Jed,
The Utube link is hilarious! Sad that there is so much truth in it.
I tend to agree with Paul Krugmen on this one--he hates Bush, doesn't like
Wall Street,
but thinks the bailout's necessary.
analysis: <http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/>
" So what we now have is non-functional government in the face of a major
crisis,
because Congress includes a quorum of crazies and nobody trusts the White House
an inch.
As a friend said last night, we've become a banana republic with nukes."
Ron
--On Monday, September 29, 2008 6:16 PM -0400 Jed Rothwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Robin van Spaandonk wrote:
I heard on TV last night that the level of private debt in the US is
$41 trillion. Imagine what is going to happen if the banks start calling in
*all* their loans.
Precisely. That's what people like Warren Buffett are worried about. They are
not concerned about
the fate of highroller Wall Street investors. Buffett has expressed contempt
for such people many
times.
I have no idea if that $41 trillion figure is accurate or not. I have heard
various estimates. I
think a large part of the problem is that no one has any idea what the true
number is, or who
owes what to whom for what property. As OrionWorks says, more transparency is
essential.
I read the other day a proposal that publicly traded corporations should be
compelled to keep all
of their financial books on the Internet. I wonder if something like that could
be done with
banks as well. That is, with any bank that is federally insured. The ones that
are not should be
allowed to collapse as far as I am concerned . . . although I suppose they are
the ones who hold
$41 trillion in debt -- I wouldn't know.
Although I know next to nothing about this, along with everyone else I am
getting a quick
education from the newspapers. I get the distinct impression that the so-called
experts at banks
and insurance companies and the Federal Reserve are a bunch of blundering
amateurs. They know
much less than they thought they did, or that I assumed they did. The mistakes
they have made --
such as not checking collateral -- seem elementary to me. A pair of British
comedians summarized
the situation better than most financial experts I have read, "Bird and Fortune
- Subprime
Crisis." See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzJmTCYmo9g
Sometimes experts turn out to be real experts -- people you can rely on. This
is usually the case
with engineering and other well-defined disciplines. Sometimes we find they are
expert at all. We
have seen this in cold fusion and other narrow scientific disciplines,
multidisciplinary studies,
and situations in which few people are aware of the facts, and few people have
done their
homework.
It would be very surprising if experts in plasma fusion were wrong, because
that subject has been
widely studied and many textbooks and papers have been written about it. It is
less surprising
that people like Huizenga who appointed themselves experts in cold fusion a
week after March 23,
1989 turned out to be wrong.
- Jed
