The Elite Forum
The Big Three Plus One => General Chat => Topic started by: NathanStinson on September 15, 2008, 11:14:00 am
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Sounds like a rough ride going on in the World of economy.
What are your takes on it, Elite? (particularly interested in people's takes such as drag)
Also, please don't turn this into a political flame war (keep that to the mccain v obama thread)
also, try to be civil, Fact is a lot of people, on this board/in life, take this kind of news with a smile and some type of contrived political i told you so satisfaction. In reality, lots of people lose their jobs.
This has been building for months. Despite repeated claims by the administration and many experts that the fall-out for the subprime collapse had already past there were clearly some significant ramifications that were yet to materialize. So those who have been watching the current crisis grow with some appreciation for its extent should not be surprised by these current developments. My feeling, for what its worth given that I am far from an expert, its still possible to avoid a severe recession/depression if the response this weekend is rationale and controlled.
What I'm concerned of is a panic. there are two reasons I think this is a legitimate fear. First, the fact that news about Lehman Brothers and about Merill Lynch hit over the same weekend which could create a feeling of impending catastrophe that either event in isolation while discouraging likely would have not. Secondly, I think there are a lot of players in the markets all the way from large companies down to individual investors that have been hoping to be able to buckle down and ride out the subprime storm. It is possible that many in who have taken this approach could be shaken enough by this weekend's news to start to respond more aggressively and fearfully. These factors in combination could start a real panic that would take this in the span of a few days from a downturn caused by a needed restructuring into a real collapse.
My hope is that people will kept their heads and behave rationally. Unfortunately the markets are not known for rationale behavior.
but, even with all of this, the USD seems to continue strengthening amidst all this doom and gloom. Two months ago the USD was worth 0.63 EUR, now it's worth 0.70 EUR, just 2 cents down from the top on Friday a week ago.
Against the NOK, it has even strengthened today, the USD is worth NOK 5.74 against NOK 5.07 two months ago.
So, all is not lost for Americans as the dollar actually strengthened and oil dropped to 94/barrel despite hurricane Ike over the weekend.
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so this thread is about your fears and not about anything catastrophic that has actually happened to warrant the use of the term 'Black Monday'?
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Actually, it was followed by a "?", indicating that it was a question of whether this was leading to such a dire consequence. Mainly just to spark debate:)
But, to be fair, I changed the title
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imo if you can get cheap housing (don't live in a big city) and can get a decent job then you should be fine as long as you're willing to rough it out for the first few years. This is why you need a girlfriend/wife for these years. Once you're defined there's no reason an intelligent couple can't be in the upper echelon of society. The only people who need to worry are the less intelligent ones. It's no big deal.
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can someone please explain what is happening in a few lines in n00b language?
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Okay.
Banks rate customer's creditworthiness, they assign each one with a score. Anything with a so called FICO score below 620 I think is a sub prime customer, likely to default on their loans. But those mortgages have a higher rate of return, so they love it. Banks pool these mortgages (sub prime mortgages with who knows what they did). It's actually forbidden to trade sub prime debt, but they got around that because they pooled mortgages and banks traded these CDOs. They even pooled CDOs to make an even bigger pool (pool of pool), called SIVs/SUVs. So everyone was buying this shit and a shitload defaulted so banks had to write off a bunch and that pretty much destroyed everything. Now banks don't trust each other anymore and will not lend out to other banks, because no one knows what they own and what defaulted.
Few n00blines, hard to tell so much about it without posting a long boring story, of course theres much much more to it.
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I am very worried about the financial crisis because it may prevent me from watching NFL, the sport that I love (https://forums.the-elite.net/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezboard.com%2Fintl%2Faenglish%2Fimages%2Femoticons%2Ffrown.gif&hash=9bb8520656650a7c2457ae0ae2ee8996e4109fd6)
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government run anything ftl
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(particularly interested in people's takes such as drag)
cool
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I am very worried about the financial crisis because it may prevent me from watching NFL, the sport that I love (https://forums.the-elite.net/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezboard.com%2Fintl%2Faenglish%2Fimages%2Femoticons%2Ffrown.gif&hash=9bb8520656650a7c2457ae0ae2ee8996e4109fd6)
I think durk brings up the most important point in this whole crisis. We can all go outside and grow food or raise cattle if we really need, or make shelter out of trees, but NFL costs money, and this is certainly the next most important thing in the world to food and shelter. If this economic problem continues then we won't be able to watch the NFL, which will be the death of the USA.
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I thought food was.
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The only impact I'm feeling here in CA is the price of food (nothing seems to be on sale anymore) and the price of gas (which has gone down $1/gallon lately). I guess once I start needing loans, I might see more impact, but my family/friends/myself are in no financial trouble so I really don't see much of this except on the news. Don't think I'll have a problem getting a job either
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YUeah, I doubt it will have any short term direct effects on any eliters, but it could
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The price of oil has little to do with the price of gas. In fact, when the US gets gas flow impacted oil automatically plummets but gas prices here rise drastically. (partially because they can get away with gouging...) The reason is that every market is in essence a world market and less gas here = more gas elsewhere = oil price goes down because world demand goes down and world supply is unchanged.
The reason we're in a (crisis=rofl--if you have a cell phone you are not in a recession) is because people have spent too much $ for far too long and now have to just learn to go without stuff like everybody else in the world. Most people are in his or her own situation on his or her own accord. I'm really hoping for the economy to go into a depression that way people will be forced to learn about fiscal responsibility (they only will the hard way) which was needed anyway since the market's due to go backwards simply because we spend more as a country than we make--that can't last forever.
The 33c macaroni and cheese box skyrocketed to 40c. Somehow I think I'll manage through this.
The financial crisis is idiots who gave out loans to idiots who couldn't pay them back. Serves them right and I hope the whole system dies (and for our gov't to stop bailing these people out--this only gives them incentive to fuck up (https://forums.the-elite.net/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezboard.com%2Fintl%2Faenglish%2Fimages%2Femoticons%2Ffrown.gif&hash=9bb8520656650a7c2457ae0ae2ee8996e4109fd6) ) The best way is to let it go private and just let the system fix itself but that'll never happen. Our bailout economic plans are now to put a nice shiny new engine on the boat with a hole in the floor. The hole is still there and the boat will still sink.
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hehe wheat, well I don't spend much on luxury goods, and especially not luxury foods, but I wont buy mac and cheese (https://forums.the-elite.net/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezboard.com%2Fintl%2Faenglish%2Fimages%2Femoticons%2Fwink.gif&hash=4979046fbfc7ed25a03644bf608e503c4aa73f0f). I'm talking bread, up from $2.50 on sale (always a loaf on sale) to $4.19 for every single loaf, no sale in the last 3 months. That's a big deal going through multiple loafs a week. Milk, every box of cereal up $2.50 to $3.00 on sale, and I only buy sale cereal, etc. Somehow my grocery bills have gone from $15 for a random run to $30, and weekly bills <$100 to $140, and its pretty killer, just buying the basics to bring a lunch to work every day and make dinner every night!
But I agree, as far as most other things are concerned. Being forced to cut back put people in check. Basically everybody could just buy whatever they want when they want, and maybe now people will realize you have to put food before shoes...
Atleast gas isn't so murderous anymore. Though I guess a lot of the US is getting raped from the hurricane, we don't feel it here. In fact, ours dropped 4 cents yesterday :-D
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Well, I'm currently driving 650 miles/week for work, so the rising gas prices affect me plenty! I do get a flat reimbursement rate ($xxx each month) that I've always come out ahead on, but I do wonder how much longer that will be.
I also recently lost the core group of clinics I had, because they found another company to copy their records that agreed to profit share. It's illegal, but hey, we'll let them deal with the consequences later on.
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It's a good job Jimbo lost weight when he did, cause with prices rising on all foods, it would have cost him a few hundred dollars more per week to keep his hugh frame ticking. (https://forums.the-elite.net/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezboard.com%2Fintl%2Faenglish%2Fimages%2Femoticons%2Ftongue.gif&hash=7cfc888ebd66cf455a55fd5e124ee8267da91148)