The GREATEST HIJACK IN DC.COM HISTORY !!!!! inflation explained in pictures:

[Brock Samson]

"If you think that the current economic crisis is something that has never happened in history before, you may be wrong! After the collapse of the agriculture sector in Zimbabwe in 2000, the inflation in that country skyrocketed to 231 million percent a year! Just think about it - 231 000 000%! Unemployment went up to 80% and a third of country's population left it."




http://humorland.wordmess.net/20081025/what-the-real-crisis-is-like/

  and..

http://superjoe.wordmess.net/20081013/credit-crunch/



thanks to wordmess.net 

[RD]

correct me if i am wrong (you mathematicians), but if you converted that number $10 trillion into seconds, it would equate to:

169,165,680,734.86 minutes (169billion minutes rounded)

=

2,819,428,012.25 hours (3 billion hours rounded)

=

117,476,167.17 days (117 million days)

=

321,852.5 years

now, go back that many years in the past and you would have seen this on earth (as well as neanderthals, etc.) middle pleistocene epoch.

[Finn]

Haa my geography class was just discussing pleistocene epoch...

[RallyeMike]

I thought they taught that the earth was created 21,000 (+/-) years ago in Kansas?!

[Khyron]

Earth is 5 Billion years old.... give or take a decade...


light those candles and blow

Haa my geography class was just discussing pleistocene epoch...

ewwwww, is the a cure for that? Sounds nasty

[Brock Samson]

http://www.feedthepig.org/

[craigandlynda]

pleistocene epoch..isn't that a rock band?

[SeattleCharger]

 

[RD]

I thought they taught that the earth was created 21,000 (+/-) years ago in Kansas?!

lol... no its 8,000 years ago.  me, i am not one of the creationist 8,000 year old believers.  without turning this into a religious thread (i said the word).. i think the vanity of man has put restraints on the understanding of life on this planet.  and i will leave it at that.

[SeattleCharger]

I thought they taught that the earth was created 21,000 (+/-) years ago in Kansas?!

lol... no its 8,000 years ago.  me, i am not one of the creationist 8,000 year old believers.  without turning this into a religious thread (i said the word).. i think the vanity of man has put restraints on the understanding of life on this planet.  and i will leave it at that.

vanity?  aren't there six more? 

[RD]

I thought they taught that the earth was created 21,000 (+/-) years ago in Kansas?!

lol... no its 8,000 years ago.  me, i am not one of the creationist 8,000 year old believers.  without turning this into a religious thread (i said the word).. i think the vanity of man has put restraints on the understanding of life on this planet.  and i will leave it at that.

vanity?  aren't there six more? 

LOL.. let's not venture any further so as to not get this locked shall we? hehehhee

[Mike DC]

I wonder how many 8000-year literalists realize that the early parts of Genesis itself are basically a cliff's notes version of a much older creation story.  The older story didn't have the radically compressed timeframe. 

 

[SeattleCharger]

Re: inflation explained in pictures:
« Reply #11 on:   Quote  from Mike DC (formerly miked)    Yesterday at 06:36:23 PM »

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wonder how many 8000-year literalists realize that the early parts of Genesis itself are basically a cliff's notes version of a much older creation story.  The older story didn't have the radically compressed timeframe. 
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hey, isn't there a joke where a guy asks god how much a day is to him, and he says a million years, something like this, and the man asks about other numbers or something, that one to god, is like hundreds of millions or billions to humans,  so the guy says, "Well then, can I have a penny?"  and god says, "Sure, just a second." 


                  (does anyone know how to delete a reply you make on a thread?  I wanted to delete my reply and then quote Mike DC, )

[Silver R/T]

Earth is 5 Billion years old.... give or take a decade...


light those candles and blow

Haa my geography class was just discussing pleistocene epoch...

ewwwww, is the a cure for that? Sounds nasty

whatever anyone wants to believe

[PocketThunder]

I thought they taught that the earth was created 21,000 (+/-) years ago in Kansas?!

lol... no its 8,000 years ago.  me, i am not one of the creationist 8,000 year old believers.  without turning this into a religious thread (i said the word).. i think the vanity of man has put restraints on the understanding of life on this planet.  and i will leave it at that.

vanity?  aren't there six more? 

six what?

[SeattleCharger]

I thought they taught that the earth was created 21,000 (+/-) years ago in Kansas?!

lol... no its 8,000 years ago.  me, i am not one of the creationist 8,000 year old believers.  without turning this into a religious thread (i said the word).. i think the vanity of man has put restraints on the understanding of life on this planet.  and i will leave it at that.

vanity?  aren't there six more? 

six what?

                         

[69_500]

I wonder how many 8000-year literalists realize that the early parts of Genesis itself are basically a cliff's notes version of a much older creation story.  The older story didn't have the radically compressed timeframe. 

 

And the compounded story would be from where?

[Brock Samson]

                   http://abcnews.go.com/Business/FunMoney/story?id=2723990

 It was reported today that Wall Street's famed investment bank Goldman Sachs will be shelling out over $16 billion in bonuses this holiday season -- an average of over $600,000 per employee.

With a $100 million bonus, you could buy a Rolls Royce for every day of the week and still have more than $97 million left over.
(ABC NEWS)Many of those bonuses will be performance-based, so some of the company's bigwigs are likely to get as much as $100 million.

With all that cash coming in, it's easy to wonder what someone might buy with a $100 million holiday bonus.

You could provide immunizations for more than 40,000 impoverished children for a year ($37.5 million), then throw a birthday party for your daughter and one million of her closest friends ($60 million). You'd still have enough to buy a different color Rolls Royce for each day of the week ($2.5 million).

You could feed about 800,000 children for a year ($60 million), recreate the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes and Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston weddings four times over ($16 million), buy one of Mel Gibson's private islands ($15 million), and still remain a millionaire nine times over.

You could pay Harvard tuition for more than 1,500 students who couldn't afford it ($70.5 million), provide health care to over 1,000 Americans for a year ($7 million), and still have enough to buy a different Brioni designer suit for every single day of the year ($6,000 suits for all 365 days would cost $22 million).

You could take everyone in the country of Grenada to a Broadway show, then buy the most expensive apartment in New York City (a triplex penthouse at the Pierre Hotel, $70 million), and still have an extra $15 million dollars in your pocket -- over 300 times the median income of the average American household.


You could buy every person in Kansas City a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes (147,000 pairs of $400 shoes comes out to about $60 million) and still have $40 million dollars left -- that's more than 500 times the average doctor's salary in the United States (about $80,000).

You could buy 1,000 gala tables at your favorite charity's ball ($10 million), provide winter blankets for 350,000 children in developing countries ($14 million), personally pay Derek Jeter's salary for a year ($21 million), and still buy your own private Boeing jet ($55 million).

You still could not pay to insure Jennifer Lopez's backside though -- rumored to be worth a cool $1 billion, according to the New York Post.



 

[Brock Samson]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26837854/

 Impact of Wall Street bailout becoming clearer
Q&A: What this means for your job, your mortgage and your taxes
By John W. Schoen
Senior producer
Why is this happening?
The system of financing homeownership has run off the rails after lenders — and the investors who put up the money — made what has turned out to be a trillion-dollar mistake.

There were a number of actors: borrowers who reached too far, mortgage brokers who pocketed big commissions on loans they knew were bad and Wall Street banks that packaged those bad loans, applied a little alchemy and sold them to investors, who didn't bother to check carefully what they were buying and relied on rating agencies who gave their unfounded blessing on the investments.

trouble?
When they bought investments backed by shaky loans, these financial giants compounded the problem by relying on too much borrowed money themselves. Just like the "no money down" home buyers, these institutions didn't have enough cash to withstand the drop in mortgage-related investments when the housing market started to slump.

 Send us your questions

Senior producer John W. Schoen is answering questions about the financial crisis and how it affects you. Click here to ask your question.

What is the government doing about it?
Starting last summer, the Federal Reserve agreed to lend money to big banks and brokerages that were short on cash — just as a homeowner falling behind a mortgage might turn to a rich uncle. But the loans weren't enough.

In March, Bear Stearns became the first firm to run out of options, so the Fed stepped in with a $30 billion loan, which helped it find a buyer in JP Morgan.

But in just the past few weeks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Bros., Merrill Lynch and insurance giant AIG all faced a cash squeeze. Even though the Fed had $880 billion on hand when the calls started coming, it soon realized it didn't have enough money for the bailout. So the Fed went to their richer uncle — Uncle Sam — to borrow more money from the Treasury. It then became clear that it would be more effective to have the Treasury act directly as Wall Street's rich uncle.

What happened to all the money these lenders lost? Where did it go?
In many ways, it never existed. As lenders kept pushing mortgages to people further down the income ladder, they added buying power — based on credit, not real income — pushed up home prices much faster than incomes. Mortgage brokers pressured appraisers to inflate home values. Those higher values forced new home buyers to stretch further to buy a home; lenders were happy to sell credit to shaky borrowers.

The scheme was based on the belief that rising home prices would let stretched home buyers cash out their new equity and refinance into a new loan before low "teaser rates" reset, trapping them into loans they couldn't afford. When home prices started falling two years ago, adjustable mortgages reset to their true cost, and homeowners began defaulting and losing their homes to foreclosure. Those homes are being dumped on the market at fire-sale prices, pushing home prices even lower.

Why isn't more being done to help homeowners?
That's a key question being asked this week by congressional Democrats, and it's a major sticking point in the current debate over the details of the bailout. The debate has gone on for the last year, and both sides are pretty well dug in.

Opponents of aggressive measures to "bail out" homeowners argue that this would reward bad behavior — or at least bad financial decisions. Homeowners who reached too far, this thinking goes, should suffer the consequences.

Proponents of more aggressive assistance, including a change in bankruptcy law to let judges negotiate more affordable terms, argue that if the government is now bailing out lenders who made bad investments, it's not fair to leave homeowners hanging. So far, voluntary efforts to rework mortgage terms haven't gotten very far.
Timeline: How the crisis has unfolded

Isn't this all the fault of irresponsible borrowers? What part of 'adjustable' didn't they get?
Some borrowers — especially "flippers" looking for a quick buck — took on too much risk. So did people who borrowed more than they could afford and are now losing their homes.

But these people hardly got off easy: Real estate investors were wiped out and risky borrowers are losing their homes. Many homeowners now in trouble were perfectly responsible borrowers who got burned by the severe downdraft in homes prices and now have mortgages bigger than their homes are worth.

There's another practical reason for rewriting mortgages that people can't afford: Until the pace of foreclosures slows, the pressure on home prices will continue.

Since the value of all this bad paper the Treasury is trying to clean out of the financial system ultimately depends on the value of the underlying homes, the value of mortgage-related investments will keep falling until home prices stop falling.

Is there really $700 billion in bad mortgage-related investments?
No one knows. For one thing, these investments were not regulated: None of the Wall Street banks that issued them, nor the investors who bought them, have to report their holdings. More than $2 trillion in residential mortgages were issued annually at the height of the boom earlier this decade.

It's also impossible to put a value on whatever investments are out there because there's no open exchange for them to trade on. Even if there were, each bundle of mortgages is different, so it's hard to compare apples to apples.

What's all this going to cost?
No one knows that one either. A lot depends on what kind of deal the government strikes when it buys up these bad investments. If, for example, the Treasury buys them for 60 cents on the dollar, and they end up losing more value, the Treasury eats that loss.

If the Treasury drives a hard bargain and buys them for 30 cents on the dollar (on your behalf — it's your money that's paying for all this) we all could end up making money later after the housing market recovers. But if the Treasury drives too hard a bargain, it will put more stress on a financial system that is already on the edge.
 
Is this going to raise my taxes?
Most likely. You won't get a bill from the Treasury for your share of the bailout. In theory, the Treasury could just borrow more money to cover what it needs — just like it's borrowing another $400 billion-plus annually to provide you with services without collecting enough in taxes to pay for them.

This latest giant government expense will make it much harder to justify extending massive Bush administration tax cuts that are due to expire next year. Doing so would push the annual budget deficit well over $1 trillion. Even for the free-spending U.S. government, that's a little too much for the world to bear.

It's the rest of the world, after all, that's lending us the money. If the U.S. government begins to look like a subprime borrower, living well beyond its means, the global investors and governments who lend us money will do what any subprime lender would do: Charge us more money. The resulting jump in interest rates would add yet another burden to our economy.

What happens if this doesn't work? Why is the worst scenario so dire?
While you may get a regular weekly paycheck to pay your bills, most businesses see a very uneven stream of money coming in the door. Sometimes it varies widely. Big orders come in at the end of the month, the new spring fashion line launches once a year and stores stock shelves for the holiday well in advance.

To smooth these ups and downs, companies rely on credit, both short- and long-term. On any given day, trillions of dollars of this debt has to be "rolled over" by borrowing fresh cash to pay off older loans.

The problem now is that fears over losses in mortgage-backed credit have spread to the entire credit market and lending system. If banks, lenders and investors who buy this debt get too spooked, the lending machine grinds to a halt. Business can't function. Bills don't get paid. Payrolls are frozen. Workers get laid off.

If your business fails, your lender is out the money you borrowed. That leaves less money to lend to someone else. As more business fail, and the lending dominoes fall, the economy slides into a deeper recession.

[RallyeMike]

DAMN ! We were almost to Cuba. 

[AKcharger]

I think this picture sums up the whole mess

[Brock Samson]

 then you want my other thread..

[Khyron]

Earth is 5 Billion years old.... give or take a decade...


light those candles and blow

Haa my geography class was just discussing pleistocene epoch...

ewwwww, is the a cure for that? Sounds nasty

whatever anyone wants to believe

Carbon Dating is a wonderful thing.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

"The oldest rocks which have been found so far (on the Earth) date to about 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago (by several radiometric dating methods). Some of these rocks are sedimentary, and include minerals which are themselves as old as 4.1 to 4.2 billion years. Rocks of this age are relatively rare, however rocks that are at least 3.5 billion years in age have been found on North America, Greenland, Australia, Africa, and Asia."


also a great read.
http://www.geocities.com/questioningpage/Evolve1.html

[PocketThunder]

also a great read.
http://www.geocities.com/questioningpage/Evolve1.html

Yes that was a good read..       Also the next article about the speed of light was a good read also.

[hemigeno]

Earth is 5 Billion years old.... give or take a decade...


light those candles and blow

Haa my geography class was just discussing pleistocene epoch...

ewwwww, is the a cure for that? Sounds nasty

whatever anyone wants to believe

Carbon Dating is a wonderful thing.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

"The oldest rocks which have been found so far (on the Earth) date to about 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago (by several radiometric dating methods). Some of these rocks are sedimentary, and include minerals which are themselves as old as 4.1 to 4.2 billion years. Rocks of this age are relatively rare, however rocks that are at least 3.5 billion years in age have been found on North America, Greenland, Australia, Africa, and Asia."


also a great read.
http://www.geocities.com/questioningpage/Evolve1.html

Everything about carbon dating is not as cut and dried as some would have you to believe.  Google "carbon dating flaws" and look at it from both a logical and scientific perspective.  Here's just one quick summary article:

http://www.essortment.com/hobbies/carbondatingac_szhq.htm


OK Strat, that's the end of my contribution to the greatest hijack in DC.com history...   

BTW, my Dad (he sits on the Board of Directors of a local Bank) has been saying for over a decade that the credit disaster we're now in was coming.  When the whole Mortgage Broker industry mushroomed, so also did a class of loans that the Banking Industry called "Liar's Loans."  Want the money for that dream home, boat or condo at the lake?  Just tell the Broker that you earn whatever you think they want to hear...      

[Khyron]

Everything about carbon dating is not as cut and dried as some would have you to believe.  Google "carbon dating flaws" and look at it from both a logical and scientific perspective.  Here's just one quick summary article:

http://www.essortment.com/hobbies/carbondatingac_szhq.htm

hmm, interesting about different conditions affecting results. Makes sense, but I still stand behind more the 6,000 years I like the article about light from other stars. I'll use that in my next creation discussion.

[MOPARHOUND!]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26837854/

 Impact of Wall Street bailout becoming clearer
Q&A: What this means for your job, your mortgage and your taxes
By John W. Schoen
Senior producer
Why is this happening?
The system of financing homeownership has run off the rails after lenders — and the investors who put up the money — made what has turned out to be a trillion-dollar mistake.

There were a number of actors: borrowers who reached too far, mortgage brokers who pocketed big commissions on loans they knew were bad and Wall Street banks that packaged those bad loans, applied a little alchemy and sold them to investors, who didn't bother to check carefully what they were buying and relied on rating agencies who gave their unfounded blessing on the investments.

Mr. Schoen conveniently left an actor or two out, remember as you read, this was prophecy written in 1999, started as a "pilot program", (also remember Freddie and Fannie are in the business of buying loans made by banks):

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Contrast with this New York Times article from 2003:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63

And now it's 2008, and we are living with the consequences.

[bordin34]

We all know the world was created by a giant flying spaghetti monster
http://www.venganza.org/

[PocketThunder]

We all know the world was created by a giant flying spaghetti monster
http://www.venganza.org/

That was funny.  And its pretty hard not to go to Madison,WI and party your brains out.