The Perfect Storm & No Country For Old Men

How bad is it? YTD SP500 -38%; PnG -20%.

IEA forecasting a drop in global oil demand for 2008, which would be the first time demand has shrunk in 25 years.

Q3 real estate assets -$646.9 billion, 3X the prior quarter's drop. Q3 net worth for households -$2.81 trillion, the most since records began in 1952.

The Yoy household net worth decline of 11% is the largest on record, eclipsing the dot com debacle.

Sinking home values & stock markets with mounting initial jobless claims +58K hitting 573K; a 26 yr high.

It is different this time... Q2 Total U.S. credit market debt $51 trillion; ratio of debt to GDP 357%. In 1929, debt was 185% of GDP.

Treasury offering $30 billion worth of one month bills that carried a yield of 0.00% was oversubscribed. How about 100 yr bonds?

How about the Federal Reserve issuing its own debt? Isn't that like a counterfeiter issuing debt?

Where does this central bank ponzi scheme end? Speaking of admitting what no one else will...

Was Bernard Madoff former vice chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers and

chief of the Securities Industry Association's trading committee in the 1990s; referring to the whole system?

Before being handcuffed and arrested on $50 billion in securities fraud: he said his firm was "finished" and had "absolutely nothing,"

He told the employees his business had been insolvent for years and estimated losses to be about $50 billion,

and that his business is "all just one big lie" and "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme." Sounds like our financial and government sectors.

GMAC is on the verge of declaring BK as will GM and Chrysler, both of which hired BK firms.

This is the perfect storm, with Bear Stearns, IndyMac, Wachovia, WaMu, Freddie, Fannie, AIG...

and Citigroup already in the hopper and bond insurers MBIA & Ambac on the way...

with unemployment jumping from 4.5 to 6.7%, the wheels have just come off; 9% is on the horizon;

further declines in consumer spending and another massive wave of foreclosures on the way...

as our emasculated; outsourced; service based; McJob; non durable economy; flips over 3 times, strikes a tree and bursts into flames.

Near term, foreign states, municipalities & US states will start to file BK...

many small banks will fail; we feel Wells Fargo will be bailed out and even JP Morgan Chase & BofA may come under siege.

In addition, General Electric, the FDIC; PBGC and Fed itself may all need to be bailed out. The word liquidate, comes to mind.

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