Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

china's economy is a house of cards fyi

so... short bidu?
there was this dude profiled in that moneyball guy's book about the financial crisis -- this guy spent all day listening to black metal and independently figured out the mortgage backed securities was a time bomb and he bet loads of money against it somehow and now is living on some black metal island paradise. i want to be that guy.

rofl @ black metal island paradise

baidu you mean?

yeah black metal island paradise = the island of greenland

anyway china's gdp is high because of all the money the government sinks into infrastructure, it artificially games the way GDP is calculated

it's pretty obvious to all who're watching the chinese economy that there's also a huge housing bubble atm

dayo when you short baidu it becomes bidu

I'm guessing you don't know very much about finance

oh shit! outed :O

if we can isolate a few chinese stocks to bet against, and if they collapse on schedule, i'll use the proceeds to pay ilx's server costs for a year and the remainder to purchase a non-genre-specific island paradise. how's that sound?

let's gather our assets and short! i have a half bottle of Sauvignon Blanc

China is brilliant about how much money they're spending towards public transportation/monorails. If I remember correctly USA is spending 1/10th that amount.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/7435705.html

we're certainly not spending a lot of money on monorails

oh shit I had no idea there was an englishpeopledaily.com (adds to google reader)

search for the china daily too - there's an english edition that has perfect english but is still subject to government censorship

China is brilliant about how much money they're spending towards public transportation/monorails. If I remember correctly USA is spending 1/10th that amount.

― Muttley vs. Mumbly (CaptainLorax), Friday, July 15, 2011 11:01 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

I assume you meant high speed rail?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monorail

james fallows is all about china daily - http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/03/redesign-fever-welcome-china-daily/36864/ - this kills me

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/assets_c/2010/03/IMG_5603-thumb-550x348-22418.jpg

EXCLUSIVE http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/CHinaDaily1.png

english.peopledaily.com.cn somehow real funny to me

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/business/fast-traders-under-attack-defend-work.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

“High-frequency traders turned what was a very down day for many investors into a very profitable one for themselves,” said Mary Schapiro, the S.E.C. chairwoman, in a speech on the anniversary of the flash crash in May. “Their activity that day should cause us to thoroughly examine their current role.”

bunch of big swinging dicks pissed off at others for having bigger, swingier dicks

Poor Goldman Sachs, only making $1.3 billion more in profit than last year:

Goldman Sachs Disappoints With Earnings of $1.05 Billion
...
The second-quarter profit of $1.85 a share fell short of analysts’ expectations of $2.27 a share, according to Thomson Reuters. Still, it was an improvement for the period a year earlier, when Goldman posted a profit of $453 million, or 78 cents a share.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/goldman-sachs-reports-profit-of-1-05-billion/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Basic lack of money remains Americans' foremost financial concern. Even in the current job climate, 17% of Americans say the most important financial problem their family faces today is a lack of money compared with 9% who say it is unemployment or the loss of a job. The cost of healthcare takes second place as 12% say it is the most important financial problem for their family.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/148625/Lack-Money-Tops-List-Americans-Financial-Worries.aspx

Here is the formula for disaster. Cut wages. Cut them some more. Issue lots of credit cards to the people whose wages yo have cut. Issue some more credit cards and push home equity loans. Cut wages again. Repeat as necesssary to create a financial catastrophe. Pretend that the people who struggle with this are poor managers of their money and irresponsible.

Will default cause a stock crash? Should I try to talk my parents into selling their stocks before next week?

it would impact the bond market first, where investors would be far less likely to buy U.S. debt instruments. but the resulting increase in interest rates (i assume based on the fact that U.S. debt instruments become a riskier investment, requiring higher rates to entice investors) will have a ripple effect on lots of other things that are tied to the treasury's interest rates. that ripple effect would likely cripple the market, dry-up all credit, spike unemployment, and so forth. that is, of course, if the crises gets that far.

that gallup poll is kinda useless

poor people's biggest concern is 'being poor' second biggest concern is 'all the shit they can't afford'.

<3

Instability in the market is often good for the long term investor, bad for the short term investor, especially those looking to cash out soon for retirement. But I think no one really knows how the worst case scenario would play out, even if it came to that. In this sense the Y2K analogy is pretty apt, except, of course, that maybe one reason little bad came of the Y2K doomsday scenarios is that people took it seriously and planned/recoded accordingly. This particular game of debt limit/budget chicken, however, seems to be predicated on a lack of fear of worse case scenario outcome. It's basically calling the bluff of fate, which seems ... unsound.

this is great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQqDS9wGsxQ

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23gfc2

http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/5648/dollarohnopq6.png

can we get rid of money now or what

beer and wine based economy now!

my pizza economy has proved to be a disaster and needs to be retooled with more onions

well we first noticed that the olive oil pizzas w/ feta cheese started falling in value among traders. in a desperate attempt to reverse the trend, pepperoni pizzas and bratwurst pizzas were brought in to shore up the market, but they started rapidly losing value too. troubles overseas in the hamburger/jalapeno pizza markets became a cause of concern. pretty soon, a wheelbarrow full of Jeno's couldn't get you a gallon of gas.

http://news.yahoo.com/p-reconsidering-u-downgrade-cnbc-001207261.html

ruh roh

see ya'll in canada

So is this why both ATMs were out when I just went to deposit my check?

on the bright side, the image the new york times is using for this is particularly beautiful

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/08/06/business/06ratings_337_span/06ratings_337-articleLarge.jpg

Treasury Department officials said that the S.&P. announcement was delayed after Treasury found a serious mathematical error in a draft of the downgrade announcement, which was provided to the government earlier Friday afternoon. The officials said that the ratings agency inadvertently added $2 trillion to its projection of the federal debt, significantly overstating the problem confronting the government.

Treasury said that S.&P. conceded the problem after about an hour of discussion.

The company did not return a call for comment.

it's been hard not to reach the conclusion that the ratings agencies are a bunch of clowns

'it was just a little 2 somewhere in our spreadsheet! happens all the time!'

where's that quote from Tracer

I don't have a problem with this. The US has a lot of debt and little long term plan of paying it off.

on the other hand, remember that the subprime mortgage CDOs had AAA ratings.

i've read a few articles that say people are overreacting to this news. thoughts?

Yes, it isn't that big of a deal really

well, they had all but announced they were going to do it unless the debt deal was more extreme than what even TP republicans were pushing for.

also there's "The other rating agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, have said they have no immediate plan to downgrade the country’s credit rating, giving the government more time to make progress on debt reduction. The split verdict limits the impact of the S.& P. downgrade as many consequences would be set off only by a reduction by two agencies."

The US has finances that fall in line with AA (not AAA) economies. While S&P was deterred, Fitch's sovereign debt guy was on Bloomberg radio Thursday morning and was pretty equivocal regarding their assessment.

Not that ratings agencies should be given much credence (given the structured swill they were bribed to grade AAA in the mid-oughts). Its seems like a great time to short Treasuries, but that's been true for much of the decade - there are no shorts left to cover so the plunge (in real terms) will be swift. My guess, the dollar moves, the rates are little perturbed.

Its an extended play Kondratieff Winter (of our debt repudiation). In past K. winters paper promises were rejected. But history only rhymes.