That's just it though Z--you assume you have the truth, and no one else does. Hence the fact that you don't think anyone else's opinion is true. And why Tnova thinks you don't respect anyone's opinion.
But yes, America has problems, but I don't think fascism is one of them. As far as "cleaning up America"...GL BUDDY! You won't find a Utopia anywhere, so just live your own life the way you need to, and help those around you. If everyone does that, maybe we'll see a "cleaner" America.
Originally Posted by Raven
I like your posts...
America is difficult. The country is very diverse. Not only the differences between town and metropole, that disgusting southern accent and the gap between poor-rich, but also the politics. When I hear about the elections, I keep wondering how on earth you invented that system...
Not that ours is better, but whatever...
What I find funny is that you have the contradiction between the prez and the leader of the American National Bank: "the base of our economy is broken" vs. "there's nothing wrong with the economy"
Also, saw a documentary yesterday about Belgian people buying houses in Florida b/c a lot of people get evicted there (hmmm, sounds like the crisis is the cause of this) and Belgians have money enough (Euro>Dollar atm, don't know if you noticed ) to buy beautiful houses;
while the former inhabitants are homeless and most of them lost all their money.
One statement in the docu really hit me in the face: "There is no more middleclass in America. Only the ones who have money and the ones who don't. The first can change into the second really fast."
btw, How can you live with a government with almost no social security? A woman (nurse) had cancer in the thyroid. So she got treated. One week after she begins working again, she has a major stroke and has to stay home again. So, what does the hospital do? Fire her b/c she's been absent for over three months total...
How on earth can you live with that?
Regards,
Bram - who lives in a country with sufficient social security
Turns out real life ends when you hit the log in button.
That is exactly what I was going to post.
I would only like to ask why do you think your truth is the only one, Z?
I just wish you would give it a rest.
And I know, I am the most ignorant poster in these forums, according to you, but I know differently. You just refuse to look at other ppl's opinions as being valid and that is what I argue against. Not so much your politics, but your elitist attitude.
And just to add, I am an American on Disability, therefore I depend on the government to survive. I cannot work so I receive Social Security benefits. I don't receive a lot of money from the government, but I get by. I own my own house, thanks to the government, so before you criticize me or my knowledge of how the system works, maybe you should consider that sometimes ppl just would rather not reveal their own situations in a public forum rather than calling them ignorant. I live the system and it works. Will I ever be wealthy? NO, do I need to be? No, Do I envy those that have made their own way? No. Soo, you see, just because you read it in a book or discussed it in a classroom, does not make you an expert on truth.
The Truth is, I am just not going to respond to anymore of it. no matter what you or anyone else says to either criticize me of the country I would give my life to protect.
Last edited by Dogma; 09-19-2008 at 16:18.
Right now I am in the education process of being a Financial expert.
And all these companies screwed themselves. To see the government step in to save them, is somewhat rewarding (see US stock market past 2 days, the week closed about even, ) but at the same time it pisses me off seeing these companies get their butts saved for making stupid choices. Oh well, they are now controlled by the government (uh, scary?) or other companies. It was a crazy week. I'm surprised the SEC didn't step in when these companies were going ballistic borrowing.
all of the above banks, save the SachsenLB maybe are all major players in their target sectors.I definetly said MAJOR bank in Europe, so the small banks don't count as the impact is fairly small.
I don't see any of these banks with "bankrupt" behind their name... Saved by government/private investors still means that the bank is saved, or you wrote it down incorrectly.
UBS and Credit Suisse are amongst the top10 of the worlds largest banks, societe generale is one of the largest french banks and a major players in investment banking. Dresdner Kleinwort and WestLB also are big investment banks. Northern rock was one of the 3 largest mortage banks in the UK, HBOS one of the Uks largest mortage and retail banks aswell. Hypo Real estate is europes largest mortage bank, BayernLB is a large governemnt financier and provider of corporate finance and IKB is one of the leading banks in corporate finance for small companies in germany. Even relatively small banks such as BayernLB and IKB going broke can cost millions of jobs in the end.
Now you can add AIG, Lehman, Merryl Lynch and HBOS to the faield banks list. all of them major players and marekt leaders.
And if they are saved by the government it means they have failed, as without government intervention they would have gone bancrupt.
A bank should not be in the position that it needs saving.
Even if a bank makes profit it doesn't mean they are liquid enuogh to run their busienss. It is what a lot of people forget about, profit is not what matters but cash flow.One of the three major Belgian Banks.
They raised their capital in July by selling a bunch of shares at low prices, hence the first drop in value.
Yesterday, the bank lost 11.5% of their value! Today is expected the same, last week was (oh no) the same.
The value of the shares is lower than ever, but still: the bank is nowhere near bankrupt. They still make profit, how strange it may sound (it does, doesn't it?)...
They lost € 500,000,000 b/c of Lehman, if AIG goes bankrupt as well, who know what will happen...
Its why Morgan Stanley and Merril Lynch went running for the hills... They were profitable yes. But they did not have the money to keep operating in the short term.
Oh by the way... A major German Bank, now called "Germanys most stupid bank" transfered over 300 million euro to lehman on the monday they filed for bancupcy. Since its even a governemnt bank... the one that owned IKB when it went bust, its a major scandal now..
If thats your best analyst i nthat matters, you need to get new ones... as That has been the case like a year ago. Inter-bank lending rates have skyrocketed already long ago...Paul D'Hoore, Belgium's best analyst in these matters, says that the banks have lost their confidence in each other and that that makes the crisis even worse.
That did not solve the problem, but made it worse.. and it really pisses me off.Back on topic:
A friend of mine just told me that the American Bank has supported AIG with ca.70 billion $ in exchange for an 80% majority of shares...
This action had an immediate reaction in the rest of the world, the values of other bank/insurrance shares have stopped dropping too fast. Now they are even with yesterday, a little lower or even a little higher.
Congratz USA, after causing the problems, you have solved them. That would be a first...
If i was any of your americans, i'd be sueing off AIGs arse right now.
They deliberately wanted to be saved by the govenrment. Allianz wanted to take over major parts of AIG which would have saved it... Munich RE was also interested in alrge parts of AIG. But AIG rejected them and would rather be saved on the tax payers wallet. good job.
of course you can. the problem was not that Lehman had too much debt, but noone wanted to keep lending to them. Imo it was even part of a Barclays scheme.. They wanted to take over parts of Lehman and that would have saved them. But they said no and Lehman went bust. The same day they offered buying the same parts again at a much lower price... wtf.It is impossible to go into bankruptcy when you don't borrow money. The article that Z cited said they were net roughly 150 billion dollars in debt. DUH! Of course there is going to be trouble. Debt = risk. They had a ton of debt and therefore a ton of risk. They made stupid choices and it came back to bite them. Sure- the economy has slowed a little, but if you haven't made stupid choices, it's still good enough to thrive.
But back to bancrupcy... To tell a company to stop borrowing is jsut plain stupid. on average around 75% of any companies capital is borrowed money. If noone would borrow money to expand, we'd have pretty much no large company left, since noone.. especialy not the amreican ones, can finance their extensive expansion without debt.
Finance 101. Stop borrowing money in a lot of cases means, stop growing. It called leveraging.
without beeign an expert i do think i am able to calaim a lot of knowledge. seeign that i've got liek 4 years of tradign and investemtn experience.. bought my first mutual fund and stocks when i was 11, 10 years ago..
I have studied economics for over 2 years now and keep constant and thurough tabs on financial, economic and busienss news (4 magazines, 2 financial newspapers and about hal a dozen online newsletters aimed towards professional traders)
i even once argued with a Goldman Sachs Eurity Research Associate on their Sell recommendation of adidas and said it was wrong during an internship interview... A week or two later they upgraded it.
AIG should not have been saved by the government If it really is too big to fail, someone else will do it. In fact there were plans to do so. But AIG wanted to be saved by the governemnt.
I saw a part of Bush's speech o nthat stuff the other day... To me it sounded like "I have no idea whats going on, but i'm doign stuff and spending tax payers moeny on it. My advisers don't have much of a clue either. We all don't know how the economy works".
Last edited by KLL; 09-23-2008 at 07:19.
Extra Bavariam nulla vita, et si vita, non est ita.
(Outside Bavaria there's no life, and if there is, it ain't worth living.)
Munich Loves You
Best city in the world
"When someone from Uri, Switzerland, moves to Austria, the average IQ of both countries rises." - Prof. Wigger, on interpreting mean values.
Welcome to Germany - Land of Ideas
talking about stupid things..
did you guys notice that the european intercompany interest rate for 3 months (the rate banks loan each other money) was negative last friday..
realise what this means: ONe bank which has money, is paying another bank to take a loan!!
So you get money for taking out a loan!!
this lasted for about 1/2 an hour!!
banks are crazy!!
**Serving the planet**
Dogma actually I have to disagree with you on this one. While you are correct that the housing crisis cannot be directly tied to W it can be tied back to the policies of Clinton. If we look into why banks were making sub prime mortgages and offering loans to people who did not need to prove income and who honestly had no real hope of paying back the loan they were taking we end up at the feet of the democrats. To give you a name I will start with Janet Reno. The policy of pressuring banks, specifically Fanny and Freddy in the beginning, to offer mortgages to low income families and minorities began with her. The Clinton administration made it a hallmark of their policy to end what is called redlining and in turn the percentage of subprime mortgages that the two GSEs held went over 50%.
To those of you who think Obama is the salvation for this problem ask yourself how he can have two former officers of these two organizations as economic advisores. If you truly believe he stands for change you are living in a fairly tale, and hopefully I can come visit you when I need a break from Reallity.
Finally if we truly want to look for solutions to the current economic woes the only true solution is to get government the hell out of the way. The United States Government helped to create this problem by encouraging the mortgage crisis which led to the credit problems, and by this I do mean government in its entirity. The democrats sought to appease their voters (i.e. minorities) and the republicans (while a few like McCain tried to reform Freddy and Fanny) basically stood idle while the system was manipulated so there is plenty of blame to go around. Why then should we trust these same people to fix the problems they created. Instead tell em to stay the hell out and let the private sector take care of itself that is why its called the private sector.
"O, I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land."
Dogma...?
r u serious?
Z
[WLF] = the greatest nation ever to exisit, in any game, in any universe, of all time, period.
I actually stated this somewhere else, possibly this thread. The Clinton Administration did rescind most of the regulating authority during his "booming economy".
http://forums.nation-wars.com/showth...?t=3288&page=2
Here it is. This crisis has been coming for years. The banking industry had to find more creative ways to make the CEO's and account managers salaries so they found a way to do it. Now we see the results of their creative accounting.