Most of those who were warning that this financial crisis would happen

[Subdivisions]

were called and considered chicken little conspiracy theorists proferring doom and gloom. Then, when it comes to pass, some of the same people who were making those charges are daring to participate in the discussion now that it has indeed happened. Some who scorned others who were predicting THE RISK Great Depression were ridiculed as pessimists. Where are you now?

I'll give you another "conspiracy theory" to deride. Peak Oil. Now, ridicule me so I can bookmark this thread and bring it to your attention when the #1 headline on every channel is "Why weren't we warned about Peak Oil?"

Edited to add: Ummmm....I don't see any derision of me yet for believing in Peak Oil. C'mon!

[wtmusic]

1. Are we in a Great Depression? I didn't even know.

You're a bit premature.

[Subdivisions]

3. Really? What is the technical economic term for a credit market freeze? I

am series.

Ok, just for you, I adjust my comment to "severe economic downturn". Is that accurate enough for you?

Edited to add: There, I added a couple of words to my OP to qualify it a little better.

[wtmusic]

6. Credit markets have frozen? You're premature about that, too.

They've tightened, but they needed to.

Can you give me some stats to qualify your statement that the US is undergoing a "severe economic downturn"? The Dow is up currently 237 pts, flush with people buying stock who disagree with you.

[Subdivisions]

7. No. I'm not going to give you anything. This thread is about

people who warned this was coming and were called conspiracy theorists and doomers. We are in the midst of what those doomers predicted. Case closed.

[wtmusic]

8. OK suit yourself

but you sound like an ass crowing about how you were right on something that hasn't happened yet.

[Subdivisions]

9. And you sound like an ass because I never said that I personally

predicted this ECONOMIC DOWNTURN. But I watched and listened as others did and I DID NOT PARTICIPATE in calling them CTs, doomers, or pessimists.

So, what do you think about Peak Oil?

[wtmusic]

10. I don't know much about Peak Oil

I should but I don't use much oil, and there are a host of other reasons to abandon oil that I'm actively in support of.

[Subdivisions]

11. Cool. We agree on something. I like that. n/t

[tama]

15. You don't use much oil?

Do you eat?

Food that was produced with oil, processed packed with oil in oil, moved several times from location to location with oil on roads made from oil, sold at a shop build with oil, carried to home build with oil in a plastic pack made of oil in a car made mostly of oil running on oil on road made of oil... etc.

[wtmusic]

16. Peak vegetable oil?

:rofl:

My tuna isn't packed in petroleum. I hope.

[tama]

22. Well...

if and when "they" want to use vegetable oils as biofuel for their cars instead of feading people...

[NickB79]

28. The trawler that catches your tuna burns diesel fuel

The truck that transports that tuna from dock to processing plant uses diesel.

The processing plant that converts that tuna into convenient cans of packed tuna uses petroleum in some form.

The workers at the processing plant burn gasoline to get to work in their cars and trucks.

The equipment used to mine the metals for the cans your tuna is packed in burn diesel.

The trucks that then transport the packaged tuna from the warehouses to the stores use diesel.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915

"Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1."

I'm not trying to be snarky or condescending; it's just mind-boggling when you think about how much we depend on oil in our daily lives.

[GrannyK]

31. Well no, but your tuna

was caught from a boat that used fuel (petroleum) to get to the catch area and bring it back for processing. Petroleum was used to manufacture nearly all components of that boat.
Petroleum is used as a base for all herbicides, fertilizers, pesticides used to grow the crops that you eat. Petroleum is used to fuel the large tractors, combines and harvesters used to grow those crops. Fuel is used to bring those crops to the processors to prepare it for the market and then used to bring that processed food to the market after it has been packaged in plastic products produced from petroleum products.

Petroleum products are also used in virtually every product you now use in everyday life.
Synthetic fabrics, scotch tape dispensers, plastic file tabs, computer components, cell phones, electrical wiring, pvc piping that brings water into your home. I could go on and on but please, just look around your home or work place and do a mini survey of synthetic products produced from petroleum.

We will not actually 'run out' of oil any time 'real' soon. It will just get more and more expensive to produce, and more expensive to buy and use.

Personally, I'd like to focus on alternative energy or green energy to ensure that we have some oil left for many of the other uses instead of energy. But the corps care not a whit for that. They are only interested in the bottom line of their profits today or next week. Not the bottom line of humanity in the next decade or century.

edited to correct typo

[mike_c]

2. proud to give the first recommendation....

:thumbsup:

[Virginia Dare]

4. You make an excellent hypocrisy cop..

as as one who has been ridiculed as a tin foil wearing hyperbolic conspiracy theorist, I thank you.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. Agreed.... but hell, I've had arguments with the same people on Global Warming

I am not happy about our country's mess, I got out of my 401s and the market
2 years ago. I'm hurting and am not gloating. I don't like being vindicated on something like this n
or feel a need for it.

I just hope that the silver lining out
of this colossal shit storm is that we can finally get some real progressive legislation
out of this and a change of national consciousness for the SUV wal-mart crowd

[Celebration]

12. Everybody who predicted this "economic 911"

Said it was a planned event and a power grab. They have been saying it for two to three years.

After looking at Hank's bill, who could argue?? They are building a firewall around a few select firms, and one person has the power to use 700 billion dollars to save their butts so they can rake us over the coals for the rest of eternity (coup for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and the like).

Goodbye regional banks!

This is a complete power grab, based on fear.

It will mostly accomplish the goal, and it really ticks me off.

[Subdivisions]

19. 'Said it was a planned event and a power grab.' That was the gist

of the warnings that were called "cospiracy theory" and were wholly dismissed.

And here we are with the Pigmen going for total control of the financial system. Once that bill passes and they have their power grab, (I'll lay down another conspiracy theory) there will be no election. After all, why seize control of the financial system in a http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/welcome-to-the-final-stag_b_127990.html">coup only then to turn it over to an increasingly likely Democratic President and Secretary of the Treasury who can then overturn the coup? Unless the coup perpetrators, with the assistance of a sparkling new law supported by the very people being ripped-off (I think DU refers to these people as "those for the bailout"), are satisfied with just three months of their power?

[Celebration]

23. pretty good alliance

of conservative republicans and liberal democrats defeated at least the first version of this. The powers that be may be slightly concerned at this point.

That alliance could be a problem for them.

I'm not sure Obama truly understands what is happening. If he does get elected (keep in mind the voting machines can be rigged), well, we'll just have to see. I am 100% Obama supporter, naturally, but he really needs to get more in a kick butt mode (as opposed to "change").

[dixiegrrrrl]

26. Apparently Bush gave them the money while we were not looking

it says here:
..."the $700 billion "bailout" was designed to 'bait' and then 'switch'. A distraction from what has been REALLY happening.

'On Wednesday, September 24, right in the middle of the fight over billions of taxpayer dollars slated to bail out Wall Street, the House of Representatives passed a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without a murmur of public protest or any meaningful press comment at all. (The New York Times gave the matter only three short paragraphs buried in a story about another appropriations measure.)'"

Full article:
http://tinyurl.com/4gwqcf

President expected to sign bills totaling $1.334 trillion

http://tinyurl.com/3wy3t5

Such a huge bill usually would dominate the end-of-session agenda with fanfare, photo ops and press coverage, but has received little attention and fallen off the radar of most media outlets due to the domination of discussions on the congressional bailout of Wall Street.

[Celebration]

30. that had to be done

We have a runaway budget deficit, and if the Fed did not inject huge amounts of dollars into the system to fund the budget deficit, we would go down the tanker REALLY fast.

[2speak]

13. That question is easy

they are the ones for the bailout!

[tjwash]

14. Nothing has changed.

I'm no more freaked out by what transpired on Wall Street yesterday, than I have been for the past 8 years.

The only difference is, now that is serves their purpose, the top 1 percent robber barons that create these artificial "crisis'" on the stock market are now telling the media outlets they own and operate to publicize and report daily how they are knocking off the country one person, one family, one town at a time. They have been doing that for the past eight years.

The truly sad thing is; that a lot of people have not grabbed the clue that until American workers stop investing their life savings in corporations whose profit margin is dependent on fucking over American workers, nothing is going to change. Sorry, but Wall Street throwing a temper tantrum yesterday is not going to freak me out.

The thing that pisses me off, though is look at the DOW today...up by 259 points. :woohoo:

Good news right? Heh...the fat cats are buying back the stocks they dumped yesterday, and at a bargain to boot. They get to profit twice from their seedy manipulations. Again...nothing that hasn't been happening for the past 8 years. Hell, if any regular people like us tried that, we would be looking at looooooooooong prison terms, instead theses bastards are looking at receiving 700 billion additional dollars. Oh and don't think they won't get it eventually; they will. They'll provoke panic and break the resolve of the House, and they will get their bailout ransom. Hell the gutless fucking cowards that reside in this country will probably hand it over to them and apologize for inconveniencing these sons-of-bitches. They'll get it along with our Social Security, and the money we currently put aside for social programs, and pesky little things like Health, Education and Welfare, as well.

This is what you call having things tilted in your favor. No matter what happens, things are rigged for the Robber Barons and against us. One of the best quotes from the late great George Carlin's best rants sums it up perfectly; "it's a big fucking club....and you aint in it."

[The Backlash Cometh]

17. Bill O'Reilly expected you to cross the t's and dot the i's.

No question there is new deflection taking place on the pundit shows. Like when Rice said that no one could have predicted it.

[Geek_Girl]

18. Umm.. Still have a job still have a credit card oh and the stock market is up today

In fact I may even be getting a raise soon and in my field there are more jobs in my area than there was last year this time.



My father who is a small business man in Miami is doing quite well also. Sorry just not seeing the effects of this. So you statement seems a bit premature IMHO

[Subdivisions]

21. It's not my statement that makes this crisis so. Are you saying there

is no financial crisis? I can only go by the information I'm given and what I am seeing. I posted last night that I can't tell there is a crisis for, if you look at my area of North Texas, this crisis is far from obvious. But, whether or not we see it, all input indicates that there is and those who were predicting such a crisis were laughed right out of the room.

[Geek_Girl]

27. I see the stock market re-adjusting to a knee jerk reaction

That's what I see. I see financial institutions being bought out by other financial institutions (OMG you mean their is invest capital out there to rectify this without a bailout of our tax dollars). I've seen homes foreclosures because people can't afford the cost of their homes. Home prices are to high and must come down.

I haven't heard of any small businesses closing do to the lack of credit. I haven't heard of anyone not being able to access their ATM and I haven't seen any of the major disasters that were predicted to happen last week by the doom sayers on this board.

[Celebration]

29. so this is a "fake" crisis

If so, why advance this bill? We certainly don't need to burden the taxpayers for some stupid bill advanced in a "fake" credit crisis. If it is fake, then they know it is fake as well. Yet, they give us a bill that is supposed to avert an emergency situation. Why? To what end?

By the way, anyone who thinks this crisis is fake needs to learn how to read the St. Louis Federal Reserve banking statistics. Do an online search and look at the "net non borrowed banking reserves."

One way to avert this crisis might be to stop the "mark to market" rules. But, the powers that be don't want that changed, do they, because they want so-called "transparency". Or do they "want" a crisis, whether it is fake or real, because it advances their agenda.

Remember the Patriot Act, and how that was sold to us?

Everyone needs to try using some critical thinking skills, and they may figure this all out.

[Geek_Girl]

32. IMHO I don't give a rat's ass if it's a real or fake crisis

I don't believe in trickle down economics never have and never will. So weather this crisis is real or fake (though I have yest to see any proof of real economic disaster) it is completely irrelevant.

Trickle down economics does not work. This so called "crisis" proves trickle down economics does not work. So why do you want to put tax payer money in this plan. There are far better methods to shore up our economy. Read your History. What happened before and after the great depression? Take a look at the robber barons that pulled the same shit in the 1920's. For Christ sake one of the robber barons great grandson is sitting in the White house crafting this bail out. Wake up your being bam boozled!

[Celebration]

34. Not me

We may need some taxpayer money, but the way it is being proposed gives Hank the powers of Monetary God. He gets to use our money to run his own hedgefund, to promote crony capitalism. It is complete BS and the 60% of house Democrats that voted for this........well, I have no use for them.

We probably do need a bailout of sorts-- NOT THIS ONE!! Scrap it. Start all over. Keep calling representatives.

[Celebration]

25. It doesn't matter if the crisis is fake or real

Don't you see that? The purpose is a takeover of the financial system. The crisis only has to seem real enough to pass the bill.

I happen to think the crisis *is* real. I can't prove that it was planned. But you sure have to give credit to the people that predicted this. And they thought it was planned. So this is akin to giving kudos to the National Enquirer for being accurate about Edwards. We may not like the messenger, and we may not like the message. But, they sure are good at being omniscient. Coincidence?

[femrap]

20. I have been dismissed as crazy by people who

prefer to keep their heads up their asses. The Debt created by this massive Greed has to end...and the ending will not be pretty. Pray we don't have a drought or flood....back in the '30's, it was the Dust Bowl that turned the economy into a Depression w/ hunger. And today we have so many more people and so few who live on farms. Not pretty.

And I believe in Peak Oil...are people stupid enough to believe that oil grows on trees? There is a finite amount of it. And as we use it, it kills our environment. Why do people hate solar panels??? I want a solar powered home, geothermal heat, and my own well. And I would love a composting toilet!!

take care!

[tama]

24. Composting toilet

Mmmmmh! "What comes from the garden, goes back to the garden."

[femrap]

35. Would that be the

'circle of life?'

[Igel]

33. Still here.

Contra http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/12/three-different.html , I still think that Bagehot's rule--which is rather the opposite of what would be needed for deflation like we saw in the Depression--is what's needed.

Of course, it has to be coupled with properly valuing the mortage-based securities that are "out there", many, probably most, of which are undervalued.

Untreated, it can lead to deflation, but it can also lead, I think, to inflation; so whether we go depression or rampant inflation I think is an open question (largely because I lack expertise and information).

While the first scenario deLong discusses is still viable, and I think deLong's wrong, eventually it can become indistinguishable from the second scenario and can be treated as such, in part: Not all assets will rise "properly" in response to such treatment. And it's still treating the symptoms; when you're done treating them you're still left with the first problem, and the best you can do is hope that it's become a smaller problem.

In this case, odds are it'll become a larger problem the longer it goes on.

The problem is that not all massive economic disasters are "depressions". You choose the term, you're stuck with its meaning.