"What we are facing now if the beginning of the unraveling and collapse of the entire shadow financial system, a system of institutions (broker dealers, hedge funds, private equity funds, SIVs, conduits, etc.) that look like banks (as they borrow short, are highly leveraged and lend and invest long and in illiquid ways) and thus are highly vulnerable to bank like runs; but unlike banks they are not properly regulated and supervised, they don’t have access to deposit insurance and don’t have access to the lender of last resort support of the central bank (with now only a small group of them having access to the limited and conditional and thus fragile support of the Fed). So no wonder that this shadow banking system is now collapsing.(...) This is indeed the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression and occurring at a time when the US is falling in a now severe consumer led recession. The vicious interaction between a systemic financial and banking crisis and a severe economic contraction will get much worse before there is any bottom to it. We are only in the third inning of a nine innings economic and financial crisis. And the only light at the end of the tunnel is the one of the incoming train wreck." Nouriel Roubini
"Ignored in Georgia and under attack by its closest allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the United States is somewhat unhappily entering the realities of the post-Cold War world, in which it has to play by new rules that it seems to find rather unpalatable." Immanuel Wallerstein
David Seaton's News Links
The United State's biggest problem is not racism, creationism, the media, or even the economy... it is America's obsession with controlling everything, everywhere , all the time: tapping phones, invading countries, drones, spy satellites, giving lectures and sermons, leveling sanctions... and then not controlling that which needs to be controlled and which it could control.
In a country where a person can go to jail for possessing a minute quantity of cannabis or get fined for not mowing his lawn, the American financial system is going to damage the lives of millions of people in America and around the world for lack of sufficient regulation.
In short America's biggest problem is incoherent stupidity.
Now Americans are American enough to know that people who are not up to life's struggles are going to be left by the wayside... "owdada way, bud, comin' though" could be tacked right up there with "In God We Trust".
The world has no more patience than Americans do with losers.
The consolation is that the United States of America is so big, so well populated, with such productive agriculture, with so many natural resources and so far from dangerous neighbors, that it is basically unsinkable.
However, fatheaded hubris is going to take a severe hit in the years to come and Americans are going to want someone to blame it on. I think that they will blame it on whichever poor, helpless, sap wins the White House this year. DS
The United State's biggest problem is not racism, creationism, the media, or even the economy... it is America's obsession with controlling everything, everywhere , all the time: tapping phones, invading countries, drones, spy satellites, giving lectures and sermons, leveling sanctions... and then not controlling that which needs to be controlled and which it could control.
In a country where a person can go to jail for possessing a minute quantity of cannabis or get fined for not mowing his lawn, the American financial system is going to damage the lives of millions of people in America and around the world for lack of sufficient regulation.
In short America's biggest problem is incoherent stupidity.
Now Americans are American enough to know that people who are not up to life's struggles are going to be left by the wayside... "owdada way, bud, comin' though" could be tacked right up there with "In God We Trust".
The world has no more patience than Americans do with losers.
The consolation is that the United States of America is so big, so well populated, with such productive agriculture, with so many natural resources and so far from dangerous neighbors, that it is basically unsinkable.
However, fatheaded hubris is going to take a severe hit in the years to come and Americans are going to want someone to blame it on. I think that they will blame it on whichever poor, helpless, sap wins the White House this year. DS
