Irish cash famine threatens euro, world markets

Ragu -- I believe markets are reactive for two reasons. One is that information moves faster, so everyone can react instantly to news. The other is that the coke-snorting, bonus-chasing douchebags who work in "the market" aren't focused on anything beyond how they can get the bonus for their next coke buy. As in, any trading based on long-term strategy is out the fucking window.

I saw this happen when I was covering IPOs and venture capital in New York when Netscape hit. I mean, markets had moved up and down rapidly before, but Netscape started wave after wave of IPOs that just popped like crazy, and all the New York banks were flat-brown-shoe-footed as the San Francisco investment houses that brought these deals made a fuckload of money. In a hurry, the New York banks, ahem, wised up (and bought many of those San Francisco banks), and the focus on the new, shiny object began in earnest. Plus, at that time, you had the dawn of the asset-backed security. Remember Bowie Bonds? (Investors still do, because they're still getting paid based on Bowie's earnings, the basis of the bonds.) You had another "innovation" that was another death knell for the old fart in the striped suit stockbroker. And, of course, once Glass-Steagall was broken apart, the cuffs were off.

So we have a whole system that makes bubbles go up and down faster. Note that "the market," whatever Obama and the Fed does, isn't focused on trying to create stability. It's trying to figure out where the next bubble is so it can take advantage.

 

Right. I didn't mean to imply that the drop in population was all due to emigration.

Out of a population of approximately 8 million, about one million died & one million left. This happened in just a few years.

 

The king has spoken. Long live the king. ;D

 

Sadly, this crisis is leading to a new wave of emigration:

 

I would liken this to the difference in playcalls on 2nd-and-3 versus 3rd-and-10, or 4th-and-26. The less reliable your market, your economy, your nation, the more desperate your playcalls have to become. Sure, someone's winning big now and then on a fake punt, but you can't count on fake punts to work regularly. When the ETFs, CDOs, etc., have to get more and more complex and confusing so the very smartest, most in-the-know people can get paid, that tells you that the down-and-distance for our national economy is late-and-long, so to speak.

How I wish this was a better economy and we could just revert back to that good old 2nd-and-3, Warren Buffett advice of "buy what you believe in," sit back and collect the steady gains as individuals and as a nation.

 

Deutschland is the linchpin of the euro. It will find a way to keep the euro afloat until it no longer sees it a profitable crisis.

I'm more worried about the U.S. bond market and what a spike in interest rates will do to it. That is one big-ass bubble poised to pop.

 

There is unlikely to be a spike in U.S. rates until such time as there is evidence the economy, especially employment, is improving here, which, alas, doesn't seem likely in the immediate (6 mos.-2 years) future.