Originally posted by DiscoStu
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You'll be needing two kidneys if you are taking up spud farming. -
No it couldn'tOriginally posted by Nicky G View PostSi posse, recte, si non, quocumque modo remComment
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Originally posted by MrRobin View Post
My partner saw an entry on the NASA website about an asteroid (not a comet but probably bigger) on its way to collide with the earth. He returned a little later to find that the entry had disappeared and no mention of it made anywhere else.
Then he realised that neither Bush or Brown were in residence in their repective countries - anyone for a conspitracy theory?
It's Deja-vu all over again!Comment
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Some JR Nyquist essays on the current economic turmoil:
Cycles of History, Boom and Bust
9/11/2007
Decay, Economic Downturn and Revolution - 26/11/2007In 1995 Prechter predicted the coming of a debt-credit contraction. On page 278 of his book, At the Crest of the Tidal Wave, he wrote: “If there is one fundamental event that will result from a major bear market in social mood, it is the collapse in the bloated debt structure, a devastating event that not one citizen in ten thousand knows is coming. All this debt will have to be liquidated, and the process is unlikely to be serene.”
According to Prechter, the bursting of the credit bubble and the liquidation of debt would lead directly to deflation. “In the deflation of the 1930s,” noted Prechter, “stocks, real estate and commodities fell 90% in value, and questionable bonds fell 20% to 50%. Many stocks went to zero, and the companies were never heard from again.” The motor for the downward “spiral” of the economy, says Prechter, will be psychological. It will involve a shift from mass optimism to mass pessimism. “Booms last longer,” wrote Prechter, “because optimism is fed by slowly rising emotions involving hope and greed,which, because they are tempered by caution, can reach maximum intensity only over a long period….” Economic busts, however, can be sudden and fast-paced because “pessimism is fed by fast-flaming emotions such as fear and anger, which can be realized in a flash of destructive action.”
According to Prechter, the final bust experienced by modern capitalism will the greatest of all. Prechter quotes the late A. Hamilton Bolton, who wrote: “In reading a history of major depressions in the U.S. from 1830 on, I was impressed with the following: (a) All were set off by deflation of excess credit. This was the factor in common.” This observation puts things into perspective, as the United States has witnessed the greatest credit inflation in history and must now experience a corresponding credit deflation. As Prechter noted, “Major deflations are … extremely destructive, and the next one should be no exception. That we are in the midst (and apparently near the end) of the greatest debt buildup in world history suggests that the resulting deflation and depression will be correspondingly severe.” According to Prechter, it will be the greatest depression in over two centuries.
Even if Elliott Wave Theory is mistaken and unscientific, the cycle of boom and bust is real enough. It is not pessimistic to say that the United States will eventually experience another Great Depression. It is realistic to make such a statement. But are we currently approaching the decisive psychological turning-point between optimism and pessimism? If it doesn’t come at the end of 2007 it will come, nonetheless, in 2008 or 2009. The world economy cannot expand indefinitely. There will be another Great Depression. And this revelation has military-political significance for Americans. It has national-survival significance.
When the economic situation changes, when peak oil has its say, when the Middle East crisis cannot be solved, when American politics reduces to a sharp ideological division, when the real estate bubble continues to burst, what will happen? What will the Russians and Chinese do? For thousands of years the world was about war and dominance, the power of oligarchies and the exploitation of peasants. Does anyone believe that the world cannot revert back? Does anyone think that the fall of modern capitalism will result in any other outcome?
The Downward Trend is Unstoppable
26/10/2007
WHEN THE HERD PANICS
17/8/2007
A BRIEF COMMENTARY ON FINANCIAL CRISESWhat will the herd do when its values collapse?
The first word that comes to mind is “panic.” It is a word closely related to the word “pandemonium,” defined in Webster’s Dictionary as: “1) The abode of all the demons; in Milton, the capital of Hell or the palace of Satan; 2) a wildly lawless or riotous place.”
It has just been announced that the Fed is approving a half-percentage cut in its discount rate on loans to banks. “In other words,” noted one analyst, “despite saying they wouldn’t bail out the markets, the risk is so high it looks like the underlying U.S. economy is at stake.” The first sign of panic, the first indication of pandemonium, is the application of desperate measures in an increasingly desperate situation. As St. Louis Federal Reserve President William Poole recently observed, “There’s no need for the Federal Reserve [to cut the discount rate before the next meeting] unless there’s some sort of calamity taking place….”
Last week the financial crisis was seen as “spreading.” In response, central banks poured out tens of billions. Alice Rivlin, a former Fed vice chairman, noted: “The Fed has almost unlimited ability to supply liquidity if they feel that it is appropriate.” But this statement doesn’t take panic or pandemonium into account. All the liquidity in the universe cannot quench the fires of Hell. The flames subside for a moment, but then they flare up anew.
Panic is something that spreads. It begins in one place and moves outward, in every direction. “There is no fence against a panic fright,” wrote Thomas Fuller in 1732. When the herd fall prey to a pack of wolves, the herd begins to panic. Who will stop the panic? The government is expected to stop it. The government must do something. But the government is part of the herd. It shares the herd’s mentality. So who will save the government?
10/8/2007
The West doesn’t seem to understand, as yet, that the emerging financial crisis isn’t merely a financial crisis. In Beijing and Moscow it is seen as something more. It is seen as part of a strategic sequence in which U.S. power is eclipsed. It is a sequence that leads to massive global changes. The Russians and Chinese want to replace America as the world’s dominant military and economic power. They want to transform the global economic system, but the transformation won’t be a friendly one. Their game is not to build an inclusive system in which “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Theirs is a zero sum game in which their triumph comes at other’s expense.
By comparing the sentiments of Putin and the Chinese leaders with those of former Soviet and Chinese leaders, we see that little has changed. Consider the text of Soviet Military Strategy, published in 1963, which put forward the view: “[that] American monopoly capital has seized the basic sources of raw material, the markets and spheres of capital investment: It has created a surreptitious colonial empire and has become the biggest international exploiter. American imperialism today plays the role of world gendarme, opposing democratic and revolutionary changes and launching aggression against peoples fighting for independence.” [Soviet Military Strategy, p. 279 of the Rand translation.] We hear this old Marxist-Leninist line from Putin’s Kremlin today.Comment
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Originally posted by sasguru View Post
They wont be able to afford to fuel themLet us not forget EU open doors immigration benefits IT contractors more than anyoneComment
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Neer scorn a poor Poet like me,
For idly just living and breathing,
While people of every degree
Are busy employed about -naething.Comment
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