Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

oh man gabbneb you sure got me!!

Man, at least gas right now is $1.47 down the street from me, and out in the suburbs it's $1.35!! Guess the guys who rig the gas prices didn't want to completely fuck over everyone's Christmas. I say by the time everyone's decorations are down it's back to $3...

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/11/news/economy/flow_of_funds/index.htm

1st time EVER

lol @ this headline:

Wall Street Flirts With Gains

also lol @ the paradox of capitalism:

Americans holding less debt may sound like a positive, but it also means consumers are spending less, as debt has become more expensive and harder to come by.

Here's another great one:

New unemployment claims surge unexpectedly

http://thepage.time.com/2008/12/11/mcconnell-opposes-auto-bailout-likely-dooming-it/

wow. On one hand I can't say they're wrong in their justification for opposing the bailout. On the other hand, countdown to tent cities and riots on the national mall. Maybe the police can finally try out that new "painful sensation under the skin" raygun weapon now.

Confidence!:

Fortified by half a cup of black coffee, Bush seemed willing to talk sports on end, joking at the conclusion of the 40-minute Oval Office interview that he only needed to end it because Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was waiting to see him.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122901585422798605.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Whoa whoa whoa. Let me get this straight. The Republicans are in favor of bailing out high finance but won't lift a finger to help factory workers? I'm.. astonished

finance impacts the economy to a greater degree than the auto industry, but yeah, the GOP wants to kill the unions, and it wouldn't hurt if more of those workers moved South to go work in non-union shops for their home state employers

About that first-time-ever decrease in household debt in the USA; it occurs to me that when a household files for bankruptcy, its debts are wiped out. I wonder if the two are related?

It's the finance industry that is breaking the straw on the auto industry's back.

Addendum: when a house is foreclosed upon, would not the debt on that house also be written off and therefore expunged from the books? This is not a far stretch to account for falling household debt.

maybe we can get Nascar fans to help vote the Southern Senators out

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/247814.php

Comment: In the future I think it will be difficult to explain why this happened, perhaps even more challenging to explain why this key national decision was left in the hands of lame duck senate Republicans.

Let's see how difficult this is:
Three old men, suffering from a variety of ailments, and acting against their physicians' recommendations by continuing to smoke, drink, use stairs without holding the handrails, and do no exercise, died.

I should draw that so it can go on the BRWC thread

On the other hand, countdown to tent cities and riots on the national mall

yeah totally countdown to armageddon!!! if only GENERAL MOTORS were still around this never would've happened, they'll all realize, too late, too late!!

DETROIT: AMERICA'S MONEY PRINTER

Ford will still be around after all of this. Chrysler should have died years ago and GM is in for a slow death after selling it's European/Korean divisions to Renault/Nissan or a combine of PSA and Fiat.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Auto_union_accuses_Republicans_of_subterfuge_1212.html

Even though the union was concerned it was being "set up" it agreed to make additional concessions including exchanging a large portion of its claims related to a retiree health care plan for equity or stock in the companies.

"These agreed-to changes would have made an enormous difference in the balance sheets of the companies and largely solved their financial problems," Gettelfinger said.

Claims that salaries were key to the breakdown was "just simply subterfuge on the part of the minority in the Republican Party who wanted to tear down agreement that we came up with."

"Senator Corker admitted to our people on the ground there that the other discussions over wages were largely about politics within the (Republican) caucus," Gettelfinger said.

"They thought perhaps they could have a two-fer here maybe, pierce the heart of organized labor, while representing the foreign brands," he said, referring to the fact that many of the Republican senators who most ardently opposed the bailout represented states where foreign automakers had set up non-unionized plants.

Gettelfinger said the union has already done much to bring their compensation levels in line with the non-unionized US plants of foreign competitors and that labor costs were not the major challenge facing automakers anymore.

"If we worked for nothing it wouldn't help them limp into January," Gettelfinger.

i'm loving this bernie madoff story

between that, blago, and bush getting a shoe whipped at him, it's like the universe is squeezing out every last crazy sociopath shithead in the most operatic way possible

New unemployment claims just hit 1/2 million for just one week. Ex-head of NASDAQ is caught in a $50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme. The entire US auto industry seems hellbound for bankruptcy in a few weeks. Factories are shutting down worldwide.

Any yet, this thread falls off the ILE New Answers page. The horror! The horror!

glut in the doomsaying market; so last month

Yeah, it's not prescient any more when all you have to do is get up in the morning to see you're in a handbasket that's moving along at a pretty good clip.

Is there a thread for the rapid death of the newspaper industry?

this thread is merely splintering into many individual shitbin threads then

one shitbin is not enough for all the shit

so true one wishes it were funny

The Madoff thing is really wo!, indeed... Where I'm working (mathnerd financial analysis stuff) we've continually been going "lol bankers/brokers/fundguys crooks" for years, but somehow been meaning it at a somewhat lesser scale than what has occurred.

lolz @ that doof from mclaughlin group/us news & world report getting caught up in this ... mort zuckerman thats his name

hate that guy

lolz @ that doof from mclaughlin group/us news & world report getting caught up in this ... mort zuckerman thats his name

― K DEF FROM REAL LIVE (deej), Tuesday, December 16, 2008 12:27 PM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark

wait..how did he get caught up in this? i just saw him on CNN this morning as a guest contributor whining about how not enough ppl in the gov't/media understand high finance and the bailout's implications...is he involved in the Madoff mess?

he lost a shitload

booyaaa!

With all the big numbers being thrown around since September, I thought it might be nice to put the $50 billion Madow torched into some perspective.

I live in Oregon. The population here is about 3.5 million. The total two-year budget for all state expenditures for 2007-9 was just slightly less than $50 billion. That includes more than half of all the K-12 school budgets for the state (the balance is paid from local taxes). It includes all state police, prisons, highways, social services, the university system, the parks and a whole raft of smaller stuff.

Madow single-handedly made that much money disappear. Impressive!

Rachel Bernie Madow

Oops. I meant to hit the double-f key, not the double-u.

yah totally amzing scam

i mean wtf srsly WTF

this is the best quote about the whole thing imo so far

Analyst Henry Blodget wrote on his blog Friday that some savvy investors figured Madoff was up to something because his returns were so high.

"Many Wall Streeters suspected the wrong rigged game, though: they thought it was insider trading, not a Ponzi scheme," Blodget wrote. "And here's the best part: That's why they invested with him."

ASOH! (audible schadenfreude over here)

Lolworthy quote. Utterly convincing, too. I will spread it around.

that's awesome Tombot.

Although Madoff's returns weren't really that high. They were just steady. He never overplayed his hand.

has there been any info as to like WTF THIS GUY WAS THINKING

His returns were just suspiciously consistent. xp

Reliable info on what he was thinking would have to be straight from the Madoff's mouth, and I'm sure his lawyer would advise him against that.

My guess: I suspect he didn't start his investment business intending to create a Ponzi scheme, but got there by small, fraudulent stages, by letting himself "touch up" the books during a disappointing quarter, thinking he'd fix it up later, when his genius really started raking in the big returns. Later, when the "I'm a genius" plan didn't work so well, but the Ponzi scheme was purring along smoothly, he just went with what was working for him.

I loled while on the treadmill today when CNN showed old footage of Madoff talking about how govt regulation made cheating on Wall St. virtually impossible and that the general public didn't really understand this simple fact.