Mega VERY depressed today

[Mega]

Feel VERY low........can anyone cheer me a little?

Mike

[olivegreen]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

Oh well Mike. I'll bite. I write a local humour column and since I can't much comment on markets at this point.... I'll drag out a column for you I wrote a few weeks ago... Maybe it'll make you smile... maybe not... OG

Please don’t feed the banksters

Well, this week it’s about time to examine the latest popular reason why we-are-all-going-to-die-horribly. Again. According to leading economists and environmentalists The Shop-oc-alypse is bearing down on us with a vengeance. We have all apparently been shopping ourselves to death. On credit I’m afraid. And as if the horror of an imminent demise by drowning in materialism isn’t bad enough, the banksters are mad as hell at us and they’re not going to give it anymore… credit that is.

Well, at least in the States they’re cracking down on things like lines of credit and credit card limits. (I’m not sure what they’re doing here yet. I suspect it will be about the same. That’s just my own little theory. I base this on the fact that when 9/11 happened in New York, the very next day a hugely big military airplane-like thing kept crisscrossing over my house, way up here in the middle of a sunny Chelsean sky, scaring the wits out of the cats. I figure this can only mean we’re pretty tight with our neighbors to the south, good times or bad.) But I digress,

The banksters are mad at us. Our dreadfully excessive spending days are waning, making all those years of their raking in pornographic profits a thing of the past, and they are not amused, not in the least.

Mind you, I’m just a simple person. It’s pretty obvious where we spent all that credit thrown at us these last few decades: trinkets from China and new cars and houses and bollards and little tea cups shaped like daffodils from India, iPods, botox injections and anti-aging collagen gleaned from the skin of Chinese prisoners. We can all stand proudly on our front lawns and point at the little lights shaped like Bonzo the Clown and our SUVs, with their shapely voluptuously violet interior and the new vinyl melamine ice resistant siding encasing our new homes with granite countertops that we can’t afford. And don’t forget our tax bills that we’ve paid and the groceries that we’ve bought and the hydro and gas bills we’ve… well you know. But never mind all that, the point is this; we have STUFF. Stuff to show what we’ve done. And what have we done? (That’s another column. I digress again.)

My question is this, where did all the bankster profits go? You can’t just go years and years posting huge and obscenely indecent profits, basically savaged out of the hands of your debt-serfs and then suddenly declare you’re in trouble. Down there in the US the federal government with taxpayer money is bailing the banksters out. This makes no sense at all. You can’t just create debt-serfs through years of service charges and indulgent credit limits and then suddenly ask everybody to switch roles. What in the name of cost-effectiveness were these banksters thinking? What in the name of profit-at-any-cost were they trying to do?

We debt-serfs didn’t start the fire; we just provided the fuel. Now these banksters think we debt-serfs are going to make it all better. I think they call it “Privatizing profit and socializing debt”. Banksters. Silly things! Isn’t that a little like the crack-cocaine addict being asked to help out his friendly neighborhood drug pusher who just happens to find himself hard up for cash, or so he says?

Don’t feed the banksters. They don’t know what they’re doing.

[Guest]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

OK I'm sure I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this (sexist), but here goes: (don't shoot me!!) :rolleyes:

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[Guest]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

Here you go Miker - summat to look forward to in yer golden yearz ...

MEGAS AMERICAN WIFE - 25 YEARS LATER.jpg

[dbarberic]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

Why does Mega always talk about himself in the third person?

[Mega]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

Because there are two of us, we share the same brain.
Mike

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

Because there are two of us, we share the same brain.
Mike

Big Mike,

I'll share one thing with you, and that is you certainly make me laugh a lot, and I appreciate that.

Remember how you feel now and try being long anything (except inverse funds) in this market and see how that makes you feel! You probably don't feel as badly as you could under some other circumstances.

[Guest]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

Big Mike,

I'll share one thing with you, and that is you certainly make me laugh a lot, and I appreciate that.

Remember how you feel now and try being long anything (except inverse funds) in this market and see how that makes you feel! You probably don't feel as badly as you could under some other circumstances.

Miker - I'll second that. Take the 28 year old young Chinese couple that bought my house back in late 2004 for example. He: an up and coming "financial analyst" with a glossy paycheck, She: a stalwart CPA with an equally glossy paycheck. Both: Young, inexperienced, and driving Lincoln Navigator Gasoline-Alligator Monster Trucks that could not both fit into the oversize two-car garage the house came equipped with.

The street address was # 1886, and the house was # 1888 square feet. "8" is a lucky number in lots of countries, especially China, and their in-laws lived right around the corner, so it was a done-deal, smiled upon by the heavenly stars and the in-laws. I still remember the look of these two, as they stepped into their new up-market investment. Like a mixture of triumphant capitalism mixed with queasy second-sight.

They overcame the queasy feeling enough to offer me commiserating smiles at the "handing over of the keys ceremony" (because I was so "down-market" and apparently poor), and as I limped away from that sale, in my little putt-putting second-hand four cylinder Volkswagen diesel, I must have looked and felt like a cowed has-been (hadn't met iTulip just yet, but was following my instincts).

A year later - Our young upwardly mobile couple are rising in grand style. The house is up $50K. (this is late 2005). I had moved on from the fleabag motel just down the street from the sold house, where I spent several months after the sale, while looking for an "economy rental". I still remember the stale cigarette smoke in the motel unit I was renting, staring blindly at the scaly-but-shiny, pale coffee-colored paint on the walls, while I sat there flipping through cable TV channels feeling heroically a bit like Samuel Beckett's heros Vladimir or Estragon who are asking each other "shall we go now?", while they are contemplating their meagre options.

A year and a half later, our stalwart Chinese yuppies property has gone through a couple of nasty valuation wobbles, but soared yet higher, being up almost $80K from the price I sold it to them for. I slink around with a stoop to my shoulders, feeling like the eternal loser. In my early morning nightmares I picture myself running into our Chinese yuppies in my sadsack Volkswagen putt-putt and doing the "how you doin'" routine while we exchange (more or less, depending on the party) valiant smiles.

Two and a half years later: Their property has sunk back in such a hurry it's burned a hole straight through their 80K equity, and straight down on through the floor, like an anchor of doom, and down on through the basement into the white hot financially vaporizing magma of the earth's core - they are DOWN $150K from the price they paid to buy this dandified cereal box from me. These two were nice kids - I did not certainly wish this on them. But meanwhile, San Diego entire armies of ga-ga greedy little brain-dead home speculators are getting taken out to the woodshed and decapitated with little ceremony.

And here we are today.

Now life is a constant string of paradoxes, because I for one think that the US Fed attempts to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are CRITICAL. First, they absolutely have to do it, to avoid much worse. Secondly, if they fail, we'll have lots of bad things happening ALSO to all the people who carefully avoided all of the above excesses. Lots of good, smart, cautious people who did not get involved will get taken out to the woodshed all over the country, and that's a very bad thing to happen. The moralisms need to get thrown right out the window. The building is now truly on fire, and we need Calvinists now like we need a hole in the head. I don't want to lose my job, nor the small scrap of hope for patching some kind of future together. If we let the Calvinists guide our next steps here the US could implode much worse than it needs to do.

And if I ever run into my young Chinese couple who bought my home, I will be honor bound to extend to them every sincere courtesy that I can, as otherwise heaven may cast a deadly bolt of misfortune down upon me too.

[The Outback Oracle]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

Whinging pommie git!!!!!

[The Outback Oracle]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

Hmm g'day Mega

I dated a woman on Saturday night...had 8 kids...divorced...no income..one son in gaol in Bali on drug charges serving a (genuine) life sentence and bankrupt from legal fees and travel!!!
For a person in our sort of society that looks damned rough to me!
So maybe mate just take note of the age-old adage and "Count your blessings"

[Mega]

Re: Mega VERY depressed today

Feeling better today.

Depression is not about what you have, its about why you are.

Mike