(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

Today, on CBC Radio-1's early-morning hourly news:

Today in the US, Congressional Committees have finally hammered out an agreement on the $700 billion-dollar bailout package proposed by the Bush administration. We go to [X reporter] for the story:

[short pause]

"Dead Dogs. Dogs in cages..."

[long pause]

We'll have that story for you in just a moment.

Either CBC is having technical difficulties, or the American economy's in rougher shape than anyone previously thought.

Comments

[lux-apollo.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

It was of course just a technical error -- Quebec police busted a puppy mill the same day.

Still, there seemed to be some synchronicity (in the Jungian sense) to that error.

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

... shite.

Anyone up for re-locating to some abandoned island in the pacific while this all blows up?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I've been expecting this for about a decade now -- since I got interested in economics. There are dozens of giant bubbles in the economy, and the mortgage one was one of the smaller ones.

Wait until the the currency bubble explodes -- the growing gap between actual currency and theoretical currency. Or the debt bubble of third-world countries. And these things tend to trigger in series.

No bubble is bigger, though, than the ecological one. Infinite growth requires infinite resources, and we're on a finite planet and rapidly consuming our non-renewable reserves. An economy focused on growth is thus a mathematical impossibility. There will come a point when all growth will stop, and rapidly reverse.

The sooner we make ecological events top priority and stop economic growth, the more of our lifestyle we'll be able to preserve. If we wait until there simply isn't anything left anymore, we'll pretty much be back to living in the trees (what trees are left).

I doubt there's going to be much of an escape from that.

[redeyedhyuuga.livejournal.com]

With the government propping up the Banks and the Housing Market, the big collapse is just going to be that much worse. And with the election coming up, who ever wins will pretty much be able to implement what ever they want when the Stock Market crashes, under the pretense of economic relief.

Correct me if I'm wrong, politics is new for me.

-Mp3-San

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

For someone who's new to politics, your analysis is quite correct ^_^

Of course, that's the US situation. We're very lucky that our mortgage sector in Canada is tightly regulated by a government agency the CMHC/SCHL. We'll still get some nasty indirect effects, though, thanks to the stock markets, but our economy actually improves when the dollar drops and it just dropped twenty cents.

The US turned over its regulation of mortgages over to private companies, which can go bankrupt.