Bambi vs Godzilla

SeattleMoose

Nice little video on the causes and ramifications of the bubble: .http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7MCohPgkXo&eurl=http://housingpanic.blogspot.com/

1) Our leaders (GW, BB, HP, etc.) ALL lie. Well of course they do...they are all members of "the club". And yes...by definition it IS a conspiracy.
2) Bankers made record profits the last few years cookin up the bubble and now they are crying for OUR money to bail them out....if it was YOUR business that cut its own throat and was failing, would YOU be bailed out?
3) Our economy is a false economy based largely on non-sustainable short term manic bubbles. We live in a "gaming culture" where everyone wants to buy low, sell high, and retire by 30. The "keep your nose to the grindstone and save" model was thrown out and now those of us who are still trudging along are ending up with nothing except flat noses as we pay for all the "gaming" from which we derived zero benefit.
4) Socializing the costs of the "party" to those who did not attend nor benefit means that those who cause bubbles and profit greatly.....never have to pay the piper. What a gig....all upside with no downside. I guess only "little people" are held accountable any more. No accoutability = incentive remains to create ever new ways to "game the system".

Fact is, our country is run by self-serving crooks and many Americans live way beyond their means. How long can this house of cards endure?

As long as those at the top are a self-serving club, we have no chance to fix what ails America....short of a revolution and lots of dynamite to bring the whole rotting structure down.

Karma is a bitch...especially about greed, corruption, and excess.

Right now America is lookin more and more like Nero's Rome.

Alan

By Douglas Adams:

The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation, and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago, and there has been no follow-up. The mess is extraordinary, and has to be seen to be believed, but if you don't have any particular need to believe it, then don't go and look, because you won't enjoy it. There have recently been some bangs and flashes up in the clouds, and there is one theory that this is a battle being fought between the fleets of several rival carpet-cleaning companies who are hovering over the thing like vultures, but you shouldn't believe anything you hear at parties, and particularly not anything you hear at this one.

One of the problems, and it's one which is obviously going to get worse, is that all the people at the party are either the children or the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of the people who wouldn't leave in the first place, and because of all the business about selective breeding and regressive genes and so on, it means that all the people now at the party are either absolutely fanatical partygoers, or gibbering idiots, or, more and more frequently, both. Either way, it means that, genetically speaking, each succeeding generation is now less likely to leave than the preceding one. So other factors come into operation, like when the drink is going to run out. Now, because of certain things which have happened which seemed like a good idea at the time (and one of the problems with a party which never stops is that all the things which only seem like a good idea at parties continue to seem like good ideas), that point seems still to be a long way off.

One of the things which seemed like a good idea at the time was that the party should fly - not in the normal sense that parties are meant to fly, but literally. One night, long ago, a band of drunken astro-engineers of the first generation clambered round the building digging this, fixing that, banging very hard on the other and when the sun rose the following morning, it was startled to find itself shining on a building full of happy drunken people which was now floating like a young and uncertain bird over the treetops. Not only that, but the flying party had also managed to arm itself rather heavily. If they were going to get involved in any petty arguments with wine merchants, they wanted to make sure they had might on their side.

The transition from full-time cocktail party to part-time raiding party came with ease, and did much to add that extra bit of zest and swing to the whole affair which was badly needed at this point because of the enormous number of times that the band had already played all the numbers it knew over the years. They looted, they raided, they held whole cities for ransom for fresh supplies of cheese crackers, avocado dip, spare ribs and wine and spirits, which would now get piped aboard from floating tankers. The problem of when the drink is going to run out is, however, going to have to be faced one day. The planet over which they are floating is no longer the planet it was when they first started floating over it. It is in bad shape. The party had attacked and raided an awful lot of it, and no one has ever succeeded in hitting it back because of the erratic and unpredictable way in which it lurches round the sky. It is one hell of a party.

lamont

SeattleMoose wrote:

We live in a "gaming culture" where everyone wants to buy low, sell high, and retire by 30. The "keep your nose to the grindstone and save" model was thrown out and now those of us who are still trudging along are ending up with nothing except flat noses as we pay for all the "gaming" from which we derived zero benefit.

Agreed.

- Cashing out on the stock market
- Winning big in poker championships or in Las Vegas
- Cashing out on your home

None of these involve work and savings. I found it interesting that after the dot-com bust the two biggest manias were house flipping and poker.