Is there a new crisis coming?

Careful comparing with Iceland. State debt wasn't the problem there. The private banks were the massive borrowers. If the state had financed the banks or guaranteed their debt the problem would have been 'socialized', but they didn't. They just decided not to honor the bulk of the debt and banks went under (from what I recall).

The British were very angry as these banks had agencies in Britain that took many people's savings down with them.

In short, the private banking sector did what in most other countries was done by the states, but it isn't without consequence.

I enjoyed the link, but there's no solutions in there. A whole lot of falling sky, but not much in the way of alternatives. It doesn't take any great wisdom to see the decay, and it's not terribly hard to figure out the majority of the causes if you're willing to look. It's finding the path out of the weeds that's the real trick.

ECB starts to buy italian and spanish bonds.

Cailloux said he expects the ECB to buy on average around 2.5 billion euros of bonds a day, which would amount to about 600 billion euros if maintained over a year. While the ECB may be playing for time until the EFSF is ready to take over bond purchases, between them they may be forced to hold “close to half of the traded Italian and Spanish debt, or around 850 billion euros,” Cailloux said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0…contagion.html

Without corruption and tax-evasion the italians might not even have this debt problem. 60 billion per year to corruption sounds lot to me. And they say corruption is not decreasing but increasing:
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English…3.0.3471577158

Well, with a criminal as prime minister I am surprised the country is even holding together.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
Well, with a criminal as prime minister I am surprised the country is even holding together.

Considering that he has been called to court 2500 times some of the charges must be true. I wonder how "the EU decisionmaking-system" came to the conclusion that it would be a great idea to bring into euro countries that are ripe in corruption and tax-evasion and led by criminals?

Of course now that the decision they made leads into massive problems they want even more power for themselves. Before the crisis I wasnt against tighter union but now Im starting to doubt whether it would work.

If they cant even handle the power they have now without creating huge crisis and possible future poverty for union citizens is it vice to give even more power to them? Who knows it might lead to even bigger problems since it seems they have no clue what they are doing.

It's not a new crisis. It's the same old crisis just finally rearing its ugly head. The problems that caused the 2008 crisis were never fixed.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
The result is simple . Since unbraked capitalism both activel and implicitely supports the richest of a given country, it will lead to the same layout of classes like in the U.S. since Reagan : A tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny dot of super-rich people controlling almost everything - an eroded middle class - and the vast majority of poor people.

And of course, rich people would only support *their* systems : Those who at least keep them rich - and at least not those who would make them poorer.

That sounds a lot like Lenin. Perhaps he was right.

Originally Posted by Jhari
That sounds a lot like Lenin. Perhaps he was right.

Socialist != Communist.

Originally Posted by Maylander
Socialist != Communist.

Exactly !

Originally Posted by Jhari
That sounds a lot like Lenin. Perhaps he was right.

I'm rather for socialism - like what we know here in Germany as "Soziale Marktwirtschaft".

Free markets - okay, but only as long as the employees get so much from the pofits that they are able to support the inland markets with this.

And the German proverb is "those who [already] have, those will be given [even more]".

The bigger the companies, the bigger their supports from politics and from bureaucracy.

"The small ones are arrested, the big ones are let gone."

This goes to the point where - and that actually happened here ! - that companies are SO big they

a) can blackmail town governments with "give us what we want or we'll relocate ! (and the town will lose 1. jobs 2. us as tax-payers ! )" (and what they want is for example better traffic connections)

b) are SO BIG the governments cannot afford them to fall down (this actually happened a few times with banks during the Financial Crisis ! ) …

Now, there are a few banks here in Germany, which are considered "system-relevant" so much that they are supported by the state - which in turn costs the common peoples millions of Euros !

And even more decadency : The top positions within these banks held alive by the public (via the government) pay eachother ten-thousands, hundreds of thousands of bonus payments !

So, this is something I'd call parasitism. Growing up a bank so big the fall of it would result in "financial tsunamies", and then still drawing the bank's "life blood" as bonus payments - a few of these "bnsters" have already appealed to courts to get their money.

To me this means they are not at all interested in he bank surviving - they are interested in fulfilling their egos.

"Take as much as you can !" - like plunderers did so only a few days ago within London …

It's a problem of humanity, imho.

And so it begins…

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0…gan-index.html

Confidence among U.S. consumers plunged in August to the lowest level since May 1980, adding to concern that weak employment gains and volatility in the stock market will prompt households to retrench.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment slumped to 54.9 from 63.7 the prior month. The gauge was projected to decline to 62, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.

Yay! Good job Teabaggers in ruining consumer confidence!

That doesn't even merit a rebuttal, Thrasher. At the absolute maximum, you could accuse the Tea Party of contributing to the debt gridlock, but to solely blame them for the entire drop in consumer confidence is just, well, we won't go there.

The drop in confidence is believed to have been caused by Congresses inability to deal with the debt limit quickly as it always has in the past. This is the fault of the teabaggers unwillingness to compromise on tax increases. And the drop is also caused by its failure to create the jobs it promised. Major screw up. Will be interesting to see if the public will continue to buy their BS…

I guess Obama's ongoing 9%+ unemployment problem has nothing to do with it, then, or is that one of those Blame Dubya kinda things? Like I said, I'll give you that the Tea Party contributed to the debt ceiling fiasco (I notice that you fail to mention congressional democrats' refusal to make any actual, long term budget cuts as a contribution to the fiasco as well, funny that), but there's a lot more going into the stew.

"Obama's unemployment problem"? This shitty economy and deficit was handed to him by Republican bank deregulation policies, 2 unpaid for wars, and tax cuts. Republicans in Congress have fought any steps to fix their mistakes. But they sure want to lie and blame the economy on Obama. Total horseshit.

Funny how every incoming political persuasion always blames those who have gone before when their own policies fail!! That's not just in the US, but everywhere.

Yes, Corwin, that's just sad.

It's like … trying to fix an engine, it gets broken, then the tech, who has "by chance" just left the fixing firm to go elsewhere : "It wasn't my fault. It was the firm's fault. Go after them."

Originally Posted by Corwin
Funny how every incoming political persuasion always blames those who have gone before when their own policies fail!! That's not just in the US, but everywhere.

That's called politics when something goes wrong you need a scapegoat. Its never the persons in charge fault that even applies at work.

Originally Posted by Corwin
Funny how every incoming political persuasion always blames those who have gone before when their own policies fail!! That's not just in the US, but everywhere.

Except here it's actually true. I'll admit a politician takes credit when something goes well, and blames others when things aren't going right.

However, everyone lays the unemployment problem at Obama's feet, but the truth is it was on the rise in the last year of Bush's presidency. It went from like 4.8% to 7.8% in January of 2009. In the last 3 or 4 months of Bush's presidency it really started to trend upward, and it just continued on into Obama's first 6-8 months until it hit 10%.

It's funny because whenever I hear the media talk about the unemployment problem, they always refer to Bush's average unemployment over his entire presidency. No one mentions the last year or the fact that unemployment rose 50% over Bush's last year and 33% in Obama's first year.

After the collapse we had, it's going to take several years to fix the economy. You can't just fix something like that in 1 or 2 years. And this whole thing with the credit rating isn't helping either. Obama has been a pretty big disappointment, but the President doesn't make or break the economy at will. It's stupid how everyone thinks the President has such an affect on the economy or that it can be fixed so quickly.

*Looks at stock-market today*….. "Hello new crisis"