How long have we got?

[Mega]

Your best guess Gents?
Mike

[fyrmun37]

Re: How long have we got?

If we don't get another surplus offer by the government to uphold any chance for McCain, this week the market will make '87 look like minor league.

[Judas]

Re: How long have we got?

149 days, 1 hour, and 9 minutes.

[grapejelly]

Re: How long have we got?

my bookshelf is filled with books from the 70s and 80s proclaiming the End Of The World As We Know It and none of them have come true (except for those authors who died since they wrote their books.)

[Judas]

Re: How long have we got?

my bookshelf is filled with books from the 70s and 80s proclaiming the End Of The World As We Know It and none of them have come true (except for those authors who died since they wrote their books.)

But one could say those days were the end of the world as we knew it.

The US was a creditor nation built on a manufacturing base with a middle class growing more prosperous, Russia was a communist nation, Germany was cut in two, China/India/Brazil was third world, etc.

The world as we knew it certainly isn't around any more!

Let's see what we get after this current "world as we know it"...

[grapejelly]

Re: How long have we got?

But one could say those days were the end of the world as we knew it.

The US was a creditor nation built on a manufacturing base with a middle class growing more prosperous, Russia was a communist nation, Germany was cut in two, China/India/Brazil was third world, etc.

The world as we knew it certainly isn't around any more!

Let's see what we get after this current "world as we know it"...

A wander through my books is like anti-smugness surgery.

Nobody can predict the future. I never thought we'd muddle along as well as we have...did you?

There may or may not be a Greater Depression, as Doug Casey puts it. Whatever. Can't say. If you invest you have to invest with your eyes open and be willing to entertain other outcomes though.

[jtabeb]

Re: How long have we got?

149 days, 1 hour, and 9 minutes.

I think it's closer to 149 hours, 1 minute, and 9 secs.

[Slimprofits]

Re: How long have we got?

A few months?

Just an American-centric guess, but maybe "consumer spending" rises briefly in September when all of those kids go off to college - the flying monkeys will screach again...And then the worst Christmas since '32 or whatever. People swamped with heating fuel bills beyond the limits of their imagination. 2009 will not be fondly remembered in general.

[don]

Re: How long have we got?

Some of my fellow iTulips are misreading the Obama phenomenon. He was the most heavily backed candidate by Wall Street of all Republicans and Democrats for a reason. He's the Great Distractor. If Billary had been Hilary, without hubby's baggage, she probably would have been the choice as first woman prez. The McCain pick is the Bob Dole for 2008, the no-can-win choice, Think of Obama as the hands-down Manhattan Lexus super salesman going up against the McCain wooden indian. No Contest-O, by design. Wall Street and the Central Banks need all the social cover they can get. Carter served a similar purpose following the Nixon/Ford political disclosure debacles. Within 2 years Obama will be completely discredited, like Jimmy. But 2 years will have passed with a new, different Santa in the Macy's window, replacing the tired monkey Santa.

[Judas]

Re: How long have we got?

Nobody can predict the future. I never thought we'd muddle along as well as we have...did you?

No, I didn't. My brother and I, years ago, would have long discussions about how long we had as a nation (USA centric) with the massive deficits and deindustrialization and whatnot. In the early 90s I bought a whole bunch of silver for the expected kaplooey.

Then Greenspan threw me a curveball.

[Supercilious]

Re: How long have we got?

Some of my fellow iTulips are misreading the Obama phenomenon. He was the most heavily backed candidate by Wall Street of all Republicans and Democrats for a reason. He's the Great Distractor. If Billary had been Hilary, without hubby's baggage, she probably would have been the choice as first woman prez. The McCain pick is the Bob Dole for 2008, the no-can-win choice, Think of Obama as the hands-down Manhattan Lexus super salesman going up against the McCain wooden indian. No Contest-O, by design. Wall Street and the Central Banks need all the social cover they can get. Carter served a similar purpose following the Nixon/Ford political disclosure debacles. Within 2 years Obama will be completely discredited, like Jimmy. But 2 years will have passed with a new, different Santa in the Macy's window, replacing the tired monkey Santa.

I completely agree with you. I'm not sure though we should call him the Great Distractor or the Great Deceiver. Don't get me wrong, I think McCain is completely unfit for the White House (not saying that a person unfit to be president can't become president). About Hillary the list is so long a whole forum can be filed with good arguments on why he shouldn't be in the WH.

But going back to Obama, I don't think we have ever seen a presidential candidate being as deceitful in trying to block even the most harmless and misguided attempt to questioning his character.

I feel there is another bubble inflating fast. But it's not a bubble of dotcom stocks, mortgage SIV's or Index ETN's ... it's a bubble of false hopes pulled on a majority under severe financial distress, which is already deeply traumatized, after being subjected for the last seven and a half years to a relentless onslaught of lies and scare tactics campaigns.

[Mega]

Re: How long have we got?

my bookshelf is filled with books from the 70s and 80s proclaiming the End Of The World As We Know It and none of them have come true (except for those authors who died since they wrote their books.)

SCHIFF HAS SAID ITS GOING TO HAPPEN!
Mike

[jtabeb]

Re: How long have we got?

Mega's best friend HAS SAID ITS GOING TO HAPPEN!
Mike

He's right. The Second Great Depression started Friday (the Greater Depression, if you will).

I'd pull out all the tin-foil hats, canned beans, food and water, and firearms you can muster. Don't head for the hills, they can hunt you down and do what ever they want eaiser if you are all alone.

It's going to be fun.:eek:

[Chris]

Re: How long have we got?

Don't worry guys, the economy is improving:

We have financial, not economic, problems

Anatole Kaletsky: Economic view

Sometimes the markets just get things wrong. It doesn't happen very often. Usually the market's collective wisdom is more perceptive than the individual opinions of the investors who comprise it. But every now and then - about twice every decade - markets make spectacular blunders, completely losing touch with the real economy of consumption, investment, employment and world trade. The markets' behaviour last week suggested that such a time has arrived.
On Friday, share prices around the world collapsed as Wall Street was gripped by rumours about the bankruptcy of the two largest financial institutions in the world: the US Government-backed mortgage insurers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose combined debts are almost $6 trillion, equivalent to roughly double Britain's entire GDP. Yet what has been happening in the world of real economic activity to explain such extreme market action?

While Wall Street has gone into meltdown since the beginning of June, conditions in the real economy have been unambiguously improving. The latest employment figures, published two weeks ago, confirmed that economic conditions had stabilised after their sharp deterioration in the winter, while purchasing managers' surveys, the most reliable indicator of very recent economic trends, suggested a continuation of the modest but clear improvement that began in April. Sales figures from leading retailers were much stronger than expected, showing that tax rebates designed to provide a shot of financial adrenaline to all but the richest US households were doing exactly what the doctor ordered - offsetting the depressing effect on consumption of the credit crunch and the housing slump.

As a result, consumer confidence, although an unreliable and lagging indicator, showed its first improvement for six months. Even the figures on home sales have now been near-stable for four consecutive months, after almost a year of vertiginous falls. Most important of all, the monthly trade figures, published on Friday in the midst of the Wall Street meltdown, proved that the remarkably adaptable US economy was responding to the credit crunch exactly as the optimists had hoped - by undertaking an immense structural shift from consumer and housing-led growth to growth powered by exports.




continues....

[ocelotl]

Re: How long have we got?

IMHO, we mexicans have until either:

- Crash of mexican exports due to US recession turning to depression
- Declining Oil exports balance with gas imports, ending our Oil Exporting Country status
- Return of migrants due to US recession turning to depression will make getting back home a possibility and counterbalance expatriation.
- Money remittances lose value due to reduced job opportunities for mexican expatriats and/or declining USD value.

IMHO, all these factors are developing since June 2005, and will keep developing at least until 2012, when they will be all fulfilled.