Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!
-- Othello, Act 2 scene 3
On the front page of Tuesday or Wednesday's Wall Street Journal was about Alan Greenspan and the besmirching of his reputation in the wake of the credit crisis that took roots during his sixteen year tenure as the most powerful banker on the planet.
I’m quite neutral on Alan (except I don’t think he should have orchestrated the bail-out of the Asian Contagion in 1997), but I don’t recall the overall (or even majority) Conventional Wisdom or Consensus being that Greenspan was butt-fucking the economy during the Clinton boom years or the years directly after 9/11 with lax controls financial institution controls and allowing damn near free money (for those with good credit). It seems to me, as it always seems in these situations, that the Wall Street Black Ops units and their Satan-spawned cousins in the mortgage banking industry concocted up some devilish ass shit to peddle to the consumers on Main Street (and in the rest of the world) – which as always made the rich more rich, and arranged for the future (i.e. now!) castration of the middle classes and the working poor; those who are fucking dirt poor probably don’t see much difference to what’s going – they’re used to the struggle, so…
I would say that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Republican controlled Congress over the past sixteen years should be held responsible. Scapegoat those bitches, if you need to scapegoat somebody for fuck’s sake.
You honestly think mutahfuckas like Jack Ambramoff and others of his politically-bribing ilk didn’t make hella cash off of all the houses and condos that we sold to bitches wanting a piece of the AmeriKKKan dream? Regardless if they could afford said Dream; in fact, in spite of the fact that these living-beyond-their-means muthafuckas just wanted more and more … to look good in expensive ass shit that they don’t need, courtesy of Madison Ave. without thinking about how shit can’t go gangbusters forever.
Greenspan needs to worry about the value of his fortune, as it’s just going to get depleted and depleted as the America he presided over swings into a protracted recession, nay, depression the likes we haven’t seen in 80 years…
Speaking of Reptuation… I don’t think all these airlines that are getting grounded is for “maintenance issues”, I think there is some terrorism shit underfoot and this is the smokescreen. They’re all taking too much of a financial ass-beating for it to be just FAA potential violations (American grounded 1000 flights!)
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Thursday, April 03, 2008
In the Politics of Hate…
The Democratic nomination process is going to sour the general electorate on politics in general, but for Democrats specifically. Maureen Dowd of the NYTimes dropped this bomb on Hillary Clinton in her most recent column - Hillary is going for “the Tonya Harding option” — if she can’t get the gold, kneecap her rival. And even Clinton supporters know that Bill does not want to be replaced as the first "black" president, especially by a REAL black president with enough ju-ju to possibly eclipse him in the history books.
Mr. Obama said: “What I’m certain about is that people are disenchanted with a highly ideological GOP that believes tax cuts are the answer to every problem, and lack of regulation and oversight is always going to generate economic growth, and unilateral intervention around the world is the best approach to foreign policy. So there’s no doubt the pendulum is swinging.”
The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.
Mr. Obama said: “What I’m certain about is that people are disenchanted with a highly ideological GOP that believes tax cuts are the answer to every problem, and lack of regulation and oversight is always going to generate economic growth, and unilateral intervention around the world is the best approach to foreign policy. So there’s no doubt the pendulum is swinging.”
The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.
Parrallels... the Housing Bubble a Do-Over?
Ah… The 1980s… the Days of the Me Generation were in full swing and the Japanese with their super strong Yen were buying up so much property in the native Nippon (and therefore driving up prices) that they went on real estate buying sprees in the United States as well, snapping up such lauded properties as Rockerfeller Center! The Japanese speculators and the Average Akria drove up prices to record levels that are still shocking (in today’s dollars and yen), and real estate leveraged money reached out an bought up companies like Universal Studios and Columbia/Tri-Star and out of real estate . Go-Go Days like that don’t last very long,After the 1987 Stock Market Crash the Japanese Housing bubble took a pinprick that popped the bubble in record time… and when it collapsed the crash was back-breaking to not only an entire generation, but to the proletariat culture of Japan!
Many of us don’t recall or care to recall what happened in Japan throughout the 90s, as we were living high on the hog during the BILL Clinton years and during the makings of the first internet bubble (yes, there will be a second one… don’t you worry). But Japan, after being viewed as the country (and therefore culture) that was going to own the world – what they couldn’t do by military force in the 1930s they were doing by economic force in the 1980s – and this vaunted economic success had a lot of people learning Japanese and studying Japanese management techniques. However, Japan waded through at least 6 to 8 years of recessions, where they would have 3 down quarters to 1 up quarter or other anemic combinations of sputtering economic growth… there was even stagflation and then there was even a deflationary period (where consumers where afraid to spend, because they knew prices would be cheaper the following month). One truly remarkable aspect of the Japanese economic seesaw was that at certain points the Bank of Japan established negative interest rates… yeah, you pay the bank back less than what you borrow!
It was a decidedly difficult time, that was only exacerbated by Alan Greenspan saving the Asian Tigers from collapse in the late 90s (remember that?) and while Japan has emerged from the storm, it’s place in the Global Economy was demoted. Sure they’re still a powerhouse (by sheer numbers), but we don’t look to them as a challenge any more – they’ve been replaced by China and India.
Why talk about Japan? Well, the housing bubble that burst in Japan could be analogous to the future of the housing marketing in the United States; only it might be more dire, as far too many people took out HELOC and used the money to extend their lifestyle (cheaper money than using a credit card) or bought up too much house than they could afford or never should have been in the market for a home in the first place (able to make the mortgage payments, but not the insurance and property taxes).
Are we poised to deal with a housing market, i.e. general economy that oscillates up two quarters, down the next three? What happens when the Baby Boomers retire and dump all their investments? The stock market, at least in the US, is poised for a perpetual zigzagging for the next 5 to 15 years. Sure it’ll go up, but the economy is going to have difficult time sustaining overall growth, except for maybe in the medical sector.
Although optimists will say our economy can withstand just about anything… I wonder if Nero’s advisers thought the same thing, before he torched the place.
Many of us don’t recall or care to recall what happened in Japan throughout the 90s, as we were living high on the hog during the BILL Clinton years and during the makings of the first internet bubble (yes, there will be a second one… don’t you worry). But Japan, after being viewed as the country (and therefore culture) that was going to own the world – what they couldn’t do by military force in the 1930s they were doing by economic force in the 1980s – and this vaunted economic success had a lot of people learning Japanese and studying Japanese management techniques. However, Japan waded through at least 6 to 8 years of recessions, where they would have 3 down quarters to 1 up quarter or other anemic combinations of sputtering economic growth… there was even stagflation and then there was even a deflationary period (where consumers where afraid to spend, because they knew prices would be cheaper the following month). One truly remarkable aspect of the Japanese economic seesaw was that at certain points the Bank of Japan established negative interest rates… yeah, you pay the bank back less than what you borrow!
It was a decidedly difficult time, that was only exacerbated by Alan Greenspan saving the Asian Tigers from collapse in the late 90s (remember that?) and while Japan has emerged from the storm, it’s place in the Global Economy was demoted. Sure they’re still a powerhouse (by sheer numbers), but we don’t look to them as a challenge any more – they’ve been replaced by China and India.
Why talk about Japan? Well, the housing bubble that burst in Japan could be analogous to the future of the housing marketing in the United States; only it might be more dire, as far too many people took out HELOC and used the money to extend their lifestyle (cheaper money than using a credit card) or bought up too much house than they could afford or never should have been in the market for a home in the first place (able to make the mortgage payments, but not the insurance and property taxes).
Are we poised to deal with a housing market, i.e. general economy that oscillates up two quarters, down the next three? What happens when the Baby Boomers retire and dump all their investments? The stock market, at least in the US, is poised for a perpetual zigzagging for the next 5 to 15 years. Sure it’ll go up, but the economy is going to have difficult time sustaining overall growth, except for maybe in the medical sector.
Although optimists will say our economy can withstand just about anything… I wonder if Nero’s advisers thought the same thing, before he torched the place.
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