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US: Black Monday
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  • svartsvart
    I gotta say that a lot of the rhetoric being thrown around in all these anti-america threads is grossly false and misleading. It's thinly veiled resentment at best and barely shy of angry jealousy.

    We americans know that a lot of the world hates us for our government policies. A lot of the normal people in the USA dislike our stupid wars and stuff just as much as the rest of the world.

    Just because our leaders are idiots doesn't mean that a large number of the citizens aren't trying to do something positive about it. It's just a lot harder on the younger generations like mine because there are too many bigoted old people who vote for ideology instead of voting for realistic needs. I think you'll see things change in the next decade or so.



  • ButtButt
    I think you need a new enemy to lead to war.
    Osama and Saddam are gone now - what about Iran?

    But solve this financial problems of the "american way of life"
    OK - well, Iran has oil
  • LPowellLPowell
    @Mark_the_Harp "So... assuming I can't individually do anything about global collapse, is it good to buy gold?"

    Gold can be quite volatile. In reaction to Bush's economic purge of 2008, gold prices collapsed suddenly, from $900 down to $750, for a brief, but tumultuous period. This was caused by a stampede of hapless investors who were forced to quickly sell their gold assets to cover their short term losses. That created an unparalleled opportunity to buy gold. Whether Obama's purge of 2011 will produce similar results is hard to predict, but I'm willing to wait and see.

    Living in the United States forces you to choose between fatalism, obliviousness, or lunacy. The most reliable way I've found to anticipate coming events is to observe how a situation has degenerated, and imagine how it could get worse. As for whether the blame lies more on the Republicrats or the Demoplicans, there are always far too many suspects to keep track of.
  • MihuelMihuel
    I think the American problem is much larger. After the collapse of Eastern Bloc (yes, I repeat this often), America believed that there may be a global policeman and that its social and economic system is best. America since the end of World War II trying to "sell" it to the world system. So we have the arrogance resulting from ignorance, because this system was shaped by cancer. Democracy in the U.S. is very illusory. I would call American democracy - oligarchy. Those who govern have the money and the differences between the two largest parties is virtually imperceptible. Does Obama is stupid? I think that it is no less stupid than his predecessors. Nothing happens without a reason and the current state is a consequence of years of stupidity. We must ask ourselves: if only politicians are to blame or whether the majority of American people? If only politicians are guilty of this means that in America there is no democracy. If there is democracy in the U.S., you have to blame the American people who elect politicians.
  • stoneystoney
    Buy gold when it's down. Buy when it's up. Got spare money? Buy more physical golds. Screw paper golds. If nothing bad happens, thank gawd. Pass the metals to kids. Sorta family treasure. Then pass to their kids and so on. Family's love is real. Physical gold is real.
  • LPowellLPowell
    Gold is literally immortal. It has become economically viable to mine industrial waste for its precious metal content:

  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp
    @all Thanks for the input on gold!! I have a problem, which is good or bad depending on how you look at it, that we were just about to start building a house when the builders estimates came in way above what was predicted. At least we hadn't started building, just shovelled a huge heap of money at various professionals who should have known better and have basically let us down badly. So don't know what to do with the money we had allocated to the house - whether to build or not build, or put it somewhere safe. Wherever that is, even if such a place exists any more. Then again, money is like knowledge - not a lot of use just sitting on its own rather than being in circulation.

    @svart I think it's an interesting thing about this forum that we don't know where people come from - we sort of piece together a picture, with clues like the spelling of color / colour etc. I'm reeling a bit from the wanton destruction in London and other cities because I'm old enough to remember listening to the radio when living outside DC and hearing about the riots after the death of Martin Luther King. So I feel a lot of empathy for the US, just that I don't live there.
  • zigizigizigizigi
    Gold, although being historical money has very limited real world demand. Jewelry and electronic industry. If there are too many people investing in gold thinking that its price will grow forever it's a bubble. Here are interesting charts where gold prices are corrected for inflation. So with $1700 we haven't yet passed historical high of 1981. What happened then? The bubble collapsed and analysts chattered for 20 years that gold lost its status and investing potential, the times of gold are gone, blabla.

    http://www.zealllc.com/2005/gorex3.htm

    So investing in gold as the bubble inflates is a wise idea but that's half deal, the other half is to quit this escalating train at the right time before it falls into abyss.

    Real world money is always a physical good that you can exchange on other goods, a good that has value. Contrary to gold that has little real world value - oil is today's money. If a nuclear disaster will hit tomorrow who will exchange gold bullion for food? Food is survival, oil is but gold isn't. In our technocratic civilization everything runs on electricity. We are dependent on it to survive. This is light, warmth, these are machines building everything we need. Pull out the global plug and everything will collapse. And 90% of electricity in the world is produced by burning fossil fuels: oil, gas and coal. These ARE todays' money whatever nonsense simulacre fiat currency is in circulation. And gold is merely a tradition. That is why understanding gold to oil ratio and how it is manipulated is crucial in seeing where the world is being driven to.

    Petrodollar is not just Lindsey Williams prophecy or freaky conspiracy theory. Societe General report discussed here earlier puts the same in different words: the world is going from capitalism as profit oriented system to resource oriented economy. That's the agenda underneath it all. To stop overpopulation and overconsumtion gobbling the world's limited resources, where capitalism as ever growing, ever expanding profit seeking system leads world to a resource suicide. Everything else of what we see these days is just the consequences of it. That change may be painful, though.
  • zigizigizigizigi
    For a desert. An insider speaking of current market crash. That leaked a week before it hit.
  • Vincent_PereiraVincent_Pereira
    That figure I always see- "Close to 50% of Americans do not pay ANY federal income tax..."- just curious, is that number 50% of WORKING Americans, or does it include non-workers, i.e. children?

    Vincent
  • stoneystoney
    Gold "investment" seems wishful thinking. Of course the price goes up and down. Of course it goes through boom and bust cycle.

    Treat gold like... food. You don't buy food to make a profit from selling it. You stack it up for your family. Stacking crude oil is... not an easy task. Gold is very portable. Gold has limited demand? Don't underestimate the human greed. The desire to own gold is built-in our DNAs.

    US gov abandoned the gold standard in 1971. That's ONLY 40 years ago. That was an "experiment". A dream of being freed from gold chain. Unlimited growth. Rapid growth. The credit market and shadow banking system were created soon after that. Boosting the rapid growth that we had never seen before. Fantastic dream. But the experiment is failing. Then again... how many "experiments" last longer than one generation?

    e.g. Ask little kids. They would say iPhones have been with us FOREVER where it was introduced for the first time in just 4 years ago. How do we know that it will last next 40 years?
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev
    FED: No QE3 yet, too soon.

    S&P Cuts AAA Ratings on Thousands of Municipal Bonds After U.S. Downgrade
    Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-07/muni-market-prepares-for-loss-of-aaa-ratings-as-s-p-downgrades-u-s-credit.html

    Municipal bonds can be real bomb under US.
  • brianlucebrianluce
    @NickBen
    Who said the Tea Party are terrorists? When you invent fake statements and try and attribute them to people in this forum it weakens your credibility.

    >>>President Clinton faced MUCH tougher criticism. Obama is disliked because he is BOTH Stupid and Dangerous, when it comes to the overall economy.>>>>

    Clinton was also despised by the right, though not to the degree that Obama is -- and the reasons are similar. There is an underlying assumption in America that goes back to the founding fathers, that the place was built by, and belongs to White men -- specifically Landed White Men. The elite class. They also lay claim to the Presidency. People that don't fit the mold, often end up dead like Kennedy (an Irish Catholic) and Lincoln or if you're poor kid and democrat from Hope Arkansas, you don't belong there either, hence we get absurd theater like the Lewinski scandal.

    But feel free to think issues of race and class aren't at the root of the divisiveness that's strangling America right now. And it sounds like something similar is going on in the UK right now, with the riots, but I haven't follow that one too closely.
  • brianlucebrianluce
    @LPowell
    <<<<<<br />Living in the United States forces you to choose between fatalism, obliviousness, or lunacy. The most reliable way I've found to anticipate coming events is to observe how a situation has degenerated, and imagine how it could get worse. As for whether the blame lies more on the Republicrats or the Demoplicans, there are always far too many suspects to keep track of. >>>>>>

    Love it! Words of wisdom. Words of wisdom.
  • svartsvart
    I find it interesting that S&P was behind a lot of the AAA ratings of the junk bundled mortgages that started this whole mess.

    Now we find that they released their intentions of downgrading the USA to some of their investors early before they even told the USA.

    Now we find out that their financial "proof" was based on flawed accounting to begin with and that they might have even known about it but decided to downgrade the USA anyway because they had already given their "friends" the knowledge of intending to downgrade the USA so that they could speculate and make tons of money.

    As I said before, it's gambling. I know others don't think so but this game is rigged at all levels from top to bottom so that most people break even while those key persons will make huge profits on the backs of everyone else who is playing the game. Someone else always controls the players. the problem is that the players think they actually have a chance to win.
  • ButtButt
    The european-bomb ticking already:
    England, Greece, Spain. . .
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev
    @brianluce

    I am going to slit this Tea Party /Reps part and move it to Offtopic soon.
  • chipchip
    So what do you guys think will happen next? There will be a crisis but how bad is it gonna hit world economy this time? What bothers me most, once it'll be over, they'll all continue like before.
  • brianlucebrianluce
    @Stonebat:
    >>>>
    Treat gold like... food. You don't buy food to make a profit from selling it. You stack it up for your family. Stacking crude oil is... not an easy task. Gold is very portable. Gold has limited demand? Don't underestimate the human greed. The desire to own gold is built-in our DNAs.>>>

    The great NYU economist Nouriel Roubini has advocated investing in SPAM! He said it holds its value, isn't perishible, and if things really get bad, you can eat it!
  • stoneystoney
    LoL. Dr.Doom... the party animal is back with SPAMs?
  • ButtButt
    >So what do you guys think will happen next? There will be a crisis but how bad is it gonna hit world economy this time? What bothers me most, once it'll be over, they'll all continue like before.

    Back to the roots
    as long as it is not too late
    Value creation through labor (work) is to be preferred
    But I do not believe it - the gamblers go to final finanz "gau"
  • LPowellLPowell
    @brianluce "Love it! Words of wisdom."

    Also, there is nothing left in Fort Knox (aside from Oddjob's corpse), and Building #7 was obviously detonated, most likely by Goldfinger himself.

  • FaudelFaudel
    It seems someone else will lose his AAA soon...
    chart-of-the-day-france-cds-august-2011.jpg
    610 x 458 - 112K
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev
    rally yesterday was triggered by a news release by GS which included false information that the Fed was proceeding with QE3

    And good mood returned to markets :-)
  • zigizigizigizigi
    Can anyone explain why treasury bonds skyrocket as the equity markets panic and fall down?

    http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/TR/

    The classic explanation is that these assets are considered very reliable and low risk. And as everyone believes in Uncle Sam's solvency investors escape from the falling markets into t-bonds as they do in gold. But this time that's not the case. Uncle Sam is at the brink of default which means that there is a high risk that he's NOT going to pay his debt. So what's the point behind buying debt obligations of a highly possible bankrupt? Why so many people do that? Or am I missing something that they know?
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