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November 9, 2009
SouthAmerica: Since I wrote that posting in February 2008 a number of new corporate scandals it has emerged such as the demise of Lehman Brothers (with self-serving help from the members of the Goldman Sacks Network), Citigroup, Merril Lynch scandal, Bear Sterns, AIG, and many other financial institutions went out of business and its pieces were absorbed by a number of American institutions that are not in sound financial shape themselves.
Last Friday November 6, 2009 I was listening on Bloomberg radio a financial analyst talking about his latest report on GE stock â and he said that if they had not changed the rules on mark to market accounting to help create the illusion that these financial institutions are doing much better than they really are then GE would have had to book real estate losses in 2009 in the range of $ 5 to $10 billion dollars.
The financial institutions are creating these artificial Mickey Mouse earnings and they are going to pay themselves a ton of money in bonus for 2009 based on these make believe earnings.
And many people still have the nerve to say that capitalism is a very efficient system for allocating scarce capital.
Wall Street screwed not only Americans, but also people from around the world with its financial scams, and history is repeating all over again.
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February 7, 2008
SouthAmerica: I wrote about this subject on various articles in the last few years, but as we approach very quickly the beginning of the New Great Depression it is worth to review some relevant information.
This it is just a reminder to give people a chance to prepare for the coming hard times.
Over seventy-five years ago, we had a market collapse in Wall Street. The market started collapsing on Black Thursday, October 24, and again on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. The "Great Depression" followed.
Following I am quoting part of an article that I wrote at the end of 2002, In that article I mentioned that the USA had to start a war (any war) in an attempt to delay the start of the coming "New Great Depression."
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I am quoting from one of my articles (the original article was 9 pages long) published in January 2003: "Getting Ready for War"
â¦Few years ago many economists claimed that they had tamed the economic cycle, and that deep recessions and depressions were things of the past. When I read articles about that, I thought they were completely wrong.
The truth is the world is overdue for a new economic depression. Historically we had a depression in the world once every 55 to 60 years. The last world depression was over 60 years ago. A Russian economist, Nikolai Kondratieff, published a study in 1926 showing that a very long-term economic cycle existed. His major premise was that capitalist economies had a pattern of long wave cycles of boom and bust. The bust cycle repeated itself approximately every 60 years. If you had read Kondratieff's paper in 1926, you would have known that an economic depression was around the corner.
Kondratieff identified four distinct phases the economy goes through during each cycle: 1) Inflationary growth, 2) Stagflation, 3) Deflationary growth, and finally 4) Depression-falling prices, falling stock prices, falling profits, debt collapse.
As the stock market is collapsing, a number of corporate scandals emerge such as Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Adelphia Communications, Arthur Anderson and many others. As the debt load reaches new highs in the economy, the result is a record-breaking number of personal and corporate bankruptcies, as is the case in the US today.
â¦In the past, a major war was the way out of an economic depression. Maybe that solution will be used by the US one more time to restart its economy - a major war contributes to ending the depression phase, and leads the economy to the first phase of the cycle once again. The big war has to be started somewhere even in Iraq.
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I wrote the following on October 29, 2004:
⦠Many economists still are debating today about the causes of the "Great Depression."
Quoting from article published on the "Financial Times of London" Oct 22, 2004:
"â¦Most scholarship has focused on the broad causes, with less study of what was the most important feature to anyone living through the crash: the juddering of prices up and down, sheer confusion and risk.
â¦Mainstream economists are not much closer now to understanding volatility in markets than they were 75 years ago."
⦠Usually Americans make programs for television to commemorate any minor event that people can imagine.
But today is the 75 birthday of the stock market crash of 1929, and there is very little mention of that event in any program on American television.
The American media are aware of the precarious situation of the entire American economic system, but nobody knows what will trigger the collapse of the house of cards.
Just to be in the safe side the American media is not saying much about the stock market crash of 1929.
⦠One of the triggers of the stock market collapse of 1929 was margin call on stock purchased on credit. (In 1929 people could buy a lot of stock on credit with a small amount of cash.)
Margin calls it was a major problem in the stock market crash of 1929.
Today, the equivalent to margin calls in 1929 is "Derivatives." The Derivatives market today, it is estimated to be over 100 trillion US dollars.
This time around, "Derivatives" will be the trigger to a massive stock market collapse.
Any way, today we are away overdue for a new stock market crash, and worldwide depression.
Here it is a current example of things to come; The Big Meltdown!!!!!!!!!!
⦠Here is why the coming depression is a sure bet. I like to quote some information from one of my published book as follows:
(Quoting from pg. 21)
"Unrealistic Expectations.
There is much evidence that human expectations tend to be linear. Most of the time, most people expect current conditions to continue for the indefinite future. It is almost an unnatural act for a man to leave home with an umbrella on a sunny day. Call it optimism, faith in the future, or just reluctance to see the party end, there is a presumption that the environment is stable. This is why cities are built on floodplains and fault lines. A similar presumption makes the gambler double his bet or the farmer plant additional crops on reclaimed land the year after a good harvest.
Whenever prosperity exists, it is natural for people to expect prosperity to continue. For this reason, much of the history of human society is a record of astonishment. Time and again, people have marginalized their affairs, rendering themselves increasingly crisis-prone.
They have gone into debt, extending claims on resources to an extreme that could be supported only if current conditions were sustained uninterrupted into the future. Time and again these hopes have been disappointed. Whenever prosperity has seemed permanent, some apparently minute change could produce astonishingly large nonlinear shifts in the organization of human society. The failure to recognize or anticipate these nonlinear transformations has been a common characteristic of almost all societies.
â¦When the dynamic and nonlinear world adjusts itself to the linear thinking used daily by governments and other institutions such as corporations, banks, insurance companies, the church, and so on, the result can be sometimes catastrophic and can translate into unemployment, inflation, monetary devaluations, market crashes, world wars, civil wars, depressions, and even chaos.
â¦Change is a fact of life, yet many people don't want to think about it because they feel threatened by it. So when change comes, it takes them by surprise. By then they can only react to it, and unless they're lucky, they suffer losses."
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1782317&highlight=1926#post1782317
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