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This news item has been barely mentioned in the main stream media. But the implications and unanswered questions are unsettling. Why and Who? There has to be a country behind this, no individual(s) can have acces to that kind of dough - unless of course they are counterfeit - which also is...

Like it or not, what the op has posted will be a reality soon. I have run a business, I come from a family that has run businesses, and I know a lot of other small business owners. NONE of us ever got/get what the CEOs of many publicly traded companies get. 250-400 times the average salary...

Great thread. But we all fall into the trap of treating and measuring the symptoms, ie unemployment, cpi, gdp changes etc... The major cause is bad debt. And not unlike pollution, it is not easily wiped out. What do you do with trash? You bury it, sink it in the ocean, or burn it...

We are constantly making job environment comparisons with the early 80's, the late 70's and the Great Depression. However our methodology for reporting unemployment, as well as many other figures like CPI, have changed significantly since those eras. So if we were to make an apples to apples...

Joel Rifkin wrote The End of Work and covers this. Though I have not read it, I am somewhat familiar with it. My view: Other civilizations dealt with their sharp jumps in technology and productivity and resultant lack of work differently. Rome built arenas and handed out cheap grain...

Turkey Buzzards gotta eat too you know....

I don't live too far from Leeds Point, NJ - the Jersey Devil's birthplace. Speaking from experience, that aint no Jersey Devil. You know how I know? It aint got wings as the locals would say. :D But yeah, seems like an otter to me. If you were near a river/estuary environment -...

Since when have contrarians been followed by the masses? Isn't that the whole point of being a contrarian - that your position, however logical, will not be followed by most people? Jim Rogers is a student of history first, then a trader. He once remarked that in learning how the world...

One day soon we will arrive at the conclusion that many jobs are indeed worthless. They contribute very little and have only grown in size due to the asset value/debt based service sector economy (FIRE ECONOMY) grew along with fiat money. So yes, job losses will be permanent - at least for my...

I agree. but I'll even add more to the list of who loses a job or gets impacted by less revenue: the detailers that kept the cars clean, the banks that financed the vehicles, the guy with the snow plow that cleared the lot, the guy that tarred and paved the lot, the municipality that...

GDP per capita can be misleading. Ever hear the example: Bill gates walks into a bar - what is the average wealth of everyone in the bar? Well, on average, they're all millionaires!!! The US has an extreme concentration of wealth - the most billionaires in the world by far. Much of the...

Bad example - Cuba is not socialist as much as it is an economic banana republic dictatorship. The thing about having the same leader for the past 50+ years would give that away. In many ways, we too are becoming an economic dictatorship. We'll see how it plays out. Think about it...

All due respect, that's being simplistic - though you are correct to a degree. However, the tax code has not changed on its own. Lobbyists representing the wealthy changed it. And these lobbyists changed more than just the tax code. Corporate Subsidies are but one example. I could go on and...

Currently no society has pure socialism or pure capitalism. There is a mix. The question is, how much of each. That said, Sweden treated it's banks a lot more capitalistic than we have. And Norway has a lot of millionaires per capita. Go figure I'm not saying they have the greatest...

I think to view this as solely a credit crisis triggered by an irresponsiby or even maliciously run mortgage industry misses the greater point. This is a crisis of a poorly evolved global trade and financial system. The mortgage mess - involving risky mortgages that morphed into securitized...

Good point, but you missed something. Europe's prison population is miniscule compared to the US, and they don't have as many active duty military either. The US has about 20-25% of the world's (counted) prison population. Nothing to sneeze at when you don't count the prison pop as...

With all due respect, I think you miss the point. What many people like Taleb are saying is that the fundamentals leading to this crisis are far worse than the same fundamentals leading to the Great Depression. Thus, if the fundamentals are worse, then it is not a stretch of the imagination...

Last summer was very unique. I think the global markets punished the US Dollar prematurely thinking that other currencies would not fare as bad... the currency markets were wrong. The entire global financial system is subprime now. Just look to the export countries' markets, and look to...

In order to have inflation, the money has to somehow make its way to the average person. How will that happen when you have debt destruction (deflation) and wage reductions/layoffs (deflation)? Wouldn't demand drop, thus furthering the drop in prices? If the government really wanted...

I completely agree. The only reason we had many of those jobs was because of the asset based ever-increasing debtload service sector - the FIRE economy. Imagine what the unemployment rate and GDP would have been if people rarely used credit cards, didn't treat their house as an ATM, the...