Here comes the other economic shoe dropping...

[Rum]

European debt. Just to cheer you up!

[Coito ergo sum]

US Money Supply Plunges at 1930's Pace..... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... mulus.html

The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history.

The stock of money fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc. The assets of insitutional money market funds fell at a 37pc rate, the sharpest drop ever.

"It’s frightening," said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. "The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly," he said.

The US authorities have an entirely different explanation for the failure of stimulus measures to gain full traction. They are opting instead for yet further doses of Keynesian spending, despite warnings from the IMF that the gross public debt of the US will reach 97pc of GDP next year and 110pc by 2015.

Economic rebound slowed: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100527/D9FV6P5O0.html

[Coito ergo sum]

Talk of the Euro failing.... http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2010/05/2 ... d=brussels

[Coito ergo sum]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... Collection

Stocks fell on Monday in a late-day selloff that took the Dow Jones Industrial Average below its lows of the May 6 "flash crash."

The Dow ended down 115.48 points, or 1.2%, at a seven-month low of 9816.49 and below 9869.62, its low-point of the May 6 slide. That day, buyers rushed into the market at that level, helping pare a 1,000-point drop to a decline of 347.80 points.

But on Monday, no such buying appeared. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2%. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index slid 1.4%.

"Global tensions are at a pinnacle," said Mike Daly, gold specialist at PFGBest in Chicago. That has prompted investors to move money into "tangible, safer assets."'

[Coito ergo sum]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... xjbLqPhA0M

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKNLACGE60C20100513

[Coito ergo sum]

Greek default on the horizon, perhaps: http://www.cnbc.com/id/37632681

[LaMont Cranston]

Coito ergo sum, Aloha! I thought I'd pay a visit over here, because this is a subject, both as a businessman, a concerned human being and a follower of social/economic trends, that interests me. As much as we disagree on many things, I happen to agree with what I believe to be your take on the world economic situation. By me, the whole thing looks like a house of cards that is in a shitload of trouble already. More than that, I see other things looming on the horizon (i.e. volcanoes in Iceland, that oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico, etc.) that are going to have long-term economic implications.

One of the things that I don't see, so far, in this thread, is any discussion of what it is going to look like when the shit hits the fan even more than it has and what the aftermath might look like. From what I can tell, Obama, regardless of what anybody thinks of him, is going to be a one term president. I can't say that it fills me with any confidence at all or that I have any reason to believe that if the Republicans regain the White House in 2012, that they are going to do any better than the Democrats.

So, let me ask you, how do you think this is going to play out? Do you see solutions to what looks like an economic breakdown on a global scale? Do you think that situations like this have to result in wars? Do you think that those people who are actually clear and rational thinkers can come up with ways do deal with problems like this and have their ideas heard?

[Svartalf]

The Euro is finished. The continent will be forced to adopt sterling.

You're aware that if it really is and we do, the sterling will just plunge in the same oceanic trench, right?

[Rum]

Coito ergo sum, Aloha! I thought I'd pay a visit over here, because this is a subject, both as a businessman, a concerned human being and a follower of social/economic trends, that interests me. As much as we disagree on many things, I happen to agree with what I believe to be your take on the world economic situation. By me, the whole thing looks like a house of cards that is in a shitload of trouble already. More than that, I see other things looming on the horizon (i.e. volcanoes in Iceland, that oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico, etc.) that are going to have long-term economic implications.

One of the things that I don't see, so far, in this thread, is any discussion of what it is going to look like when the shit hits the fan even more than it has and what the aftermath might look like. From what I can tell, Obama, regardless of what anybody thinks of him, is going to be a one term president. I can't say that it fills me with any confidence at all or that I have any reason to believe that if the Republicans regain the White House in 2012, that they are going to do any better than the Democrats.

So, let me ask you, how do you think this is going to play out? Do you see solutions to what looks like an economic breakdown on a global scale? Do you think that situations like this have to result in wars? Do you think that those people who are actually clear and rational thinkers can come up with ways do deal with problems like this and have their ideas heard?

I think we are facing multiple challenges and the 'economy' is one aspect of the totality of the way we have been developing as a species over the last few hundred years. We appear to be coming to a climax of a process which was perhaps doomed from the outset in the absence of wisdom along the way to see what was happening.

The economic woes we face really are just a symptom in my view. In the past the ups and downs in the economy were as much to do with the internal economic systems, but now I suspect we are confronting 'real world' aspects, i.e. more structural issues, not least massive over population and unsustainability.

I have always been an optimist by nature, but I am gloomy right now. We may well 'recover' from the present economic lull, but unless we have the will to change almost everything about the way we do things and the way we think of economic life I honestly believe catastrophe is not all that far away.

[LaMont Cranston]

Rum, I, too, have always been an optimist, but sometimes I have to work harder at it that others. I find that a stiff belt of rum in my coke can help quite a bit.

I also think that the economic shit hitting the fan is just one manifestation of ongoing issues that face the very survival of human beings as a species, and it is not a pretty picture. When I see stuff on TV about that oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it is extremely depressing.

Still, as an optimist, I would like to believe that there are people and ideas with good intentions who are capable of creating a saner world, and, in our own small way, we have to do whatever we can to move things in that direction. Are their any guarantees? Hell, no!

Take care...

[Coito ergo sum]

German government nearing possible collapse: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ju ... n-collapse

Spain is the new Greece: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE65D0GJ20100614

Greece debt rating cut to "junk" status: http://au.biz.yahoo.com/100614/2/2dmfb.html

German investor confidence down: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/ ... 53644.html

[Coito ergo sum]

Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opini ... ugman.html

[Martok]

Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opini ... ugman.html

That's scary.

[Rum]

The hatches are clearly being battened down everywhere. We are in for a bumpy rise in the so called 'developed' world as we become poorer and other bits of the world become richer.

[Coito ergo sum]

The hatches are clearly being battened down everywhere. We are in for a bumpy rise in the so called 'developed' world as we become poorer and other bits of the world become richer.

There isn't much of an indication of the "other bits" of the world becoming richer, though (other than in relativistic terms, where equality is the goal, and if we become poorer then that is the same as the other bits becoming richer).