The bailout bonanza has started spreading to other industries.
To paraphrase the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies 'Well they would say that wouldn't they?'Letter against Keynesian solutions in today's telegraph.
Asia is full of powder kegs, often religous and ethnic but also poverty. There is probibly a dozen threads worth on that topic alone, but at the moment there is no coherent orginised ideology or movement that I can see other than the affiliated jihadis. This could change rapidly though as the region still has the living memory of the Maoist, Marxist and anti colonial struggles as a template. This together with more modern templates of the likes of the 'color' revolutions, the east european velvet revolutions and the EZLN and even al Quada can be used by people to build revolutionary movements quite quickly. Whether it is desirable is another question. Im not expecting it but Id not be shocked to see a Maoist insurgency in China.
Sure, some stocks will stop being used at least for a bit, the credit ratings agencies will be nationalised and around we go again. The market won't stop existing, it'll just go down for a bit, until more and more people reckon it is at the bottom and then start to buy.
In fact the government could get a jump on the market by opening up sales of stock to the public at large, thus diversifying it, which along with a few choice regulations should see it fine. Some simple Keynesian measures to raise effective demand and bingo Capitalism II. And the added advantage of firing lots of people, thus bigger profits etc.
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad....imes-and-the-wall-street-journal--all-st.html...let's say that we are witnessing the two stages of a tsunami.
The current disappearance of wealth in the form of debts repudiated, bets welshed on, contracts canceled, and Lehman Brothers-style sob stories played out is like the withdrawal of the sea.
The poor curious little monkey-humans stand on the beach transfixed by the strangeness of the event as the water recedes and the sea floor is exposed and all kinds of exotic creatures are seen thrashing in the mud, while the skeletons of historic wrecks are exposed to view, and a great stench of organic decay wafts toward the strand.
Then comes the second stage, the tidal wave itself -- which in this case will be horrific monetary inflation -- roaring back over the mud flats toward the land mass, crashing over the beach, and ripping apart all the hotels and houses and infrastructure there while it drowns the poor curious monkey-humans who were too enthralled by the weird spectacle to make for higher ground.
The killer tidal wave washes away all the things they have labored to build for decades, all their poignant little effects and chattels, and the survivors are left keening amidst the wreckage as the sea once again returns to normal in its eternal cradle.
So, that's what I think we will get: an interval of deflationary depression followed by a destructive wave of inflation that will wipe out both constructed debt and constructed savings, scraping the financial landscape clean.
There's no question that stage one is underway. But we can be sure the giant wave of money recklessly loaned into existence in just a few weeks time will wash back through the global economy leaving a swath of destruction.
The Bank of England says that global losses could be £1.8 TRILLION.
That is fucking way beyond obscene.
Hmm, should I be buying gold with my savings?(Gosub - Re: sugar - you might find this interesting regarding feedstock).
/derail.
Back to economics, and Jim Kunstler's waxing his board...
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad....imes-and-the-wall-street-journal--all-st.html
Surf's up, dude.
My boss is clutching at straws to remain positive, today he is blaming the media for going overboard, and is wanting to believe the words of some bloke he knows who runs a machine tool company in the USA who says things arent that bad. Oh well, his fate and mine are tied to the UK commercial property sector so who knows exactly when reality will bite us, or how bad. I still expect it to fall off a cliff soon, but if I try to be optimistic I suppose it could be nearly a year before that happens, allowing for lag.
Not sure I like the idea of nationalised credit rating agencies. That should be quite a big deal in terms of freedom of the individual, power of the state.
The question is how will it start growing again?