Monday Links

Re: Uncomfortable Answers to Questions on the Economy [NY Times]

"Unlike the dot-com companies at the heart of the last speculative investment bubble, the new gold rush was centered on something that seemed unimpeachably solid — the American home."

No, no, no. LIKE...llliiike the dot-com companies... We may have forgotten, but pets.com SEEMED just as unimpeachably solid back then as a house did in 2005. If it looks, feels, smells, walks and talks like an asset bubble...

"If we get more bank failures, we have the possibility of seeing more of these pictures of people standing in line to pull their money out."

Wow! The stability of banks, and therefore the economy, is based purely on a bet. A bet on mass psychology that NOT everyone will close their accounts at once. From the first day I learned about fractional reserve banking in Econ 101, I was bothered by it - 'You mean to tell me that my bank will lend out 90 cents of my hard earned dollar'. I was equally dumbfounded in kindergarten the first time a kid asked if he could borrow a dollar from me - 'How the hell do you borrow money?', I thought. It's like the insurance industry when a natural disaster causes a run on the claims department. Utlimately, nothing is really backed. How long can the FDIC protect us until it needs an "FDIC" of it's own. The process of turning debt into money cannot continue indefinitely. When hyperinflation hits wages, the emergency brake on money creation will get yanked.

"Average household debt has swelled to 120 percent of annual income..."

Negative savings rate. AKA in the "red". We haven't had this since the Great Depression. This very worrisome.

"Wall Street’s financial wizards engineered diabolically complicated investments linked to mortgages"

It took about four years for the general public to

Posted by: DOW8000SP800 at July 21, 2008 2:05 PM

...figure out where all this cheap, easy money came from. Very tricky, very sneaky, very opaque, very smoke and mirror. Banks went from being lenders to brokers of black box, marked to model junk, pumped and dumped to the unsuspecting investor (Chinese, Hedge Funds, Pensions, ultimately 401's, etc.).

Posted by: DOW8000SP800 at July 21, 2008 2:11 PM