biz.yahoo.com — Traders are nervous, with the upshot being a swing to cash and gold. Why gold? Under the circumstances that exist today in the financial marketplace, any rise in interest rates will certainly pass the tipping point to where millions of Americans will be forced from their homes and put out on the street.
Mar 14, 2007 View in Crawl 4
iomegaboyMar 15, 2007
Only those stupid enough to have variable rate mortgages or interest only loans.
fixedcomaMar 15, 2007
the thing i wonder is how we keep moving if we're trillions in debt would evertything around justcave in. Something justdoesnt add up.
ponder22875Mar 15, 2007
I do not think we are headed for a depression, possibly a period of stagflation but I do have a question for all who have a rosy view of the economic picture. I have been trying to wrap my head around what is going to happen in the housing market as the baby boomers retire/move/die over the next ten years and the reason this concerns me is that a lot of them are living off of the equity in their homes as well as working jobs that pay more than most of the generations under them by a large margin. I am happy for you if you are making a good living but most X and Y's are not most of us are making around 8-20 an hour which can be good can be bad depending on which side of that you are on but it is not enough to pay for the McMansions that we have inherited from the newly retiring generation(especially if there is a carbon or gas crisis since these are mostly in burbs with only service sector jobs near them) and if we all try to sell our inheritance who will be buying. Will these be the new ghettos? Or will we import immigrants and hope they will live 30 to a house to pay for it? If neither happens and if the current trend of stagnant wages persists(which since it is so loved by big business I doubt it will change) who will be buying these houses that are $300,000 and up yet have paper thin walls and look the same as all of their neighbors? I suppose that if our economy tanks foreigners may(the American dream to be like post-Soviet Russia) but short of that they will sit empty or come WAY down in price to where people can actually afford them(You may want to divide by 5, but if wages keep going down like they have since the 90's, by that time you may want to divide by 10). Please tell me why embracing the Walmart economy was such a good idea?
david927Mar 16, 2007
America is headed for something a bit worse than the Great Depression.Several here have talked about that the Federal Reserve won't let interest rates rise to the point where the housing market would melt down. The problem is: They have to. There is another issue that's not discussed here, but which couldn't be more relevant. That is the Dollar.You see, the US Dollar is like the stock of the US Government. People will use it as a reserve if it's safe. The dollar, however, is getting dumped. It's near an all-time low and continuing to sink. The Fed has been raising rates to support it in 17 straight sessions, but now it's in a Catch-22. It needs to raise rates more to continue dollar support, but the housing market is already unraveling and instead desperately needs a rate cut. So they've been in a holding pattern, but it can't stay that way. The dollar is more important to the economy (and the housing market is DOA anyway), so eventually they'll bump up rates more.That or the US will just go to war...
Closed AccountMar 16, 2007
Hmmm, yummy, americans being denuded of their pride, people shooting themselves in despair, hysterical mobs on the streets screaming "HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN", politicians subject to mob rule and hanged from lamp-posts, the end of the unpolar world...Where are my nacho's? Gotta watch this live on CNN. Fun !
Closed AccountMar 16, 2007
actually a great deal of our growth is fueled by immigration. If it weren't for the (slightly) higher birth rates here and the high immigration rate we wouldn't be closer to the growth of the larger European economies -- probably higher still because of our better business climate but not by all that much.
siszamMar 17, 2007
How can you say that? You're a horrible person if you think it's good that ten or hundreds of thousands of people will become homeless, jobless, and hungry just so you can save big on a house. You sick, sick pig.
betterthMar 23, 2007
@RhinoAgain, all these assumptions! So quaint, you're obviously old. "Seen the world, know the world, impossible for me to change!" That's what I'm seeing. You told me my salary. 30-40k max, eh? Wow, I'm making $55k a year working part time. My boss just signed onto our company as a fte making over a hundred and twenty. But hell, I must be wrong, right? /No one makes over 40k in SQA!/ What a scrub.I may not know what starvation and hunger and homelessness is like, but then again, no one should fall to that unless they've f**ked up. I've invested money almost the second that I got this job. If I lose it, /I'm not f**ked/. And, judging by how you talk, you're experiences and you're idea of this industry, you're the last person to be taking advice from. I'm doing just fine balancing college and working part time, making more than my parents, investing tons of money. The most annoying part is when old people start writing off younger people just because of our age. Who cares if I've accomplished twice what they did in their twenty years. Who cares if it took them thirty five to get where I am in my live. Noooo, they're so much better just because they've been alive. It's retarded, and it's stupid. Approach people with an open mind regardless of their age, end of story.
johny900May 16, 2007
Okey, americans being denuded of their pride, people shooting themselves in despair, hysterical mobs on the streets screaming "HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN", politicians subject to mob rule and hanged from lamp-posts, the end of the unpolar world...Where are my nacho's? Gotta watch this live on CNN. Fun !Depression treatment<a class="user" href="http://www.depressiontopics.com">http://www.depressiontopics.com</a>
thedredDec 25, 2008
The government has decided to try to inflate us out of this bubble by pumping a couple TRILLION dollars into the economy. They claim that not doing this early enough was what caused the Great Depression and that they must do it now to avoid another one. Currently, ALOT more money is leaving the economy and flooding into safe havens than they are currently pumping in thus causing an illusion of deflation. This is causing the powers that be to print and borrow even more to try to balance things out. Here is they are screwing up. Once things level out and the markets start to recover across the board, people will pull their money out of the safe havens and pump it back into the markets. When this happens, severe inflation will occur and GOLD, SILVER, LAND, OIL, and TIPS will skyrocket in value.This is different than the Great Depression, because it was a deflationary depression. The next one will be inflationary.