Saturday August 11, 2012, 3:46 pm
You can bet that will NOT come at the hands of a Republican effort!

Saturday August 11, 2012, 3:59 pm

I have to say I was concerned long before 2006. From one administration after the next the regulations to keep business and marketing practices under control and inspection; I felt we were going to face another depression. I'm not an economist, in fact I have had to read every book published the past few years to keep up with all of this.

It's easy to look at this and realize what went wrong and where, and I certainly am no expert. Just some basic awareness, watching the market, the runaway use of credit and I was deeply concerned. This phase of our economy is often called a quaternary our the fourth economy. To this point we had followed a fairly stable under pinning for the United States economy; a) agriculture b) industry c) service and information (this begins the down slide) d) credit base.

An economy based on nothing more than credit or a poorly defined service and information base, is doomed. Early in the Bush administration William Cohen was interviewed about "hedge funds" his comments and the fact that even by the early part of the 2000's no one, not even the former head of the SEC could clearly define hedge funds should have been a wake up to all Americans. Even now most have trouble defining "derivatives" yet nothing has been done to truly buckle down on the run away behavior of corporations and banks.
When is was clearly true that many of the regulations from the FDR years no longer applied it was incumbent on the government to replace them with more current and applicable regulation,not simply do away with all regulation.

I think Faber is more concerned about selling his book and his own ideas then addressing the real problems.

Saturday August 11, 2012, 5:50 pm
Thanks Jae, Noted.

Saturday August 11, 2012, 6:56 pm
...still waiting....!

Sunday August 12, 2012, 8:52 am
Thanks, Jae. I don't preternd to understand even hal;f of the economic strata we have in this nation but i do know that using other people's money to gamble with is just inherently WRONG. Derivatives, credit swaps, hedging against 'bets' is all wrong. All I knowe is the gov't reeally screwed up in deregulating the stock maket and allowing banks to merge their regular banking with their gambling sector. They should have neverrepealed Glass-Steigle. All this can be traced back to Ronny Raygun. With him it all bagan to become nothing more than a casino using OUR money.

I don't like stocks to begin with because it sucks people in that really can't afford to gamble thousands of dollars chasing an illusion of getting rich quick. I don't believe in living on credit (although I know from experience of someone having to literally live on it in order to make ends meet--still not the best way to survive because it always, ALWAYS leads to banckruptcy--JMO). Easy money is never 'easy money' there is always a catch and people do not wake up to that fact until it slaps them in the face.

I do not have credit cards, and haven't since 2001. I will never have another again in my lifetime. To me, they are nothing but loansharks without a face. I do have a debit card and I was forced into have to have oe of them in order to get my internet service. Those though are different in that you have to have to money in your bank account--so you cannot overspend on it from the getgo. I don't have a huge savings account and I don't have CD's. But I do believe that the best way to grow whatever money you have is by putting it in the best and safest investment and that is CD's and interest bearing savings accounts. They are safe and they are easy to understand how they work.

As far as I am concerned, the rich who gamble with their money in stocks, bonds, credit swaps, hedge funds, derivatives, etc.....they have it to burn an if theyget burned by their greed in the future I will not shed a tearfor them, they will have brought it on themselves. I only fear that we, the taxpayers, will once again have to savce their sorry asses by bailing them out with our money that is sparse and hard-earned. That is what should neverhave been allowed to happen in the first place. Bailing out Wall Street only glutted their greed in wanting to gamble even more and our gov't is letting them do all over again.

Bailing out companies like the car industry is one thing--and a good thing. But bailing out parasites who feed on our money and weak people's greed and produces no jobs, no security, nothing but even more money for the already obscenely rich....is not a good thing. Zit is doomed to fail because of it own greed.

Sunday August 12, 2012, 2:04 pm

.. :-( ..You cannot currently send a star to Terrie because you have done so within the last week.

They built this nation into a house of cards ...and a cat10 hurricane is headed toward and within reach of it in the all too near future. On that, I place my bet.

Monday August 13, 2012, 3:33 am
very good

Monday August 13, 2012, 4:37 am
noted and thanks!

Monday August 13, 2012, 6:44 am
Sorry, my computer said not a site to go into, meaning too many cookies attach, but I've seen this video and I do agree with Kit, it is an infomercial to sell his book. I'm not saying there isn't truth to what he is stating in the book.

As Jae said, and is how I felt, this house of cards is falling, and many who think they are escape proof will find it otherwise. Is why I feel that many who are making salaries in the $200,000 to a million bracket are getting a lot more nervous and are speaking out. As the floor below them keeps dropping out, meaning the lower middle class is now in poverty, the mid middle class has dropped to lower middle and trying to hang in there, the upper middle class are seeing their position in this system slipping.

There is a big jump to get upwards to protect ones own self interest, the top 1% are a universe away, and they will not care that someone making a mere million or two a year will loose out on all they own. In fact the 1% have been very happy to suck them into their scams for there is more money to be made off of them, and besides those who have been quickly thrown into poverty, the only thing now for the 1% is to prevent the poor and newly poor from eating by getting Food Stamps or obtaining health care. The 1% must have those dirty bottom dwellers eliminated somehow.

So it will be the educated, the ones who understand the system better, who has some connections that will have to wrestle this away from this downward spiral, for in time, yes, they too will be sucked in, then the ones making 5 to 10 million and onwards up. But the 1%, well they think they are untouchable, they forget though at some point a lot of torches get lit and people pick up the pitchforks and start digging in.

Monday August 13, 2012, 6:47 am
Noted.

Monday August 13, 2012, 12:33 pm
Thanks Jae.

Monday August 13, 2012, 2:43 pm
Terrie:
Hedging a bet is buying into more than one probability. It has always necessarily been and must always be legal wherever any betting is legal. All investment is betting.
Hedge funds are large funds open only to investors of vast amounts of money. They are not necessarily SEC listed and generally operate internationally. There has been some attempt to regulate because they control so much money.
Arbitrage is a practice which cannot by nature be realistically regulated. It is taking advantage of price differences among different markets. If I buy Marks or a bucket of wheat on one market, I can sell them on another. It evens to some extent world markets.

Regulation must at a minimum limit the extent of what risks banks can be allowed with money, as people who put their cash into banks do not do so to invest, but to protect or save. Banks make money through investment and interest.
Regulation must also be returned to extreme controls over what corporations or companies or individuals can acquire under one roof, due to the extremely high probability that :
1.Information can be controlled misused, and a narrowly controlled media.
2. acquisition of resources to a monopolistic extent always occurs when markets are unregulated. The ills of free-market systems become profound and evil without such regulation. Vertical acquisition is efficient and controls as far as resource to product. This creates large businesses which have financial means to control civil government. Horizontal acquisition is pure monopoly, which leads to real enslavement of any who depend upon the product(s). All these restrain trade and opportunity. Fascism, despotism, oligarchy, and other evils quickly exist in fact from these practices.

I suppose that "wealth" is the liquid capital and means of liquid exchange symbols like money or gold, neither of which has intrinsic value, but only value agreed upon by those who covet such inedibles.

We're caught in this cage by acquiescence to a culture which trades in them; thus you understand those who seek to become self-sufficient outside it: Should you not be one of those who profits socially (status and other related fictions of the brains of social animals), you will be discontent so long as you either do not defect or do succeed in increasing your status with others of the culture.

I have known young wealthy men who believed they would abandon it all at 40, but did not - not a single one. Status is the most addictive drug.

Monday August 13, 2012, 2:51 pm
Excuse me, extreme problems with typing in the comment box lose portions of my sentences right now.

To reiterate:
"1. Information can be controlled, misused, abused, hidden, and misinformation, disinformation, and fabrication can be disguised as fact by a narrowly controlled media."

Too much power to control your knowledge, emotions, choices, is maintained by Rupert Murdoch, for instance. He successfully changed US law, although he was Australian national, to allow ownership of radio, television, print media, and more, which helped him elect those he favored in Oz, the USA, and England.

Sunday August 19, 2012, 5:23 pm
Thanks Jae, I'm very late in reading and my response. Glad to read from you.

Another reason that the wealthy will be losing $ is one that should be obvious to the wealthy of the world, and those not so encumbered. The resources of this planet that created wealth among humans are now "endangered". Polluted, corrupted, and many, extinct or well on their way. Thanks to we homo sapiens, who have not used (and are not using), our wisdom (sapiens/intelligence) wisely in our species life span on this planet.