“Black Tuesday”; après le deluge

[donsu]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1830.shtml


“Ring around the rosy
A pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down” --Children’s lyric

US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is sweating bullets right now.

In fact, a shrewd investor could probably make a fortune just figuring out what type of high-blood pressure medication he’s on and then betting the farm on the manufacturer.

Last week the stock market bull plopped down on an I.E.D. and wound up in intensive care, sucking food from a straw and drifting in and out of consciousness. That put Paulson on the road to South Korea, Japan and China, where he’ll meet up with his foreign counterparts to strategize on the deteriorating state of world markets. It’s a daunting task. The sudden rise in the yen has set off a brushfire that’s swept through the global system clearing out the deadwood and sending panicky fund managers out into the streets.

Paulson downplayed worries that the roiling markets were reason for concern. Before leaving for Japan, he confidently proclaimed that the global economy was “as strong as I’ve seen in a lifetime. All the economies are growing, inflation is low, and liquidity is high.”

That may be, but today’s market is built on an ocean of red ink and any upward movement in the yen is likely to send listing indexes to Davy Jones locker.

Glub, glub!

This is the most overextended, over-leveraged, debt-plagued stock market in the history of the world; a sudden gust from Tokyo or Beijing and down-it-goes like a straw house in a wind tunnel. That’s what happened last week when the yen lurched upward and Wall Street suddenly plummeted 416 points. That’s why Paulson quickly tossed his toothbrush and an extra pair of astronaut diapers in his duffle bag and scampered off to the Far East.

-snip-

This is a classic pyramid scheme, the only difference being that Wall Street’s survival depends on ever-increasing infusions of debt that masquerades as investment.
-snip-
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it ain't over

[Skink]

1. Everything's fine.

Bush is in the Whitehouse now. The adults are in charge.

[Selatius]

2. Foreign investment is what keeps the US economy afloat.

I believe half the US national debt is now financed by foreigners and foreign governments. The gov't doesn't care how many billions in treasury bonds it sells or to whom they sell as long as it has enough money to feed the war machine.

[tanyev]

3. Can they keep the balls in the air until Nov. 2008?

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they pulled out every desperate trick they have until then. If a Dem gets elected, then they would let everything come crashing down. Then the RW spinmeisters would crow about it for the next four years.

[Karenina]

4. House of cards...