Category: Economic Depression
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Monday, October 27, 2008
Investor Sentiment Signaling The Great Depression II / Stock-Markets / Economic Depression
That's what investors simply will not do today because they are the same spoiled brats that make up the bureaucracy. Stubborn – stubborn – stubborn – that's what both investors and bureaucrats are today, with no sense of proportion or morality, and unwilling to give up the ghost in speculation games. The moral hazard that has been instilled into the public and bureaucracy alike over the past twenty years has finally caught up to reality, where as discussed in ‘ The Missing Ingredient ' the other day, investors are convinced the bureaucracy will engineer another stick save for the stock market right in front of the election, and for this reason speculators are hesitant to short the market. And it's not as if the bureaucracy isn't throwing the book at the problem attempting to arrest the meltdown – they are. But alas, without the suckers (put buyers) to squeeze stocks higher, prices continue to plunge like never before in history .Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Fed Attempting To Prevent "Great Depression II" / Economics / Economic Depression
Bernanke and the Fed have to be miffed over their lack of traction in addressing the credit bubble.Of course if Bernanke understood simple economics as explained in Impossible To Get Something For Nothing , he would not be doing the silly things he is doing such as running out of letters in his alphabet soup of lending facilities.
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Friday, October 17, 2008
Current Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression / Economics / Economic Depression
The current stock market crash has spurred a vital national debate about the causes and catalysts of the Great Depression. The dominant school of thought believes that the stubborn refusal of then president Hebert Hoover to intervene after the stock market crash of 1929, and his preference for free market solutions, led directly to the ensuing decade-long catastrophe.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Central Banks Fail to Solve Credit Crisis / Economics / Economic Depression
Depression on the way - A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the central banks had put up collectively $3 trillion worth of stimulus/backing to financial markets. I also noticed that the big bailouts had about only a one day boost to the financial markets till they did a thumbs down.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, October 09, 2008
United States Dragging the World into a Great Depression / Economics / Economic Depression
Stocks fell sharply across Europe and Asia last night following another down day on Wall Street where the Dow Jones lost 508 points and the S&P 500 slipped below the 1,000 mark for the first time since 2003. Japan's benchmark index, the Nikkei, lost nearly 10 percent while shares in London at one point slumped more than 7 percent. Trading was suspended in Indonesia and Russia where stocks fell 10 percent each on opening.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
America's Financial Apocalypse Economists Need to Sit Down and Shut Up / Economics / Economic Depression
I'm really sick and tired of these economists out there who continue to claim that America will not enter a depression. These are the same bozos that have yet to acknowledge the fact that the U.S. is in a recession and has been for several months now. In fact, as I have previously mentioned, I can make a very strong case that the U.S. has been in the early stages of a silent, modest depression for at least two years; at the very least a protracted recession masked by credit. After the appropriate adjustments have been made for GDP, the U.S. economy has had no more than 3 to 4 quarters of GDP growth since 2005.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
U.S. Economy Rapidly Sinking Into Economic Depression / Economics / Economic Depression
This is the crisis that will change the course of history. Even before ivory-tower theorists have gotten around to officially calling it a "recession," the U.S. economy is already sinking rapidly into depression.
And even as the government has vowed to embark on a $700 billion spending spree to avert financial panic, over $1 trillion in wealth has been wiped out in just five days of stock and bond market declines.
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Sunday, October 05, 2008
The Deepening Economic Depression / Economics / Economic Depression
We definitely live in interesting times, huh?
I believe future historians will allocate Monday, September 29, 2008 as the start of the second Great Depression. That is not to say we may yet see exciting corrections and even occasionally a stronger US dollar. Still, the ultimate trend is down, down, down.
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Sunday, September 14, 2008
The Crash of Western Capitalist Civilization? / Politics / Economic Depression
“Train-wreck” doesn't even begin to describe what is starting to happen to the U.S. today with the financial crisis, an onrushing depression, and the failure of George W. Bush's war policy as he is faced down by Iran and the Russian bear.
But in an even broader sense, the West, as a civilization, after a century of world war and the utter failure of global finance capitalism, may have reached its limits.
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Wednesday, September 10, 2008
US Dollar Rally Signals a Severe Deflationary Depression / Economics / Economic Depression
Extraordinary Measures Today, a Financial Funeral Tomorrow - I wish I was referring to Fannie and Freddie in the title of this piece, but because those institutions are being resurrected, the funeral I am waiting for is the one for our entire fiat-based system. We are now on the brink of a collapse in confidence that brings the whole world financial system to its knees. Each market intervening action is becoming more extraordinary. The rallies which pull the suckers in following the intervening actions are becoming briefer and less powerful. I expect this one to be no different. This sequence has now become a broken record. Markets threaten to take out technical support levels and the government comes to the rescue. Armageddon is avoided until another day and a relief rally ensues on the belief that the government has fixed the problem a new bull market can begin. After all, this is how investors have been conditioned over the last three decades.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Economic Depression: Who will Suffer the Least? / Economics / Economic Depression
Though few may have noticed, the past few weeks may be regarded as a global economic turning point. Evidence is mounting that the United States is entering a recession, with increasing signs that it could morph into a depression. While the current Administration appears resigned to bail out or nationalize large tracts of American commerce, the presidential candidates drift towards Great Society era spending proposals. At the same time, America’s principal economic rivals appear to be charting courses that are not in line with U.S. interests.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Central Bankers Safety Confidence Trick as Great Depression 2.0 Looms / Economics / Economic Depression
Rising gold prices are a cold sore on the lip of central bankers. In the world of paper money, it's a clear sign something's not right
Central bankers are the keepers of the keys to the kingdom. The kingdom, however, is on the edge of bankruptcy and in danger as never before. Comparisons are now being made to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The comparisons, however, are just that.
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Sunday, July 27, 2008
Bernanke Seeks a Great Depression to Test His Thesis / Economics / Economic Depression
It has been a rather busy time for The Collection Agency, picking up assets in lieu of cash. Anyone need a badly treated, surplus to requirements, Bank customer desk or ten? I can do job lots.
We start off with an excerpt from The Bernanke Conundrum written on 8th May 08:
Thursday, July 24, 2008
It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn...of a Economic Depression / Economics / Economic Depression
The financial system will collapse before "zero-hour" actually occurs. I think we are seeing signs of it in the desperate measures being employed to nationalize companies which trade on market exchanges as private enterprises. There is simply no way to defend the SEC's decision to selectively enforce the prohibition of naked short selling for 17 ‘fragile' financial companies and to not enforce it for the over 5000 other companies which trade on US stock market exchanges. And plans to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac breathe of a sort of corporate nationalism. Over time this will deal a massive psychological blow to financial markets. They are currently rallying on the sense of relief that the efforts to prevent Fannie and Freddie from dragging US financial markets into the abyss have succeeded and the inevitable day of reckoning has been postponed once again.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, July 21, 2008
US Financial & Economic Crisis Heading for Repeat Misery of Japans Lost Decade / Economics / Economic Depression
William Patalon III writes: If you think the "Lost Decade" Japan endured during the 1990s was deep and painful, stick around: As the global financial crisis that was jump-started by the meltdown of the subprime mortgage market continues to unwind, the U.S. economy is headed for a financial Ice Age that will make Japan's 10 wasted years seem like a single chilly night.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, May 30, 2008
CNNMoney.com's ‘Great Depression Comparisons Misguided' Conflicts with Historical Fact / Economics / Economic Depression
After reading CNNMoney.com Editor Paul La Monica's piece on the comparisons to the Great Depression , we felt compelled to respond. Unfortunately for Mr. La Monica, the article regurgitates common beliefs about the Depression which conflict with historical fact and basic economics. We hope to set things straight. We begin with Mr. La Monica's words:
“ The unemployment rate skyrocketed during the Depression, peaking at nearly 25% in 1933. The current unemployment rate is just 5%. And that's only up from 4.5% a year ago. Contrast that with the far more explosive spike at the beginning of the Great Depression - from about 3% in 1929 to nearly 8.7% in 1930, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census.”
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Thursday, May 29, 2008
Lessons from the Great Depression - Stock Market Crash! / InvestorEducation / Economic Depression
Today I think it is appropriate to look at the actual crash of 1929 and how it unfolded. The importance of this post will examine the multiple interventions that entered into the market trying to prop it up while the market steadily unfolded for four years before bottoming out. When we look at a number such as 1929-1933, we seem to compartmentalize that these four years somehow went quicker than our future four years of say 2008-2012.
Try to imagine for a moment, how 2012 will look. Does this seem like tomorrow? Does this seem like a quick turn of a chapter? Of course not. So when we examine the crash of 1929, we realize that the market declined both abruptly and quickly at times but took years. It wasn't for lack of intervention or from motivation. There were those perma-bulls back then that couldn't foresee a world without new credit devices that emerged during the early part of the century.
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
The Bernanke Monetary Policy Conundrum Heading for a Crash / Economics / Economic Depression
The Bernanke Monetary Policy Conundrum Heading for a Crash
With the US Federal Reserve cutting its Fed Fund Rate to 2%, presumably to aid the cost of borrowing and allow an expansion of lending that will lift the US economy from the doldrums you would expect to see an expansion of bank business. Not so according to the latest Fed's Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey which shows that banks are now actively avoiding the expansion of credit and it can be shown are deliberately causing a credit contraction.
This has profound meaning for the US and the wider global economy.
Monday, May 05, 2008
The Great Depression of the 2010s / Economics / Economic Depression
Economics is not rocket science. Neither is power.Depressions are monetary phenomena caused by central bank issuance of excessive credit. In 1913, the newly created US central bank, the Federal Reserve, began issuing credit-based money in the US . Within ten years, the central bank flow of credit ignited the 1920s US stock market bubble; and shortly thereafter, following the collapse of the bubble in 1929, the world entered its first Great Depression in 1933.
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Monday, April 28, 2008
Warnings of US Heading for Depression Plague US Economy / Economics / Economic Depression
The cause of the current economic problems is very simple: Bad economics. Instead of closely examining the monetary theory that got us into this mess economists have started playing the blame game. Alan Greenspan blamed Wall Street irrational for making irrational economic decisions the appear to have brought the US economy to the brink of disaster.Read full article... Read full article...