Y2HH

Anyway, I think it's something worthy of thinking about in an "outside the box" manner. Most people tend to think a new depression would be rather civil, and I don't. I predict we'd have states secede from the union, a breakup of the US government, massive riots, civil unrest, etc... Basically the worst parts of the bible.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 5, 2011 -> 09:56 AM) I saved extra space in our bomb shelter for you. We have a 5 year supply of food and ammunition.

QUOTE (jenksfart @ Aug 5, 2011 -> 09:51 AM) I suppose what your definition of "depression" would matter. I agree with you if you define it as DOOMSDAY ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. If the US goes into a depression, it would sink the world on a scale we can't even begin to imagine. People think it would be like the last time, and I just don't see that. If this is a house of cards -- which people love calling it -- the US is the foundation to that entire house, and every other country in the world are the cards stacked on top. It'd be BAD. Worse than a lot of people want to imagine.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 5, 2011 -> 09:23 AM) I'm not quite certain where that prediction comes from? To begin, this is just a prediction, and this is my thought process behind it. I shouldn't use the word "quickly" as I did, because it would take a while, but people eventually catch on to the obvious. In the previous depression, which was local to the US, the dollar was tied directly to gold. Neither of those factors would hold true in a modern depression. If we were to go into another depression, it would make the previous one look tame...as we'd sink the entire world with us, combined with the fact that the dollar is no longer tied to gold. This would undoubtedly cause a short term massive spike in golds worth...but soon after people would recognize it's not easy to get, or carry, or store, or defend. As a matter of fact, most people that "own" gold, don't actually have it...they simply have a certificate saying they do, to which I say good luck collecting that now. There would be massive civil unrest, riots, looting, guns are far easier to own/get in mass quantity, and the government would retract and become largely useless since it already has no money and that scenario would make it even worse considering the sheer size of the US population now, not to mention the rest of the world. When you realize you can't eat gold or silver, it's price will drop precipitously...or you'd be willing to part with it for food in a pretty unfair means. Land, especially farmable land, will become worth something...and so will food, especially preservable food, spices, etc. Gold, as a currency is also very hard to effectively carry around and/or spend in a balanced/fair means. We don't want to see another actual depression...I don't think the modern populace could handle it. People will pretty quickly decide other things are more important than a pretty metal that weighs too much to spend effectively.

QUOTE (jenksfart @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 09:34 PM) Point taken. Buy Gold,Silver,Guns,Ammo,Water and seeds. If the economy goes into a depression, gold and silver will quickly become as worthless as the dollars you bought it with.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 07:44 PM) YES. The 2009 low will look good compared to THE LOW. I think 20-30% lower than the 666 2009 low. I think Timberlake should do a song called "Bernanke in a box." Easy to say, but you don't actually mean it.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 04:57 PM) What do you all think of what happened on Wall Street today? Reading the yahoo article it says most are convinced we are in for another recession. Wow. If businesses are going to be laying off tons of people again, will the economy ever recover? Are we looking at the biggest depressionary period in u.s. history?? Is it coming soon? Will the economy ever recover? Yes. The question is when, and how far down the road is said recovery? And no, right now, we are not in a depression, it's a recession, and at this point a half recovered recession. Is it coming soon? If I knew that for certain, I could make more money than I need for 5 lifetimes by shorting the market on massive margins, unfortunately, I don't know that...so I could also lose everything in the process. The market went down today...so what. As an investor that has more than a decade experience, I've seen this multiple times already. When markets crash, that's when you buy. When markets rise, you reap the benefits of the stupid buying something at 100 that they wanted no part of at 15.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:54 PM) Here's another gem from former Bush Speechwriter David Frum: More discussions over what happened and the problems -- no solutions. We can probably stop reading about what happened, it's been written about 50,000,000,000 times now. It's time for solutions...otherwise we are just rehashing what was already said in this thread 25,000 posts ago, probably by the same people discussing it now.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:34 PM) 25%? Come on man. Even I'm not that nuts. U6 is up around 16% right? Point is, it's a lot higher than the 9% they keep reporting.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:30 PM) We have 9% unemployment, not 100%. Obviously some amount of demand still exists. That 9% figure is also a bunch of garbage. Unemployment is probably closer to depression levels of 25%. They don't consider you unemployed if 1) you aren't actively looking for work, and 2) aren't receiving unemployment benefits.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:27 PM) General Motors became the largest automobile company in the world in 1931 and stayed that way until 2008. You can't really expect me to believe that anecodotes prove that there is adequate demand do you? Fine. Borders Circuit City Hollywood Video The Sharper Image Ritz Camera KB Toys Bennigans Mervyns Gottschalks Steve & Barry's Wickes Furniture A bunch of companies went under, clearly that proves that there is a significant lack of demand based on your standard, right? No, not really. The companies you mentioned went under due to mismanagement and poor to market strategies. And GM is once again posting record profits, so is Ford. And to add to this, those companies you mentioned failed because they refused to move their businesses into the future. They kept them running in a way that the industry was turning away from...they held steady, however, instead of adapting.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:21 PM) Citing a single business that is performing well doesn't mean that there is not a significant lack of demand within the economy. There are a megaton of highly profitable companies I could cite right now. Microsoft. IBM. Apple. Pfizer. Any company in the tobacco industry. Any company in the petrol industry. Conagra. Kraft. I can keep going. All are raking massive profits despite all of this. Demand still exists...somehow. So much of this is smoke and mirrors I don't know what's real and what's not anymore. I do know this...it's not adding up.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:16 PM) The lack of demand is a product of the fact that we have 9% unemployment and policy makers think that's not high enough. They are sitting on that money because if they did invest it, they'd be likely to lose money on the investment because there wouldn't be customers for new products. You can see that throughout the data. Factories are idled, the construction industry is a fraction of where it was a few years ago (not just in housing), companies that actually make or do things have way more capacity than they can use because all their customers lost their jobs. That's why some of us keep pushing stimulus. If people are able to buy things, that brings that capacity to do things back online, and furthermore, if that happens by printing T-Bills, then that makes Treasuries a worse investment. Even if you got rid of rules for wall street through another round of deregulation, that wouldn't change the underlying lack of demand. Tell that to Apple. A consumer driven business that seems to be having no problems with demand.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:11 PM) There's not growth in demand. Thank you for correcting that. See, they've successfully created an atmosphere where while they live lavish lives on our backs, but they have us arguing amongst each other as to how/why it happened. I don't care how it happened, other than for a history lesson and learning from our mistakes, what's done is done. What I care about now is fixing it. They've shown they have little to no interest in fixing it. While I sympathize with both sides, cutting spending (while necessary), this isn't the right time. It's also, on the flip side, not the time to raise taxes. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place, of their own creation, because the way the system is SUPPOSED to work, is counter to how they've worked it for decades. In good times, the government is supposed to draw back, cut spending, and save -- and pay down debts, etc. In bad times, the government is supposed to do the opposite. The problem is, they only do one -- and we all know which it is -- whether times are good or bad. The entire system wasn't designed to work this way...the fact that they've worked it that way for so long, it's become broken beyond the state of being fixable. Sadly, the only way out of this IMO is to tear it down and build it back up...meaning everyone gets to suffer unfairly. What they will do, however, is prop it up for as long as possible, until (IF) it collapses around them. IF that happens, they'll have no choice but to scrap it, and start over. IF they can keep it propped up, good for us.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:10 PM) The fact that they are sitting on record piles of cash is the whole point. They could be doing something with it, but they aren't because of the uncertainty created by this administration. The lack of demand is a product of that uncertainty. I know the federal government is a different creature, but when you are in a situation where you know your job is either tenuous or temporary, you aren't going out and spending lots of money. You also don't spend lots of money when your biggest asset is upside down and isn't going to be going anywhere for a while because the housing system is a needlessly landlocked mess. They're not just sitting on record piles of cash, they're actively MAKING record piles of cash.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:09 PM) I can still remember posting somewhere here in 2008 that if the world is destroyed because of Credit Default Swaps, I'll be pretty annoyed. I think we all would be pretty annoyed, but in all honesty, that's just ONE of many things they've done to bring this down.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 03:05 PM) Businesses are still sitting on record piles of cash. Your argument would only work if they were barely making a profit and had no room to hire additional people or invest in expansion. Instead they're making money hand-over-fist but there's still no demand out there. If there was no demand, they wouldn't be making any money. What you're saying and reality aren't meshing. There is obvious demand, because people are giving them money for what it is they do. I think the time has come for all -- including those of us on this board -- to stop bickering about our relatively minor differences of opinion and to start wondering what it is we will be doing when they bring the system (and the world) down around us.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:56 PM) If only we elected the right people, businesses would just be so confident right now. They'd be expanding like gang-busters to meet demand that doesn't exist. How do you know the demand wouldn't exist if difference choices were made? I'd like to see this fantastical peer into an alternative timeline device you have. Is your name Walter Bishop?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:46 PM) I know your response to uncertainty is to run out, spend your savings, and then open up a few credit cards to max out, but that isn't how it works in the real world, at all. This is an understatement. Unfortunately, it's exactly what the government has done the last 30 years, regardless of who was/is in office, be it D or R.

They're not investing because of economic uncertainty, and the current administration, despite trying, has not done much successfully to restore that faith long term.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:34 PM) Once you accept that premise, then the logic that they're not investing because Obama wasn't nice enough to them becomes the object of ridicule that we keep treating it as. That's not why they're not investing, though. You can keep saying it, but it will never be true.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:50 AM) Lion is running very slooooooowwwwwww for me. And apps seem to freeze up when quit. Not impressed so far but I'm sure a patch will come out eventually. That's not normal...runs perfect for me, no issues at all. I know there are a few bugs, but nothing so major that it should slow down or freeze.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Aug 2, 2011 -> 07:27 PM) This is... not... good. It might sound like it is at first glance, but it translates into all bad for me and you. Intentional cheap labor policy is bad for everyone except the actual corporations themselves (who, without laws specifically stating otherwise, have ZERO obligation to anyone but shareholders, and even employees are only a means to an end). And even profits don't equal jobs, corporations recovered pretty well from the recession and have record profits but why hire anybody if they don't have to? This is one of those bite the hand that feeds you type of deals...it's a catch 22 in the worst way, and what's insane is they don't even see it. If you ship all the labor overseas to save money on salaries, benefits, etc...you bite the hand that feeds you because the very people you've put out of work now have no money, who are/were the very people that pay for your products to begin with. If they can't pay for your products because they have no money, the savings is meaningless. These corporations are so shortsighted at times, I don't understand how or why people allow them to pay these executives what they make.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 06:28 PM) As someone who runs Snow Leopard and went to an Apple Store to demo Lion myself, I didn't think it was all that different. I don't have enough applications to use the goofy launch pad, but that's not a negative. Most of the features can be ignored or turned off so it's not all that different. Some of the touch gestures are cool and potentially a significant upgrade for someone who would use them, but a lot of them already exist. There is a decent amount of customization available with the new options as well. I don't see how someone that uses Snow Leopard would hate Lion. You can make them pretty similar if you know how. I just didn't see enough of a change to pay anything at all for it, even if $30 is a cheap upgrade. The biggest difference, behind the scenes, is that Lion is secure -- not only secure -- but more secure than even Windows 7, and far more secure than Snow Leopard. In addition to full application sandboxing (a sandbox is a subsection of memory/kernel that can only access specific system functions to prevent applications from doing something other than their intended purposes), it also has full implementation of address space randomization, something that didn't exist in Snow Leopard. This randomizes the spaces of memory in which vital system components run, a common and easy exploit hackers usually rely on. For example, if you know the exact area of memory a system function resides in, you can bypass most (if not all) system security merely by pointing to that exact location of memory and execute functions through it...with address space randomization, hackers have no idea where anything resides in memory because it's completely randomized. Lion does this from the kernel level on, across the board. Snow Leopard stored vital system components in ram in the same positions regardless of computer make, model, etc. That alone makes it worth the 30$ upgrade.