Major Trouble on Wall Street

[Zeebu]

i think wamu is about to be downgraded to nigerian prince

[Fit of Rage]

My mattress sure is comfy when stuffed with 5 dollar bills.

[Galleleo]

Luckily for us Dutchies, we have the only bank in the world with a Triple A status. (well, 3 German banks, but they are under government control and thus benefit from the German Government triple A status).

[Nycle]

Luckily for us Dutchies, we have the only bank in the world with a Triple A status. (well, 3 German banks, but they are under government control and thus benefit from the German Government triple A status).

Which is why I chose to move my deposits and savings over to Rabobank, got a nice interest deal and it feels good to know that it's hard to buy them out when they're not listed on the stock exchange. Their cooperative structure is appealing as well, their profits are used for the betterment of the bank itself and its clients instead of being spent as sky-high bonuses for their main CEO's. Fortis has lost all of my trust.

BNG has a AAA status too, but they only do public financings.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Luckily for us Dutchies, we have the only bank in the world with a Triple A status. (well, 3 German banks, but they are under government control and thus benefit from the German Government triple A status).

I hope that stays :P

Are you saying the german government gives its own credit ratings? That seems kinda stupid. I wonder what independent credit ratings would show...

[Epinephrine]

Wow bailing out all the mortgages huh? I imagine Jerome must be crawling up the walls now.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Not really, I'm more excited than anything because, hey - I said this would happen and it did. I said the government would do something crazy, and they have. I said they'd wind up destroying the entire economy in the futile quest to stabilize Wall Street - once again, pretty on-par with reality.

They've banned short-selling, and the next day the Dow jumps 400 points. I'm sure some of that rise was due to the usual down-up-down fluctuation in the marketplace, but now the SEC has distorted the true market process and so the Dow can't be trusted to give a true representation of what the market's doing.

I predict that the government is going to somehow find a way to smooth over their own bank accounts - making what Enron did seem almost petty in comparison - but I don't think it's going to stop what's going to happen, assuming I am of course correct about things up until this point. The recession is not just an economic slump, it's a psychological evaluation of the current system - people are shaken about the Federal Reserve and the merits of central banking itself.

AIG was bailed out, Morgan Stanley was bailed out but everyone knows the reason they were bought out isn't because they were worthwhile investments - someone's going to have to pay up. That's why the Lehman brothers went bankrupt, the Fed was trying to manipulate another group into buying them out but the bank pulled out at the last moment, because that bank is actually looking after its investments. Perhaps thats why they are one of the few banks to maintain their credit rating.

This is socialism of the rich, where the rest of America gets stuck with the tab that Wall Street had after a few years of being drunk on a glutton of Fed loans and rate cuts. Trillions of dollars aren't going to magically disappear or become worth something - the market will see to it that the money is purged. The government has been trying to stop that for years and years and years and now they can't.

I've been getting thank-you's from people who have de-invested from Wall Street. My ego is pretty huge right now, because not only are my economic theories finally validated, but those ideas have actually saved a few people alot of money.

So no, Epi - I'm not really down, at all.

[Galleleo]

No, the German Government has a triple A status itself, and therefore those 3 banks benefit from it because they are under direct control of the German Government. It wasn't given by the Government, but they are being run by the government and the government themselves have a triple A status, that is at least how I understood it.

Right now I am with the ABN Amro bank, which is technically the largest Dutch bank (in the Netherlands, not world wide) but since the forced take-over (retarded ass hedge funds, biggest financial mistake of this century (said so by someone who works for a different bank and graduated in Economy, not me)). But anyway, I like my student package from ABN Amro so I am not switching banks right now (for instance I got a credit card for which I don't have to pay interest over any of my sales, I just pay like 15 Euro a year for this card, very handy). But the moment I decide to switch, I am definitely moving to Rabobank.

[Zerzera]

I predict that the government is going to somehow find a way to smooth over their own bank accounts - making what Enron did seem almost petty in comparison - but I don't think it's going to stop what's going to happen, assuming I am of course correct about things up until this point. The recession is not just an economic slump, it's a psychological evaluation of the current system - people are shaken about the Federal Reserve and the merits of central banking itself.

That's why this system works, when the sheep are back in line again everything will run smoothly and no real harm is done. Apart from the fact that some hawks doubled their property now that it came cheap. In the end everyone's to blame and that's why nothing has to be done afterward.

[Kolar]

Worst... President... EVER

[Squeezer]

so when can I sell my share of AIG to China?

[Vihta]

Peter Schiff is the man

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TIbD3BGoe5g

"They are gonna turn the dollar into confetti" :grin:

[Jerome Scuggs]

The Compassion of Liberals

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,7535469.story

Expressing nostalgia for "the good old days when bankers jumped out of windows," Aeschimann condemned as "extortion" the rescue of U.S. corporate giants by the very state that free-marketeers resent.

But fear accompanied gloating. The crisis threatens to worsen woes -- inflation, unemployment, weak growth -- of regional powerhouses including Britain, Spain and Italy. Joaquin Almunia, an ideologically moderate Spanish Socialist who is the European Union's economic commissioner, offered a simple analysis.

"It has been a problem of greed," he told El Pais newspaper. "In Europe it can't be said that we did nothing, European banks bought toxic products. . . . Nobody knows when this will end."

Nostalgia for death combined with a helpless "noone can say we didn't try!"...

if you have never read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", because you thought it was too "dense"... well, you might be able to tackle it now, because this could be a paragraph from one of her politician-characters in the novel.

But it shows a common sentiment I'm seeing - worship the guys who can pull short-term happiness out of thin air, then demonize them when their house of cards collapses.

[Nycle]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,7535469.story Nostalgia for death combined with a helpless "noone can say we didn't try!"...

I think you're misinterpreting what Almunia is saying. As I understand it, he's admitting that among all the gloating Europe cannot wash its hands innocence, since European banks decided to buy those "toxic products" hoping they would be profitable.

And why would anyone in this case ask "why didn't they try?" in any situation? "Short term happiness" is not as much sought after in Europe as it is in the US due to cultural differences, this also translates into other areas of policy like environmental and social policies for example.