Aankomend vice-president Biden: economie VS kan instorten

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 17:15 schreef Zero2Nine het volgende:
Komt dit bovenop het noodfonds van ome George? Dan wordt er dus in totaal voor 1,4 biljoen in de economie van de VS gestoken. Ik neem aan dat een groot deel ervan ook leningen zijn aan bedrijven, maar de vraag is dan natuurlijk wanneer het terugkomt.

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 17:29 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Amerika gaat kapot!

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 17:34 schreef Zero2Nine het volgende:

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En wij gaan mee

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 17:36 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Europa word economisch wereldleider

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 17:38 schreef __Saviour__ het volgende:

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Als het de zaken intern goed op orde krijgt, heeft Europa wel duidelijk de potentie om zich los te weken van de VS en een eigen grootmacht te worden. Maar aan de andere kant van de wereld staan ook reusachtige economieën te trappelen om een grote rol op te eisen.

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 17:17 schreef jogy het volgende:
$ 5000 miljard is er op dit moment al in de markt gegoten Dit was de stand in november.

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 17:45 schreef YuckFou het volgende:

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En gezien de omvang van de markten waar dat geld in gepompt word is het allemaal nog steeds een druppel op de gloeiende plaat

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It’s the same story on this side of the Irish Sea, of course. We’re all still plunging hither and thither, guzzling wine and wondering what preposterously expensive electronic toys the children will want to smash on Christmas morning this year. We can’t see the meteorite coming either.

I think mainly this is because the government is not telling us the truth. It’s painting Gordon Brown as a global economic messiah and fiddling about with Vat, pretending that the coming recession will be bad. But that it can deal with it.

I don’t think it can. I have spoken to a couple of pretty senior bankers in the past couple of weeks and their story is rather different. They don’t refer to the looming problems as being like 1992 or even 1929. They talk about a total financial meltdown. They talk about the End of Days.

Already we are seeing household names (MFI, Woolworths etc) disappearing from the high street and with them will go the suppliers whose names have only ever been visible behind the grime on motorway vans. The job losses will mount. And mount. And mount. And as they climb, the bad debt will put even more pressure on the banks until every single one of them stutters and fails.

The European banks took one hell of a battering when things went wrong in America. Imagine, then, how life will be when the crisis arrives on this side of the Atlantic. Small wonder one City figure of my acquaintance ordered three safes for his London house just last week.

Of course, you may imagine the government will simply step in and nationalise everything, but to do that, it will have to borrow. And when every government is doing the same thing, there simply won’t be enough cash in the global pot. You can forget Iceland. From what I gather, Spain has had it. Along with Italy, Ireland and very possibly the UK.

It is impossible for someone who scored a U in his economics A-level to grapple with the consequences of all this but I’m told that in simple terms money will cease to function as a meaningful commodity. The binary dots and dashes that fuel the entire system will flicker and die. And without money there will be no business. No means of selling goods. No means of transporting them. No means of making them in the first place even. That’s why another friend of mine has recently sold his London house and bought somewhere in the country . . . with a kitchen garden.

These, as I see them, are the facts. Planet Earth thought it had £10. But it turns out we had only £2. Which means everyone must lose 80% of their wealth. And that’s going to be a problem if you were living on the breadline beforehand.

Eventually, of course, the system will reboot itself, but for a while there will be absolute chaos: riots, lynchings, starvation. It’ll be a world without power or fuel, and with no fuel there’s no way the modern agricultural system can be maintained. Which means there will be no food either. You might like to stop and think about that for a while.

I have, and as a result I can see the day when I will have to shoot some of my neighbours - maybe even David Cameron - as we fight for the last bar of Fry’s Turkish Delight in the smoking ruin that was Chipping Norton’s post office.

I believe the government knows this is a distinct possibility and that it might happen next year, and there is absolutely nothing it can do to stop Cameron getting both barrels from my Beretta. But instead of telling us straight, it calls the crisis the “credit crunch” to make it sound like a breakfast cereal and asks Alistair Darling to smile and big up Gordon when he’s being interviewed.

I can’t say I blame it, really. If an enormous meteorite was heading our way and the authorities knew it couldn’t be stopped or diverted, why bother telling anyone? Best to let us soldier on in the dark until it all goes dark for real.

On a more cheery note, Vauxhall has stopped making the Vectra, that dreary, designed-in-a-coffee-break Eurobox that no one wanted. In its place stands the new Insignia, which has been voted European car of the year for 2009.

This award is made by motoring journalists across Europe, and, with the best will in the world, the Swedes do not want the same thing from a car as the Greeks. That’s why they almost always get it wrong. Past winners have been the Talbot Horizon and the Renault 9.

They’ve got the Insignia even more wrong than usual because the absolutely last thing anyone wants right now, and I’m including in the list consumption, a severed artery and a massive shark bite, is a four-door saloon car with a bargain-basement badge.

Oh it’s not a bad car. It’s extremely good-looking, it appears to be very well made, it is spacious and the prices are reasonable. But set against that are seats that are far too hard, the visibility - you can’t see the corners of the car from the driver’s chair - and the solid, inescapable fact that the Ford Mondeo is a more joyful thing to drive.

In the past, none of this would have mattered. Fleet managers would have bought 100 of whichever was the cheapest, and Jenkins from Pots, Pans and Pyrex would have had no say in the matter. Those days, however, are gone. The travelling salesman is now an internet address, and the mini MPV has bopped the traditional saloon on the head. I cannot think of the question in today’s climate to which the answer is “A Vauxhall Insignia”. And I’m surprised my colleagues on the car of the year jury didn’t notice this as well.

Then I keep remembering the Renault 9 and I’m not surprised at all.

I feel, I really do, for the bosses at GM who’ve laboured so hard to make this car. It’s way better than the Vectra. It looks as though they were bothered. But asking their dealerships to sell such a thing in today’s world is a bit like asking men in the first world war trenches to charge the enemy’s machinegun nests with spears.

Right now, there are two paths you can go down. You can either adopt the Irish attitude to the impending catastrophe and party like it’s 1999. In which case you are better off ignoring the Vauxhall and buying a 24ft Donzi speedboat instead.

Or you can actually start to make some sensible preparations for the complete breakdown in society. In which case you don’t want a Vauxhall either. Better to spend the money on a pair of shotguns and an allotment.

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A loss of nearly 42,000 jobs last month pushed California's unemployment rate to 8.4%, a 14-year high[/b] and the third-highest jobless rate in the country.

California's November unemployment figure lagged behind only Michigan with its crippled automobile industry at 9.6% and Rhode Island at 9.3% after job cuts this year in retail, manufacturing and services.

Nationally, unemployment hit 6.7% in November. In Los Angeles County, it rose to 8.9% in November from 8.3% in October.

The state's jobless rate was up from 8.2% in October, the Employment Development Department reported Friday.

And economists say the grim news isn't over.

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 17:42 schreef paullo het volgende:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4668112n

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 17:51 schreef jogy het volgende:


I think mainly this is because the government is not telling us the truth.

senior bankers in the past couple of weeks and their story is rather different.
They talk about a total financial meltdown. They talk about the End of Days.

You can forget Iceland. From what I gather, Spain has had it. Along with Italy, Ireland and very possibly the UK.

without money there will be no business. No means of selling goods. No means of transporting them. No means of making them in the first place even.

It’ll be a world without power or fuel, and with no fuel there’s no way the modern agricultural system can be maintained. Which means there will be no food either. You might like to stop and think about that for a while.

instead of telling us straight, it calls the crisis the “credit crunch” to make it sound like a breakfast cereal

If an enormous meteorite was heading our way and the authorities knew it couldn’t be stopped or diverted, why bother telling anyone? Best to let us soldier on in the dark until it all goes dark for real.

Right now, there are two paths you can go down. You can either adopt the Irish attitude to the impending catastrophe and party like it’s 1999. In which case you are better off ignoring the Vauxhall and buying a 24ft Donzi speedboat instead.

Or you can actually start to make some sensible preparations for the complete breakdown in society. In which case you don’t want a Vauxhall either. Better to spend the money on a pair of shotguns and an allotment.

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 18:03 schreef SjonLok het volgende:
Het gaat ook wel erg hard met de werkloosheid in de VS:

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 18:20 schreef YuckFou het volgende:
Heel hard, een vriendje van me die in de financiën zit vertelde me dat het daar momenteel met 600.000 per week omhoog gaat...600.000 dat is wat het CBS hier voor het gehele komende jaar voorspelt

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 18:32 schreef Drugshond het volgende:
Dit lijkt me wel erg overdreven.... dat het knak zegt geloof ik wel.... Maar dit is wel bijzonder explosief.

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 18:38 schreef YuckFou het volgende:

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Hij werkt bij een pensioenfonds wat alle zeilen bij moet zetten en dan nog letterlijk meer dan een miljard is verloren, als ik iemand geloof die me kan vertellen wat er werkelijk aan de hand is, is hij het wel, in ieder geval vertrouw ik hem veel meer dan alle "naar buiten gebrachte persberichten" en "vrijgegeven informatie" bij elkaar, dat soort jongens krijgt tig-honderd mails per dag met economische informatie en weten heel wat beter wat er echt aan de hand is dan wij die het vanuit de mainstream media moeten vernemen, of heb je ook een bloomberg account?
*trust no one....*

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 18:32 schreef Drugshond het volgende:

Dit lijkt me wel erg overdreven.... dat het knak zegt geloof ik wel.... Maar dit is wel bijzonder explosief.

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Op zaterdag 20 december 2008 18:58 schreef SjonLok het volgende:

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In het bericht dat ik plaatste, werd geschreven dat er in California in 1 maand tijd meer dan 40.000 werklozen bijkomen. Dat is net iets meer dan 0,1% van het totale inwoneraantal.

Als je daar doortrekt naar de totale USA met meer dan 300 miljoen inwoners, dan kom je op meer dan 300.000 werklozen per maand extra. De ene staat wordt meer getroffen dan de andere (auto-inustrie in Detroit, Banken in New York), dus het cijfer kan aanwijken.
Maar duidelijk is wel dat het aantal werklozen nu met honderduizenden per maand gaat.