Just Watched PBS Special on 'The Crash of 1929'

[limitdown]

Quote from Red_Ink_inc:

The program can be viewed here. .........

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/crash/

Thanks for posting that.

no

thank you

for posting the link,

will watch it later


what is the same, from those times and ours were:

A) the desire of ordianary and educated Americans to continue to self delude themselves with their sociopathic conduct and think that there would be no detriment to society and the financial system

B) the notion that trickle down could ever meet the demands of a thriving economy, no matter what the sub-topic conversation was:
B1) trickle down tax breaks
B2) trickle down employment
B3) trickle down metropolitan growth

C) the idea that "the market" has anyone's best interest, if just left alone to correct the excesses or meet the demands of the populace

C1) 1917 in Russia proved that concept horribly wrong and ushered in Communism on a scale never seen before
C2) 1929-1932 is US proved that the wealthy can never be trusted beyond their own self interests
C3) 1932-1938 Reconstruction proved that the markets need severe and ridgidly enforced regulations, unlike the last 8 years of deregulation by Bush II

 

[zdreg]

people back then were not the whiners and crybabies that they aretoday.
if you have any doubt read various posts on ET.

 

[zdreg]

Quote from limitdown:

no

thank you

for posting the link,

will watch it later


what is the same, from those times and ours were:

A) the desire of ordianary and educated Americans to continue to self delude themselves with their sociopathic conduct and think that there would be no detriment to society and the financial system

B) the notion that trickle down could ever meet the demands of a thriving economy, no matter what the sub-topic conversation was:
B1) trickle down tax breaks
B2) trickle down employment
B3) trickle down metropolitan growth

C) the idea that "the market" has anyone's best interest, if just left alone to correct the excesses or meet the demands of the populace

C1) 1917 in Russia proved that concept horribly wrong and ushered in Communism on a scale never seen before
C2) 1929-1932 is US proved that the wealthy can never be trusted beyond their own self interests
C3) 1932-1938 Reconstruction proved that the markets need severe and ridgidly enforced regulations, unlike the last 8 years of deregulation by Bush II

of course blame capitalism. what do u expect to happen when the gov't combines with wall street to help the undeserving poor and near poor to buy homes. that is not capitalism or free markets.

 

[tradingbug]

Quote from zdreg:

people back then were not the whiners and crybabies that they aretoday.
if you have any doubt read various posts on ET.

I always see those pictures of food lines during the great depression......people of all ages waiting patiently in line.


If shit hits the fan and we see food lines like that....i dont know how patient and orderly things will be.....i guess thats why we have a new civilian security force

I am scared.

 

[Wallace]

the equivalency between 1929 and 2008 is margin, in 29 it was margin for stocks
and in 08 margin for houses, speculation in stocks, speculation in house prices
both resulting in a credit crisis when margins weren't met and prices fell

what's apparent in a recession/depression after the tipping point is the speed of the
reactions - rise of unemployment, credit limits/restrictions, business failures and
bankruptcies, consumer as well as business and government (municipal, state)
spending greatly reduced and massive 'loss of confidence' withdrawal

while the pbs doc was ok, what would be of greater value imo would be a doc about
what happened next, an examination of what the gov tried to do to manage the crisis
what worked and what didn't while making a comparison of the differences between
the 29 experience and what's happening today even tho it's still an unfolding event

 

[lilduckling]

That program was exellent, im looking to get it on DVD.

 

[murray t turtle]

Quote from zdreg:

people back then were not the whiners and crybabies that they are today.
if you have any doubt read various posts on ET.

================================

Re Little chickens; chicken little in the news

ZDR;

That kind of emotional immaturity[victim/whiner];
may help the downtrend be a bigger friend.
But thats is not a prediction.

Yes i have seen the 1929 foodlines also;
but still the population was much more rural.
Gardens ,chickens, [feathered birds LOL], family hogs were much more common...................................................

 

[jprad]

Quote from Wallace:

the equivalency between 1929 and 2008 is margin, in 29 it was margin for stocks and in 08 margin for houses, speculation in stocks, speculation in house prices both resulting in a credit crisis when margins weren't met and prices fell

The speculative end of today's housing market, namely sub-prime, option-ARM and interest-only mortgages did not create the credit crisis.

No, the problem was rooted in the IBs getting 30:1 leverage which was then used to structure the above mentioned mortgages into even more leveraged CDOs.

No need to get into CDSs, which theoretically are nulled out within a bank (but, as we found out with Lehman, do nothing to stem the problem with counter-parties).

Anyway, what a lot of people seem to be missing is that those insane levels of leverage work exactly the same in reverse. As mortgage defaults began to mount they caused the lowest tranches of the CDOs to become total losses as the returns on those levels were transferred up to preserve the returns of the highest two levels.

Once MER wrote down their bad CDOs everyone had to follow suit and this created a capital gap on their books since those write downs went against their reserves.

That's the little detail, secret if you will, that Paulson never told Congress. The bailout money was never going to be used for loans, it's being used to shore up their capital against the onslaught of even more writedowns as the option ARMs start to reset over the next 9-12 months.

We're in the bottom of the 3rd, 3 ballls, no strikes, no outs.

And, I'm being optimistic...

 

[Wallace]

jprad, thanks for the explanation

you say: " We're in the bottom of the 3rd, 3 ballls, no strikes, no outs." which seems
very early in the game when i thought the worst of the resetting was over - why do you
think it's only the 3rd ?

also, care to speculate on what the further consequences will be during the next 6 innings

 

[trendy]

Just ran across this Crash of 1929 PBS Special. Interesting to see the perspective of people, and the idea of money for nothing. Me thinkst not much has changed.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1308436568/