Hmmmm nobody else here thinks that the high oil prices were one of the most important reasons for the crisis detonation? :hmm:

148$ oil means brutal inflation, which in turn means high interest rates, which in turn means many people can't pay the 45 years variable interest rate mortgage they stupidly signed, which in turn means.....BOOOOMM, a torpedo under the waterline of many banks.

...and a lesson about not encouraging people to take out high risk loans that obviously will become problematic to make the repayments on one day....not learnt/heeded by the greedy, profit driven banking sector.

Shortage of liquidity in the banking system doesn't help.

Inflation doesn't help either.

There is a tumor in the system, very deep inside, and it has infested both bones and neural system. Removing it is a very bloody, painful and risky operation. But it needs to be done. when you are sick, it is too late for prevention, and you need to suffer what you have to. Living healthier was for the time before. In the past 12 months, hundreds of billions have been pumped into preventing shaken major players from falling. Longterm stablizing result: almost zero.

And isn't it that when banks can make profits at others' costs, they do not want to share with anybody and even betray customers and make wrong calculations about real costs for investements, but if they mess it up and have to pay and found they brought themselves into troubles, they call for help and social solidarity - and suddenly the taxpayer is expected to pay the damage in their place?

the system itself is th problem, and in the end ou culture. Our culture encourages brutality and egoism at the cost of others - if you can make a profit from that. Seen that way the crisis is what our societies deserved. The problem reaches far beyond the obvious, superficial facade.

ZOMG!

85 billion taxpayer dollars just went to bailout AIG. 85 billion! the mind boggles. That's got to be more than the company has ever made!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7620127.stm

long live nationalisation!

Agree. The only way to look at it from the taxpayer's point of view is by considering that you are trying to help some thousands of innocent workers in that bank. But whenever public help is needed, IMHO it should always mean destitution of the whole directives of the bank and forcing them to pay the black hole they have created, elseif going to prison.

Agree even more :yep: But the sad thing is that probably nobody will learn from this :shifty:

Socialist perspectives on economic issues are always most amusing.

While technically private enterprises, FNMA and FHLMC are quasi-governmental agencies put together for one purpose. That purpose was the feeling that all are entitled to own a home whether they can afford it or not. In the 1990s great pressure was put on financial institutions to grant loans to the "less fortunate," who could not qualify for a loan under present guidelines. These two agencies were formed to purchase these bad loans from banks and thereby insulate them from the consequences of their coerced foolishness. In a way you could call it hush money. People do what they are paid to do* in any sort of society. Greed is irrelevent in this equation. The responsibility lies with who makes the money available and what they are paying for. The government (disguised as mild-mannered FNMA and FHLMC) paid the banks to make bad loans. We got lots of them!

As such entities often do, FNMA and FHLMC proceeded to eat up mortgages until they owned the vast majority of home loans in the country. At this point, they were so large that failure would be catastropic to the economy. When the housing bubble created by the easy money these agencies made available inevitably burst, the US Government had no choice but to reveal the true nature of these fake private corporations by taking over. That was the situation all along. It was just disguised.

What we are seeing is the predictable consequence of dishonestly applying socialist policies in a capitalist society. If we decide that it is in the national interest for the people who earn enough money to be forced to pay for houses of people who do not, then just pass a law, confiscate the money and do it. Setting up paper tigers and knocking them down for public amusement is beneath contempt.

*Rockin Robbinsism #5

Does that go for AIG, Merill Lynch and Lehman too?

This is what happens when loans for homes are made to those who don't qualify, or will knowingly go into default. It all looked great when things were on the upside. Only thing is, nobody was talking about the downside, as if there could never be one.

Same attitude prevailed before the crash of 1929, that sent the world into the dpression that led up to WWII.

This is one of the reasons the Founding Fathers of the United States of America tried to keep a central banking institution like the Federal Reserve from ever coming into being. But they also had a thing called 'debtors prison' in those days. Today we call it bankruptcy. I think the latter makes people think a bit more before they act.

In Norway allmost all banks must pay into a fund that the state control. This fund is used to guarantee that all deposits upto 400.000$. This means that you don't get panic withdrawal of money when the banks are in enough trouble allready.
There is nothing wrong with socialistic approaches in a market economy, but they need to be clear and equal for all partisipants, so that the goal of a free competition is conserved.

BTW I read an article in a paper two years ago predicting this, a colapse in the economy. This is of course not sensational but the reason they had was very good and easy to understand. Wearing pink shirts became "in" again!, and thats the clearest sign that the economy is unhealthy.. :)

Pelosi says "Hey its not the Dem's fault".

Why dont we just look into this and see whos 'fault' it really is.:hmm:

Oil makes up almost half of Norway's total exports, and the oil business is nationalized, and Norway is still in debt. Almost 500 billlion dollars in debt, in fact.

Norway may be on the up now, but they'lll have to come up with something else when their oil resources are exhausted or demand for them falls.

Well banks here in Australia are doing fine, Billion dollar profits for each mid and full year report! They just keep uping the fees and charges!:stare:

I'm with a credit union, no fees, no charges, and all profits returned to members through improvements in services. I'm not going near a bank again if I can help it!

My gold is going up.:up: Its not too late people to get some today, move!
WaMu, AIG, Wachovia and Citigroup are on danger, its not just the investors. FED has used half its capability, it cant save all! Its hyperinflation or recession! You dont want to be the last in line of a bank run! Finland had a Great Depression size depression in the early 90s. FED people have been to Finland to study how that was hadled. One way was establishing a "rubbish bank" where all the "rubbish loans" were gathered. But we still have people who are affected by those times!

EU is going to follow suit, especially UK, Spain and Baltics. :nope:

And HBOS is bought out by Halifax.

Hm. It certainly is to be expected that banks buy other banks in this crisis. However. Imagine the ba´nks reuslting from these fusions! Even bigger banks! Even more power and influence concentrated in even less institutions and hands! It's not that these institutions are driven by wellmeaning and altruism, but by profit-craving. If you go to a bank today to buy one of their "products", you get told a lot of crap and worthless misinformation, and whenever some investigators examine their business practices with private customers, they find in very very many cases the hidden costs of a product to be three times as high than what people get told and persuaded with in the high-gloss advertising.

Do I really want such institutions without any democrati legitimation for their enormous power in economics and politics to become even more powerful? the fewer players there are, the more monopolism - and it already is a swamp right now.

Looking beyond the imidiate things and watching how our civilisation as a whole gets influences by the banking "culture", it seems it can only become worse, seen that way.

Im pumping my next paycheck to gold, you cant loose!

A mishap:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...578924,00.html

:dead:

Small change tough, New York today will be chaos.