collapse

[Arleigh]

J.P. Morgan Chase is leveraged over 700-1 when you look at the bank's exposure to derivatives.

This bears repeating!

Also, the point of derivatives is often to insure against some unfavorable market event. If JP Morgan Chase can't pay up, the innocent counter-party gets screwed. Like wrecking your car and then finding out the insurance company can't pay your claim.

Big mortgage lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac borrow short and lend long, but use derivatives to hedge the risk of rising interest rates. But if the hedge is no good, then they're quickly in trouble and Uncle Sam will have to bail them out.

[Aliska]

Sounds a little like us, the way we live and all. I went through a Tolstoy phase and read a lot of his short stories and Anna Karenina. Never could wade through War and Peace. I didn't know he was an anarchist and I was never very philosophically astue, reading for entertainment value. Chekhov was one of my favorites. Guess I could have used some mentoring as I read them all on my own. Who wrote Brothers Karamazov?

[jwalsh07]

Like it or not, this will go down in the history books as the Great Bush Depression.

Economic growth in the first quarter was about 6%, about 3% in the second quarter for an average of 4.5% growth in the first part of this year, thanks in large part to the tax cuts and low interest rates.

When do we get out of the depression? When growth hits 50%?

[Political Junkie Too]

I'm surprised that no one has looked at William B Harrison's leanings. He's the CEO of JP Morgan Chase and an old buddy of Erskine Bowles...

Just like Enron -- the more the Democrats make an issue of it, and the more that people look deeper at the problem, the more they find Clinton's fingerprints and not Bush's.

-PJ

[lwoodham]

Sorry , I never saw that book.

[wingnuts'nbolts]

Just like the S&L fiasco.

[AppyPappy]

S&L redux

[wingnuts'nbolts]

Youbetcha!

[Dales]

Dostoevsky. (I had to look that up lol)

[Aliska]

Maybe you saw Whatever happened to the culpepper switch?

I'm getting an education reading this thread.

[Aliska]

I could have done that and pretended I remembered. I didn't. You are an honest soul. Thanks for doing my homework for me ;-).

Did you ever read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch? I did. It was grim but interesting. Couldn't hack the movie though.

[wingnuts'nbolts]

Bull!

[Arleigh]

When do we get out of the depression? When growth hits 50%?

We haven't even STARTED what will be a long, ugly, multi-year depression. The little hiccup after 9/11 doesn't count.

Mrs. Consumer is 2/3rds of economy and her credit cards are just about maxed out. Mr. Business is still running at less than 65% of capacity, so demand could increase nearly 50% before capital expenditures are a factor. (And don't get me started on the phony stats coming out of BLS! Go look at how the employment numbers get revised downward each month.)

Yup, no matter what the truth really is, it'll be the Great Bush Depression.

[meyer]

Yep, $23.4 trillion is a stack of $1000.00 bills 313.4 miles high.

I'd love to be sitting on that stack of bills. ON a calm day, of course. Things could get a little shaky up there on a windy day. :^)

[Arleigh]

Bull!

Ahhh, that's what I love about the Internet. Cogent, well-reasoned discussions with people who are witty and in command of their facts.

[laconic]

Why are banks involved with "derivatives"? I know nothing about them other than the fact that they are extremely volatile. Whatever happened to the conservative banker and why should we bail fools of this magnitude out? Is it because like Donald Trump, they are just too big to fail and go into bankruptcy like the average Joe? Why did they invest billions in bonds of WorldCom, advise Enron and other companies on how to hide debts, and allow scumbos like Jack Grubman to ride herd over their subsidiaries while paying such a clown $20 MILLION a YEAR!

[jwalsh07]

Nah. Business is good and getting better. Demand in the real estate market is outstripping supply which is why the real estate balloon is filled to over capacity. Its almost time for all those Y2K computers to be replaced and there are markets waiting to be tapped.