Nassim Nicholas Taleb, famous economist and author of "The Black Swan" and Dr. Mandelbrot, professor of Mathematics. Both say that the present economy more serious than the Great Depression, and the economy during the American Revolution:
Because conditions leading up to what we are about to go through now will make the Great Depression look like a happier time, LOL.
tjerrard (Wed, 10/29/2008 - 11:24 #8)Yes the markets took off today, including Canada where I am, all of them and I repeat all of them at exactly 2:00pm in the afternoon.
What happened at 2:00pm??? Who did what to whom???Tom
Tom, If what you say is true; and IF IT WAS INTENTIONAL; then your answer lies here:
FREEDOM ICE-AGE SLAVERY The Two aims of the Party are: … To conQuer the whole surface of the Earth, and To extinguish once and for all… The possibility of Yndependent thoughT. … There are therefore Two great problems which the DEmockerY Party is concerned to solve. … One is how to discover, against its will, what another ‘human being’ is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds with-OWT giving warning beforehand.
Before discarding aforementioned, may I suggest you apply the Crypto-RCMP principle of: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." ~ Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia (1891) ~
JMCSwan
Back in the sixties when I first had an interest in investing and economics, I only knew a little about the Great Depression from high school. So I went to my library and scanned the microfilm files of the NY Times during those years. I was stunned by the constant barrage of optimistic predictions that always turned out wrong. That set me to study economics on my own.
I struggled to understand Keynes’ Theory of Money and Credit. So much of it made no sense. I had Economics 101 in college. Again, it was so abstract, I couldn’t relate it to the real world. I had to get through the course by rote learning. Economics came to life when I found the Austrian School of Economics. It’s almost a course on human psychology. From there, I knew this would happen decades ago. Hopefully I can continue to stay ahead of events.
Machinead
Keynes great fallacy is that he claimed to have found weaknesses in Says Law which states that consumption precedes production. This is why politicians are so obsessed with getting people to borrow and spend. It’s obviously false in the siimple way I’m stating it. His obscure language disguises its absurdity.
Henry Hazlitt took Theory of Money and Credit apart in Failure of the New Economics in clear language.
For serious students of the Hoover Era, the best is MurrayRothbard’s America’s Great Depression. Contrary to the myth that Hoover was a laissez-faire president, he was just the opposite. In fact, Hoover laid the groundwork for the New Deal. Rothbard shows how expansion and contraction of the money supply caused the crash. Hoover’s interventions made matters worse. Consumer prices were stable for other reasons not related to the money supply.
Switters:
Wow, another good watch, thank you!
Switters,
Thanks you SO much for sharing this. When I took a computer graphics class as an undergrad, I learned about fractal theory by Mendelbrot, but did not know he was still around! It seems a very insightful interview touching the heart of the issues we are dealing with currently.
Yesterday, I came across this 60 minutes segment on credit default swaps and thought it was the best explanation I have read so far.
Regards
Dr. Martenson, you’d better watch out. Switters here seems to be digging up some good content 
That’s DR. Switters PhD, LOL
This was a disaster when it was passed, but sadly not too many people in Congress really knew what it meant. Do you want to know how to get rich? Study everything that is going on Congress with a microscope right before a holiday, a short session, or a session that is not fully attended. That’s when all the tricky stuff gets approved. That’s been the pattern since the Federal Reserve was enacted, and they keep playing this same old trick to sneak BS through. It might be boring, but that’s why they make watching or following it boring, so you don’t.
Also, Greenspan knew EXACTLY what this was. He may be one of our greatest minds, but he’s a crook to let this one get through as well as countless other BS. I just love how he is playing all this stuff down when it was done on his watch.
Invest wisely, they did.
Thanks Switters. I bet there aren’t too many of us here doing that. Perhaps the optimist (singular).
Don
What a great video - thanks for the link!
Oh - and thanks for the rest of the quotes!
PresentMoment:
Thank you for that video link. It was, very good. The Comedity Exchange Modernization Act passed by Congress 8 years ago, as mentioned in this video is sick.
Congress should pay personally. The majority of these idiots are, well a picture says a thousand words.
More like a bunch of Robin-hoods stealing from the poor and giving to the rich so the resources of the planet can be decimated and sold for profit while the middle class are converted into slaves.
Until Congress is replaced, lock stock and barrel, (Okay Ron Paul can stay) we are going to be along for a nightmarish ride.
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/kirby/2008/1029.html
Just gets better and better. I haven’t read the entire article I stopped here.
Plumbing the Depths of Depravity
by Rob Kirby | October 29, 2008
PrintFirst, for a bit of historical context, a little bit of fact-finding pertaining to Henry Paulson, complements of my friend, Jesse:
“I didn’t know he was a member of the Nixon White House as his first ‘real job.’
In 1970, fresh from the Masters program of the Harvard Business School, Paulson entered the Nixon administration, working first as staff assistant to the assistant secretary of defense.
In 1972-73, Paulson worked as office assistant to John Erlichman, assistant to the president for domestic affairs. Erlichman was one of the key figures involved in organizing President Richard Nixon’s notorious "plumbers" unit that carried out illegal covert operations against the president’s political opponents, including espionage, blackmail, and revenge. Erlichman resigned in 1973, and in 1975 he was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury, and conspiracy, and was imprisoned for 18 months.
Utilizing his connections, Paulson went to work for Goldman Sachs in 1974. In a 2007 feature, the British newspaper the Guardian wrote, "Not only was he well connected enough to get the job [in the Nixon White House], but well connected enough to resign in the thick of the Watergate scandal without ever getting caught up in the fallout. He went straight to Goldman back home in Illinois."
[quote]It’s just amazing that all of these high paid economists can’t
understand something that a 12-year old can easily grasp. Too much
spending and borrowing with not enough saving and producing = bankrupt.[/quote]
I Totally agree with this.
The higher up the ladder you go in the company i work for the less they understand about the current situation.
They are very gung-ho when the government inject a few billion and just assume this will get people spending which will fix the problem !!!
sorry but it won’t i say, "what do you know your on the shop floor" they say with a smirk on face.
The small surges in the markets will keep happening but the falls will still be steeper and steeper until meltdown day dawns.
Quote:
It’s just amazing that all of these high paid economists can’t understand something that a 12-year old can easily grasp. Too much spending and borrowing with not enough saving and producing = bankrupt.
I also agree. After reading http://www.2000wave.com/article.asp?id=mwo103108
of which Chris referred to in another post, it looks like what "we" spend or what goes into GDP is or a lot of it was borrowed from the homeATM… Now that 1/5th or 7 million homeowners are underwater/upside down http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/30/real_estate/underwater_borrowers/index.htm and credit card companies/banks are slashing limits this should melt down really quickly. Even if they do another stimulus it won’t be enough or fast.
I see a big snowball coming down the mountain!$!$!$
We’re missing out on a lot of free traffic using social engines. I know there’s a share this link, but you kind of have to dig to make anything happen.
Suggestion:
- Have a row of social bookmark links so people can recognize their site of choice- mine is Digg.
- For voting sites like Digg, have someone start out each post in the system, so it’s easy for readers to just click and make it happen.
Here’s the link to the Digg article to get things rolling: http://digg.com/business_finance/Pompous_Prognosticators_Think_the_end_is_in_sight_Ha
My thought is that with maybe 20-30 minutes of work for each story by some admin, you’ll be getting a lot more viral/social traffic than before.