"The truth is a beautiful thing...two." (I'll be surprised if anybody can place that in the context of the movie).
Regardless, I do thoroughly enjoy watching reality start to pierce through the rose-colored glasses of everybody who is of the mentality, "oh, the market will come back."
Post - post - it just keeps getting better.
POST POST POST - Who grew a pair over at S&P???
14 comments:
Oh this fills me with joy. I'm really looking forward to the upcoming brutal recession with USA, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece defaulting. Enjoy the decline, I definitely will.
I remember back in 2009, in my first year in college, one of the teachers told us that the recession is overhyped by media, it's already over and we didn't even feel a thing (I live in the Czech republic, where in fact the recession didn't hit so hard).
I told him: "This is 1930. Now we're in the same situation as in 1930. Year after the stock market collapse. It seems that everything is back to normal, that the crisis is over, as it seemed in 1930.
It's not over. The Great Depression came in 1933, the unemployment rated went through the roof and the economy collapsed.
Now we're in the same situation. Around 2012, everything is going to hell. That's my prediction."
Ta-da! When the shit hits the fan, I'm gonna write him an e-mail:
"HA!!!!!!!!!!
Best regards,
Sonny"
Now I only need a pick-up truck, a gun, some ammo and supplies, and a strong woman. YAY APOCALYPSE!
@Sonny
The recession is not funny. How do you think people will react? We do not live in 30s. The morals has changed, demographics has changed. The Czech republic is doing fine (for now). But, when you look at Western Europe, there will be serious riots (the last - London, Tottenham riot is just a breeze of following events). And I am afraid things won't turn better.
Anyway, your English is good. Where have you learnt it? And how have you found this blog?
"The truth is a beautiful thing", right before he was about to shoot through the glass closet door. The guy who was doing his wife was hiding in the closet.
The Last Boyscout was the best Bruce Willis movie ever. The role was perfect for Willis.
Sheesh! You hit that one out of the park, Kurt.
unfortunately, The Last BoyScout is his SECOND best performance. His finest performance was of course Die Hard, his THIRD best performance is Last Man Standing.
Anon - the recession is funny. Because we've all suffered enough like Mythical Cassandra's trying to warn people about it, and now that it is inevitable, I find GREAT enjoyment in laughing at the collapse and the people who were too ignorant to stop it. Because, frankly, what else are we supposed to do? Cry? whine? Complain? I'm LMFAO right now and it's at all the ignoramouses who are stunned and dazed that this is happening or that their hope and change hasn't be delivered yet.
So, let me see if I have this correct.
S&P, Moody's etc... are ratings firms. They use their knowledge of the bond (investment) market to provide a rating of the bond, as well as the entity selling the bond. Much the same way a credit rating agency will tell your mortgage lender if you are a good or a bad risk.
The US, which has always held a top notch rating decided to get fat, dumb, and happy with that rating, and just assumed it would never go down. And, secure in that belief, politicians decided to carelessly use the word default, and let the requirement to live up to their obligations stagnate until the absolute last minute.
Where, in a fit of financial genius, the convinced their creditors to just go ahead and give them a credit limit increase. Which, they immediately took a cash advance out on, and used that cash to pay back the same exact credit card.
So, the credit rating agencies said "hey! That's a pretty stupid financial move there. If you keep that kind if stuff up, we will have to ding your credit score a few points." To which, the politicians replied (in true Chicago politics style) "No you won't, you do not know who you are messing with here.... etc..."
Curiously enough, the folks at S&P recognized that this administration does not have enough backbone to carry through with any of their threats. (Or, if you want to believe in a deeper darker conspiracy, they actually welcomed the downgrade in rating) And, armed with the knowledge the President is actually quite spineless, they went ahead and changed their rating, as they should if they actually want to maintain any credibility in the industry.
Seriously, what would S&P's rating be worth if they caved under political pressure and actually left the rating at AAA? I actually have a lower opinion of Moody's because they are not doing the same thing.
@Anonymous
The Captain has pretty much summarized my thoughts in his reply.
First of all, the apocalypse is self-inflicted. Socialists brought this upon themselves. I wouldn't laugh at an asteroid hitting the Earth...
Secondly, there are two possible reactions from someone who, as Cappy pointed out, suffers from the Cassandra curse. We can either rage--or laugh.
NEITHER of these reactions will achieve ANYTHING. We're doomed and there's literally NOTHING we can do about it. So why stress ourselves out? Let's just enjoy our lives to the fullest.
I'm just visiting, anyway--I'll be here for another 50 to 60 years and then I'm leaving forever. Why not throw myself a 50 years long party? And by 'party' I mean anything that will set off the pleasure center of my brain.
As long as I don't act selfish by bringing a child to this forsaken world, I don't have to give a shit about the future.
To answer your questions: I've learned English my whole life. Since the foreign languages teachers in our public schools are horrible, my main resources were movies, TV series, books, and the internet. I read massive amounts of English every day on blogs, in ebooks and on message boards.
I can't remember how I got to this blog. And I even haven't been reading it for that long, maybe a year or so. Probably through a blogroll link.
Anyway, I gotta say, along with Roissy (heartiste.wordpress.com), this blog influenced my world view the most. I used to want to be a billionaire, have a wife and lots of kids and build a powerful dynasty of descendants. Now my only life goal is to set off the endorphin glands as often as I can with sex, sports and music. The particular post that turned me to the dark side was 'America's collapse causing depression in males.'
@Captain
Bruce Willis' best performance was Twelve Monkeys, there's no question about that.
Also, coincidentally, the best movie ever.
I'm nowhere near as secure (physically, financially, etc) as I'd like. I'm better off than many, being debt-free and not tied down, but if this is truly the eve of the reckoning (and not another false-start), it's still not going to be fun on a personal level.
Nevertheless, all I can think is "Burn motherfuckers, burn".
I have to agree with Sonny.
This is no ordinary recession. The economic causes are closer to the great Depression than a run of the mill recession or even prolonged recession.
I would dearly hate to hear ten years from now the same words as FDR's treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau said -
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."
And while we're seeing riots in Greece and in the UK because of government spending cuts, it can get so much worse here when those welfare checks no longer come. Rioters, arsonists, roving bands of thieves and looters, police abandoning their posts unable to keep order.
Take a look at this -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023809/Did-George-Soros-win-10-1-return-S-Ps-US-credit-rating-downgrade.html
Biden: What did you do last night?
Zero: I think I fucked a squirrel to death and don't remember.
I gotta go with Last Boy Scout, slightly ahead of Die Hard. But he was also good in Pulp Fiction and Sin City too.
He played Mr. Goodkat in Lucky Number Slevin to perfection.
He was also the voice for Hammy in Hammy's Boomerang Adventure. You know that one, don't you Cappie? Varmint says so.
No, its not a depression. What we will go through this decade is no different than what Japan went through during the 90's. Its a post-bubble stagnation. Even Bernanke's Keynesian spending is no different than Japan's stimulus packages during the 90's, with the same predictable result on the government's finances.
A depression is a 10% decline in GDP over a 2 year period. We have not and will not see this. Instead, we will have a 10 year period of sub-normal GDP growth, say 0.5-1% annual growth, while the economy self-corrects through deleveraging.
I lived in Japan during the 90's. What I see here in the U.S. is no different than what I saw there then.
Even the birthrate will decline to Japanese levels in the next couple of years because young people can't find jobs and will choose to be slackers. The U.S. fertility rate will drop in half in the next 2 to 3 years.
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