In their minds, this is a paper crisis.

Ergo print more paper to replace the bad and everything will be OK. Right.

In principle, the market has some way to go down, and I haven't really seen anything that suggests the fundamental problems (other than an overvalued stock market) are being addressed.

As long as people are choosing oppulence over security and consumption over enjoyment, we'll have the same problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo

The fix for a problem can never be accomplished during the heat of crisis. If an extreme crisis occurs and someone must step in to solve it, that will not be the fix. We hope it does not come to that since we know that there are plans set up to establish martial law which is just as the totalitarians would like and right in line with their militarist ideas of how to get things done. So keeping everyone calm until after the election and the inauguration is key.

The fix must be initiated by committees of Congress who are already questioning those who have participated in the unregulated orgy that got us into this mess, thanks to Reagan, GHWB, Clinton (sad to say), and GW/Cheney. Keeping the public mobilized to pressure Congress to find answers to prevent a recurrence of the problem may be easy since things will take awhile to improve and folks are going to continue to be pissed off.

So we want to remain cool and support the transition to Obama in the manner that he has maintained so well, a cool and collected demeanor with the promise of public involvement at each step of the way. After the inauguration we can pressure the White House and Congress to address the issue by setting up a national forum of experts, that may include some from outside the nation, and devoid of insiders, who can address the problem and render the discussion in terms comprehensible to the informed citizen.

Such transparency, once established as a process, can then be applied to other problems and we can advance backwards through the actions of various agencies under GW. Eventually some people might even end up in jail, charged with treason, etc. We must just remember to keep our cool, take things one step at a time, and promote the idea that things will work out if we all work together to advance positive outcomes. That would be rebuilding the American team.

Channing
Ventura CA USA

The Moment of Truth

The question now is whether these moves are too little, too late. I don’t think so, but it will be very alarming if this weekend rolls by without a credible announcement of a new financial rescue plan, involving not just the United States but all the major players.

Why do we need international cooperation? Because we have a globalized financial system in which a crisis that began with a bubble in Florida condos and California McMansions has caused monetary catastrophe in Iceland. We’re all in this together, and need a shared solution.

Why this weekend? Because there happen to be two big meetings taking place in Washington: a meeting of top financial officials from the major advanced nations on Friday, then the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting Saturday and Sunday. If these meetings end without at least an agreement in principle on a global rescue plan — if everyone goes home with nothing more than vague assertions that they intend to stay on top of the situation — a golden opportunity will have been missed, and the downward spiral could easily get even worse.

This is the momentous point at which budding globalization has its chance to forge a cooperative approach to global problems to replace US economic hegemony and political unilateralism. This is the big news and the big opportunity.

True to some extent, but all those various banks and such have already started collapsing. Everyone had to acknowledge Enron was really a seismic fraud after it was gone. The absence of the entities in question is still a huge battering ram into their fake reality.

Usually these entities find a way to stick someone else with the bill & still continue to exist, but the systemic collapse is of such a size that that doesn't work anymore.

--
Hongpong.com

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 10, 2008; A01

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is claiming another casualty: American-style capitalism.

Since the 1930s, U.S. banks were the flagships of American economic might, and emulation by other nations of the fiercely free-market financial system in the United States was expected and encouraged. But the market turmoil that is draining the nation's wealth and has upended Wall Street now threatens to put the banks at the heart of the U.S. financial system at least partly in the hands of the government.

The Bush administration is considering a partial nationalization of some banks, buying up a portion of their shares to shore them up and restore confidence as part of the $700 billion government bailout. The notion of government ownership in the financial sector, even as a minority stakeholder, goes against what market purists say they see as the foundation of the American system.

Yet the administration may feel it has no choice. Credit, the lifeblood of capitalism, ceased to flow. An economy based on the free market cannot function that way.

The government's about-face goes beyond the banking industry. It is reasserting itself in the lives of citizens in ways that were unthinkable in the era of market-knows-best thinking. With the recent takeovers of major lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the bailout of AIG, the U.S. government is now effectively responsible for providing home mortgages and life insurance to tens of millions of Americans. Many economists are asking whether it remains a free market if the government is so deeply enmeshed in the financial system.

Given that the United States has held itself up as a global economic model, the change could shift the balance of how governments around the globe conduct free enterprise. Over the past three decades, the United States led the crusade to persuade much of the world, especially developing countries, to lift the heavy hand of government from finance and industry.

But the hands-off brand of capitalism in the United States is now being blamed for the easy credit that sickened the housing market and allowed a freewheeling Wall Street to create a pool of toxic investments that has infected the global financial system. Heavy intervention by the government, critics say, is further robbing Washington of the moral authority to spread the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism....

Other than a few fringe heads of state and quixotic headlines, no one is talking about the death of capitalism. The embrace of free-market theories, particularly in Asia, has helped lift hundreds of millions out of poverty in recent decades. But resentment is growing over America's brand of capitalism, which in contrast to, say, Germany's, spurns regulations and venerates risk.

more

For years and years the official mantra was, "It can't happen here", this sort of institutional/systemic collapse usually occurs in overheated Asian economies, or in Latin America, Mexico, Russia, et al.
The major Western developed nations declared themselves immune from such shocks, as they ran the show, through the IMF, World Bank, "Washington Consensus", you name it, the West controls it. Or rather, we can now say, it used to. The UK and US had long abandoned the notion of building national wealth through production, it was all about wealth accrual amongst a powerful and influential subset of their national economies: the financial sector. Whose principal task was inventing more and more fanciful schemes for moving money globally, and taking a huge cut of "profits" at each turnover of "assets". The dollar as reserve currency would exist forever, foreign banks and investors would forever buy up US/UK debt and indirectly finance bubble after bubble, as what they needed to sell, we would buy, at whatever cost to personal/national levels of indebtedness. Well, guess what, debts are getting called in, and those now who are the creditors to US/UK get to set the terms, and will not listen any longer to lecturing from the advanced capitalist nations on the "proper way" to manage national economies. As the Mo Green character in "The Godfather" said to Michael Cordoleone, "You don't buy me out, I buy you out". In his case, he eventually was eliminated; in the current case we will take the hit, and long overdue it is.

"Tragic" in a Shakespearean sense? No, everything that has befallen the US and its people was a direct result of this man's misfeasance and non-feasance. Someone intellectually, temperamentally, and morally manifestly unfit for the office...the "tragedy" is that Junior was first appointed by the Supreme Court, then elected by the very people now suffering under his (mal)administration. He reached well above his station, shows no remorse or seemingly even understanding of how all it went pear-shaped...may God have mercy on his wretched soul, because he won't get any from the rest of humanity or history. At least Adolf Hitler had the good sense to know when the game was up and acted accordingly.

on the radio today from an older woman who was a young child during the Depression. She said: "Fear is a liar - it distorts everything".

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}

One way or another, the plan will be to create more money.

If the rules say they can't do that, then they'll change the rules.

I did inhale.