Bernanke gloomy on housing, economy

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Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
62,365
14,681
136
Did you know given inflation there is approx 5 times more wealth in this country alone than was during the lumber/oil/shipping baron days? Did you know if investments stayed FLAT for the next 25 years close to 3.5 TRILLION dollars will be passed as inherantance to the next generation?...and thats NEW money. There are credible estimates this figure tops $40 TRILLION!I dont think people understand at all the wealth in this country. Things gotta get a whole lot worse before it really starts hurting. This country is lazy and fat.

Not to mention that the population is proportionately larger than 5X... And if a huge % of that wealth is in the hands of .01% of the population, what good is it to the rest of us? Mexico and Nigeria are pretty wealthy, too, but you'd never know it by the way much of the population lives...

In case you haven't figured it out, let me clue you in- Bernanke's job is to sugar-coat it, make it seem better than it is while maintaining some shred of credibility... If he says it's bad, it is, and probably a lot worse than he's letting on...
 

Slew Foot

Lifer
Sep 22, 2005
12,381
96
86
Bernake is only a couple years late, dumbass he is.

People like me and Engineer who have been saving and scraping to get ourselves ahead are going to get hosed by bailing out the "good Americans" who spent themselves into Oblivion.


 

blackangst1

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
22,914
2,359
126
Originally posted by: Jhhnn
Did you know given inflation there is approx 5 times more wealth in this country alone than was during the lumber/oil/shipping baron days? Did you know if investments stayed FLAT for the next 25 years close to 3.5 TRILLION dollars will be passed as inherantance to the next generation?...and thats NEW money. There are credible estimates this figure tops $40 TRILLION!I dont think people understand at all the wealth in this country. Things gotta get a whole lot worse before it really starts hurting. This country is lazy and fat.

Not to mention that the population is proportionately larger than 5X... And if a huge % of that wealth is in the hands of .01% of the population, what good is it to the rest of us? Mexico and Nigeria are pretty wealthy, too, but you'd never know it by the way much of the population lives...

In case you haven't figured it out, let me clue you in- Bernanke's job is to sugar-coat it, make it seem better than it is while maintaining some shred of credibility... If he says it's bad, it is, and probably a lot worse than he's letting on...

Good God man. Today's wealth is in far more hands proportionally than was back then. Proportionally. Get it? Taking inflation and size of the country. Kinda like...per capita. Why dont you get that? Have you seen the list of millionaires and billionaires in this country, and how quickly it grows year in and year out? Sure, less people own wealth than dont. But you know what? The new first generation money I spoke of was NOT passed down. Its NEW money. Which means people worked their asses off. They were smarter, and worked harder to get it than you or I did. So bravo for them! Sure, theres some luck in there, but if you read the stories of these people they really DO work smarter and harder than 99% of everyone else. So why shouldnt they have some wealth? Or are you one of those who believes wealth is created by corruption? JHC I hope you dont think that. Communism would be perfect for you if you think so. Capitalism not so much.

Wake the fuck up man. Things really arent that bad. Whats bad is all the lazy assholes who expect their government to fix it. Yeah, thats right. The same government who they want out of their bedroom, their churches, their school, and their wallets. Pretty cool huh? If more people would quit stretching their hands out like some kind of infected street urchin and put their hands to work, we wouldnt HAVE a mess.

The only ones who are going to get us out of this (whatever "this" is) is ourselves. Quit waiting for someone else to do it and get off your ass and do it yourself.
 

Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
62,365
14,681
136
The sad truth, blackangst1, is that we're returning rather rapidly to the wealth and income distribution pattern of 100 years ago, and all that goes with it. Inequality has exhibited a U pattern over the last 100 years, being at its nadir in the post WW2 pre Reagan period, roughly 1945-1980. The broad middle class as we know it, a product of the post-WW2 situation, simply didn't exist 100 years ago.

Inequality is at it's highest point since 1929.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3138232.stm

Just as inequality drove that economy to excess, it's driving today's economy in the same direction. Investment then was highly leveraged, fluid, and speculative, just as it is today, and so-called "gains" were largely the result of financial manipulation rather than actual productivity increases. It's no different now...

If anything, today's situation is more precarious, because the current bubble is based on housing, a much more fundamental element of the economy than the stock market.

As for the rest of it, particularly your disingenious reference to work, it's hard to imagine that CEO's, for example, or investors work any harder today than they did in 1980, but their incomes relative to the rest of us have exploded by factors of ten... Work and reward are becoming increasingly disconnected. It's a fundamental aspect of leveraged capitalism. The same amount of work, backed by money and leverage, yields much larger results than work alone. That's completely obvious, other than to the oblivious fanbois of the wealthy.
 
Oct 30, 2004
11,442
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Originally posted by: blackangst1
oh noez a recession! The USA is going to be a third world country in 5 years! Unemployment will be at 50% oh noez!

The reason I and others are concerned is that this doesn't appear to be an ordinary recession and our economy has more or less been in the dumps for the past six or seven years. So, yeah, if this keeps up, it's quite possible that the nation could become a third world country in, say, 50 years. One of the characteristics of many third world countries is having a large population--one where the amount of resources per capita is not high and with our nation's explosive third world rate of population growth, we might just get there.
 

blackangst1

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
22,914
2,359
126
Originally posted by: Jhhnn
The sad truth, blackangst1, is that we're returning rather rapidly to the wealth and income distribution pattern of 100 years ago, and all that goes with it. Inequality has exhibited a U pattern over the last 100 years, being at its nadir in the post WW2 pre Reagan period, roughly 1945-1980. The broad middle class as we know it, a product of the post-WW2 situation, simply didn't exist 100 years ago.

Inequality is at it's highest point since 1929.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3138232.stm

Just as inequality drove that economy to excess, it's driving today's economy in the same direction. Investment then was highly leveraged, fluid, and speculative, just as it is today, and so-called "gains" were largely the result of financial manipulation rather than actual productivity increases. It's no different now...

If anything, today's situation is more precarious, because the current bubble is based on housing, a much more fundamental element of the economy than the stock market.

As for the rest of it, particularly your disingenious reference to work, it's hard to imagine that CEO's, for example, or investors work any harder today than they did in 1980, but their incomes relative to the rest of us have exploded by factors of ten... Work and reward are becoming increasingly disconnected. It's a fundamental aspect of leveraged capitalism. The same amount of work, backed by money and leverage, yields much larger results than work alone. That's completely obvious, other than to the oblivious fanbois of the wealthy.

Thanks for backing up my posts.