It’s the Economy, Girlfriend

Check out these dumb, ugly broads... you would think as rich wallstreet bankers that they would have better taste in the type of "gold diggers" that they would go after...or at least I would in this case ;D

You really gotta feel bad for these schmucks, I mean how will they deal with schleping around in a 98' Honda Civic or even a 2001 Toyota Corolla. We cant imagine how any of these schmucks will deal with life like the average person.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/nyregion/28daba.html?_r=2&ref=business

I have no love for any of those banker/trader/investor types and haven't since I've been out in the real world.  They typically make huge amounts of money off of the needs of people less fortunate.  Now that they are being brought down to the level of the common citizen, they whine and cry about losing their cushy lifestyles while the rest of us look on.

Unfortunately this also spills onto their spouses and flames.  For someone to have a need to go to a support group because their significant other is now poor/jobless is just crazy to me.

I'm sorry that people lose their jobs but I'm not sorry for the recession.  Housing prices, gas prices, food prices, etc, were WAY too high and only going up.  This recession has reset things to the norm once again I think.  You can't always keep increasing profits, there will come a time when the market is saturated with something and you just can't go up anymore.

I've never been able to afford dining out all the time.  Heck, I've never been able to afford a vacation aside from the day trip.  I can't imagine having someone in my life that would complain about not eating out or not going on vacation.  It stuns me to read that there are people who can't enjoy life without this stuff.

Oh no! The economy is making it hard on the trophy wives of the world! 

I do not feel sorry for them.

Svart said:

I have no love for any of those banker/trader/investor types and haven't since I've been out in the real world.  They typically make huge amounts of money off of the needs of people less fortunate.  Now that they are being brought down to the level of the common citizen, they whine and cry about losing their cushy lifestyles while the rest of us look on.

Unfortunately this also spills onto their spouses and flames.  For someone to have a need to go to a support group because their significant other is now poor/jobless is just crazy to me.

I'm sorry that people lose their jobs but I'm not sorry for the recession.  Housing prices, gas prices, food prices, etc, were WAY too high and only going up.  This recession has reset things to the norm once again I think.  You can't always keep increasing profits, there will come a time when the market is saturated with something and you just can't go up anymore.

I've never been able to afford dining out all the time.  Heck, I've never been able to afford a vacation aside from the day trip.  I can't imagine having someone in my life that would complain about not eating out or not going on vacation.  It stuns me to read that there are people who can't enjoy life without this stuff.

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Exactly....I've thought the same thing as people probably are hurting....think about this for a moment, remember back in the 90's??  Now that I look back in perspective, no sane/rational person can tell me that the majority of folks from the "little" to the "big" showed any fiscal responsiblity when it came to money management.

Maybe im a "closet Marxist/Communist" and dont even realize it LOL...but I would ask myself time in and time out "how hell do these companies (retail/dept stores) stay in business???" 

Think about it...if you happened to live or lived in areas such as the "Booming areas" such as Arizona, Nevada, S.Florida when all this madness began; was it called for to have one "stripmall" after one stripmall in a 10mile radius??? 2 Home Depots, 4 different banks, KidRUS, Specs, Blockbuster Music, Blockbuster Videos, so on and so forth...now how did they make money???  It seems like now if you look at it they made money off of all the credit stupid people used to buy all this crap that they really didnt need.

Now before I get called a Nazi/Conservative...I'll use the talking point well "they got mortages that they couldnt afford"....but all thanks to preditory lenders for creating a culture of "braindead consumers" all while "independant" processes of corruption went on in the highest levels of Wallstreet.

As people were conditioned into buying and spending themselves into oblivion, wallstreet fatcats were riding the gravy train and thus with the right ingredients ...BAM!!! we have now what we have.


So NOW let me ask the question....the economic model/system that took place, was it something that could of been possible to persist???  Was what we have seen the "Free Market"???  or was it "Consumerism/Preditory Capitalism, "Laize Faire"??  Just asking a rhetorical question....

Now would it be unrealistic to say if people in the US actually applied some kind of common sense money management, (not that I am Christian or anything) but Dave Ramsey is someone that I think everyone should know about for there are some of course can take his money management ideas out of context, he has real common sense ideas towards money management and if everyone took his advice we wouldnt be hurting as bad as we are right now.

Also, is unrealistic to say that we can go back somewhat to the days BEFORE corporatism took over?? during the days when a person knew how to change a flat tire and most US citizens were "rugged" individuals??  I believe so, with the modern spirit of DIY which I've discovered thanks to this site;we certainly can!!!  Just so as many people can wake up and realize the economic model of yesterday had no real connection with "reality.

I didn't make it too far into that article...what a sorry group of girls. I would have said women, but only girls act like that.

I stopped reading when I got to this line:
"the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion."

Holy Crap!!! It's ARMAGEDDON!  He had to stop [size=10pt]PLAYING GOLF!!!![/size]
These douchebags make me wretch.
:

“One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

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Priceless and disgusting at the same time.

Even if its slightly out of context... "not what I signed up for" is a revolting thing to say about someone she married "in sickness and in health"

I'm not the type that takes pleasure in other people suffering...but must say that I enjoy the thought of knowing that their "day" is coming very soon and the world will be a little better off when these people just realize they serve no real purpose in society and if we had some real justice we would follow the example of what the "Frenchies" did back shortly before Napoleon made his name in the history...

Let the banks have their "bailout" from the assets seized from these overgrown children...

We also know how the Chinese or the Russians deal with these type of criminals.

Fuck 'em.

well put Dave, well put.

Please not, this is NOT sarcasm in the least.

Now if you guys had had the foresight to invest in Shadenfraude (sp?) say a year ago, you'd be raking in the dough these days.  ;D

ENS Audio said:

Now before I get called a Nazi/Conservative...I'll use the talking point well "they got mortages that they couldnt afford"....but all thanks to preditory lenders for creating a culture of "braindead consumers" all while "independant" processes of corruption went on in the highest levels of Wallstreet.

As people were conditioned into buying and spending themselves into oblivion, wallstreet fatcats were riding the gravy train and thus with the right ingredients ...BAM!!! we have now what we have.


So NOW let me ask the question....the economic model/system that took place, was it something that could of been possible to persist???  Was what we have seen the "Free Market"???  or was it "Consumerism/Preditory Capitalism, "Laize Faire"??  Just asking a rhetorical question....

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This was created by greedy altruistic politicians and greedy golfing bankers.  Sell a widget and a banker will create widget derivatives- futures, options, LEAPS.  Show an altruistic politician that the poor do not get enough widgets and they will force a level, actually badly slewed, field with legislation and the Treasury.

If the market were allowed to work, there would be no "risky" mortgages or derivatives based on them.  Capitalism involves, actually is fueled by risk, but that risk has to be taken by the capitalist and not forced by the politician.  The risk was removed from the initial transaction by the quasi-government Freddie-Mae "institutions".  The risk was gambled and abstracted in the financial markets by all the CDO's and options created thereon.
All this fueled the real estate market as a whole.  Created a heated market that blew into a bubble.  Our first home doubled in price in less than 4 years.  That is crazy appreciation.  In NYC, there were lines of people walking through $250k studios that would be in contract before you walked through.  The banks, forced to abandon any "red-lining" practices also took advantage of the mandate to create all sorts of products to "provide the American Dream".  With a neg-am mortage you walked out with $20K to fix your $100K house (which was really worth only $65K, but was appraised differently by the bank).  Someone who can't balance their check book or make calculate change for a $20 in their head cannot understand a 5-25 mortgage.
When the last idiot bought a South Beach condo for $650K that could support a rent of only $750 per month the bubble popped.  Now on Long Island people are walking away from their $2M house contract with $200K left on the table because they found a better place for $1.5M.
Dave Ramsey is OK, but his philosophy limits people by staying away from OPM.  OPM is good if given and used responsibly.  We've gone through this before.

And yeah, eff those wives and their dopey duffing spouses.  I just wish that there were an equal group of folitician's wives complaining about the lack of good parties or corporate junkets in DC.  Double-eff THEM!  There solution is more idiotic spending and mortgaging of our futures.
Mike
PS: the best solution I have heard so far is not re-sodding the Mall or spending on Foreign aid for birth control but a Resolution Trust Corporation purchase of all the bad debt.  That is what they said they would do in the summer, but politicians blah-blah. . .

sodderboy said:

This was created by greedy altruistic politicians and greedy golfing bankers.  Sell a widget and a banker will create widget derivatives- futures, options, LEAPS.  Show an altruistic politician that the poor do not get enough widgets and they will force a level, actually badly slewed, field with legislation and the Treasury.

If the market were allowed to work, there would be no "risky" mortgages or derivatives based on them.  Capitalism involves, actually is fueled by risk, but that risk has to be taken by the capitalist and not forced by the politician.  The risk was removed from the initial transaction by the quasi-government Freddie-Mae "institutions".  The risk was gambled and abstracted in the financial markets by all the CDO's and options created thereon.
All this fueled the real estate market as a whole.  Created a heated market that blew into a bubble.  Our first home doubled in price in less than 4 years.  That is crazy appreciation.  In NYC, there were lines of people walking through $250k studios that would be in contract before you walked through.  The banks, forced to abandon any "red-lining" practices also took advantage of the mandate to create all sorts of products to "provide the American Dream".  With a neg-am mortage you walked out with $20K to fix your $100K house (which was really worth only $65K, but was appraised differently by the bank).  Someone who can't balance their check book or make calculate change for a $20 in their head cannot understand a 5-25 mortgage.
When the last idiot bought a South Beach condo for $650K that could support a rent of only $750 per month the bubble popped.  Now on Long Island people are walking away from their $2M house contract with $200K left on the table because they found a better place for $1.5M.
Dave Ramsey is OK, but his philosophy limits people by staying away from OPM.  OPM is good if given and used responsibly.  We've gone through this before.

And yeah, eff those wives and their dopey duffing spouses.  I just wish that there were an equal group of folitician's wives complaining about the lack of good parties or corporate junkets in DC.  Double-eff THEM!  There solution is more idiotic spending and mortgaging of our futures.
Mike
PS: the best solution I have heard so far is not re-sodding the Mall or spending on Foreign aid for birth control but a Resolution Trust Corporation purchase of all the bad debt.  That is what they said they would do in the summer, but politicians blah-blah. . .

Click to expand...

The Resolution trust worked but a lot of S&L went bust in the process...  I am nervous about the good bank-bad bank proposal. How do we price the toxic assets? Pay too much the taxpayer gets hosed, pay too little the stock holders get hosed.  Perhaps some long term bill back where actual recovery from the toxic assets relieved from the bank balance sheets gets applied against the initial relief. Right now as a tax payer, I'm am thinking I should buy some bank stocks since they will benefit and I will lose in this deal.

A minor point about the original TARP.. the initial plan was to set up auctions with the government as a buyer of last resort, not to buy all the toxic crap, but to create a market for them so there could be free market price discovery. Apparently the institutions were collapsing faster than that program could help them, and if the toxic assets really are worthless, price discovery will just prove that the institutions are bankrupt.

[edit- BTW the amount of toxic debt is at least several times the <$1T TARP program. Several $T easy. The best we can do is create a market for the poop and let the chips fall where they may. Any artificial price support from marginal buying will be short lived. If anything everybody is holding the crap hoping to be bailed out by the governemt ... Sorry guys, there ain't enough trees in the forest , to print money for that...not gonna happen.  /edit]


I am apprehensive that this new congress is less responsible than the last one which was complicit in all this (Frank, Dodd, and other co-conspirators). The urgency surrounding this stimulus bill is just to conceal the decades of pent up pork they are slipping into it. Stimulus for big government perhaps, not the economy.  [/rant]

JR

As well they should.  It is the basis of the risk-reward continuum.  You cannot privatize the reward and socialize the risk.  And vice-versa for any hopeful big government pork o rama types. 

Our government cannot borrow and spend us out of a recession, no matter who they send checks to.  Our last examples were the Smellosi-Boner "economic stimulus" bill last summer, which will cost close to $200B,  and $350 billion of disappeared TARP funds (which also included $150B in pork to get it passed).

The big joke in all this is that our president has set re-instating PAYGO as one of his few financial goals.  His "financial goals" is the shortest list on his website; dwarfed by things like "womens' issues goals".
Mike

 

While this is true of all politicians, our new president is a basketball player, and one useful trick to know when guarding a basketball player is to ignore his head fakes and all that arm waving. Look at his feet to figure out what direction he is going to move...

To translate to governance, do not listen to the words politicians utter. Look at what they do...

Biden was just on TV trying to undo the damage from Geithner's slip before congress that he thought China was "manipulating" their currency. In world trade that word has significant meaning. Geithner needs to choose his words more carefully, especially when contradicting his boss..

It's not wise to piss off the folks buying all our debt, unless we have some reason to go there now.  The congress is already slipping some protectionism into the stimulus bill. Don't these guys read history books about the big one...?

They are going to ruin my buzz.

JR

Scodiddly said:

Now if you guys had had the foresight to invest in Shadenfraude (sp?) say a year ago, you'd be raking in the dough these days.   ;D

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Schadenfreude

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude

Browsing the Brewery I came across this thread thinking it was about one of these,



Might as well have been?  ;D

Cunts. 

I hope they lose everything and get shipped to Detroit.  You can't get to your mailbox without seeing real hardship around here.  You might hear Detroiters talk about hard times, but you'll never hear a Detroiter ask for pity. 

I hope for all those women to lose everything, get divorced, and then for their ex-husbands to make back every penny they lost and blow it on strippers, parties and they occasional charity function. 

I actually work for one of the big banks (although not an American or British owned one).

There's a real double universe inside these institutions. The so called "business" (traders/front office/senior management) and the support staff (ie everyone else).

Over the last 10 years the thumb screws have been on to screw costs down in all areas other than the front office. Whole swathes of the organisation have been outsourced or off-shored. The resultant chaos and loss of service/competence apparently does not matter - only costs matter.

In support functions you are paid to be miserable (ie put up with the squalling bawling pampered babies in the front office). In my area we now are paid lower than the market. Our so called "bonus" is essentially withheld salary (maximum 30% of retainer - minimum 0%). It's not a bonus at all!! Traders get bonuses often 1000's or 10's of 1000's of percent of their retainer. Unless they lose money of course - in which case they are unceremoniously fired.

So why don't I just leave? - well after 13 years my redundancy payout can't be thrown away. I have a mortgage, kids to educate, plus two dogs a cat and a rabbit to feed. If I was alone I'd have been outta there years ago - probably wouldn't have joined in the first place.

The majority of the people in investment banks are not making mega bucks and are not a**holes with trophy wives. Those guys do exist and they really are revolting - but they are in the minority.

MikoKensington said:

Cunts. 

I hope they lose everything and get shipped to Detroit.  You can't get to your mailbox without seeing real hardship around here.  You might hear Detroiters talk about hard times, but you'll never hear a Detroiter ask for pity. 

I hope for all those women to lose everything, get divorced, and then for their ex-husbands to make back every penny they lost and blow it on strippers, parties and they occasional charity function. 

Click to expand...

Being that I've never been to that part of the US...I've seen some of the vids on Youtube that shows some of the "decay" inside of Detroit..its really a sad thing IMO : ( 

Detroit seems that at one point years before I was born that when I look at the abandoned buildings how this is now a place of broken dreams and hopes where you can almost visualize the "hustle and bustle" of pround workers and families getting ready for the morning shift as they enter in the factories and assembly plants.  Being that I was born around the year that Ronald Regan was elected, its impossible for me to know what life was like for those of yesteryear and now being someone living in Detroit.

MikoKensington, it makes me sad when I think of your situation and not to give you pity but words of condolenses and support for you and the people of that region.

BTW do you know of that Ted Nugget says it was the unions that are responsible for what happened in Detroit??  Living in a "Right to work state" my whole life, I really have no clue onto what its like being in a "Union State"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JbGxIR8JTk&feature=related



The Michigan Central Depot Train Station

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ira3xb2IEb0&feature=related