Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4

Author Topic: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN  (Read 9852 times)

Creamcorn

  • Bay Watcher
  • [FANCIFUL]
    • View Profile
Re: AIG is DOWN
« Reply #30 on: September 19, 2008, 09:56:51 pm »

Well just for the record, we're probably more socialist than China economically right now.

USA #1!

Since the news hasn't carried out how big the story is...

Here's an idea of how fucked we are.




All I know is that when graphs spike up or down it either means a very bad thing or a very good thing.

By the context of this topic I'm guessing it maybe a bad thing. ???
Logged
"OH NO! That carp is gulping at me menacingly, even though it cannot really threaten me from here on land!  I KNOW! I'll dodge into the water, where I'll be safe!"

Cthulhu

  • Bay Watcher
  • A squid
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #31 on: September 19, 2008, 10:02:25 pm »

The first one is showing how rapidly the government is accumulating debt, and the second is showing how much money the government is using to bail out Depository Companies.

Also,
Quote
most of all, DON'T PANIC.

Agree.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it panic-selling that caused the stock market to crash in 1929?
Logged
Shoes...

Immortal

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #32 on: September 20, 2008, 07:33:01 pm »

When America sneezes Canada catchs a cold. Ever heard that? It should be, When America sneezes the World catchs a cold.

Since Im pretty sure we have all decided most of us are fucked by the US's debt lets move on to something else. I say we talk bout their healthcare system.
Logged

Royal Surveyor

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #33 on: September 20, 2008, 08:36:04 pm »

If you want to get your hackles up about the US healthcare system, read Critical Care: How Healthcare in America Became Big Business - And Bad Medicine by Barlett and Steele.  I read it in preparation for medical school interviews and kind of didn't think I wanted to be a doctor for a week or two after reading it.

Then I read it again.  The US healthcare system is a joke; one particular company gave their CEO a billion... with a B... dollars compensation for a year of work.  Now, I figure a CEO can probably be given 3-5% of what he makes the company do above what it did before in cash, maybe bonuses on top of that if he did something really spectacular, but a billion dollars just mad, considering that the company didn't do a third of a trillion in business. 

Then, on the other side of the coin, the US taxpayers, again, are picking up the tab where the corporations aren't doing what they say they're doing.

Logged

Torak

  • Bay Watcher
  • God of Gods of Blood.
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #34 on: September 20, 2008, 08:43:30 pm »

Corporations Lying,

Children Crying,

Countries Dying,
Logged
As you journey to the center of the world, feel free to read the death announcements of those dwarves that suffer your neglect.

One billion b-balls dribbling simultaneously throughout the galaxy. One trillion b-balls being slam dunked through a hoop throughout the cosmos. I can feel every single b-ball that has ever existed at my fingertips, I can feel their collective knowledge channeling through my veins. Every jumpshot, every rebound and three-pointer, every layup, dunk and free throw.

Aqizzar

  • Bay Watcher
  • There is no 'U'.
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #35 on: September 20, 2008, 08:47:57 pm »

Corporations Lying,

Children Crying,

Countries Dying,

Cancer is killing,

Texaco's spilling,

The whole world's gone to hell,

But how are you?
Logged
And here is where my beef pops up like a looming awkward boner.
Please amplify your relaxed states.
Quote from: PTTG??
The ancients built these quote pyramids to forever store vast quantities of rage.

Duke 2.0

  • Bay Watcher
  • [CONQUISTADOR:BIRD]
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #36 on: September 20, 2008, 08:51:21 pm »


 But we must remember one important thing: The whole damn world is doing this crap. On a smaller scale sure, but there is not one country in the world free from stuff like this.

 So remember: Let us focus on the problem, not the country with the problem. Too many people seem to get a bit confused about this.

 Then again, we don't know what goes on at Sealand...
Logged
Buck up friendo, we're all on the level here.
I would bet money Andrew has edited things retroactively, except I can't prove anything because it was edited retroactively.
MIERDO MILLAS DE VIBORAS FURIOSAS PARA ESTRANGULARTE MUERTO

IndonesiaWarMinister

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #37 on: September 21, 2008, 03:40:31 am »

They are now conspiring against the Good Old World! Destroy them! Kill them! No mersi!
Logged

Cthulhu

  • Bay Watcher
  • A squid
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #38 on: September 21, 2008, 11:58:07 am »

Corporations Lying,

Children Crying,

Countries Dying,

Cancer is killing,

Texaco's spilling,

The whole world's gone to hell,

But how are you?

Doctors are healing

Thunder is pealing

Michael Jackson is feeling

and as a consequence

Children are crying again.

Logged
Shoes...

Royal Surveyor

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #39 on: September 21, 2008, 06:18:52 pm »

Wait until the CDO market starts to unwind....
Logged

Strife26

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #40 on: September 21, 2008, 11:41:44 pm »

Remember that nothing is 'lost' in crisisi like this. Just confidence. There are still just as many factories, stores, and farms in America. There are other things to be worried about.

Such as:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Logged
Even the avatars expire eventually.

Anfold

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #41 on: September 22, 2008, 09:40:30 am »


Such as:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

China is in more trouble than we are (they own most of our national debt, and Hong Kong is all   :-* with Wall Street), and, there is a major problem for everyone.  Trickle down economics  is absolute bs, it all trickles up.  Let me explain.

The general wealth of a country is its GDP, which by and large is generated by the working class.  Te working class in America (which includes the rapidly shrinking middle class) is the largest consumer of goods worldwide.  Our luxury loving populace powers the economies of most of the third world, Japan, China and pretty much any body who exports their goods here.  Thanks to the massive tax breaks given to corporations who outsource their jobs, the American worker has become an unworthwile investment, leading to the stagnation of pay and benefits.  Thanks to the way our culture thinks, having your own home is the largest indicator of economic success, you have a place to call your own, you have something you can borrow against in hard times, and when your children finish college getting a degree for a job that no longer exists, they can get their old room back.  So, when the bank suddenly decides that you are now qualified for a loan to get a house, you jump on it faster than a New York governor and a hooker.  The price of your home becomes overinflated, the banks pretty much force people to refinance at the higher rates, and now you can still make the payments, barely, pretty much zero of your paycheck goes to the bank, and if you are in pretty much any state that doesn't swing blue, joining a union is out of the question.  Now come in speculators driving the price of gas up to over for dollars a gallon, food prices rising, a national debt that makes your money worth less and less.

You Europeans may be wondering 4$ a gallon so what?  But remember that most Americans  have to drive more than twice in a day that you do in a month, and there are a hell of a lot more of us.  Suddenly, people have to choose between food and work or losing their house.  Since you can;t work if you can't eat, and you can't keep a house without a job, millions of homes are foreclosed on. Foreclosure costs the banks a hell of a lot of cash. Now come the fun part.  The people you financed with sold your loans to investments banks, packaged up with a lot of other homes and sold as a security.  Suddenly, they need some cash to conduct day to day business.  This is quite common in the financial markets, as you can have trillions tied up in very profitable collateral, but they only pay off at certain times of the year.

  You (the financial bank) pay back the loans when the money comes in, and keep a hefty profit for yourself.  But your credit rating is now pretty much 0 because of your shitty securities that you own, and nobody will lend you any money or buy the craptastic properties from you.  The market smells blood.  Turns out the Republicans took the ban of off short selling stock.  Suddenly, every floor trader and day trader worth their salt is shorting the stock because they know they will make a lot of cash, and they don't care that this will drive you bankrupt because they're making money [I[god damnit[/I] so let the system collapse.  Suddenly, insurance firms like AIG and mother-fucking bull balled Merryl Lynch are going down the drain and nobody wants to lend any money to anybody.

There is no more credit.

At all.

The crisis wasn't because major firms were losing money, it was because all the credit lines dried up faster than Cindy Mcain's <cough> when John comes to bed. 

Every single damn business in America operates off of the credit system.  All of them, every single damn one.  You cut off the credit flow in the fucking great depression again in less than a month, and pretty much every other industrialized nation (save New Zealand, go figure) is pulled into the black hole of credit crisis.  Inflation skyrockets, and the US starts to resemble Somalia, only the warring tribes have less trouble telling each other apart, as people fight for food and jobs. Okay that was an exaggeration, but still, the vast majority of Americans will lose their jobs and be forced onto the streets.  The American worker drives the economy.  The largest consumer of goods (25% last I checked) has suddenly gone on welfare.

So, because of lenders who didn't give a damn, companies devaluing our workforce and Washington deregulating the markets (cause the twenties were so much fucking fun I guess), we are all one poorly made decision from global depression. 

But hey, War's are good for the economy (if your the US anyway) and Russia keeps fucking around with Georgia... next stop WWIII. Lets all get on the Doomtrain.  Whoo-Whoo.

Tl;dr Strife is full of it.

And we should all move to New Zealand cause it has mountains, oceans, sheep and seems like a nice place to watch it all come crashing down from.
Logged

Royal Surveyor

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #42 on: September 22, 2008, 06:57:18 pm »

So, because of lenders who didn't give a damn, companies devaluing our workforce and Washington deregulating the markets (cause the twenties were so much fucking fun I guess), we are all one poorly made decision from global depression. 

The 20s were a hoot, hence "The Roaring Twenties."  The Crash at the end, and the subsequent decade long hangover after the party was the problem. 

The thing is, we're kind of seeing a similar thing here.  From the inception of the Graham-Leach-Bliley bill in '99, things have been a party... until now.  The tech crash of '00, telecom and 9/11 in '01, and the accounting scandals of '02 were all sucked up pretty nicely, so much that in about three months, things were back on a decent course (minus some individual money). 

I believe that the real crap is still in the pipe.  There's a market called the 'collateralized debt swap' market, in which collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) are traded to the tune of $75 trillion (yes, with a T; debt swapping on the order of a little more than the global domestic product value).  None of it is regulated, there's little to go about on concerning the value of the CDO other than what the institution (it's institution only in the market, no private investors) claims.  It smacks of problems that companies (Worldcom, Tyco, Enron) in strongly deregulated markets faced when doing mark to market accounting: there's a temptation to keep marking things up, until you can't, and then the emperor has no clothes. 

Should this market begin to unwind with considerable pace... well... we'll see an unraveling of global trade unprecedented since the run up to WW1, and a likely temporary cessation of global markets in NYC, London, Hong Kong, etc., with Very Bad Results.  Not necessarily war, but Very Bad Results.

I strongly doubt that short selling is the root cause of the crash.  Short selling only causes changes in the market through influencing the psychology of other traders: if they see a lot of shorts on something, they will avoid the stock because they think it goes down.  Stock values have to stand on their own merit, and a lot of short sellers lose a lot of money heavily shorting a stock that isn't going to go down.  For instance, there was a lot of shorting of BHP-Billiton after the company shut down all Australian iron mining after four deaths.  No one appeared to panic, and the stock price remained pretty stable.  A lot of short traders lost money in that gamble.  Saying that short traders are pushing the markets down is like saying that the Cubs inability to win a World Series is because people keep betting against them.

On the flip side, short selling can indirectly keep bubbles from inflating too quickly, because of the same psychological effect, though it's still not a direct cause.

ed:  Cleaned up typos.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2008, 07:09:59 pm by Royal Surveyor »
Logged

Strife26

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #43 on: September 22, 2008, 08:55:32 pm »

You know, I don't even aprove of war with China (we'd win though it would be bloody).

I just think that 'global economy' cuases things like this to happen.
What does America need from the rest of the world?
Logged
Even the avatars expire eventually.

Strife26

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AIG(and WaMu) is DOWN
« Reply #44 on: September 22, 2008, 09:00:32 pm »

clarification of my point:

The companies might be in trouble, but the infastructure is still there.
I agree with everything you said Anfold (including going to New Zealand, although I would prefer Austrailia, lingering ZAI paranoia).

we'll boounce back after some tough tiems, the government will regulate more in the future. Laize Fare will have been proven false. We just have to get through the coming problems.

Conclusion, tough times, but not the end of the world.
Logged
Even the avatars expire eventually.
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4