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Wow. This article is very wordy, but it does a tremendous job of explaining how the stock market is basically completely corrupt. Its a wonder that our Americ

Wow. This article is very wordy, but it does a tremendous job of explaining how the stock market is basically completely corrupt. Its a wonder that our American economic system hasn't collapsed already.

brown9-2 17y ago
I guess it depends on your definiton of "collapsed".
- gloob 17y ago
  If you think "collapsed" is a legitimate description of the present state of the American economy, I tremble to contemplate the words you would use to describe, say, Zimbabwe's. Edit: That, alone, is a tad too much snark with a tad too little data for me to leave it unadorned in good conscience. Here's a couple points of interest: 1. In 2003, the Zimbabwean economy shrunk by 18 percent. 2. In 2008, the estimated inflation rate in Zimbabwe was 231 000 000 percent. 3. By late 2008, official statistics put that at 516 quintillion percent 4. The Zimbabwean Dollar officially ceased to exist on 1 July, 2009 (quoth Wikipedia; I'm not making this up). America's doing just dandy, all things considered. Edit again: On a non-economic front, it might be interesting to note that Zimbabwe's life expectancy is in the mid-30s for both sexes.
  - wheels 17y ago
    Zimbabwe's life expectancy for both sexes is closer to 45, which is similar to it's southern neighbor and regional economic stalwart, South Africa. It's that 15% of the population of both countries have HIV, not specifically economic troubles that the mortality rate is so high. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/zi.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
gills 17y ago
We have collapsed. It's called denial.
- gaius 17y ago
  I must have missed the bread queue at the bakery this morning... Seriously. There are still people alive who remember the Great Depression. Go find one and ask what it was like. We're not even close to that.
  - kls 17y ago
    fortunately, the tech sector was shaken out with the dot com bust and did not fully recover. I have friends in construction who are not that far from the bread line. Now that is slipper slope hyperbole, but the fact remains that they are not doing well at all. Currently, if you are not in tech or medical it is not a great outlook for your prosperity. The problem is that we have traded debt (future labor and products) for currently assets as if it where a current asset (and we convinced the rest of the world to do so too). The problem is that you can continue to sell the future (debt) until someone looses faith in that return then the whole thing comes crashing down. I really think we should go back to a hard asset economy as it is less susceptible to crashes in valuation and is far harder to manipulate. The problem is when only current assets are valued. Prosperity tends to shrink and amass in the hands of a few. It really is a catch 22.
  - euroclydon 17y ago
    The only reason there weren't bread lines is because the government dictated that there not be (by printing money). Soviet governments tried to dictate things too. The only difference between them and us, is that we can get away with it now because we are still coasting off our past credibility, but that won't last forever.
  - e40 17y ago
    There's always a queue at Acme bread.
  - kingkongrevenge 17y ago
    > I must have missed the bread queue at the bakery this morning It's a digital queue now: One in nine americans on food stamps: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE55270Y20090603 http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE55270Y200... The depression created certain visuals that have no parallel today, but the experiences of ordinary people might not be so different. The depression was not bad at all if you still had your job, which over 3/4ths of people did. (Government favored wage supports over full employment.) Only a minority of people really suffered. The depression was an era of luxury supercars and massive new estates. Large numbers of business elite made fortunes or still had great wealth from the 20s. Today may look much more like 1930 than you realize.
jsz0 17y ago
It's not all that bad. Shorting, credit default swaps and all these other ugly tricks are a comparatively small part of the overall system. The vast majority of the trading that happens everyday is completely legitimate old school business. The US economy is also freakishly resilient. We had an almost total collapse of our credit system last year and while we don't know the full long term ramifications yet it does appear we're going to make it through it without too much gloom & doom. It's somewhat of a miracle that we've only seen a doubling of the unemployment rate and very little (if any?) inflation or deflation due to all these external forces at work on the market. The end result for most of us is maybe we couldn't buy that new car we wanted or had to cancel a vacation.
- euroclydon 17y ago
  That's naive my friend, were it not for the fact that central banks all over the world held more dollars than any other foreign currency (a fact that is rapidly changing) the two trillion we have printed out of thin air would have immediately caused drastic inflation. I don't think a nation's economy, resilient of not, gets to print two trillion twice, and since we haven't yet fixed the fundamental issues that got us here: trade deficit and federal deficit, we'll need another bailout soon, but it will cost more, something like four trillion. The world knows it, and that's whey they're moving away from the dollar as fast as they can. There is not much in the US economy for the rest of the world any more. If we do the right thing and pay our debts off, that means drastic consumption cuts, and if we don't then we just continue to consume with credit. So you see, it's a lose-lose for the rest of the world.
- nazgulnarsil 17y ago
  the dollar lost a huge amount of purchasing power between 2005-present. prices just havn't caught up yet. expect CPI inflation to continue to suck for the next few years.
  - jongraehl 17y ago
    I'd think so too, but inflation expectations are actually low (e.g. look at TIPS yields).

brown9-2 17y ago

I guess it depends on your definiton of "collapsed".

gloob 17y ago
If you think "collapsed" is a legitimate description of the present state of the American economy, I tremble to contemplate the words you would use to describe, say, Zimbabwe's. Edit: That, alone, is a tad too much snark with a tad too little data for me to leave it unadorned in good conscience. Here's a couple points of interest: 1. In 2003, the Zimbabwean economy shrunk by 18 percent. 2. In 2008, the estimated inflation rate in Zimbabwe was 231 000 000 percent. 3. By late 2008, official statistics put that at 516 quintillion percent 4. The Zimbabwean Dollar officially ceased to exist on 1 July, 2009 (quoth Wikipedia; I'm not making this up). America's doing just dandy, all things considered. Edit again: On a non-economic front, it might be interesting to note that Zimbabwe's life expectancy is in the mid-30s for both sexes.
- wheels 17y ago
  Zimbabwe's life expectancy for both sexes is closer to 45, which is similar to it's southern neighbor and regional economic stalwart, South Africa. It's that 15% of the population of both countries have HIV, not specifically economic troubles that the mortality rate is so high. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/zi.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

gills 17y ago

We have collapsed. It's called denial.

gaius 17y ago
I must have missed the bread queue at the bakery this morning... Seriously. There are still people alive who remember the Great Depression. Go find one and ask what it was like. We're not even close to that.
- kls 17y ago
  fortunately, the tech sector was shaken out with the dot com bust and did not fully recover. I have friends in construction who are not that far from the bread line. Now that is slipper slope hyperbole, but the fact remains that they are not doing well at all. Currently, if you are not in tech or medical it is not a great outlook for your prosperity. The problem is that we have traded debt (future labor and products) for currently assets as if it where a current asset (and we convinced the rest of the world to do so too). The problem is that you can continue to sell the future (debt) until someone looses faith in that return then the whole thing comes crashing down. I really think we should go back to a hard asset economy as it is less susceptible to crashes in valuation and is far harder to manipulate. The problem is when only current assets are valued. Prosperity tends to shrink and amass in the hands of a few. It really is a catch 22.
- euroclydon 17y ago
  The only reason there weren't bread lines is because the government dictated that there not be (by printing money). Soviet governments tried to dictate things too. The only difference between them and us, is that we can get away with it now because we are still coasting off our past credibility, but that won't last forever.
- e40 17y ago
  There's always a queue at Acme bread.
- kingkongrevenge 17y ago
  > I must have missed the bread queue at the bakery this morning It's a digital queue now: One in nine americans on food stamps: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE55270Y20090603 http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE55270Y200... The depression created certain visuals that have no parallel today, but the experiences of ordinary people might not be so different. The depression was not bad at all if you still had your job, which over 3/4ths of people did. (Government favored wage supports over full employment.) Only a minority of people really suffered. The depression was an era of luxury supercars and massive new estates. Large numbers of business elite made fortunes or still had great wealth from the 20s. Today may look much more like 1930 than you realize.

jsz0 17y ago

It's not all that bad. Shorting, credit default swaps and all these other ugly tricks are a comparatively small part of the overall system. The vast majority of the trading that happens everyday is completely legitimate old school business. The US economy is also freakishly resilient. We had an almost total collapse of our credit system last year and while we don't know the full long term ramifications yet it does appear we're going to make it through it without too much gloom & doom. It's somewhat of a miracle that we've only seen a doubling of the unemployment rate and very little (if any?) inflation or deflation due to all these external forces at work on the market. The end result for most of us is maybe we couldn't buy that new car we wanted or had to cancel a vacation.

euroclydon 17y ago
That's naive my friend, were it not for the fact that central banks all over the world held more dollars than any other foreign currency (a fact that is rapidly changing) the two trillion we have printed out of thin air would have immediately caused drastic inflation. I don't think a nation's economy, resilient of not, gets to print two trillion twice, and since we haven't yet fixed the fundamental issues that got us here: trade deficit and federal deficit, we'll need another bailout soon, but it will cost more, something like four trillion. The world knows it, and that's whey they're moving away from the dollar as fast as they can. There is not much in the US economy for the rest of the world any more. If we do the right thing and pay our debts off, that means drastic consumption cuts, and if we don't then we just continue to consume with credit. So you see, it's a lose-lose for the rest of the world.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
the dollar lost a huge amount of purchasing power between 2005-present. prices just havn't caught up yet. expect CPI inflation to continue to suck for the next few years.
- jongraehl 17y ago
  I'd think so too, but inflation expectations are actually low (e.g. look at TIPS yields).