Bernanke And Buddies Desperate To Stop Panic

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Bernanke has hauled himself out of Cloud Coo-coo Land to assure investors there is nothing wrong and the Chinese Communists didn't spear the world's stock markets like it was a flounder in a barrel! Nope. He makes an excellent Baghdad Bob, doesn't he?

Did the Congressmen and women laugh and then throw him out?

Appearing before the House Budget Committee, Bernanke also said, "There didn't seem to be any single trigger for the market correction we saw yesterday," Washington Post staff writer Nell Henderson reported. He said the Fed and the president's working group are monitoring the situation but that the markets "seem to be working well, normally."

HAHAHA. There wasn't 'one trigger'---there was a full FIRING SQUAD. All of whom read Mao's Red Book in their youth. 'Power grows out of the barrel of a market panic,' he wrote. Or maybe it was, 'World markets are like a barrel of monkeys, just drop a banana in and watch them riot.'

What would happen if all these proud American capitalists discovered the communist 'Let a Thousand Flowers Wilt' Chinese have total control over the DOW Jones average? Isn't that heartening? The people who this week professed they wanted to re-invigorate the Communist dogma are also the same people who can topple our economy simply by talking about raising taxes and preventing people from buying stocks using loans?

HAHAHA. Man, those reforms, if done here, would cause our billionaires to go belly up. No wonder they panicked and they aren't even in China where they punish economic crimes with a bullet to the back of the head!

The jump in U.S. stocks came despite government reports Wednesday showing that the U.S. economy grew at a relatively sluggish 2.2 percent rate in the last quarter of 2006 and that new-home sales plummeted in January by 16.6 percent, the sharpest drop in 13 years.

So, all the economic news is bad, even they admit it but it is fine, all is well? Even Greenspan said we 'might have a recession at the end of the year.' Of course, by then, it will be painfully obvious to even Americans that something is terribly wrong. Right now, the top 1% is happy so we should all applaud. Clap, clap, clap.

Alas, this won't bring Tinker Bell Housing Bubble back to life. Her lights are barely flickering. Of course, the latest mantra is, only the 'bad' loans will collapse and this won't kill all those hedge funds, right?

Wrong.

Bernanke also said the Fed sees "no indication" so far that the turmoil in the market for subprime mortgages -- riskier loans made to home buyers with poor credit histories -- is spreading into other financial markets or affecting the housing market.

When water goes over a dam, the dam holds for a few minutes. Then it collapses. When the Titanic hit that iceberg, the tear wasn't all that big at first, it took two hours to sink! And so it is here: the economy doesn't sink instantly, the hull of the ship is ripped badly and yes, the guys working in the engineroom are drowning and the third class passengers are up to their necks in blood-red waters but the ship itself is seeing the front half where the first class guys are having a party, rising into the air!

I read today that in Europe, Airbus is firing 10,000 people all of whom are paid high wages. And in the USA, Toyota is building yet another car assembly place in lower Mississippi. The only place with cheaper wages is south of Guatemala. The Japanese even state they are doing this to keep Americans from yapping about how Japan with its super-cheap yen and .25% loans for Japanese businesses, is screwing up America.

The Chinese will do this too. Hire us as super-cheap labor. Gads! My head hurts. Is this what we want? What next? Work for the Germans?

Oh, heh. I used to work for the Germans, Mannesmann Demag.

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Comments

[cha]

Airbus isn't firing 10,000 people(atleast not directly). They are selling parts of the company and those parts employ 10,000 people.

[JSmith]

"I read today that in Europe, Airbus is firing 10,000 people all of whom are paid high wages."

Being 3 years late with the A380 hasn't helped much. Airbus is an intergovernmental fuckup - having to answer to the French and German governments does not make for a flexible business. (BSE got smart and sold out.)

"Of course, by then, it will be painfully obvious to even Americans that something is terribly wrong."

OK. Whatever you say. (You got your PhD in econ where, again? Berkeley? LSE? Stanford?)

[DeVaul]

It is because she does not have a degree in econ that she can see things more clearly. No propaganda to flush out first. Once you have been trained to think a certain way, it takes years and years to undo it.

[JSmith]

So... I don't have a degree in civil engineering, and that will make me a better bridge designer?

Sorry... I'm not following that at all!

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

I built my own house without earning a degree in Architecture. I learned economics the hard way: via my own life experiences. Believe it or not, I used to be a speculator and tried to make money on market ups and downs. Some years, I made a lot.

Now I can't do that anymore because both my first and second husbands are disabled and I can't live a life of risks. Oh, I used to go for both ends of the spectrum! Lived high of them thar hogs! Poor as a church mouse.

No more. Following a strict budget and counting pennies and growing veggies. Still have investments but they make me nervous because of all the damn blasted stupid things going on. I want a STEADY INCOME not super rich/super poor.

That sucks when you are nearing retirement anyway.

[JSmith]

"I built my own house without earning a degree in Architecture."

A house is one thing. I'd let you build a house for me. Not so sure about a bridge over the gaping chasm. (Maybe a bridge over troubled water though...)

"That sucks when you are nearing retirement anyway."

I sympathize with that. One's appetite for and ability to handle risk needs to take into account where one is in life - one should become more conservative as one goes further along life's road.

[DeVaul]

Smith, I do not consider economics to be a science or a trade like engineering. It is, in my opinion, totally bogus. Surely you must know that. Do you really think economists are on your level of education?

Engineers can build bridges and other structurs that can stand for 50 years or more with no significant changes. Can economists build an economy that does the same?

What would happen to the field of civil engineering if bridges kept collapsing every 5 to 10 years? Would civil engineers start talking more like economists?

"Well, the bridge may stand, or it may not stand. There is a high probability that it will stand at least through December, but then, depending on weather patterns, traffic levels, copper thieves, etc. etc., that prognosis could change. Heck, we might even see some ups and downs in individual concrete slabs before then, but nothing major."

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

HAHAHA. Thanks for the laugh, DeVaul.

[JSmith]

"It is, in my opinion, totally bogus."

You are, as always, entitled to your opinion.

[JSmith]

"What would happen to the field of civil engineering if bridges kept collapsing every 5 to 10 years? Would civil engineers start talking more like economists?"

If you read Elaine's typing about dams, civil engineers do talk like economists.

[cha]

Fuck up and biggest aircraft company?

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

We will all be flying on Iron Dragons made in China some day. Those of us who are not pulling rickshaws, that is.

[CK]

The choices of individuals and small groups build economies; at best economists try to explain why people chose what they chose when they chose it and how whatever choices they made came from certain behaviours that one calls economic.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

In Greek, economic means 'domestic matters'. Namely, the wife and how she ran her home while the men were at war, getting drunk or chasing after young boys.