The strongest economy in the world

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Panda

A lot of Mexicans still regard those South Western US states the USA "purchased at the point of a gun" in 1848 as Mexican territory.

---

In those greasers life time the borders have not changed so why in the hell should they feel that the land belongs to them? It never has that they actually know about.
Or is it just shit stirrers like you that have to go into old history that you actually have no knowledge about nor have you ever lived in the area that you seem to know so much about. And 90% of the greasers know no history and most can not read anyway, and How about Chiapas and Oxajoaca,, they were taken from the beaners thru force..


And I suppose that you think anyone that had ever had an ancestor that owned A SLAVE should have to pay all blacks union wages from 1865 until the present day.
and do you suppose that any country that was ever called something else or not under a nations flag should also be released to do as they want.

There were and still a lot of borders set by wars and also by payments, so if the greasers do not like it then why not declare war on the USA and then there would be grounds to legally shoot 12 million of them as enemy insurgents.

Whats going on?
Are you illiterate assholes afraid or can not read the constitution of the USA.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by blackgang

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Panda

A lot of Mexicans still regard those South Western US states the USA "purchased at the point of a gun" in 1848 as Mexican territory.

---

In those greasers life time the borders have not changed so why in the hell should they feel that the land belongs to them? It never has that they actually know

---

Looks like they are getting their land back a bit at a time.
Better learn some Spanish. I believe its the second language in SW USA.

But then again where else can you hire farm hands for $3 an hour?

Here is an article. And I blame the borrower and not the lender. However, it's worth noting that yes, wages have stagnated, and the cost of education, and
basic cost of living has outpaced wages. housing, energy, inflation, and

Quote:

---

Household debt, including mortgages and credit cards, represents 19 percent of household assets, according to the Fed, compared with 13 percent in 1980.
Even as this debt was mounting, incomes stagnated for many Americans. As a result, the percentage of disposable income that consumers must set aside to service their debt — a figure that includes monthly credit card payments, car loans, mortgage interest and principal — has risen to 14.5 percent from 11 percent just 15 years ago.
By contrast, the nation’s savings rate, which exceeded 8 percent of disposable income in 1968, stood at 0.4 percent at the end of the first quarter of this year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
More ominous, as Americans have dug themselves deeper into debt, the value of their assets has started to fall. Mortgage debt stood at $10.5 trillion at the end of last year, more than double the $4.8 trillion just seven years earlier, but home prices that were rising to support increasing levels of debt, like home equity lines
of credit, are now dropping.

---

The New York Times: Reference Search for 'Household debt, including mortgages'

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Milkman

Here is an article. And I blame the borrower and not the lender. However, it's worth noting that yes, wages have stagnated, and the cost of education, and
basic cost of living has outpaced wages. housing, energy, inflation, and

Quote:

---

Household debt, including mortgages and credit cards, represents 19 percent of household assets, according to the Fed, compared with 13 percent in 1980.
Even as this debt was mounting, incomes stagnated for many Americans. As a result, the percentage of disposable income that consumers must set aside to service their debt — a figure that includes monthly credit card payments, car loans, mortgage interest and principal — has risen to 14.5 percent from 11 percent just 15 years ago.
By contrast, the nation’s savings rate, which exceeded 8 percent of disposable income in 1968, stood at 0.4 percent at the end of the first quarter of this year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
More ominous, as Americans have dug themselves deeper into debt, the value of their assets has started to fall. Mortgage debt stood at $10.5 trillion at the end of last year, more than double the $4.8 trillion just seven years earlier, but home prices that were rising to support increasing levels of debt, like home equity lines
of credit, are now dropping.

---

The New York Times: Reference Search for 'Household debt, including mortgages'

---

Hey! What are you saying? These guys are Americans. Citizens of the greatest country ever to rule the earth, and as such the rest of the world owes them a living. Americans should be allowed to have as much debt as they want. Consumer goods like TVs and stereos cost money you know. There is no reason why the average American citizen shouldn't have access to unlimited credit as long as the US government can keep printing $US money to sell to the rest of the world. That is unless the rest of the world looses faith in the value of the $US.
OOps, that wasn't supposed to happen. Lets try printing more money and selling it to the losers who have been sucking up $USs in the past. Bastards don't want to play now. Its so un-American!

When downturns happen, those on fixed income bear more brunt. Here's an article on the senoirs. Note: economic reports on unemployment will be released at the end of the week.

Quote:

---

Economy hitting the elderly especially hard

Bankruptcies soar as retirees, agencies struggle to keep up with rising costs

https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif Jeff Gentner / AP file
Matt Jackson of the Meals On Wheels program waits to deliver a meal to a home in Charleston, W.Va. The program is losing volunteer drivers nationwide because of rising gas prices.

By Alex Johnson

Reporter
MSNBC
July 28, 2008

Bob Emily put in an honest day’s labor every day of his life.
“I worked for the railroad, for the town marshal, security, bars, Sealy down here, UPS,” said Emily, 82, of Commerce City, Colo. “Worked hard all my life until I got sick.”
Then the bills started piling up.

"Hospital bills built up,” said Emily, who didn’t have health insurance. “I had to get loans to take care of my bills. Then I was getting behind on the loans.”


Every day, more calls and letters would come in from creditors and collectors. “I just got tired of it,” Emily said, so three months ago, he filed for bankruptcy.

That could take some of the pressure off. Then again, it might not. Food prices and medical costs are still rising, tarnishing what are supposed to be the golden years for the elderly, perhaps the hardest-hit victims of the slumping economy.
Elderly Americans are filing for bankruptcy in record numbers, according to a study by AARP, formerly the American

Association of Retired Persons. At the same time, support is drying up from meal, transportation and other home assistance agencies that can’t pay their own bills.

“There's no question that the downturn in the economy is dramatically impacting those at the doorstep of retirement and those that have already decided to retire,” said Mark Kitchens, a senior vice president of AARP.

Soaring bankruptcy among the elderly
The numbers are stark. Of the more than 1 million Americans who filed for bankruptcy last year, nearly a quarter were 55 and up, AARP found. Bankruptcy filings among those ages 75 to 84 skyrocketed by 433 percent from 1991 to 2007.

Halfway into 2008, workers at agencies that serve the elderly say the problem is only getting worse.

---

Link: Economy hitting elderly especially hard - Retirement - MSNBC.com

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Milkman

And I blame the borrower and not the lender.

---

How can that be though? A trillion dollars in possible losses and its the guy in the streets fault?

How could the guy in the street ever be held responsible for this?

The blame lies with Walls St, they couldnt package these crap loans quickly enough, the world was lapping it up like cats round cream. A bit futher down the chain are the maggot mortgage brokers selling complex products with the promise of rising values and eternal wealth.
I dont see how the end user can be responsible, he was just going along with the tagline out of the fed "homeownership is the American right"
Greenspan has a lot to answer for, he left rates down at 1% for too long and that set the ball rolling for the bubble.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spin

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Milkman

And I blame the borrower and not the lender.

---

How can that be though? A trillion dollars in possible losses and its the guy in the streets fault?

How could the guy in the street ever be held responsible for this?

The blame lies with Walls St, they couldnt package these crap loans quickly enough, the world was lapping it up like cats round cream. A bit futher down the chain are the maggot mortgage brokers selling complex products with the promise of rising values and eternal wealth.
I dont see how the end user can be responsible, he was just going along with the tagline out of the fed "homeownership is the American right"
Greenspan has a lot to answer for, he left rates down at 1% for too long and that set the ball rolling for the bubble.

---

Spin, you have fair points, and I stand corrected. honestly may have erred in my commet of blaming the borrower not the lender.

I blame the borrower more than the lender.

Yes, Wall St. and the entire system of *allowing* this to happen lies with the government, laws, Congress, public banks that issued CDOs, and private morgaage lenders that were all greedy.

Greed + Stupidity.

A systemic weakness that now is leading to systemic collapse.

The next president will inherit a record US budget deficit of $US482 billion ($505.4 billion), according to a new Bush administration estimate released on Monday.

The administration said the deficit was being driven to an all-time high by the sagging economy and the stimulus payments being made to 130 million households in an effort to keep the United States from falling into a deep recession. But the numbers could go even higher if the economy performs worse than the White House predicts...

the new figures are so eye-popping in dollar terms that it may restrain the appetite of the next president, who takes office January 20 next year, to add to it with expensive spending programs or new tax cuts.

In fact, pressure may build to allow some tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 to expire as scheduled at the end of 2010, with Congress also feeling pressure to curb spending growth.


Obama or McCain to inherit $US482 billion deficit | smh.com.au

The US looks and sounds like an economy in recession, but surprisingly I haven't seen concrete figures to back that up yet.

^The only thing that the new President will be considering is the actual date of the US debt default.

Its still only about 3% of GDP. Its been worse. But the trend this time is for an increasing trade imbalance which means either some belt tightening or increasing debt. And since the US social infrastructure is already trimmed to the bone its likely to mean some very hard times for a lot of people.

U.S. Recession May Have Begun in Last Quarter of 2007 (Update2)

By Timothy R. Homan

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy may have slipped into a recession in the last three months of 2007 as consumer spending slowed more than previously estimated and the housing slump worsened, revised government figures indicated.

The world's largest economy contracted at a 0.2 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter of last year compared with a previously reported 0.6 percent gain, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Growth for the period from 2005 through 2007 was also trimmed.

The revisions now reinforce measures such as employment and production that already signaled the economy was shrinking. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based arbiter of economic cycles, defines a recession as a ``significant'' decrease in activity over a sustained period of time. The declines would be visible in GDP, payrolls, production, sales and incomes.

``We're in a recession,'' Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics Inc. in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. ``It's going to widen, it's going to deepen.''

The government also said incomes grew less than previously thought, raising the risk that consumer spending will again stumble after getting a temporary boost from the tax rebates last quarter.
Previous Contraction

The prior time the economy shrank was in the third quarter of 2001 during the last recession, when it contracted at a 1.4 percent pace. Growth from January through March was revised down to a 0.9 percent pace from 1 percent. Initial jobless claims increased by 44,000 to 448,000 in the week ended July 26, from a revised 404,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.

The revisions of growth are part of the government's annual adjustments to gross domestic product based on additional information from surveys and Internal Revenue Service data.

For 2005, growth was cut to 2.9 percent from 3.1 percent, and the rate of expansion for 2006 was reduced to 2.8 percent from 2.9 percent. The economy grew 2 percent last year, down from a previously reported 2.2 percent.
Nine of the 13 quarters under review were revised down, three increased and one was unchanged.

The largest downward revision was for the last three months of 2007, as the previously reported 2.3 percent gain in consumer spending was reduced by more than half, to 1 percent. Americans cut back on the use of electricity and gas as fuel bills soared.

Continued here:

Bloomberg.com: Economy

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Panda

Its still only about 3% of GDP. Its been worse. But the trend this time is for an increasing trade imbalance which means either some belt tightening or increasing debt. And since the US social infrastructure is already trimmed to the bone its likely to mean some very hard times for a lot of people.

---

See:
https://teakdoor.com/issues/31530-oil...tml#post708099

^ you are getting desperate bkka, time to see the mia noi I reckon :rofl:

^Funny to see you so jealous that I can afford a mia noi. But then, you being gay and all, they would interest you, would they...

Desperate? No, Busy, yes. Unlike you, I have a real job at the heart of this crisis. You, on the other hand, ponce, prance and mince about talking rubbish. It must be galling for you to come up against someone actually dealing with the financial matters that you have for so long falsely claimed you have knowledge of and then discover that being in such a position can bring rewards of wine, women and song.

Sorry about that. No, actually I'm not!:p

The US may yet have an ace up their sleeve. The US has the largest gold reserves in the world. About 78% of the worlds reserves. Over 8,000 tons of the stuff. More than enough to pay off their $US debt many, many times over.
Official gold reserves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ironically, it was the $US as the worlds fiat currency that eventually, completely replaced the world gold standard by 1971.
Gold standard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It seems the USA had less faith in the continuing strength of the $US fiat currency than the rest of the world as the rest of the world sold off gold reserves and bought $USs.

As a country that owned the mint for the worlds trading currency, the USA could simply print paper money and lend it to other countries or exchange it for real tangible consumer goods. Since virtually all US trade was denominated in $USs.
On top of that, the USA has been a nett exporter for several decades (until now) which encouraged international faith in investment in $USs and US industries including finance.

Now we have hit a tipping point where the US balance of trade is going into the negative. The country can no longer continue to produce competitive exports to balance imports. International faith in the strength of the $US is ebbing and now moving more towards the $Euro, although the $US hegemony still holds the (declining) lions share of about 66%.

Here is a situation where a country doesn't have enough tangible goods to export in order to buy their way out of debt. As the only other factor keeping the $US at its present and recent high exchange rates has been the rest of the worlds faith in the trading value of the $US, it does seem like another bubble about to burst when international investment in $USs and industry starts to decline.

That all sounds like bad news for the value of the $US on the world market. But for the countries that are actually producing a surplus of tangible goods, their profits will be invested elsewhere, probably in $Euros or industries in countries that are actually showing real growth (eg: China and India).

USAs only way to trade their way out of increasing world debt is allow the value of the $US to fall. And thats not necessarily going to be a bad thing for employment. Only catch is that imported consumer goods will not be so cheap anymore and life will be a little tougher for the little people. The bad thing for the big money people in USA is that a drop of up to 20% in the value of the $US (over the next 10 years as I predict) would deter international investment and reduce their profits very considerably.

What alternatives does the US government have? They can crank up the printing presses at the mint and flood the world with cheap $USs in even more loans (hello Zimbabwe). They cant produce any more tangible goods for trade unless the $US drops in trading value. They could dump their reserves of gold onto the world market in exchange for $USs, but as they own nearly all of it, it wouldn't be worth much after a short time. It would get them out of debt for sure but would only be buying time for a declining economy.

The fact is that the USA has been living above their means for a long time at the expense of the rest of the world, mainly because of the $US hegemony. And also because they were a secure international investment because of a surplus in exports. That era is just about over now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Panda

The US may yet have an ace up their sleeve. The US has the largest gold reserves in the world. About 78% of the worlds reserves. Over 8,000 tons of the stuff. More than enough to pay off their $US debt many, many times over.
Official gold reserves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

---

You might want to check that chart again. The 78% is not an indication that the US holds 78% of the worlds reserves, it holds less than 30% of the nearly 30,000 tonnes of the stuff.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bugs

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Panda

The US may yet have an ace up their sleeve. The US has the largest gold reserves in the world. About 78% of the worlds reserves. Over 8,000 tons of the stuff. More than enough to pay off their $US debt many, many times over.
Official gold reserves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

---

You might want to check that chart again. The 78% is not an indication that the US holds 78% of the worlds reserves, it holds less than 30% of the nearly 30,000 tonnes of the stuff.

---

You are correct. My apologies. 8, 000 tons of the stuff is still a lot of cash though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Panda

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bugs

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Panda

The US may yet have an ace up their sleeve. The US has the largest gold reserves in the world. About 78% of the worlds reserves. Over 8,000 tons of the stuff. More than enough to pay off their $US debt many, many times over.
Official gold reserves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

---

You might want to check that chart again. The 78% is not an indication that the US holds 78% of the worlds reserves, it holds less than 30% of the nearly 30,000 tonnes of the stuff.

---

You are correct. My apologies. 8, 000 tons of the stuff is still a lot of cash though.

---

Way out I am afraid.

The facts:

Current price of gold: $918
Current value of 8000 tons: $236,109,600,000
Current US National Debt: $9,534,846,989,875

So even assuming that the US could get today's price if they sold off all their gold (in reality the price would crash through the floor), the US National Debt is over 40 times greater than the gold reserve. I.E., put another way, it doesn't even cover one years worth of interest on the debt.

Source for quoted debt figure:

U.S. National Debt Clock

Also, remember that the debt figure does not include personal and corporate debt in the US. Doing so would include so many zero's it would be scary.

^ Well scratch the idea of the gold reserves pulling them out of the shit then.

^Any other ideas? They could do with them!:)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bkkandrew

It must be galling for you to come up against someone actually dealing with the financial matters that you have for so long falsely claimed you have knowledge of and then discover that being in such a position can bring rewards of wine, women and song.

---

sure, troll, sure, plenty of evidence in the other thread exposing your fraud and lies :)

I bet you drive a Ferrari and also have a 100m THB mansion somewhere in Phuket,

what school are you teaching, son ?

^^ Invade somebody? :rolleyes:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bkkandrew

It must be galling for you to come up against someone actually dealing with the financial matters that you have for so long falsely claimed you have knowledge of and then discover that being in such a position can bring rewards of wine, women and song.

---

sure, troll, sure, plenty of evidence in the other thread exposing your fraud and lies :)

---

None actually. Where?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Butterfly

I bet you drive a Ferrari and also have a 100m THB mansion somewhere in Phuket,

---

No, I dislike Ferraris. You will find a pic of my old TVR in the 'Favourite Car' thread however.

I also dislike Phuket.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Butterfly

what school are you teaching, son ?

---

TeakDoor. Its just one or two pupils (you and Britmaverick) are dim, unruly and uneducatable.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Panda

^^ Invade somebody? :rolleyes:

---

Brilliant!

I'mAdinnerJacket better watch out! (Or pray for rapid US economic recovery;))