Tossing Pebbles in the Stream

This blog is my place to sit and toss pebbles into the stream. The stream of Life relentlessly passing before us. We can affect it little. For the most part I just watch it passing and follow the flow. Occasionally, I need to comment on its passing, tossing a pebble at it to enjoy the ripple affect upon Life's surface.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

The Economic Crisis is Old News

The current sudden economic crisis has been predicted for a long time by those in the know.

There are those who would like people to think it is not so and there was nothing they could do earlier to avert disaster until now.

Fortune Magazine lists 8 financiers who saw the problem coming and 8 who did not.

Here is a Toronto Star newspaper article, Five Reasons to start worrying", which explains it all and predicts what has happened since March and will happen as a solution come Monday. http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/349667 One has to assume a lowly columnist isn't the first to know.

The article ends,

"If worst comes to worst, the United States may end up creating a state agency to relieve troubled lenders of their junk – which the Fed effectively began to do by accepting a liberal definition of collateral in return for emergency bank financing.

It would be a costly gambit, reminiscent of Resolution Trust Corp., which picked up the pieces after the U.S. savings and loan disaster of the 1980s, whose total cost, while enormous by contemporary standards, would seem like chicken feed compared to this catastrophe.

Better that, though, than a great unwinding of the global financial system – although there's room to wonder if America, facing a $3 trillion debt in Iraq and Afghanistan, can resort to a rescue for the ages without resorting to printing the currency to fund it."

Sounds prophetic!

1 Comments:

At 10:18 p.m., Mary said...: Philip,

I think that we are facing a time of financial downfall. Things are probably going to get worse before they get better. No, I'm not a doomsayer, but we have to face reality. This could probably have been avoided.

I think we all need to be careful of how we cast our vote on October 14th and I think the people in the US need to use caution when voting for the new President as well. What happens will definitely depend on who is in control and how they deal with this.

Take care. I hope you are enjoying your weekend.

Blessings,
Mary