The Federal Reserve is printing mainly to supply the Euro central banks liquidity. I like Chinese: http://youtu.be/GzC5HT1Qhmo
Would you believe apocalypse? http://youtu.be/eg0TNHeFMQg
Remember, they woke up and still made bread and drank wine on September 7th 476AD.
How about conflation? Otherwise known as huddles of bankers thinking about how to squeeze the final pips out of everybody.
We are more likely going into a deflation, not an inflationary period.
Yes, and as my OH says, do not forget the Swiss. They bought heavily on the sub-prime market, plus got their come uppance from a bent chappie and their two leading national banks lost billions of Francs. She does hate it when the greed of her country is left out! The British press speculation on the new treaty by March (the same with a few tweaks - led by Sky, oh yes News Int or in other words the Roop Murdoch Gang again, surprise, surprise!) will perhaps blast their socks off (I hope anyway) and the total collapse (Daily Torygraph) is already nearly two weeks overdue so predictably the real fireworks might be the Euro taking off big time, albeit on a 'two track' trajectory for which I am not sooooo enthusiastic. The banks will remain in Pixieland, no Gretchen not Dixieland, and dollars will be used as confetti given the number of them the world is stuffed with at little more value than each shard of actual confetti. Poverty is being reinvented big time and HD television repossession will have to be cancelled because of no space left to store them with the cars, houses, grandparents and all else the bailiffs will be gathering in a futile attempt to reintroduce rationality into the new Poor Age.
Ahhhhh, got that off my chest. Must have been an overdose of broccolli at dinner this evening.
Didn't notice, but on second thoughts you DO have a point...
I should have said formerly, not formally! On the other hand...
Yes, went looking earlier and found. Cool. Know what happened to my lucre now - gives new meaning to down the pan as well.
I have been looking at Vance Packard's 'Hidden Persuaders' written in 1958 and as valid today as then. My Pelican edition was bought in 1963 for 3/6d, money many Brits do not even remember and did a highly ritualised dance in mourning in 1971 when Sterling was decimalised. I remember them foretelling the downfall of the currency because of this heinous act. They then claimed everything had gone up far more than ever before and within the period that cry's echo could rebound had started a spending spree like never before. OK, Packard got me there because he mentioned Pavlovian responses in his book and it strikes me that the credit boom that preceeded the present angst was just that. Pavlov's dog all over again but this time the big dogs have all the bones and are running away to bury them where we will never find them...
200 out of 100 for that final word - no, didn't think you were blaming them, they're simply the 'suckers' who were sold junk.
Mark - Lehmans who absconded with my carefully saved pension, the only saving I have ever done... but no did not see it. What did I miss?
@ Brian. Did you see "Despicable Me"? The criminal visits the Bank of Evil, formally Lehman Brothers...
Yes Gretchen, I agree entirely. The work I am doing at present is on citizenship in a particular context and economics continually 'butts in', thus I am doing my homework at a trotting pace and not liking much of what I see. I can see that Joe and Joan Public have a big portion of blame for walking open eyed into that trap but the people who sold them that poisoned silver bullet who you list are the most culpable of all. I only wish they would get their just desserts but I suspect it is Mr and Ms Public who will get it. I am not a huge lover of economics either because of what it tells us about our species, but I loved and still enjoy economic anthropology enormously and romance myself into an idyllic hunter-gatherer society very often, also very easy hereabouts with one of the world's biggest heritage sites for prehistory around me... Sadly it is only a romance, so back to the boring reality of writing.
Brilliantly funny but not as good as the Giles Coren and the subs version!
Christopher. OK it is funny BUT there again are the implications and rather smutty implications that this is all some kind of German takeover of Europe and so on. Look at the work of serious contemporary economists like Mischkin and realise that in lay terms it is simply a case of the Germans and French resisting everything going down the plughole, that other countries have become complacent and politicians have created the conditions for this situation with their inactivity in terms of fiscal control of those bleeding money out of national purses as well as everybody elses' pockets. So funny it may be but I for one wish people would stop capitalising on that bit of history because like most brainwashing it is untruth that is persuasive. Now if somebody dared to do something showing pirates hoarding treasure with bank logos on their ships' sails and captains with the names of CEOs then that would be funny and pretty well precise.
@Brian, you're kinda right, the horse has well and truly bolted, yet, there are some people ready to pick up the pieces.Problem being, the people ready to give their two cents are NOT the people holding the gold, and therefore, stand for nothing. Remember the golden rule.. whoever has the gold makes the rule.
Joe soap on the street is NOT EVER going to do anything more than simply "be governed"
I'm not going off on a tangent, just saying "this happens, but the PEOPLE are buying into it, so don't blame the "system". My other half had no trouble setting up the business, getting the siret, the tax number, tout ca... everything was done in jig-time. The problem, finding clients, because everyone buys cheaper Chinese stuff, rather than local. I know why It's made cheaper there, and I know that it defeats the purpose to buy something that is actually bad for you, in the name of well being, but, people see the digits on the price-tag, and decide on that alone. It's not difficult to decide to buy local, it's just complacency, we don't regard the labels, and apathy, some folk just don't give a toss.
There are people who don't actually know, but want to. I hope to meet as mant of these people as possible.
It is a world crisis, Euro is the name of one currency in trouble. Outside the so-called Eurozone there is far worse, there is little point in wishing people would stand up and speak for themselves now, too late. As they say 'After the horse has bolted...
you mirror another comment i made below, yes, but don't blame the French "system", it's the same pretty much everywhere. when the world is laden down with logos, nobody bats an eyelid. you need to buy kids a present this year, check the labels, Disney, playmobil, fisher price, ALL made in China. They won't stop producing till we stop buying