As per a quote from President Roh, “Lee Myung-bak is repeatedly calling for a revival (of) the economy, (while) the South Korean economy is not dead. Why does he want to revive something that has never died?” Somebody must not own any stocks or have read this.
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I heard that some US official said this may turn out to be the world’s worst economic crisis since the end of WWII. What really is in store for the world economy? I used to think that globalism was a good thing because I bought into the propaganda. Now I think globalism is a terrible mistake of mankind.
It’s looking like it’s going to be a bad day in your hemisphere, all right. I’ll be waking up tomorrow with interest in surveying the damage. 75 basis points, indeed. Like screaming Fire! in a movie theater.
More like “gobble-ism” nowadays. Yeah, the fed here just made an emergency rate cut today too.
My prediction of Americans hunting pigeons in the park to make sandwiches may come true. I’m just not sure what we will be hunting in Korea just yet but I’m sure it will be more healthy and less fattening than what is in the states. :p)
I for one I’m glad that amatuer hour will soon be over in the Blue House.
Now if we can do something about the village idiot in the White House and not f-up by getting another goose egg president?
Regarding the economy….
Our chances of avoiding a recession are as good as the Titanic’s chances of avoiding an ice berg… that being said, we just know too much about macro economics to let recessions get really bad. The problems that plague the global economy, namely rising commodity prices (oil and food), U.S. subprime crisis and the falling dollar are fixable with decisive leadership.
Will we get the decisive leadership we need? The fed REALLY dropped the ball on the subprime crisis. I remember Mad Money Cramer going ape sh*t over the sub prime mess and the fed’s inaction back in October! If the fed had done something then, we wouldn’t be in this mess, but then again, Paulson and Bernanke don’t play golf with the average single home owner so they had several layers of information asymmetry diffusing them from the true extent of the crisis. Kind of like the King and Queen of France never really knew how bad it was with the peasants just before the French Revolution.
Will we get the decisive leadership that we need? I don’t know. W generally gets what he wants from Congress but he’s going to have to get Congress to act faster then they generally act (difficult) and get them to agree to give some money to stimulate spending (probable) BUT get most of them to agree where to put the spending within a three month time frame (improbable). Also, to stem the rise of commodity prices, we need cheaper energy. The U.S. has basically only two short and medium term options: 1) Drill in Alaska’s wildlife reserves and 2) Build more nuclear power plants. Both are gonna be a hailstorm of political debate to implement, but we need to decide and decide soon or we are all going to have to be content with lower expectations for future economic growth.
#3 I just saw on one of “Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations” episodes that pigeons we see today everywhere in the states were actually imported to be used as food. i would still never eat a pigeon just based on psychological issues I have with it. Which begs the question for me at least…do you think pigeons are an endangered species in NK?
The property prices in Seoul have been on the rise ever since Roh took office beyond the reach of middle income families. Many economists have warned of a possible collapse of the real estate bubble. They cried wolf. Now the fear is becoming a reality. Unlike the US where the people who would default on the housing loans are low-income families, Koreans expected to default are middle income families, the core of the Korean economy. The consequences would be devastating to Korea. I expect another financial crisis in Korea which we saw in 1997.
Natto, that’s old news. Japanese at 2ch have been desperately wanting and wishing for another Korean collapse for years.
Heh, 32 days seem like such a long time to wait!
FWIW I have eaten pidgeon before when it was offered as an apetizer at a rather upscale establishment in London. I figured pigs are far more nasty and we eat those, and then I considered all the other wierd shit I eat here and figured “why not?” (dog, live octopus, etc…).
It wasn’t bad. It was very dark, like liver, and somewhat dense but still very chewy. It was also very lean. I’m not sure what to compare the taste to, but turkey came to mind.
If I’m reading WangKon right, I think I half agree. I differentiate between the ’subprime mess’ and the real mess. Within the past year, we’ve worried that: bursting the private equity bubble would burst the Big Bubble; then that bursting the home equity loan bubble would do it; then that bursting the Yen carry trade would do it, then subprime. We could easily have sailed through subprime until something else burst the Big Bubble.
That Bubble (overpricing of stocks, bonds, homes, gold, oil, commodities, everything, exists because America spends too much and saves too little. Go to war, which throws trillions of dollars into the economy. Cut taxes. Keep interest rates low to encourage borrowing, spend spend spend. Issue so many T-bills that there is no way even blind people can delude themselves that the dollar can maintain its value.
Some specifically-targeted program that would help limit the number mortgage defaults would be helpful, on that I’ll agree. Default is bad. But “stimulate spending?” That’s what got us where we are now. Americans don’t need to spend any more; the rest of us do. Americans need to SAVE. I’ll put up some FT snippets.
Stephen Roach (FT):
Willem Buiter:
The Fed has really screwed the pooch. The reason we are in this trouble in the first place is Greenspan’s injections of liquidity over the nonexistent Y2K crisis (anyone remember that stupidity?) and the LTCM boondoggle. Too much money chasing too few productive opportunities is the PROBLEM, not the SOLUTION.
Rob should really move some of these comments to a new post entitled “What the F*ck Happened to the Economy?”
The most excellent Martin Wolf on various “what went wrong” scenarios:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1808.....fd2ac.html
George Soros’ FT piece claiming this may be a terrible recession and that China will come out the winner:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/24f7.....07658.html
Which leads to a brilliant new Foreign Affairs article about the rise of China and how to deal with it and not fuck up the world in the process.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/.....-west.html
IMO this last one should be required reading.
“Why does he want to revive something that has never died?”
Its generally pretty diffcult and otfen a little too late to revive something after its dead. Although reputedly Jesus managed it.
“to come or bring back to a healthy, vigorous, or flourishing condition after a decline”