Poop in the bed already?
The Nikkei is falling out of bed. Down to an almost 2 and 1/2 year low -- and enough percentage points to indicate a bear market. The Yen is strong, but ... that depends on what you are measuring it against. The rest of Asia is showing little in the way of vitality.
The UK FTSE is also taking a hit. And why shouldn't it? What is going right there? The government stumbles from crisis to crisis, each step taken by Gordon Brown a seemingly greater poop-heap that the last. Did you hear that in the UK you will shortly have little to no control over your dead body? Seriously!! Unless you make specific provisions in a living will with detailed medical instructions, the government will be able to harvest your organs from your dead body -- without your permission. Friends, it just a small step from there to eugenics. They are better "socialists" than the Soviet Union or East Germany. Gordon Brown and his cadre of leftist loonies appear to have won in the UK. Though in this instance, it may just be because the English have become more mindless that the Americans.
And US housing starts is the worst in 28 years. And shows the third worst period past since records have been assembled in 1959. And there is hope at the end of the tunnel? Where? The economy has ground to a screeching halt and nobody seems to have realized it quite yet. And not only the US economy, but the global economy. The trigger to start the accounting for 8 years -- no, 16 years of excess? The subprime mess without doubt. But before the world points to the US as the villain ... consider that someone had to buy the junk in the first place. And those buyers seem to have come from all over -- greed is not solely and American vice. Although, we seem to be particularly good at disseminating greed as a concept.
So where does it all end? It ends with markedly lower property prices, a healthier balance of payments situation in the US and some reality check in Europe. The U.S. has been consuming way above its ability to support such consumption: the recent capital injections to US investment banks is similar to the bail-out of the sovereign US by foreign bond holders. But we learn ... the U.S. is a dynamic society and economy. The EU, by contrast, is not. Beware.
The UK FTSE is also taking a hit. And why shouldn't it? What is going right there? The government stumbles from crisis to crisis, each step taken by Gordon Brown a seemingly greater poop-heap that the last. Did you hear that in the UK you will shortly have little to no control over your dead body? Seriously!! Unless you make specific provisions in a living will with detailed medical instructions, the government will be able to harvest your organs from your dead body -- without your permission. Friends, it just a small step from there to eugenics. They are better "socialists" than the Soviet Union or East Germany. Gordon Brown and his cadre of leftist loonies appear to have won in the UK. Though in this instance, it may just be because the English have become more mindless that the Americans.
And US housing starts is the worst in 28 years. And shows the third worst period past since records have been assembled in 1959. And there is hope at the end of the tunnel? Where? The economy has ground to a screeching halt and nobody seems to have realized it quite yet. And not only the US economy, but the global economy. The trigger to start the accounting for 8 years -- no, 16 years of excess? The subprime mess without doubt. But before the world points to the US as the villain ... consider that someone had to buy the junk in the first place. And those buyers seem to have come from all over -- greed is not solely and American vice. Although, we seem to be particularly good at disseminating greed as a concept.
So where does it all end? It ends with markedly lower property prices, a healthier balance of payments situation in the US and some reality check in Europe. The U.S. has been consuming way above its ability to support such consumption: the recent capital injections to US investment banks is similar to the bail-out of the sovereign US by foreign bond holders. But we learn ... the U.S. is a dynamic society and economy. The EU, by contrast, is not. Beware.
posted by Zaphod at Thursday, January 17, 2008
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