Wednesday, September 17, 2008

On The Precipice

In my recent post "If you ain't scared" I laid out how close we were to a Financial Meltdown.  A couple of times between here and there I thought that it would be bad, but we would avoid Armageddon.  Whoops!  It sure LOOKS like Armageddon.

Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley do not appear to me to be able to survive the defaults on all of the loans on their books.  What was so hard to understand?  When people default on over $1 Trillion in mortgages someone else has to take the hit.  Those "someones" were the banks, bond insurers and brokerages.

This is why you can't have  all your eggs in one basket.  If you have the means, you should own a farm or rentable farmland, precious metals in the form of bullion, cash, energy equities, a small business that produces something for local consumption, etc...

The energy crisis has not even hit the market in force - yet.  What will things look like when that inevitable event comes to pass?  Still believe in miracles?  Where is the capital required to invest in "alternative" energy going to come from now?  The banks? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Get a GRIP!!  And get a bike.

Back soon,

Mentatt (at) yahoo (d0t) com


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just purchased a huffy. Thanks for all your insight into the markets. Good luck with all your ventures.

Bureaucrat said...

You can kiss the "small business" idea goodbye. Deflation wrecks profits. They won't escape.

Anonymous said...

Won't make any difference anyway, when President Palin hires Joel's Army to get the real Armageddon going, it will be "nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide"
There might be plenty of oil left for the next species that evolves.

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

Small family business's will ALWAYS be with us, and have been the backbone of civilization forever, and will be once again.

Capitalism, or self interest of family and clan, will also always be with us, thankfully, no matter how confiscatory the government tax system gets, this is one thing that cannot be confiscated.

Bureaucrat said...

And if most small businesses get their first funding from family and friends ("the clan"), and the clan figures out you can't make any profits in a deflationary economy, how long you think the clan will continue funding such ventures?