Warning: Worldwide Economic Wipeout Ahead

[Better Believe It]

Warning: Worldwide wipeout ahead
Think US stocks are on a life raft? Look around the globe, where seas are much rougher. This is serious, folks. Brace for a brutal riptide of more economic upheaval.
By Jon Markman
August 22, 2008

It barely seems possible that anyone is more pessimistic about corporate earnings prospects than American shareholders right now, with the U.S. stock market down almost 15% for the year and the banking system coming unglued before our eyes.

Yet if you take a moment to look around the world, you may be surprised to learn that U.S. stocks are the picture of health compared with their counterparts worldwide. And measured against the gloom in bonds, U.S. stocks are like a sunny day in spring.

Time to gloat? Not on your life. For if there's one thing we know about global markets these days, it's that they seldom diverge for long. So while it might be tempting to look with pity at investors across the seas and in other asset classes, it's more likely that U.S. equities will plunge than that foreign equities will float higher toward our perch.

The Merrill Lynch Corporate Master Index, which tracks the performance of investment-grade-rated corporate bonds, shows 72 of them trading in "distressed" condition, or more than 10 percentage points over Treasurys -- 28 of them issued by banks such as regional giants National City (NCC, news, msgs) and Washington Mutual. That means corporate bankruptcies are virtually inevitable over the next 18 months. Chris Whalen, the managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, has told Dow Jones Newswires that he expects 110 banks with $850 billion in assets to fail by next July, which is eight times the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s reserves.

You can read the entire article at:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SuperModels/warning-worldwide-wipeout-ahead.aspx?page=1

[Maccagirl]

1. Oh joy

and we can do what about it besides peer over the cliff and get pushed off?

[Warpy]

5. Not a hell of a lot

I imagine I'll repeat what my grandmother went through, living on oatmeal (in my case, brown rice) three times a day but managing to keep her house and all the stocks that survived the crash and Depression. She died quite a comfortable woman, but that was 20 years after the crash.

There is no real way to prepare for a total meltdown. My fervent hope is that the people in the kleptocracy who are trying to steal enough to ride it out find themselves holding the most bad paper from hedge funds. I will believe in justice only when I see former plutocrats arguing over a wilted lettuce leaf from a dumpster.

I just know it will have to get desperate and there will have to be massive civil disturbance before our government gets the courage to overturn the stupid GOP policies that always cause economic meltdown.

Maybe this time, they'll rewrite all the books and put the blame where it belongs, on greedy rich men pushing economic dogma that will make them richer while beggaring everybody else.

[warren pease]

8. "...former plutocrats arguing over a wilted lettuce leaf from a dumpster."

One of the all-time great lines, creating the perfect image of justice served in a chronically unjust world. Makes me wish I could draw because it would make a hell of a political cartoon.

So thanks for that. I needed a break from my growing sense of impending doom.


wp

[kestrel91316]

2. We keep on wasting our hard-earned money on useless wars of

aggression, you're damned right we're gonna wipe out.

[Bob Dobbs]

3. Thank Krishna I own nothing

and have nothing to lose.

Already wiped out by previous econoscams.

[Night_Nurse]

4. Yep, I'm with you there... nt

[HillbillyBob]

13. Me too, tho i was never very far up the ladder

Before getting kicked in the face and knocked off. Homeless a couple times nearly homeless several more.
HIV survivor, and several other devastating things, then losing one sorry mcjob (layoff, company failure, downsizing, outsourcing) after another because I always had to work 2 or 3 jobs to just keep the lights on.
I had "real jobs" too, I was an electrician for years, but in so called right to work states working for folks that let people go if they were there long enough to get any benefits, and the pay was never much more than minimum wage. The harder I tried to get ahead the faster something happened to knock me back down.
My partner and I were pretty devastated after 9/11 he was in aero parts company that was bought out, we were not extravagant, we were taking extra earnings and trying to build a business. It was not far enough along to support itself let alone us too, by that time I had cancer to deal with as well.
When we lost our place in South Fl, a rental we went to another rental that was center of crack operation 2 doors over. Threatened by the crack cookin manager we picked up and left after having a yard sale to get enough money to get out of South Fla.
Now we are doing pretty well.
We managed to get a home loan and buy a place in the woods to make a small farm on.
We thought we saw the future from back then and did out best to try to see that we could survive the coming depression, and try to be some of the ones to help rebuild when the world market goes in the pit.

[InkAddict]

17. I applaud your courage and determination. Best wishes for a future.

I'm having a hard time imaging one.

It's so very difficult to step out of the "discomfort" zone when what's possible for a couple to do tears up every American myth one learned to trust, i.e., the power of the Constitution, the need for good manners, hard work, and neat and clean dress. I guess I was just a "lace-curtain" American, a blissfully un-street-smart Dem, trying to hold on to the freedom that was democracy and the inherent good will of other Americans. We are truly on our own--one degree of error in navigation, reasoning, crystal-ball gazing, can bring a huge and fatal outcome.

One has to understand that there are those that, while crawling in the desert, will not crawl in the direction of the oasis and will be lost. The trouble is that the oasises of hope have been fenced and moated, and those inside don't have much inclination to light a beacon of hope.

Medication? Why would I want to forget that I'm thirsty and veer off into a dune.

[DailyGrind51]

6. Get rid of unnecessary monthly expenses, cell phone, cable, etc.

[Better Believe It]

7. That's Not A Plan That Will Just Happen If We Have A Depression ....

to most of us. It will not be our choice, we simply won't have the money to pay for those and many other things we now take for granted.

[DailyGrind51]

15. At least you will have a little more cash in your pocket before it hits!

I have never had either and live on very little, yet my house is paid off!

[warren pease]

14. Better still...

Keep those services; just learn how to tap into them without leaving a footprint and, therefore, without incurring any usage fees.

But that's theft, they say. We can't become like them, they say. Well, why the hell not?

Considering the thorough, unrelenting, equal-opportunity screwing courtesy of the alliance between the predatory multinational corporatocracy and our own stunningly corrupt federal bribocracy, it seems well past time to return the favor even at a mostly symbolic level.

A single person could never recover what's been stolen from them and theirs by decades of legalized corporate theft. But stiffing these swine -- even though they richly deserve so much worse -- is pretty satisfying even at a modest rate of return.

Plus, that money isn't funding the more disgusting perks the ruling class gives itself to reaffirm its superiority over the proles and peasants, which allows the massuh class to trample these nameless nobodies into the dirt without experiencing the slightest twinge of guilt.

Nor does it end up in a briefcase stuffed with $100 bills delivered by a K Street/Gucci Gulch bagman to an nondescript motel room occupied by a veteran pol or agency lifer who's had a bit to drink and is now stretched out on the couch, TV turned to Fux Nudes because official lies and omissions are so much more enjoyable when delivered by brainless blonde bimbettes showing plenty of thigh.

In a just world, prisons would overflow with these pricks. All the non-violent druggies would have been pardoned long ago to make room for real criminals and there still aren't enough cells in the country to hold them all. So the worst of the worst are now being "renditioned" to various CIA black sites in the American gulag.

Rumor has it Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and Kenny Boy -- live as you or me -- are among those sent to an undisclosed location whose initials are Abu Ghraib.

Ah well, reluctantly returning from Fantasy Land...


wp

[Merlot]

16. "theft, they say?"

Consider that we in the US pay more for internet service than Europe and Asia, and that our service is slower. Why is that?

So, who's stealing from who (or would that be whom)?

Health insurance is a big scam, so I won't even go there.

[OhioChick]

9. K&R

:kick:

[lonestarnot]

10. and another

:kick: & R

[Mudoria]

11. Yes it's true..

we're all doomed! I read it on DU every day.

[Better Believe It]

12. Another Bank Failure Just Reported

US regulators shut Columbian Bank in Kansas

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&date=20080822&id=9059647