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I think I’ll send them all those credit counciling course spam I keep getting.

4th most productive nation? I’ve never bought into that productivity bullshit. Just “bucks per hour.” Smells like bullshit to me that bankers thought banking is one of the most productive industries around.

Only real cost is labor and land, but not raw materials or loads of energy like real industry. Too bad that it’s more toxic than plutonium right now.

I’ve had friends who worked in banks. How many fucking VPs does one bank need? Apparently some 4000 (out of 30000 workers!)

Dow has now fallen below 9,000. Lovely.

@ManchuCandidate: changed it to not – I’m thinking they’re not up for buying anything right about now.

8,600, for a while there. I am scared shitless. Really. Bush has done it, the same thing he did to anything he ever tried to run in his life, he has destroyed it. No car industry, retail floundering, unemployment rising, the complete breakdown of international trade and finance, man, here’s Bush’s Legacy staring us in the face and I am very very scared.

Oh, you might think you won’t eat dog or cat, but thats just because you’re not hungry enough. Yet.

@SanFranLefty: I live in fear that someone is going to jump off of the SunTrust Building on Peachtree Street while I’m walking to work from the bus stop, and land on top of me.

@Prommie:
We are all Arbusto NOW.

@Prommie: I find comfort in cold, icy, Gary Numan-ish Ladytron at times like these. It’s actually one of my favorite workout songs, cranked up while watching the news of the day.

@ManchuCandidate: comment of the year …

And to add to the sense of being under siege, the Navy fighter jets are overhead as I type. They’re buzzing the Financial District as they practice maneuvers and everything is rattling on my desk when they go over.

@SanFranLefty: That’s even better than when the rock quarry near my old workplace would blast everyday and we’d have the shakes.

Did everyone go find their hobo name? And we will have to learn that secret sign that tells that an easy mark lives there.

“I know every hand out in every town,
and every door thats not locked when noone’s around
I’m a man of means by no means,
king of the road.”

That and “Winchester Cathedral” and “In the Year 2525” are among my earliest musical memories. Oh, and “And When I Do.” People were morbid back then, weren’t they?

Dow close 8579, off 679. I can haz 401k bailout?

Holy shit! But why the hell has the USD done so well recently against the Euro and most American currencies? With all the monopoly money we’re printing up for the bailouts rescues, how can the good old greenback actually gain value? Is it mostly from oil dropping?

Apres Shaggy, le deluge.

@Pedonator: Apparently, as bad as it is, even with a corrupt fucktard as president, the world still looks to US treasuries as security in times of trouble, and has been buying them up the last few weeks.

@SanFranLefty: Part of the preparations for martial law no doubt. You might have seen this clipped elsewhere:

October 8-10, 2008 — FEMA sources confirm coming martial law

WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.

In addition, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North is to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement in the imposition of traffic controls, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared. The BCT was assigned to duties in Iraq before being assigned to the Northern Command.

@SanFranLefty:

Ho, hey, wait. Jets doing practice drills, you say? Down here, too…right out my office window.

Woah, that freaks me the fuck out. Think they’ll wait until just before the election or enslave us this afternoon?

@FlyingChainSaw: Good thing the Blue Angels are in town so that they can destroy the San Francisco sodomites and secure control of Google, Yahoo, Oracle, Apple, Sun, and all the other Silicon Valley companies that keep this world running.

@Pedonator: We’re not printing that money for the bailout, we’re borrowing it. Vastly different. Fortunately, our fiscal overlords have at least grasped that printing more money is not the same thing as having more money.

@Prommie: Remind me again, aren’t US Treasuries basically promises from the US American government? The government nobody sane would trust with a three-year-old’s piggy bank? Those are the most reliable investment vehicles in the world right now? I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but it just adds to the surreal nature of what’s going down.

I guess a generous interpretation would be that those T-bills represent votes for Hopey.

@IanJ: As soon as China’s middle class can afford to buy China’s industrial output, we’re toast.

blogenfreude: No, u no can haz 401kay munnie. Sry.

But wait a minute folks — a bunch of this is pure panic. I mean, come on. Kraft Foods was off 8% today for example, and down by similar amounts over the last week or so. Was that company worth 8% less today than it was yesterday? For the sake of FSM: Kraft sells cheap food with huge profit margins — a five-cent box of Mac and Cheese going retail for $1.00. Kraft is going to make bank on that. Cheap food works right about now.

Wal-Mart off 6% today? You know those anti-union, anti-code bastards are going to be rolling in it.

And old people are still going to get older, so Big Pharma will not be in too much trouble in the out years.

But much of this is not panic, of course. Ford is trading under $3. Don’t you doubt that some Japanese / Korean company isn’t thinking about buying Ford out once all this crap shakes out. GM got absolutely creamed today, too. The Big Three by the end of 2009 may be, well, the Big Nothing. (Add to the drumbeat of noise that banks are not making car loans — to anybody. Man. Detroit knew this was coming, and now it is here.)

@FlyingChainSaw: Good god I’m seeing this from lib sites to Paultard sites to con sites to just plain weird ones when I google it. In the United Anti-Caligutard Front, there will have to be sacrifices in order to keep from killing one another on the rickshaw to revolution.

@SanFranLefty: As I keep agitating for, it’s time for California to secede; I’ll gladly be a spy.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again, @SanFranLefty: You guys are scaring me with the synchronicity thing. I work a mile from MCAS Miramar, so I get the shrieking jets flying overhead all the time. And no, I never get used to it, I always think they’re about to drop a bomb on me.

@FlyingChainSaw: I’m tempted to say, “Bring it on, muthafuckers.” Torches and pitchforks long. overdue.

@IanJ: But the borrowing is just a semantic difference, isn’t it? Aren’t most of these T-bills short-term notes? And when they come due, where does the money come from to pay them off? How convenient the Fed stopped publishing the M3 or whatever it is last year…almost as if they could see something like this coming, yes?

SanFranLefty: Y’all do not know the hell that is Air and Water Show. God — I feel like I’m right in the middle of a bomb run for three days straight. Weird.

@Pedonator:
Actually, the Fed stopped releasing M3 info in 2005.

@chicago bureau: I forget the details, but isn’t Buffett going on a shopping spree right now? When fear drags everything down, he knows where the bargains are.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again, FlyingChainSaw: Good thing you can still go out and buy Barrett .50 cal semi-automatic rifles, which are civilian-legal. One of those can make an armored personnel carrier or helicopter look like a cheese grater. MSRP is about $8,000, ammo’s about $4 per round. According to the reviews in the “specialty press”, the muzzle brake on the Barrett reduces recoil significantly.

From our friends at globalsecurity.org:

“The M107 enables Army snipers to accurately engage personnel and material targets out to a distance of 1500 to 2000 meters respectively. The weapon is designed to effectively engage and defeat materiel targets at extended ranges including parked aircraft, command, control and communications, computers, intelligence sites, radar sites, ammunition, petroleum, oil and lubricant sites and various lightly armored targets.”

Just sayin’ . . .

TJ: Oliver Clark, the young African-American man in the audience at the town hall whose name PsychoGeezer couldn’t remember and about whom PG said “you probably don’t know what Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac” are, has spoken to say, yes, asshole, I do know what they are, and oh by the way I have two masters’ degrees.

@FlyingChainSaw: What is WMR? [several minutes later] Is it the Wayne Madsen Report?

@SanFranLefty: Can we call that a Macaca Moment?

@SanFranLefty: Is it Imperial Fleet Week already? Those tie fighters must get annoying after awhile.

Oh dear God, I come out of the cellar for like 5 minutes and EVERYTHING GOT MUCH WORSE!!!

This putsch they’re rehearsing, will that be right after we elect the Democrat?

Still. Stiff upper and all that. And boy! Did I pick the perfect time to buy stocks! I am truly the master of Wall Street!!!

Back to the cellar.

Atrios sez:

Oh Boy

The preznit is going to get on the teevee tomorrow morning and make it all better.

SELL SELL SELL

@ManchuCandidate: How time flies when you’re having fun. I remember when they announced that they would no longer publish the M3, and reading on my favorite conspiracy sites about how they were deliberately orchestrating the bankruptcy of US America…who knew they would take Iceland down with us?

@drinkyclown: They’re heeeeeere.

@drinkyclown: Also, the hookers get tired of telling the fanboys to take their galactic credits and scram.

@SanFranLefty: I’m sure that one will get one of those nice little apology notes Psychogeezer tends to send to the innocent victims of his temper and/or cluelessness.

@SanFranLefty: Yeah I hate those guys, they fly around Seattle all summer during Seafair, between them and the hydroplanes it’s just noisy as hell.

@rptrcub: Not just Cali, the whole left coast. Leave no liberal abortion-loving sodomite behind!

blogenfreude: Seriously: what can this man do right now? He’s given away about $100 billionish to AIG — which, in between injections of cash, went to Palm Springs or wherever the fuck. We told the financial industry that you’re good for $700 billion, and still nobody will make a loan. The Dow loses about an eighth of its value in the two days after the Fed cuts rates a half-point. This is just nuts.

I know what he can say — tax cuts! Get back to Congress right now! Tax cuts for everybody! America’s depending on you! (Most of which will go to people you will never be able to meet on account of the armed guards at the entrance to their subdivision. But you’ve earned something, sparky!)

Holy fuck — is Dubya stammering and yammering for an emergency session of Congress for tax cuts that nobody has ever thought through going to be the [GASP!] October surprise?

@chicago bureau: Is it too early to perp-walk Osama through the Rose Garden? Would that have any affect on the markets?

@Prommie: We are mos def from the same cohort. “Winchester” and “In the Year” were standards. “Classical Gas” as well by any chance?

Pedonator: Fuck — don’t you think that somebody would have pulled the trigger on that by now? If everybody will credit PG for doing something that Dubya ….

OH NO.

If they in fact do this, Dubya can lie through his teeth and say that Geezer actually gave him some ideas that worked. The ones he wouldn’t telegraph to the world before doing it? The very same ideas.

(And yes, I like my tin-foil nice and crinkly.)

@nabisco: Classical Gas is what turned me on to experimental animation. I first heard it performed on the Smothers Brothers show, accompanying a single-frame montage — one image per frame, 24 frames per second. Very trippy for the day.

Oh, and Mason Williams still performs in Eugene. December 13 & 14 at the Hult, if you’re in town that weekend.

I’ve, um, been distracted. Have the program-trading brakes kicked in, or is this an orderly worldwide financial collapse?

@nojo:

Riots in the streets, Nojo. It’s the end of the world as we know it.

Have any popcorn?

@nojo: Live at the Purple Onion was in our parents’ record collection, so the SmoBros are in my blood. Their tv show was edge city.

Tommy went all political at an award show just recently, too.

Of course, classical gas was there, but 2525 and “And when I die” were just wierd, don’t you think?

@Promnight: 2525 scared the hell out of me. Also, “Atlantis” — couldn’t sleep after I heard that one on Ed Sullivan. Maybe that’s why I’m not really into music.

@Mistress Cynica: You need some Jonathan Richman, listen to “I’m a little dinosaur” and “I’m a little airplane.” He’s a marvel, he’s the most sincere pumpkin in the music patch, but more than anything, he’s a grown up who is still totally in touch with a child’s joy and delight.

Now, on to the depressing stuff. We are seeing events unfold that will go down in history. This is 1929 and 1860 combined, a tremendous civil divide, a horrible, disastrous economic crisis. Its not tinfoil anymore, its not gloom and doom pessimissim anymore, the world is really going to hell in a handbasket on a scale only seen once every several lifetimes.

Bush, who caused it but doesn’t understand how and why he did, is so over his head and helpless, he doesn’t have a policy staff, remember, it was widely reported, HE HAS NO POLICY STAFF, he only has a political staff, he doesn’t have anyone around who has any knowledge or ability to advise in any way except politically, blame the democrats, whatever the political shitbags have to say, they are probably whimpering under their desks now. Bush, what the fuck does he even think he’s gonna say tomorrow?

And Geezer is responding with a mavericky spasm of panicked, incoherent gibberish. Its all Barney Franks fault, he is now saying, as if Barney Frank has more power than the chairman of the federal reserve and the secretary of the treasury and the republican congress of the last 12 plus years or the republican president of the last 7 years.

Its really out of control, noone knows what is happening or what to do, its scary.

Obama is gonna win, but I really think he is gonna have to deal with insurrection.

I need a stinky group hug, someone tell me I am not insane. That we will survive. Its bad. I have explained before, I work for a trade association, the automobile retailers, and I am hearing reports and seeing data about car sales that make my hair stand on end. Banks pulling out of floor planning retailers, which immediately puts the retailer out of business. Sales are down 30% across the board, domestic and import. Financing tied up so tight people who want to buy cannot. We are gonna lose 10% of our members this year, 10% of the auto dealers, gone, out of business, average number of employees, 100. Its top down now, finance issues slowing sales, but as slow sales pressure the retailers, millions will lose their jobs, and their buying power is lost to the economy, restaurants go out of business, retail is hit harder. More foreclosures, finance is harder hit, real estate plunges further, more lose their jobs, and then there is an amplifying loop, fewer people with money to spend and more businesses slowing and laying off workers.

I am seeing the bottom up data, we get reports of how this finance crisis is hitting mainstreet, and hitting it hard.

Please, someone tell me I am wrong. This is Great Depression II. They never called WW I that until there was a WWII. The new name for that thing our grandparents went through is gonna be GD I.

I am astonished at how quickly such an amazingly large and integrated and worldwide house of cards can fall. I am astonished.

I think the reason the pundits and thinkers are not very evident with any perspective, and am I alone in thinking there is an amazing silence going on, is because the experts and the pundits are more shocked and terrified by whats happening than we are, and have no clue what to say?

@nojo: The brakes only apply to single-day falls. We are seeing a death of a thousand cuts, but they are not just flesh wounds, any one of the market plunges of the last two weeks would go down in history even if they were just isolated events.

Amazing coincidence, the Dow’s all time historic high was one year ago today, 14,000 and change. Today, 8,500, 40% drop.

Remember these days, people, and read the history of 1929, noone then knew what was happening until years later. It wasn’t the one day crash that killed the economy, it was the ensuing months of decline, lower and lower. Remember these days, our grandchildren will be asking us what was going on, what was it like.

@Promnight: You’re not wrong, and you’re right that the pundits and experts don’t know what to say because this is a level of global interdependence and melting house of cards that wasn’t even conceivable in 1929.

Wasn’t Ford’s closing price at the bell today $3/share? How long before Toyota and Hyundai snatch up GM and Ford at bargain basement prices.

But a hug to you.

/ awkward man hug

(deep voice) “Uhhh . . . wanna beer?”

@SanFranLefty: SFL, I am scared, existentially scared, as I have never been in my life. I am scared by the silence. When huge events happen, there are public intellectuals out there who offer their observations and analysis. The events of the last 2 weeks have been dizzying, and I have not seen any significant comment, by any respected experts, which makes any serious effort to put all this in any kind of perspective that might give some hint as to the future. I have a sense that the experts and the policy wonks and the serious people in the world are as horrified and stymied, or more so, than I am. Noone is predicting a bottom, is what gets me. The proponents of the bailout, Bernanke, Paulson, when pressed, actually admitted they didn’t know if it would work, they didn’t have any metric or orderly analysis guiding their proposal, they just knew we needed to do SOMETHING. The people in charge are driving blind, and the serious thinkers, who did predict something like this, well, when they predicted it they said there would be no solution, so they have none. They said “don’t drive the car off the cliff, that would be bad.” Now we have driven off the cliff, and we just haven’t hit the bottom of the abyss yet, and its kinda too late to figure out how to fit the car with rocket boosters.

RML, to quote the great movie, Airplane, you picked a bad time to give up chemicals. Not that they work.

Anyone who finds anything out there from some serious person that tries to explain this in some way that produces some rational hypothesis as to how its gonna play out, I want to hear it.

Noone wants to say its great depression II, OK, thats cool, noone wants to shout fire in a crowded theater, what scares me is, noone with credibility is saying its not.

@SanFranLefty: Shit. Yugo is looking to snatch them up.

@JNOV:

Irony floats better than even hope.

@Promnight:

Yeah, but we needed this, Prom…the rich just kept getting richer and fucking the poor, and the poor just kept voting for the bastards who had them in a choke-hold. Nothing for it but to burn it down and start over.

And it is starting to burn, isn’t it? Stand back and enjoy the flames before they consume you too….

@Promnight: I beg you to relax a little bit. Hoover RAISED interest rates and fucked the nation, but Paulson (tool though he is) attempts an unclogging by lowering rates and acting like a socialist. Do I think there will be a depression? Maybe. But I also think we have a chance to employ people and avoid a complete meltdown. It all hinges on Bush stepping down willingly.

@blogenfreude: I’m closing my eyes tightly and hoping whatever dickwad manages my mutual fund is snapping up some bargains.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Heh. I made that up, but I hope it’s true.

@Promnight: Actually having a Sapphire martini for Our Queen Rachel’s Jay Leno appearance esta noche. (East Coast eeleetes are welcome to tip me off on when Rachel comes on. Don’t care to waste my now-rare buzz on Marky Mark or who ever tha fuck.)

Seriously, Prom, what the fuck can we do? It’s like seeing the fucking tidal wave come in and there goes all your switching to curly light bulbs and taking your own goddamm bags to the grocery store. This is also a hell of a time for me to decide that I really need to work about half a day less per week so I can preserve my mental health, that and get more sleep.

We’ll all have each other’s onscreen company so long as we haz the webz.

@SanFranLefty: @Promnight: What I heard tonight on NPR was that, yes, 1929 was awful, but the WORST of the depression happened in 1932 and 1933.

And I think Ford’s share price at the end of the day was $2.

Yes, GDII is highly plausible and possible. Best case scenario: we will just have That ’70s Economy. And that’s the best case scenario.

@JNOV: I’m going back to the p-doc for more drugs tomorrow, myself. That’s how I cope.

@JNOV: Go fishing. That’s my drug.

@rptrcub: My Hope™ might be sponsored by Pfizer, but I’ll take it where I can get it.

(And the dumbass Phillies PA guys are playing the theme to “Rocky.” Srsly? Corny ass town.)

@redmanlaw: Man, can’t no fish live in these polluted waters! I expect the SureKill (Schuykill) River to catch fire any day. I blame Ohio.

@redmanlaw: My problem, RML, and you all, I think, is that I am rich. Oh, not really, I have zero net worth, but a big income, mostly mrs. Proms, but I ain’t no slouch. Great lifestyle, zero security. Don’t get me wrong, its not that big, but I grew up poor and its beyond my parents’ wildest dreams, and its new to me and Mrs, too, only the last 5 years brought this. And I am seeing real data from mainstreet businesses, our members are going out of business. My association is gonna face budget cuts. But the thing is, my industry is a belwether, and its situation is telling me its gonna be bad, real bad, all over. Its gonna trickle down, up and all over. And Mrs. Prom’s industry is not doing so great either, and its supposed to be recession proof.

So when some say, “watch and enjoy as the rich get theirs,” well, rich is relative, but I may be among those who get theirs, collateral damage, neither I nor Mrs. are in finance, but the slowdown is gonna hit us. And there are gonna be millions of us out there pounding the pavement, and not everyone is gonna find a landing, not even in retail, not even in starbucks, not even as Walmart greaters. I am not afraid to be poor, I was happier when I was, I think, sometimes, but a depression, it means chronic unemployment, nothing out there. Thats what I fear. Maybe I do just have to get a grip. Its the silence that kills me, noone I have read has put this in perspective and offered a plausible prediction for whats up.

I have no basis for saying this, but I don’t see Doom. Yet. Massive Readjustment, but not Doom.

Even today, the Dow is still at 2003 levels. A very big bubble has burst, and it’s very messy, but are we looking at a systemic problem, or a credit freeze that will start melting once we muddle through it enough?

We are due for a Reckoning, no doubt about it, and the longer we’ve been putting it off, the worse its immediate effects. If not CDOs, oil. If not oil, the global-warming Tipping Point. We’ve been on notice since 1973 — thirty-five years — that shit’s gonna hit the fan, one way or another. As a nation, we’ve chosen to look the other way.

The ugly truth: We just keep jabbing the needle in our arms until the needle breaks. Warnings are ignored, interventions thwarted. The only thing that stops us is our sheer inability to continue. And by then we’ve fucked things up so much our opportunity for recovery is slim.

However…

It’s still an opportunity.

Barry enters office next January with a real fucking crisis on his hands, and no easy solutions. But Barry’s smart, and he’ll surround himself with smart people. And Shrub has done us a perverse favor by fucking up things so bad, we’ll be open to solutions that have been ideologically unacceptable for a generation. The Reagan Era is over.

It’s going to be a very bumpy ride, no doubt about it. But now more than ever, it’s our only hope.

@Promnight:
That silence is deliberate.

The financial guys don’t want to tell the masses that they fucked up to keep everyone from panicking and from (rightfully) blaming them. Limits the number of pitchforks and torches they will face.

The MSM doesn’t want to tell you because they’ve never told anyone bad news in 20-30 years. It would mean that people wake up and NOT buy all the stuff they’re peddling on the tube.

I know it’s ugly. My employer has a $400 million dollars worth of securities coming due and no one is willing to extend our lines of credit. And they want to lay off a lot of us (including me probably) and don’t have the money to pay us off (severance okay, pensions, not so much.) Can’t do both with no credit.

Personally I want to see the rich get theirs. They initiated the class warfare in the late 70s and I figure that they deserve all the grief they get. What pisses me off about many of them is their hypocrisy. They think they are above the rules and physical laws that govern the rest of us. They talk about Meritocracy but never follow it (see W and PG.) So on and so forth. However, I wish that they didn’t take the rest of us down with them in the process. If wishes and buts were like candies and nuts…

The way I look at it, you’re in a lot better shape mentally than those guys are. They’re incapable of dealing with being a failure or falling back to where they started from or worse. How does one deal with going from being a billionaire to having just $60 million besides lots of coke and booze? Plus they have expenses that you and I can not comprehend.

As much as it will hurt us, this will hurt the rich more. The truth is, for many of the upper crust, their real pleasure is in the misery of the poor, knowing that they are far better off than the rest of us miserable wretches. They don’t like being afraid of us. See the anti-revolutionary hysteria of Europe post 1798 and the shrieking anti-communism of 1930s to the 1980s.

From what I’ve read of the GD, only a few of the ultra wealthy came out unscathed. Many great fortunes were lost. Many more never really recovered.

And I hate to say it, but sometimes, societies need a good backhand to the head to make them wake up and realize what is important and what is not.

@nojo: In 2003, our only economy, retail, and service, was still going, real estate values were skyrocketing, and the inevitable reckoning was being pushed off by borrowing, by everyone and anyone. In my industry, longer and longer car loan terms were being pushed, and manufacturers were staving off a decline in sales with aggresive financing and leasing programs that encouraged people to “buy-up” sooner than they would normally, I was saying then, they are eating into next year’s sales by enticing people to trade up sooner than they would have.

All the factors present in 2003 are gone, noone has magical equity in their home to finance home improvement or a car or boat or a jump up to a tract mansion. Finance has dried up. Our false prosperity for the entire term of W Bush was based on free and easy credit and massive debt. Hey, what industry has crashed? The finance industry, there is no more free and easy credit. The real reckoning has arrived, and its gonna be huge.

I expect my home to be worth half what I paid 2 years ago by the end of next year. If my wife and I keep our jobs, we will be fine, but if we don’t, we are not gonna have the option of selling, taking the equity, and downsizing and simplifying. The equity is gone, even though we had over 30% down on this house.

Until recently, I thought it was a psychological downturn, it happens, people are just holding their breaths until after the election, and a new president, no matter which, would bring an improvement.

No longer, there have been fundamental shifts, it will take years, 2 or 3, for this economy to start to pick up, I think. Thats a long time, when it comes to recessions. Its gonna be a full year to reach bottom, I think. Especially in real estate values, and thats gonna hurt bad.

@Promnight: Nojo has a good point. We’re back at 2003 levels on a lot of this. Obviously you’ve got to sock away your money as much as possible…I’m freaking out because I am someone who despite frugal living has about $150 in discretionary spending each month after paying the mortgage, car insurance, property taxes, student loans, groceries and utilities. That gets old after a while. I just pray to FSM to be able to keep my job and that Mr. SFL can keep his.

Manchu, you are wise beyond your years. I agree with all you have said. Problem is I make my living off those fuckers, and if they are screwed, I may be screwed too. I think people will still need food, I am still pursuing my hip coffehouse deli catering business idea. In my area, its strange, retail property is much cheaper than residential, I am looking at a listing for a restaurant, 70 seats, fully operational, all equipment, and it has a 3 bedroom apartment above it, all 3 blocks from the beach, and its $500,000. A house in that neighborhood cannot be had for much less than a million. If I am willing to live above my deli, the cost of my housing and the business would be less than the cost of my current house. We’d save money even if the business made nothing. And I would be able to integrate my life and eliminate the alienation, do what I love, in my own home, no artificial divide between life and work, make my work what I love. We are real close to jumping on this.

@Promnight: I would be able to integrate my life and eliminate the alienation, do what I love, in my own home, no artificial divide between life and work, make my work what I love.

Why wouldn’t you do that? What is holding you back?

@Promnight: . . . wearing a boater, beeg moustache, striped apron . . .

@Promnight: Watch out Di Bruno Bros.!

@SanFranLefty: But Nojo is also economically illiterate, just picking up breadcrumbs here and there…

Still, it’s the broader point I was groping towards: The chatter has been that Barry’s gonna be saddled with all these problems, and we’ll have to put off rainbows for another administration. But these are practical problems, and Barry strikes me as a practical person — much more so than, say, Hillary, who may be a wonkette when she’s not failing at demagoguery, but never impressed me like her spouse with the details.

FDR also inherited a huge problem, and he spent the first year or two experimenting, since there was no manual to follow at the time. The things they learned in the Thirties we now know, and we may see a vogue for Keynes while Friedman finally gets remaindered.

That’s the opportunity: Barry has a free hand to attack these problems, and I think he’ll address them with what wisdom he can muster. No rainbows, but I’ll settle for solutions.

The catch with my comparison? The thing that really saved the United States from Depression was World War II.

What I really want to know, is how the hell the British Government managed to twist the anti-terrorist laws to freeze the Icelandic assets!

I mean are the laws that vaguely written that the party in power can twist them to their own ends? How can one trust one’s Government?

This is why I wear a tinfoil hat. Well that and the fact that people can create bombs that are triggered by the RFID chips in passports.

prommy,
i cut and pasted this post of yours because it’s the true fright we’re all facing. remember i have inside info coming out of wall street. i just posted a day or 2 ago that THEY don’t know wtf is going on, except we haven’t seen the bottem. this is an unprecedented event. the great depression of 1930ish is upon us, or worse. i got this right from the horses mouth-
yes, they are driving blind. this post is right on promster.

Promnight says:
“I am scared, existentially scared, as I have never been in my life. I am scared by the silence. When huge events happen, there are public intellectuals out there who offer their observations and analysis. The events of the last 2 weeks have been dizzying, and I have not seen any significant comment, by any respected experts, which makes any serious effort to put all this in any kind of perspective that might give some hint as to the future. I have a sense that the experts and the policy wonks and the serious people in the world are as horrified and stymied, or more so, than I am. Noone is predicting a bottom, is what gets me. The proponents of the bailout, Bernanke, Paulson, when pressed, actually admitted they didn’t know if it would work, they didn’t have any metric or orderly analysis guiding their proposal, they just knew we needed to do SOMETHING. The people in charge are driving blind, and the serious thinkers, who did predict something like this, well, when they predicted it they said there would be no solution, so they have none”

FCS, i’ve been screaming martial law since the patriot act was enacted.
i suspect the rioting is the reason, not the wiretapping.

on a personal note, the baked household is scaling back.
when mr. can’t-keep-his-dick-in-his-pants gets here for 2 months, december and january, we are moving to cheaper digs. the rent on this beach house is $OMFG, and his income is 1/3 of what it was just a few years ago. he’s a commodities trader. paper, lumber. he’s in the middle east, because it’s a new territory for him to open in response to the disatrous economy.north and south american mills are closing at an alarming rate, and others are merging, putting a nice dent in our income.
no one is safe.

@ALL and Prom especially. Paul Krugman’s column in this morning’s NYT says you’re right, Prom, and that the financial big boys from all over who are gathering in Washington this weekend have a chance, which they damn well better take, to get their act together and keep the global ship from going down. (Also see his blog posting from last evening called Two Kinds of Problems.)

A further frightening sign of the times: In yesterday’s mail we got a letter from the president of our local bank (home office in Evansville, IN) assuring its depositors that the bank had never engaged in subprime lending (or other risky practices, always used condoms), detailing the FDIC insurance on deposits, and giving the bank president’s phone number and email and urging those with fears and questions to contact him. Imagine! Never before has a bank gotten in touch with me to calm my fears. Usually more interested in intimidating me or seducing me into providing them with an opportunity to siphon off more of my money for them to add to their pile.

@lynnlightfoot:
a love letter from a bank?
now i’m REALLY scared.

@lynnlightfoot: I’m currently in the lurch with Wachovia, which has been whoring around in a love triangle between Citi and Wells Fargo. The talk has been to divide Wachovia’s East Coast assets between Citi in New England and the mid-Atlantic, and Wells Fargo in the southeast. I know that the FDIC is there and everything, but who’s going to bail out the FDIC when it’s overloaded?

@CheapBoy:
Welcome. Another lost sheep has found the rebellious flock!

Small local banks have been running big ads in my area, basically hinting that people should get out of the market and money markets and put there pile in the local bank, its insured and safer there, and it seems to be true, so this is an opportunity for the little guys, it seems.

First call this morning, a dealership thats been in business for 3 generations, asking advice about layoffs and how to avoid discrimination claims when making layoffs, he’s laid off 10 people already, and the next to go is disabled, and he says “I don’t know if we will be in business in a month.”

Holy Shit.

@baked: Oh damn, I was hoping I was wrong, I know squat about finance and the markets, but I sense the silence in the media. Hope all will be well for you, and your insider, Baked.

@rptrcub: My investment accounts, such as, are with Wachovia, and I’ve been getting e-mail from my financial advisor (who’s been a friend for over 20 years and who I’ve followed from one institution to another) — I felt so bad for the woman, because it was obvious that the employees know nothing, are being told nothing, and are just trying to quell panic.

@baked: If the sale falls through, I can rent you a 230 acre ranch in northern New Mexico for $1,000 a month. 3bdr house, pasture for horses, timber/firewood, elk and deer, front 1/3 is in alfalfa, good legal access, water rights, awesome hiking up to a mesa overlooking the whole valley. It’s where I found my 300 million year old fossil while deer hunting one day. The end timer neighbors apparently cached some provisions in a cave there, too.

@redmanlaw: Thats a new one, RML: “Hey baby, how’d you like to come rent my place?” :)