Comments on: The government crash

By: Doc Searls Weblog · Bailing on the bailout

Doc Searls Weblog · Bailing on the bailout — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:08:06 +0000

[...] Second is that “doing something” is overrated. For that insight I thank this excellent piece in the Washington Post, by Shankar Vedantam. And to Russ Nelson for pointing to it. [...]

By: Annabel

Annabel — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:39:22 +0000

Its not much different in the UK/Europe although the US will be scalable as per capita. The bubble was gonna burst for sure – if the average Joe could see it coming then why not Governments? Subprime housing lending, banking sector greed, bad debt lending….it had to come crashing down – it was just a matter of time..

Job losses, social security payments raising, repossessions, bail out of whole industry sectors…where’s all this Government bail out money coming from anyway?

Currency crashes and whole countries brought to their knees…a roller-coaster few months!

BTW interesting link Laurent..

By: Russell Nelson

Russell Nelson — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:08:42 +0000

As Paul Krugman (the man who made the Nobel prize in economics jump the shark) said “We’ve got to do SOMETHING”.

In fact, no, “we” don’t. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/30/AR2008033001582_pf.html

By: Russell Nelson

Russell Nelson — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:06:30 +0000

Don: since the money isn’t there, obviously the entitlements will be defaulted on. The age at which you can receive Social Security will start to rise. Medicare benefits will be cut.

By: Mike Warot

Mike Warot — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:39:31 +0000

I think that Credit Default Swaps have already made themselves “too big to fail”… but the US government will hopefully resort to a new tactic because they can’t bail out something that huge… retroactively declare then null and void.

In an ideal world, this would retrieve massive amounts of money from otherwise deep dark pockets of foreign interests.

By: Don Marti

Don Marti — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:00:26 +0000

John Robb points out the rise in price for Credit Default Swaps tied to the solvency of the United States government. All this bailout stuff is chump change compared to the amount that the US government will have to pay out in Social Security and Medicare for the baby boom generation ($40 trillion in so-called "entitlements" that will have to come from somewhere), so just wait a few years for the real freakout.

By: laurent lathieyre

laurent lathieyre — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:38:22 +0000

it’s about the money crash — as we know it. It’s not news there is something rotten in the kingdom of currencies. And change is opportunity… to see the bright side of it all

You may find this link interesting : http://thetransitioner.org/wen/tiki-index.php

(Reading/following you because I’m working on a VRM idea)

By: Shawn Powers

Shawn Powers — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:49:14 +0000

As sad as I realize it is, my instinct is to metaphorically curl into a ball and pretend it’s not happening. And truthfully, there’s not a whole lot I can do anyway. It’s depressing.

And cold here too.