Financial topics

[aedens]

http://www.businessinsider.com/david-st ... oney+Game)
Here's the heart of the matter. The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding. If you had a (former Fed Chairman) Paul Volcker running the Fed today 7/8— utterly fearless and independent and willing to scare the hell out of the market any day of the week — you wouldn't have half, you wouldn't have 95 percent, of the speculative positions today.

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Obama+Justice+ ... ar-2012%29+

Moral hazzard and moral decay seem to be just a opinion strapped on the taxpayers back. Reminds me of a story when a guy pulled some wallpaper
off and the house collapsed. The point is the house got in that condition one day at a time. It appears game theory runs its course until it cannot.
Meanwhile some are moving forward.
OT: http://www.jamestown.org/

[OLD1953]

That's beginning to become known as the "new" reality. If the pure consumerism of "buy any crap with a label" is really dead, then the notion of "the consumer will spend if ----" is also dead. When THAT percolates into the market fund of general knowledge, then we'll slide down to true market value for a great many consumer related stocks.

The little things go first. Starbucks and all the other retail outlets that assumed the consumer would buy luxury goods are slamming up and down like rockets on every rumor of recovery/recession. Apparently they have no value besides potential sales.

[Higgenbotham]

The last Great Depression survivor that I personally know died recently. Surviving the Great Depression by my definition doesn't include those who were scared children who don't talk much about it, but those adults or near adults who had to deal with it and talked about it the rest of their lives. This man quit high school and went to work for 50 cents an hour to help support his family. He told me stories of how, when his 10 hour shift ended, he went into the machine shop at night to learn how to operate the machines in hopes he could someday make a better wage. He told me that, in early 1937, he saw a newspaper headline with 2 inch high letters proclaiming, "THERE'S LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL" and as a young person that gave him great hope things would get better, only to see the disappointment of the 1937 year end collapse. He told me about how he didn't walk through certain neighborhoods because it was whispered that cannibalism took place there.

"I guess he won't live to see the financial apocalypse that he felt was just around the corner, though I have to think when the last of those who have lived through the Depression get done warning everyone because they are now silent, that is when it can really come. I really do believe that."

I've asked him over the years how this crisis compares with the Depression. First, he considers it a crisis era that will be worse than the 1930s in his opinion. The primary problem he sees is that the people today are less moral and less competent than the people of his era. In his words, the stock of people who built the great manufacturing cities of this country is gone and it will not come back. He believes current generations of Americans are incapable of building anything as great as the America he knew.

[Trevor]

I knew a Great Depression survivor, at least until she died in 2009. She told me that even though her family had very little money, they were able to survive because they were able to have enough food due to the fact that she lived in a small town. Not only that, but she told me that if it ever happened again, it would be even worse because our population was far more urbanized than it was 80 years ago.

[Higgenbotham]

He told me the same thing. He said, first, nearly every family had family on a farm, so they could go back to the farm if need be and have a place to sleep and something to eat. Second, food production was more local so that even if you didn't have family on a farm, the source of the food was closer.

[Trevor]

Things are different this time around. Thankfully, I still live in a small town, which is better than being in the middle of a big city when the new depression begins. I remember her stories quite well but she was also confident that nothing of the sort could ever happen again.

[Higgenbotham]

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/03/jud ... ty_ba.html

Jefferson County Bankruptcy: Judge says case can proceed
Published: Monday, March 05, 2012, 7:00 AM

Jefferson County has $4.23 billion in total debt including $3.14 billion in sewer debt. The county's collapse earned a place in the record books, far eclipsing the previous biggest municipal bankruptcy -- a $1.7 billion filing by Orange County, California, in 1994 -- even when inflation is factored in.

This could be enough to start a domino effect - and it's not on anybody's radar - why?

[Trevor]

probably because it would interfere with the "V-shaped recovery" party line that we keep getting. California is falling apart, and since I live there, i see it firsthand. It's quite possible that this state will start a chain reaction in the country. With the DJIA back around 13,000, many believe the bubble is back on. you'd think they'd figure it out, but I suppose not.

[aedens]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... nekzRuu8wo

Sorry to hear on your loss H, since you cannot replace that kind of people.
I have a few left to rely on so I feel very fortunate. The guy I know and still
have around worked at Boeing for eight a day and School eight hours a day
during the War. A no nonsence fellow who tells it like it is. He retired
from the City of Chicago many years later. An amazing person indeed.

New orders for manufactured goods in January decreased $4.8 billion or 1.0 percent to $462.6 billion.
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/briefroom/BriefRm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxo7V2HyYS4&feature=fvsr <---- reading music for lehman below.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lehman-em ... 43282.html

[Higgenbotham]

T, makes sense, and Stockton is in trouble too and probably some you know about that I don't.

a, I feel fortunate he lived to be 96 and I heard what he wanted to say. My Grandpa, 98, went 1 month after 9-11 and he could have hung on longer but that was all he wanted to see. This other man certainly could have seen 98 too but he didn't want to and that says more than any words he could speak now. He worked at Douglas Aircraft during the war and several shared an apartment. They worked and slept in shifts. Well into his 80s, he would buy cars that insurance companies had junked and economically rework them to look like new.