
The world *has* changed: Why we should be afraid - startingup
This is a sort of rebuttal to optimists, who believe "it will blow over". I believe the world has fundamentally changed. It is not merely a financial crisis. It is a fundamental economic crisis. The last two weeks brought the crisis to full focus, but we have been building up to it for several years.<p>Here are a few things that happened in the last 10-20 years that have brought us to this point:<p>1. Debt became fashionable, even prestigious, world-wide. The most storied names in business became debtaholics. This includes the financial players like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, but industrial-companies-that-became-financial-companies, like GM, Ford, GE and so on. This level of comfort with debt is unprecedented in history, and the historical parallels are dark.<p>2. The most prestigious nation on earth piled on debt, and other nations copied. US Debt/GDP is at 320%, much higher than even the great depression peak. Derivatives further magnify the leverage - as an example, AIG went down because of the magnified leverage not captured on their balance sheet.<p>3. US savings rate dropped from 10% in the mid 80s to near zero today, and it even went negative for a period.<p>History teaches us that such toxic debt episodes are followed by a prolonged hang-over, followed by a social aversion to debt and eventual recovery. The patient has just passed out - the hanger over hasn't even started. It is way too soon to talk about a recovery.<p>So it is very appropriate to be very concerned and fearful for our collective futures. What can we do as individuals? Swear off debt, live very frugally, lower our expectations.<p>To paraphrase, just because a lot of people are panicking doesn't mean we shouldn't be really afraid!
======
tdavis
_To paraphrase, just because a lot of people are panicking doesn't mean we
shouldn't be really afraid!_

To paraphrase, when a lot of people are panicking it's the ideal time to find
some fucking spine and _not_ panic.

What is panicking going to accomplish? What will being afraid gain you? NOT A
DAMN THING! What does _not_ panicking get you? Ask the people who aren't. It
gets you lots of money and opportunity. Many people have already made hundreds
of thousands of dollars by shorting pretty much any stock possible. Many
companies are waiting for their competition to start laying off tons of staff
and making deep cuts to spending so they can speed ahead by making smart
choices and spending money where it can put them ahead.

From: _Economy is booming! Credit is free! Leverage everything! Next quarter
will be awesome!_

To: _Economy is destroyed! Take all your money and put it under your pillow!
Sell the house! Expect to be poor!_

Just two different forms of compulsory reactions that have a complete lack of
foresight.

The act of making good financial decisions has not changed. Minimizing both
debt and overspending has always been the _right_ thing to do. I have zero
debt and as close to zero excess possessions as is possible without living in
a log cabin in the woods. I'm not going to change a damn thing except possibly
spend more money because stupid fear-mongering like this will create all sorts
of opportunity for people who can see the forest for the trees.

Why something like a recession would inspire _fear_ in anyone is a complete
mystery to me. There's nothing you can do about it so stop being afraid and
stop spreading fear as a viable option. Instead, sit down, take a deep breath,
realize that this isn't the "end of the world as we know it," and move on with
your life. Jesus, you people sound like a whining, crying broken fucking
record. All this recession has caused me to "feel" is pissed off constantly.

This argument sounds like this, except not hilarious because you're _serious_
: <http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2184997/6808646>

~~~
startingup
You are putting words in my mouth I didn't say. I am in the same position as
you: zero debt (no mortgage or car payment even), almost all cash or precious
metals and renting my home. So this panic doesn't mean anything personally in
terms of drop in assets.

But I do see a fall in my income, so I am tightening my belt - by which I mean
things like eating out less, stretching out that laptop for another few
months, buying fewer non-essentials, less expensive vacations and so on. That
is all I am advocating.

It is a rational, non-panicky response to some fairly dire economic
circumstances ahead. If you question whether the economic circumstances will
become dire, well, bookmark this thread, come back in 1 year, 2 years and 5
years.

~~~
tdavis
I want whatever drugs you are on.

Read your post. You said it's time to be fearful. That we should be really
afraid. That a lot of people are panicking and maybe it's time to join them.
I'm paraphrasing, but it's in black and white (well, gray and other gray).

Then you come back with this. Essentially, "I'm making less money, so I need
to spend less money." So, either you don't believe your own words ("rational,
non-panicky response" != "we should be really afraid") or you really believe
that a slight decrease in your income warrants advocating dangerous responses
like mass-fear and panic.

Presumably, you live in America. This means that by the mere fact of where you
were birthed you have been given, free of charge, essentially all the
opportunities that this life holds for a human being. I know first hand how
horrible life can be for people not handed what we have been. Your inability
to financially continue eating steak dinners every night is so far removed
from the constant suffering and strife that you could be experiencing that
your entire current view is laughable. If you were living on the streets you'd
have it better than hundreds of millions of people in this world.

So, no, it's not time to panic. It's not time to be afraid. It's time to
survey the landscape, take in the changes, and roll with them. It's time to
stop talking about this bullshit. Weather the storm, take advantage of other
peoples' fears, and come out on top. It's time to do the same thing any smart,
rational, successful person with the right perspective would do.

And, no, I will not bookmark this thread. I don't want to be further reminded
of just how much people like you take for granted and what you think we should
do when life throws us a little curveball.

~~~
startingup
You are making baseless assumptions. I was born in a very poor country, to
parents neither of whom could afford to finish high school. My worldview was
shaped by a world where debt was just not an option (think loan sharks & 300%+
annual interest rates when inflation was in the 10% annual range) and
mortgages simply didn't exist. If you got into debt that you couldn't repay,
you got thugs at the door to collect.

So I am already used to much worse circumstances than the worst that is likely
ahead in America. Having said that, what lies ahead for America is going to be
very painful economically, even more so because Americans by and large have no
recent memory of such economic pain, so lack the "inoculation" that lesser
societies have built up due to periodic crises. Deep structural changes are
inevitable - and such changes in the economy end up having profound cultural
and social impact, some of which is unpredictable.

I would personally do fine both because my personal balance sheet is in fine
shape and because I have a lot of inoculation. Can you say that about the
average American?

These are the things I said we should be afraid of.

~~~
tdavis
Saying we should be afraid of the unpredictable is like saying we should be
afraid of a meteor crashing into earth.

(1) We have no idea how likely it is _to_ happen (2) There's nothing we can do
to stop something unpredictable (3) If something unpredictable does happen,
deal with it then

Despite the fact that I disagree with your level of alarmism in general, I
won't even argue the unlikelihood of these profound cultural and social
impacts you suggest. I will just continue to stick with my original argument
that there's nothing to gain by fear or panic and continue to be right.

------
maxklein
SERIOUSLY, you guys need to get off this bandwagon. There is nothing
fundamentally wrong with the world enconomy. Resources are available,
production is huge everywhere and rising, more and more people are entering
the rich class, more and more countries are becoming industrialised, there are
very few active wars right now.

We live in an unprecendented era of peace and prosperity, and this 'problem'
we are observing is just a matter of numbers being pushed from one person to
the other. But there is still value being produced, there is still demand for
that value.

You should become afraid when you see people withdrawing their savings from
the banks, and when a major hostile economic block comes up. What we're
observing is just economic readjustment, it's not critical.

If in a year this situation still exists, I'll eat my hat on a webcam. You can
hold me to that.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Quite right. To put this into concrete terms, we still have all the food we
can eat, adequate medical care, enough homes to house everyone, assorted
consumer goods that make us happy, and the means to produce all of these as
needed.

The crash of the financial markets has not reduced the production capacity of
any of these goods or services. There will still be enough of them, only the
dollar values attached will be different.

In contrast, during the great depression, lots of _actual physical wealth_ was
destroyed. Various other policies reduced production capacity, most notably
the NRA and Smoot Hawley.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Recovery_Administratio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Recovery_Administration)

~~~
mattchew
One way to look at the current crisis is that a whole lot of long term plans,
once thought to be sensible, were abruptly shown to be unworkable.

These plans included actual inventories, lines of production, houses and other
buildings, and actual people working at actual jobs to support all of these.

Those plans now have to be scrapped. That means inventories wasted, lines of
production shut down, and people fired. We cannot just keep building more and
more houses as if nothing has changed.

Shutting down production lines and firing people is a real destruction of
wealth.

This destruction will have secondary and tertiary effects. We've already seen
how the cascade works in the stock market. Over the next year (or more) you
will see it in production and employment levels.

> The crash of the financial markets has not reduced the production capacity
> of any of these goods or services.

It has, because a considerable fraction of that productive capacity was
allocated based on false assumptions.

We have to reallocate that productive capacity to new purposes. We don't yet
know exactly what capital and labor needs repurposed, or to what new purposes.
The way we find that out is by businesses contracting or going bankrupt and
people being thrown out of work. Eventually, other businesses will expand, new
ones will start up, and people will find new jobs. It will take a while, and
in the meantime, it is going to hurt.

~~~
startingup
Totally agreed! Thanks for that succinct explanation of the real world
connection to all this financial destruction.

A whole lot of capital and labor needs to be repurposed, and it is going to
hurt, even without the political system making things worse. History teaches
us that the odds aren't very good on that front- it is _not_ a Republican vs
Democrat issue, nor for that matter a US vs Europe issue.

~~~
maxklein
Nah, the effect will be minimal. A house is either being built or it's not
being built. The investment in a house that is not built yet is not that much,
for the simple reason that there are not THAT many houses being built.

This economic correction will have an effect, but it will not be terrible - it
only affects very tiny parts of the global trade, and most of what is affected
is just U.S based and very local.

------
drewcrawford
10 years is about the length of a business cycle, which is about the smallest
accurately-measurable period in economics. The most frustrating thing about
politics today is that before 1980, all we hear about history is vague
references to things like the Holocaust and the Great Depression.

The thing about our current situation is that it's not something that caught
anyone who was paying any sort of attention by surprise. The Federal
Government has been making/encouraging bad loans from the moment they had the
power to do so. What started out as federal housing assistance during the
Great Depression has become Fannie and Freddie and our current crisis. The
ideas of easy money and credit extend as far back into human history as we can
go; at the very least they played a hand in the economic collapse of the USSR,
Germany, Russia. We even suspect they played a large role in destroying one of
the only ancient empires we know much about, Rome.

All of that to say, I know the politicians are running for office and thus
have to frame things within the lifetimes of their constituents, but can't we,
as intelligent people, construct a slightly wider historical lens for this
discussion?

------
fallentimes
1\. World wide? What source are you referencing? The States sure, but I have
no idea about the rest of the world and have never read anything talking about
world wide debt rates.

2\. See number 1.

3\. The saving rate statistics are misleading because they don't include 401k
and IRAs, which were not nearly as popular 10-20 years ago as they are today.

~~~
mtts
Since the financial system is indeed global, world wide is correct. Sure, it's
only in the US, the UK and Spain that a housing bubble has burst (AFAIK,
still, that's more world wide than the US alone), but financial institutions
are in trouble in Germany, in Belgium and the Netherlands as well (again,
AFAIK). In Iceland the collapse of the banking system is so severe the country
as a whole (not just the banks!) is effectively bankrupt. And I just read on
<http://fistfulofeuros.net/> that Ukraine is pretty close to something
similar.

~~~
fallentimes
Right - markets. What about the debt rates the author referenced in his OP?

~~~
mtts
Good point. Apparently the UK has a situation similar to the US where debt
rates are enormous. But you're right in that most of the world is rather more
frugal than the US.

------
viggity
According to this site (<http://zfacts.com/p/318.html>) our Debt is 70% of our
GDP, not 320%. Not that it matters because the two aren't well suited to
compare.

Debt is found on a balance sheet. GDP is found on a cash flow statement. A
much more appropriate comparison would be debt to the value of the entire
nation's assets. According to this site
(<http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/how_bad_is_the_national_debt_r/>), the per
capita debt is $162k but our per capita WEALTH is $300k.

We're going to be fine.

~~~
akkartik
Wow, debt of 50+% assets is 'fine'?! Grab the nearest person who lived in the
50s, and ask them what they think of it. That we've grown accustomed to this
sort of debt is the cause of all this mess.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Even if you owned nothing else, and had no other debt then a standard 80/20
mortgage has been considered a good deal all around for decades and still is.
That's 80% debt to 20% asset at the time you assume the mortgage. Yeah, I'd
say a 50:50 debt/asset is OK. The bigger concern is cash flow as shown by Debt
to Income ratio because it speaks directly to your ability to service that
debt.

------
adrianwaj
From this slideshow, (<http://businessjive.com>) these are other things that
also may have caused this:

1) Naked short selling: selling stocks you don't own or haven't even borrowed.

2) SEC not releasing information concerning hedge funds when they should have
under the FOI act, because that may have revealed funds' "proprietary trading
strategies", which may have been illegal due to their naked shorting.

3) The failure of large derivatives broker Refco in 2005, where in its
failure, a significant amount of stock was scattered through the market that
wasn't actually capitalizable due to naked shorting.

Since the failure of Lehman, the domino effect has been caused by a lack of
trust in the positions of would-be lenders and borrowers: no one believes or
can accurately determine another party's viability for a transaction to occur:
a lack of commercial grease.

With the US being a central pillar in the global economy, other countries have
failed too partly due to their connection to it.

Solutions: greater transparency, perhaps a business organization that
companies can join if they reveal more about their actual balance sheets.
Members can opt-in to view one another's positions before doing business: like
befriending someone on Facebook or Friendfeed.

Also, perhaps from this pillar of transparency, it may be possible to cancel
net debt positions computationally rather than let markets gradually build
again. Many people may lose out, but others should be held accountable and
people can move on.

~~~
mtw
the greater transparency solution would be only avalaible to big companies,
who would employ armies of consultants and accountants to be declared
"transparent", since a small business needs a minimum of $20k to get their
balance sheets audited/certified

------
cbrinker
If you want to point fingers you only have to look at the federal reserve
(1913).

Fractional reserve banking - Hey, let's give out invisible money ten fold
(more today) than actually exists! Usury? Yeah, let's add more invisible money
to it in the form of interest. We are geniuses!

------
carterschonwald
I do think that people panicking, while creating lots of problems, also
creates really interesting opportunities because of how people give everything
incorrect valuations in the near term and hence a sort of long term arbitrage
opportunity is possible

------
known
A country is not made of land; a country is made of its people. -- G.A.Rao

------
natrius
If you're correct that a social aversion to debt will develop, then debt will
become cheaper as demand decreases, at least after banks have money to lend
again. In that case, it seems like swearing off debt as you suggest would be
passing up a bargain.

Debt often makes sense.

------
ralph
You could trace the problems back beyond fractional reserve banking and say
that axing the Gold Standard and having a fiat currency was the first con.

Certainly, if credit is too cheap, asset prices will rise as borrowers outbid
one another to pay more. Greenspan has to shoulder a lot of the blame for the
recent boom.

Here in the U.K., our great leader, Gordon Brown, proclaimed "an end to boom
and bust" when he became chancellor in 1997. He was right. Instead we had
boom-boom-boom lasting ten years and are now going to have a bust to mirror
it.

------
zurla
"The root cause of this crisis is fractional reserve lending, and
micromanagement of interest rates by the Fed in particular and Central Banks
in general. The Fed started the party by slashing interest rates to 1%, but
Central Banks everywhere drank the same punch to varying degrees." --
[http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/10/global-
co...](http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/10/global-coordinated-
rate-cuts-wont-solve.html)

------
fnazeeri
The three points above all refer to the financial system. I'm not entirely
sold on this "it's not just the financial system it's systemic" argument.

The way I see it, the overall setup looks like this:

[capital] <\--> [financial system] <\--> [projects]

So basically the role of the financial system is to (i) allocate capital and
(ii) manage risk. I think it is totally clear that the financial system failed
with the latter, but where is the evidence that it failed with the former?
With the "subprime loans" were the houses that were built shoddy? It's not
like as a world or nation we went out and built some giant white elephant that
is now useless. By and large the projects funded remain sound. The problem is
that the financial system has seized up.

A few folks have suggested that rather than pumping several trillion of new
capital to save the existing disfunctional financial system, we should just
pick 20 banks out of bankruptcy, capitalize them and basically replace the
existing financial system with a new one (and then distribute the shares in
these banks to all citizens so it's not a government run thing).

Bottom line, the financial system is broken, but I'm not sure the fundamental
underlying "projects" are themselves broken.

~~~
startingup
_Bottom line, the financial system is broken, but I'm not sure the fundamental
underlying "projects" are themselves broken._

In your diagram, you need to complete the loop, to more accurately reflect
reality:

[capital] <\--> [financial system] <\--> [projects] <\--> [capital]

It is worth remembering how the financial system itself started breaking - it
started with all those massively overvalued housing "projects" for which they
lent money started going bad, which then spread to other credit classes like
autos, commercial real estate and so on.

Ultimately, the financial system is choking on debt that became uncollectable,
because the underlying projects that the debt financed proved economically
unviable. In micro terms, household income could not service the debt on the
house. None of the bailout schemes so far address that income issue. If they
started mailing out checks to homeowners to help them pay their mortgages,
they _can_ stop house prices from falling, but at the cost of hyper-inflation.
In chess terms, we are at an economic checkmate scenario - all options are
bad. The least bad option may not be politically viable, so we have to
consider really bad scenarios too. At this point it is unpredictable which of
the bad choices will be made.

Here is a nightmare scenario: start to _really_ worry if trade sanctions on
China or outsourcing ban on India become a possibility. Such beggar-they-
neighbor policies begot the Great Depression. We are not there yet, but how
confident are you it won't happen once the US Congress gets "serious"?

~~~
fnazeeri
I think:

[capital] <\--> [financial system] <\--> [projects]

better reflects reality in that inflows/outflows of capital to/from projects
are funneled through the financial system. For example, investors (capital)
are trying to take get capital out of hedge funds (who are in-turn invested in
companies) and they can't b/c the financial system is "constipated."

------
DenisM
To borrow your analogy the patient is not passed out, he is vomiting all over
the room due to credit&leverage intoxication. There is hoping he has coughed
up all of that and then some, so he will stop doing that and begin being very
sick but conscious, which would be a makred improvement over what we have
right now.

Ok, allegories are fun but back to business:

we had some serious issues prior to great depression with stock market -
people didn't know how to be moderate. With some education and regulation we
got over that (e.g. dot com was not that bad). So now we have a similar
problem with leverage - people failed to excersize moderation. They will learn
and credit and leverage will assume their natural place as instruments of
funds management.

Having said that, I think there are more shoes to drop yet. While there might
be a short-term rally, there will be even more drops after that. The size of
downturn should be equal to size of run-up (minus the productivity gains over
the last decade).

------
cmars232
It might be your last change to charge up a mountain of debt before its all
gone. Might as well do it now if we're all going bankrupt!

------
colinplamondon
A depression just means a lot of big companies are going to fail, thus leaving
vacuums just begging to be filled.

But, yeah, the whole "hyper-inflation leading to a massively devalued
currency, rampant unemployment and poverty, enormous waves of foreclosures,
bankruptcies, and bank failures" thing is going to rather suck for a great
many people.

Just remember, paradigm shifts = opportunity.

------
patrickg-zill
If you truly believe what you are saying, then it logically follows that you
have bought a great deal of gold, silver, or other precious metals, which for
5000 years have been a measure of value and served as a hedge against
inflation.

So, how much gold/silver have you actually purchased? Put your money where
your mouth is...

~~~
startingup
Yes, I actually did purchase a meaningful (i.e as a fraction of my net worth)
amount of gold, and have been buying for years. And for the rest of my net
worth, I went all cash (dollar & yen) or short term treasuries some years ago
- other than some small angel investments, which I will likely lose. And I
have been renting the place I live. So this 40% stock market crash or the real
estate bust hasn't meant anything to me personally. All I am saying is that
there were many very smart people warning about these exact issues (examples:
Paul Volcker, Warren Buffet, Nouriel Roubini, Steve Roach, Doug Noland ...)
for many _years_. Alas, their pessimism, based on facts and logic, has proved
entirely justified.

------
steveplace
Economic reality: E(t) = A _t

where A is the summation of all current factors.

Average person's view of economic reality:

Dummies(t) = 5A_t + 90

Which means that average people see reality either better or worse than what
it is and they're always late to the game.

~~~
steveplace
Shameful edit:

Should be Dummies(t) = 5A(t + 90)

This error woke me up in the middle of the night.

------
viggity
Invest in precious metals, Lead and Brass.

~~~
furiouslol
Invest in soft commodities. World population is still growing and people still
need to eat.

Oh yes. Just in case it gets ugly. Attend some MMA classes and load up on
ammo.

------
mjnaus
After only looking at your the title: the world changes every day... go with
it and get used to it!

------
schtog
When did it ever stop changing?

~~~
qwph
_Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose._

------
carterschonwald
I do think that people panicking, while creating lots of problems, also
creates really interesting opportunities because of how people give everything
incorrect valuations in the near term and hence a sort of long term arbitrage
opportunity is possible

------
Create
DICTATORSHIPS are like a good many other things in this world. They can be the
best, or the worst, form of government. There are some excellent
dictatorships, and there are some hateful ones. Nevertheless, be they good or
bad, it generally happens that they are imposed by circumstances, and, when
this is the case, the people concerned have no choice but to put up with them.
Inasmuch as a nation cannot be too strongly urged not to drift into a
situation which leaves it no alternative but helpless acquiescence, this brief
and cursory survey of dictators as they have displayed themselves at
successive stages of the world's history may not be without profit to the
French people at this present juncture.

INTRODUCTION WE are constantly deluding ourselves with the notion that things
are new, when, in truth, we are but repeating the experiences of former
generations and treading the paths which they long since have trod. The
dictatorships of our time came into being on the morrow of the day when
President Wilson enjoined us to 'make the world safe for democracy. The
victory of the Allies was universally hailed as a triumph for the democratic
spirit in all its varied forms. Amid the din of falling thrones, three empires
came crashing to the ground. The monarchical system, by which the control of
the State is vested in one sole person, seemed doomed to extinction. Who would
have dreamt that one-man rule would ever come into its own again? _When the
first dictator came upon the scene, his advent was greeted with incredulity. A
few days, men prophesied, would surely set a term to his dominion. In France,
one politician went the length of publicly deriding him as a comic-opera
Caesar_. And then, when the fashion seemed to be spreading, people consoled
themselves with the belief that, if it was an epidemic, it would assuredly
stop short at the frontiers of the Greater Powers, of those countries which
had a liberal tradition at the back of them, and a firmly established
progressive wing. _As for inflation and debased currencies, these things,
though not unknown, were looked upon as evils proper to impoverished,
primitive or ill-governed communities. It was not for a moment to be thought
of that the wealthier nations, equipped as they were with a well-organized
financial system, would fall a prey to such grave disorders. All this turned
out to be a grievous miscalculation. The monetary system fell a victim to
disease in the very places where it seemed to be flourishing most securely.
Dictatorships sprang up in countries where they had long been looked upon as
unimaginable_. There they took firm root, despite the fact that, for a long
time, the dictators themselves, when still no more than popular sedition-
mongers, had never been taken seriously. It is no mere caprice that has led us
to connect a disordered currency with the emergence of despotic forms of
government. The one precedes, and often begets, the other, because, for the
vast majority of people, it is the most obvious symptom of national
disintegration. (300 pages later)

CONCLUSION measure pfuncertainty. It is desirable to be sparing of Itfiem7
desirable, that is, not to have need of them, or not to drift into them
unwittingly. Eckermann once asked Goethe if the human race would ever see the
end of way “Yes” answered the sage of Weimar, provided that governments are
always intelligent and the governed always reasonable. We will say the same of
dictators. We can do without them on the same condition. But good governments
are rare. And Voltaire said that the bulk of the human race always were, and
always would be, imbeciles. ps: a bonus from the same author:
[http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/bainville_jacques/conse...](http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/bainville_jacques/consequences_pol_paix/consequences_pol_paix.html)

\--- The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises
under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic
authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without
intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very
definition of a police state.
[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/privacy_and_th...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/privacy_and_the.html)

[http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2009/budg...](http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2009/budget_justification/pdfs/07_Military_Construction/11_NSA.pdf)

~~~
Create
This problem will remain for at least as long as you are in denial (and take
points away to make the diagnosis fade away and disappear).

------
TweedHeads
A few crooks got rich and they want us to panic while they run away
unpunished.

After the biggest profits ever in the oil industry I can hardly see this as a
recession.

Where is that money now?

------
ahold
"Most prestigious nation on earth"? Update: (I had to puke.) You are just
'known'. Known as most militant and most dangerous. You are directly or
indirectly responsible for every war in the last 60 years. If you sniff oil,
or other form of money, you are ready to kill even civilians or children. You
are also ready to send your sons to die for smell of money. You have biggest
number of homeless in the world, even children and so we can continue whole
day... but I still hope there are some people there who understand this and
can do something with that. This is how we perceive you here in Europe, my
fellow "Americans". :) or :(

~~~
palish
This isn't Reddit. A sweeping statement like "[The U.S.] is directly or
indirectly responsible for every war in the last 60 years" doesn't even relate
to this particular topic. I don't understand what mental state you're in where
you feel a strong urge to lash out at "America", but those comments are
detrimental to the quality of this discussion, _regardless of whether they're
true_.

~~~
ahold
It's morning here, I'm sitting at the desk, drinking coffee and I can assure
you I'm OK mentally :) Also I can assure you that short facts in my comment
ARE strongly related to current state of the market.

