My definitive guide to the Global Economic Meltdown

Von

Von

Active member
Being a student of Economics as well as a free market loving Libertarian has made the past few months very interesting to me seeing that the economy is in the front of everyones mind and the front page every morning. Sadly however nearly all pundits on T.V. and editorialist's in papers have so little knowledge about the subject its almost embarrassing to read/listen to them analyze the situation. Thats why I've turned to a site that I have truster for a long time mises.org, they have developed a pretty comprehensive guide to how this crises began, how our leadership in Washington is affecting the crisis, and where will we go from here. I've read many many articles on this crisis in the past year and a half and am a news junkie as well as being well versed in the language of Economics (there are a lot of words that most people have little grasp of in Economics).

Without further pause here is a collection of articles and essays that thoroughly describe every aspect of this crises, http://mises.org/story/3128. Please feel free to post questions or start discussions, its my pleasure to inform and persuade.
 
i have been reading a few of the articles from time to time.

here are a few thoughts:

1) this is the first, foremost and most important fact (and the most obvious). We the people as taxpayers will always bail out what the government tells us to, no thanks to all the corrupt leaders on both sides of the party. in order for this conversation not to get out of line lets not blame parties, its both parties faults, as well as the American consumers fault in their "spending habits."

2) there are two sides to me. one that did not want to bail out theses financial institutions because we are suppose to live in a free market capitalistic society; which we all know is bogus to a point. the other side of me knew we have to bail out certain market influencers because without them we risk global depression. what do i mean by that? well Fannie Mae controls something like 1 out of every 5 mortgages in this country. if we think a couple of thousand foreclosures are bad could you imagine 1/5th of our countries mortgages going down the drain if we let Fannie and Freddie fail? i dont want to. the difference between this "almost" depression and the last one is that our government is actually trying to do something unlike what we did in the 30's which was just watch the market tank.

3) interesting ideas that i have been hearing from different sources lately. some reports are coming out (one is one the site you listed) about a second, more powerful foreclosure storm. this time affecting adjustable rate mortgages (which is what alot of well bearing, good credit people have in this country). it will be interesting to see how the market plays out over the next year or two years.

so, thats my two cents for now, if you or anybody else wants to talk specific events just bring them up. if you read this far thanks for reading!
 
Smart, but in your second point where you said that the government just sat back and watched the markets fail isn't true, the government attempted to intervene and caused what would have been a deep recession or depression to become The Great Depression that plagued the US throughout the thirties, trust me Roosevelt's New Deal did little to help this country during the depression and in my mind is one of the most harmful collections of legislation passed in this country. It's interesting to look at the run up to the Great Depression and compare it to the run up to our current crises. The Bush "regime" has been corrupt in the name of "free markets" by giving hand outs and breaks to corporate fat cats, the Coolidge and Hover administrations were much the same and Coolidge even stated that "the business of the US government is business", by that he did not mean that the business of government was to stay out of the way of the free market, instead what he was alluding to was his use of government power to help big businesses.
 
good points.

Its interesting to note that true capitalism will work if left alone. sadly to say, after the federal reserve was established (somewhere during 1913 i believe) this country has felt obligated to interfere with the free market. Our government was never established to run our free market, nor do we the people, want them too.

the day when a bunch of non-elected people decided to take our money and bail out these same individuals that got us into this mess, is the day the government sold us out; and as we all know, that day already happened.
 
Whats really getting under my skin these days is how people say that they don't like the bailout but then claim they are happy that it was passed because we've "averted another great depression" there are many many claims in the media that are like this. But that is udder bullshit there is absolutely no way to know that the bail out has saved us from a depression when its only been three or so weeks since it was passed and those have been highly volatile weeks where we have seen the Dow tank more then 2000 points. It makes me mad that people are already claiming the bill worked when it has barely gone into effect.

also this is a really good paper written by three economists from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank

the link to it is herehttp://blog.mises.org/archives/008823.asp.

 
just to point this out, according to Karl Marx capitalism is designed to crash and burn. According to him, if it wasnt for our middle class as a buffer, the seperation of wealth created by capitalism (Bourgeogis vs. Proletariat) is supposed to lead to a total collapse of the economy and eventually bloody revolution. At least thats what i understand from Marx's theories.
 
I'm sure that Karl Marx was a brilliant man and lived much longer than I have yet to, but his understanding of capitalism is very limited and was based on what he saw around him in 19th century Germany and London. On the other hand students of today have a much broader scope to study capitalism and how government can impact it.

And I'm happy to say that it is not, i stress not capitalism that has failed in the recent months it is however the failure of the neoliberal economic policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations.
 
Anyone ever hear about the forefathers warning of a privatized banking system? Last time I checked I'm pretty sure that's what we have.
 
did you read the whole article? im going to read it right now. will let you know what i think.

I also agree with you on the bailout. who was it to decide that all of a sudden we were going into a great depression like era? the president, the Federal reserve? please. im in retail, and its bad, really bad; but no where near depression like era. we are barley in a recession era. this country will know when to be scared, and we are no where near that yet (but yet is the key word)
 
YACHT

i read that article about the financial meltdown and it was interesting. i really dont have much to say. i mean, i agree with them, the banking lending has not froze up like the media portrayed it has.

like they said, there is no arguing that we are going through a financial crisis but the credit is still out there for alot of businesses, especially the banks. my opinion, the market is like a rubber band, the further it gets stretched the more likely it snap. well, we are at the snapping point but the strong will survive and the weak will wither, its just natural.
 
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