Bonfire of their Vanities

by Vermont Woodchuck

The last bump of this size Bush called an adjustment; that was Lehman Brothers tilting over. This is nothing more than another adjustment.
However, this one will involve a bunch of swells cutting up their credit cards, selling (if they can beat the repo man) the M3, the Lexus or the Mercedes, the plasma screen TV and every bell and whistle they couldn’t do without because “Bob had one.”
Have you ever seen a stockbroker bang nails or replace a 20-amp breaker? Life inside the “gates” is going to become amusin’.
Here’s a flash for you. The only ones that will get it in the neck are those living on next year’s income. IRA’s, 401k and pensions will take a hit but only those without diverse holdings will drop severely.
If you were flipping houses or specing condominiums, greed gotcha.

In Europe, the elite, those that can tell all how it should be, have their knickers in a wad.

Bailout failure ‘will cause US crash’

The US stock market could suffer a devastating crash with shares losing a third of their value this week if Hank Paulson’s financial bailout plan fails, US Treasury officials have warned.

The financial system could face a meltdown of 1929 proportions unless US politicians succeed in their efforts for a $700bn rescue scheme, experts added. [snip]

Well they certainly are busy telling us what to do. For good reason it seems when one looks at their markets. But, they seem to have it a bit backwards, for their markets visited the loo quickly and in earnest.

Investors fretted about contagion into Europe, where Fortis, which was part of the consortium that bought ABN Amro last year, fired its chief executive after liquidity concerns pushed shares down more than 20pc to a 14-year low. Holland’s ING and BNP Paribas are looking at buying the bank this weekend.

London investors have warned that the FTSE could suffer falls of as much as 1,000 points - a fifth of its value, if the deal falls through.

Peter Spencer, economic adviser to the Ernst & Young Item Club, said: “This is the time you have to bail people out and ask questions later. It is very difficult to see how the US banking system would survive without that.This has the potential to make 1929 look like a walk in the park.”

Of course, it’s the bloody colonials doing it again. Have we no shame! Well, this time we’ll be generous and let the Tories have the soup lines.

[snip]
Markets were anxious about Britain’s fast deteriorating economic outlook and the stability of its banking sector as B&B followed Northern Rock in being nationalised. The worries followed the fire sale of HBOS, the nation’s biggest mortgage lender to Lloyds TSB, and led to the London stock market succumb to a fresh hammering of its leading shares. [snip]

The euro also fell heavily against the dollar amid concern over the eurozone’s banking strife and the adequacy of arrangements for bank rescues in the 15-nation bloc. The euro lost as much as 1.8 per cent against the dollar, falling to levels of about $1.4340 from a US close of $1.4613 on Friday.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index was down 1.3 per cent at 11,743.61, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index shed 2.1 per cent to 18,286.90.
“They’re worried that another fire is starting in Europe,” said Castor Pang, an analyst at Sun Hung Kai Financial in Hong Kong.