Today, March 3, stocks fell in Europe and Asia as fears of a recession spread among investors. This coming a month after the Fed slashed interest rates and Congress hacked out the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008; provisions to save the economy from a recession. Negative speculation comes less than a week after Bernanke and Bush claim that the economy is not heading for a recession.
It is the abusive fiscal and monetary polices that have brought us to this point, and it is the same "stimulus" plans that we keep hearing about to inflate the dollar and save the economy. Well my friends, this year we will see a significant worldwide depression that will devastate the global economy if things don't change.
Is there any hope that economic sensability will return to Washington?
Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly. -Ludwig von Mises
It looks like things won't be up to the Washington government or the Federal Reserve anymore.
As I write this, Venenzuala has just broken diplomatic relations with Columbia and is massing tanks along the Columbian border. War is mere hours away. Venezualan oil production will almost certainly halt completely. If I was the Columbian Air Force, my first response to an invasion would be the complete and utter destruction of all Venezualan oil facilities, which could halt oil production for several years.
For the United States, that means gas prices will go catastrophically high. With the cutoff of all commodities from South American and with the likely hood of the Venuzuelan Air Force damaging the Panama Canal to the point of closure, the U.S. is essentially f***ed.
It is likely that the war will rapidly spread to include Ecuador and other nations in South America.
If this was any other despot, I would say that Venezuala would likely back off at the last second. But this is Hugo Chavez and he is a total madman.
Anyhow, these turn of events essentially will bring immediately economic collapse, regardless of what the Fed does.
If there is war, the US would certaintly back Colombia, but how? Our soldiers our oversieze so I could only see airstrikes. But I don't see any of this happening, or at least I hope not.
"The plans differ; the planners are all alike"
-Bastiat
New documents have surfaced from a stolen rebel laptop linking Hugo Chavez to FARC. This rebel group apparently has three U.S. military contractors as hostages, and has been holding them since 2003. The destabilization of the region will certainly not help oil prices.
Well, Hugo is holding back at the moment, though his armed forces continue to mass on the Columbian border. I wonder if somewhere in that deluded mind of his, it has occured that he would essentially be signing his own death warrant with an all out war.
Isn't what will come more accurately called stagflation? Rising prices and falling GPD? Correct me if I am misunderstanding something.
I think economic sensibility comes with a wholesale replacement. I heard the term 'trustees in bankruptcy' many years ago and it still seems to fit except for the trust part.
You are correct, stagflation will likely be a result of the current fiscal polices. The inflation we see today will continue along side a depression with rising consumer prices and falling housing prices. New international incidents stoke more fears and pushed the DOW down 214 points today.
To play devils advocate,
Every time we've gotten into a recession and theres some tension in the world people start fear mongering that theres going to be another great depression. What makes now any different than any of the other times these people were wrong and life for the most part went on as usual?
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There is no doubt that the fear mongering of the mainstream economists has hurt Wall Street in the past few months. We have recovered from these slight setbacks before. The problem is the longterm fiscal polices. Inflation continues to rise, and the Fed continues to pump cheap credit into the consumer end, creating the classic "credit bubble." This trend has been growing for too long to be able to sustain itself. Soon this bubble must burst.
Yes it must. But I'd say it's more likely to happen not when foreign wars erupt, but when the US starts getting more belligerent in its use of the military to enforce policy. I think it's when we break out our guns en masse, which Iraq might be the first instance of, that indicates when it's really going to hit the fan.
Check out Adam Hamilton at http://www.zealllc.com/2008/realusdx.htm
Real Rates and USDX and his other essays.
I really like his analysis. I think this exlains, in part, why Ron Paul says the US is in uncharted territory.
The Fed and US Gov have gone beyond 1929, the comparison to 1929 is becoming an anachronism.
I found this on a Yahoo message board -
"We didn't have the WTO, the UN, and the IMF. We didn't have 30 million mexicans and a Traitor in our White House. We didn't have an International Socialist predatory capitalist cabal gutting our manufacturing and shipping it to communist china. ........"
Not to mention GATT and NAFTA.
It seems to sum up nicely some other interesting and notable differences between 1929 and now.
Don't know yet. Borders, language, culture? But it is a unprecedented scenario I think.