Financial Crisis

[samuibeachcomber]

The media are attributing the Dow's drop last night to things like Obama's policies and

Citigroup and Bank of America possibly needing to be nationalised...but this is another

angle and this sounds even more serious....................?

Dow sinks to 12-year low on fears for AIG

Wall Street lurches downwards again amid more financial turmoil

AIG's collapse last September had threatened to bring down the global financial system..................

The $60bn loss, due to be announced next Monday, could force the company into bankruptcy unless new financing is arranged before then, analysts said. A board meeting is believed to have been set for Sunday. The company itself issued a statement saying it was not considering a legal filing for bankruptcy, although sources confirmed it has hired the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business...ig-1630411.html

if they say their not then you can bank on it happening.

[samuibeachcomber]

yes i know what you mean nouf,there is nothing any of us can do,but its human nature to want to rant off,and this thread is as good as any to do it.

It would be better to just enjoy the day/moment where ever you are,but thats hard to do when you see whats going on around you.

[thaidrew]

There seems to be a plethora of bad news these days, every newspaper has headlines crying doomsday of one sort or another from 'criminal bankers' to financial robbers, etc. In my opinion the fault lies fair and square with the various governments that are elected to 'govern', as in propose, enact and monitor rules for society to abide by. In the case of the financial wizz kids that have managed to take advantage of a system that was simply not designed to control greed, perhaps because the major recipients were either connected to, or supporting various officials, it is not right to deliver blame where someone is within the law. There seems to have been little effort to stop financial rorting taking place, or make it illegal so to do. In the UK we read that cash, from the companies or individuals involved, was 'donated' to one party or the other, perhaps to ensure that the system allowed the stripping of cash to run on. In the USA a similar situation since it is big business that pays for the promotion of the electoral process. So why do we blame the bankers when they are working within the law?

The real fault lies with the greedy, lazy and corrupt, so called lawmakers that have consistently failed us, and the system that allows them to not only do it but not be penalised for their actions. It is time that ordinary people who are the losers , either by payment and wastage of tax, or by loss of savings and/or income, made a stand to force these so called 'servers of society' to be accountable for their actions, or lack of. When was the last time that a politician was asked to reimburse society? The next time will be the first! Time to demand change. Worldwide.

And I am not a banker, nor have I ever been.

[samuibeachcomber]

it looks like your wish is about to happen................rioting worldwide,and you can bet the govts.are working on a plan to control this eventuality.

[midas]

Bloody ell, reading this thread makes me wanna go and throw myself of one of the Pattaya condos, and become front news on the pattaya mail, are you sure you guys came to thailand to chill?????

seriously there is not alot you can do about the current problems other than to try and keep your purchasing power by whatever means

and adjust your lifestyle and keep your powder dry for oppertunities

getting depressed about the the situation wont help, the sentiment on this thread recently leads me to suspect a bottom of sorts in the market soon, it pretty much mirrors world wide sentiment at the moment

and crowd psychology is usually wrong at turning points

as much as we would like to think the world is coming to an end, it wont and we have been here before and society will rise above this, sure it will be hard for many, but other than going after the ones that caused this mess "what can you do"?????

i do wonder if there is any happiness left in the world, because the way society is going we are setting up for world wide riots, and really what does that achieve, other than a few brief moments of releif from frustation built up inside

All this $ and fiat money collapse talk,

what else is there for money, if the worst ever was to happen and we have a meltdown of the fiat system (which i dont think will happen)

You will have bigger things to think about than your savings, like survival for food,

Depression talk leads to suicide (some of you guys might wanna think about that)

there will be a recovery in all this bad news, and i suspect society will eventually figure it out

untill then do what you can to protect your assets

some of you need to chill and get a beer or two,

karma after all we are in a buddhist country

Nouf, this thread has been excellent for generating thought-provoking ideas mixed at times with a little

humor. we are only discussing " what if " scenarios.

If you don't like what you have read, with a click of a mouse, you are free to read something else-no one is forcing you.

Some of us are open-minded enough to at least consider the possibility that more unusual nature of this financial crisis could

at the very least eventually lead to some unforseen changes in our lifestyles-e.g. Gordon Gecko 's " greed is good "

philosophy has just been tossed out of the window for a long time to come. You say the world is not coming to an end

but the psychology of the financial world may never be the same again.

I suggest to you that no one on this board is depressed or suicidal, but I would think most of the regular contributors

are philosophical enough and are adequately prepared mentally not to " throw themselves from one of the Pattaya condos "

[Chaimai]

Chaimai - I am worried about you.............!

Midas, please don't worry about me - I am the one who thinks things will be OK.

You are doing enough worrying for all of us

On a serious note, Nouf does make a good point about continual bad news having an impact on people's state of mind. We don't want anyone to become a member of the Pattaya Flying Club so it is important to remember that we WILL come through this.

What happens between now and the time we reach the light at the end of the tunnel is open to conjecture.

Edited February 24, 2009 by Chaimai

[HardenedSoul]

The media are attributing the Dow's drop last night to things like Obama's policies and

Citigroup and Bank of America possibly needing to be nationalised...but this is another

angle and this sounds even more serious....................?

Dow sinks to 12-year low on fears for AIG

Wall Street lurches downwards again amid more financial turmoil

AIG's collapse last September had threatened to bring down the global financial system..................

The $60bn loss, due to be announced next Monday, could force the company into bankruptcy unless new financing is arranged before then, analysts said. A board meeting is believed to have been set for Sunday. The company itself issued a statement saying it was not considering a legal filing for bankruptcy, although sources confirmed it has hired the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business...ig-1630411.html

This has the potential to represent the straw that broke the camel's back. AIG wrote an awful lot of credit default protection and despite suggestions that its bankruptcy wouldn't be the sytemically disastrous event it would've been in September last year, the fact is that nationalization of Citi or B of A, the collapse of Ford, GM, Chrysler or any of a number of mega-corporations would prove catastrophic for the US government.

Estimates of literally trillions of dollars-worth of liabilities are NOT an exaggeration. AIG wrote this protection at a time when a bankruptcy at, say, GM or Lehman was absolutely unthinkable. The US government faces a truly awful dilemma - does it pay out trillions to speculators on any credit events and then explain to Joe Sixpack and Sally Housecoat why it couldn't stump up 5 billion to keep Ford and the millions of jobs attached to it OR does it draw the line in the sand and renege on legally binding contracts, tell the counterparties to whistle for their money and invite comparisons with Russia vis a vis corporate governance ?

[churchill]

Not something one wants to hear in this jittery market

Russian general says watching Arctic militarization

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/...E51M3ES20090223

[midas]

Not something one wants to hear in this jittery market

Russian general says watching Arctic militarization

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/...E51M3ES20090223

Personally I am not worried about this so much right now because who could threaten

them- USA? They have too many other things to worry about

and oil looks like being cheap -unless Iran is attacked

and they retaliate by attacking oil facilities in the Middle East.

Am i missing something ? Agree / disagree ?

[Naam]

What happens between now and the time we reach the light at the end of the tunnel is open to conjecture.

let's hope the lights are not like these:

[AlexLah]

Very soon a few more of those legendary institutes are going broke and not only because the "Bet's" insurance contracts are going to be called.

That amount of money (doublle digit Trillions) is just not there. The counter parties can demand what they want, if the dosh ain't there what will they do?

What they will do is to try and grab as much as they can, that I surely believe, and could most likely crash the current financial system.

Similair things have been done before (contraction of money supply) and it will cause massive unrest, famine, dissease, just pick a one or all.

I am not mentioning another great war altough for myself I keep that scenario also in mind.

Hopefully a new and more honest and simple system will be developed and used in the near future, so that the kids of the kids of your kids, will be able to pay at least all the interest on the debt and slowly pay off a bit of the debt.

Edit: Is that a non moving train?

Edited February 24, 2009 by AlexLah

[churchill]

"That amount of money (doublle digit Trillions) is just not there."

It could be if the US prints it ?

[AlexLah]

There always have to be someone that wanna borrow that money to the US, buying bonds and stuff.

It is not as simple as just run the presses and send a few oiltanker sized cargo ships filled with USD to the counterparty.

And even if it was that simple who is gonna buy my USD and change it in THB or whatever other currency?

[Chaimai]

What happens between now and the time we reach the light at the end of the tunnel is open to conjecture.

let's hope the lights are not like these:

This is more like what I had in mind

[Jumber]

The right approach to the crisis is sitting back in the chair and doing NOTHING. If a bank is insolvent it should go bankrupt, if a guy can not pay back the mortgage he/she should lose the house and etc. If government starts giving out the cash to everybody as US and EU does it will bring new crisis, because economic agents become indifferent to the crisis, since they know that they will be bailed out. This will lead to stupid decisions and new, more severe crisis.

[tango]

'There will be blood'- Harvard financial guru Niall Ferguson predicts prolonged financial hardship, even civil war, before the ‘Great Recession' ends

…this is a very unfair crisis. The epicentre is the United States, but the rest of the world, and particularly America's trading partners, will get hit harder than the U.S.” “It suggests virtue is its own reward. You don't get any reward beyond the self-satisfaction of having been virtuous. This is a crisis of globalization. Therefore, the more an economy depends on the global system, the harder it hurts. Asian economies are going to be really slammed this year. But it's an unfair world. The U.S. won't be as badly affected as most countries.”

…People just have to get over the fact that their wealth wasn't worth what they thought it was in 2006. Whether it's their stock market portfolio or their housing. If we simply go back to where we were, in 2005, that's surely not the worst thing that could happen to us.”

Is the U.S. able to escape with less pain because it has more resources to throw at its problems?

Niall Ferguson: “Partly because they can throw so much at it, and they can do it at a lower cost than anybody else, because the U.S. retains the safe-haven status, which makes the world so unfair. Here is the world's biggest economy, which gave us subprime mortgages, rampant securitization, the collateralized debt obligation, Lehmann Brothers, Merrill Lynch. It is, in a sense, the fons et origo of this crisis. And yet, because it retains safe-haven status, in a global crisis, investors want to increase their exposure to the U.S. Hence, the dollar rally. Hence 10-year Treasuries down below 3 per cent yields. It's almost paradoxical that an American crisis ... reinforces the status of the United States as a safe haven.”

Surely that safe-haven status would be revoked if China loses faith in the U.S. ability to finance its debt?

Niall Ferguson: As you know, Chimerica – the fusion of China and America – is one of my big ideas. It's really the key to how the global financial system works, and has been now for about a decade. At the end of The Ascent of Money, I speculate about whether or not that relationship will survive. If it breaks down, then all bets are off, for the U.S. and indeed for Asia. I think that's really the key point. Both sides stand to lose from a breakdown of Chimerica, which is why both sides are affirming a commitment to it.”

“It's very interesting that the Chinese in the last week were saying such soothing things around the [secretary of State Hillary] Clinton visit. This was only days after Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner used the dreaded ‘m' word – currency manipulation.

This illuminating article goes on for 5 newsprint pages at:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...geRequested=all

(Possibly worth a glance...)

[midas]

This illuminating article goes on for 5 newsprint pages at:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...geRequested=all

(Possibly worth a glance...)

Very good article tango

And I love this part

“One possibility is that policy makers are lying in order to encourage

people and prevent depression from become a self-fulfilling psychological

conditions. That's why it's called a depression … Maybe they don't really

believe this, but they're saying it in order to cheer people up, and if they're

sufficiently consistent, perhaps people will start to believe it, and then it will

magically happen.”

Now politicians and policy makers would never do anything like that........

[AlexLah]

Uuuuuurrrr,

Guys, I wish you where here so I could show you and explain how I was able to predict the Feb 9.

It is a bit complicated, but I tell you to watch 13 and 16.

There is no such thing as:

It is all about:

[whiterussian]

729 = made in israel ? http://www.google.com/search?q=729+israel&...amp;startPage=1

if i were a rich man, la la la la la la la...

thought this interesting:

China prepares to buy up foreign oil companies - Telegraph24 Feb 2009 ... China is preparing to open a new phase in its race for the world's resources by using its huge currency reserves to buy foreign oil and gas

http://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+to+...amp;startPage=1

here be the S & P: http://www.jsmineset.com/wp-content/upload...p-500-index.pdf the DJI has already broken support.

Edited February 24, 2009 by whiterussian

[midas]

I think it was injust to treat Binyam Mohamed the way he was

and only fair to release him and I hope he is happy now he is free.

But why couldnt they have sent him to UK by First Class on British Airways

- even that would have cheaper than this...................?

And so the tax payers keep getting screwed...................... :D

£250,000 bill for return of 'torture' prisoner as luxury jet flies him from Guantanamo to Britain

Taxpayers will foot an estimated £250,000 bill for the return to Britain of an Ethiopian held at Guantanamo Bay.

Security and surveillance costs covering Binyam Mohamed's life in Britain will add an estimated £150,000 to the £100,000 paid to hire a plane for him.

The 30-year-old was released from the U.S. detention camp on Monday, vowing to expose British 'complicity' in his alleged torture in the seven years since he was arrested in Pakistan.

[AlexLah]

The army is preparing................

[midas]

The army is preparing................

interesting..............where did you see this ?

[midas]

This " trend " could be of concern if it spreads.....................

Savers withdraw record amount as interest rates fall

Savers withdrew a record £2.3 billion from their accounts last month as historically low interest rates forced millions of investors to look elsewhere for better returns on their money, official statistics showed.

The “cash drain”, as the BBA described it, was also a worrying symptom of rising unemployment. People who had lost their jobs were being forced to dip into their savings to pay for everyday expenses.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/persona...rates-fall.html

[AlexLah]

The army is preparing................

interesting..............where did you see this ?

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Is secret, learn how to use computer in other way's.

Edited February 25, 2009 by AlexLah

[quiksilva]

US defence contracts are bid for in open forums google and all will be revealed, hardly a secret!

The only secret that keeps bugging me is why Alex never makes direct links to the stories he posts here?

Have you noticed how he always posts jpegs and never actual webpages? I suspect he does this to make his posts more mysterious, but these screen captures are image files that can be readily tampered with, (photoshop anyone?) so they could say whatever he wants them to say!

(Hows that for a conspiracy theory?)

Edited February 25, 2009 by quiksilva

[AlexLah]

Exactly if you use some kind of search engine you can find out yourself.

I do not tamper with those files.

I make screendumps many times as sometimes webpages are being deleted changed whatever.

And come on, a bit of mystery is fun in this doom and gloom time.

[midas]

Exactly if you use some kind of search engine you can find out yourself.

I do not tamper with those files.

I make screendumps many times as sometimes webpages are being deleted changed whatever.

And come on, a bit of mystery is fun in this doom and gloom time.

Hey Alex ............... no more scaremongering ok !

[AlexLah]

Is not scaremongering lah

Just good old digging work

Why does the army need anti riot protective gear?

I'l keep digging.........

Edit: How a small island can be big (Plus website linky, ha ha)

Edited February 25, 2009 by AlexLah

[midas]

I really never expected to see this in China

China nears deflation trap as rail freight collapses

Railway freight in China’s Shanghai region plunged 31pc in January and industrial production fell 12pc, dashing hopes that Beijing’s stimulus policies will soon begin to fuel recovery.

The country’s central bank said the economic outlook was going to bad to worse was still gathering pace, rains the risk that China could tip into a Japan-style deflation trap.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economi...-collapses.html

[Naam]

US defence contracts are bid for in open forums google and all will be revealed, hardly a secret!

The only secret that keeps bugging me is why Alex never makes direct links to the stories he posts here?

Have you noticed how he always posts jpegs and never actual webpages? I suspect he does this to make his posts more mysterious, but these screen captures are image files that can be readily tampered with, (photoshop anyone?) so they could say whatever he wants them to say!

(Hows that for a conspiracy theory?)

nah... Alex would never do that! he is doing serious business only; such as faking an UFO, complaining about a conspirative bird shitting on his freshly washed car and thereby announcing the arrival of the apocalyptic riders on the ninth when the seventeenth seal is aligned with the gold price in Bangkok divided by the ambient temperature in ºF :D