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That pretty much sums it up!
That pretty much sums it up!
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I might have preferred \"We're Fucked\" but this will work.
I thought this was a joke, but I guess not..
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Ack...I tried to create a named link and epically failed.
Here's the actual link to the real Sept.27th cover.
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I love the Economist.
If I wasn't paying off credit cards and student loans, I'd totally pay the ~$150/yr to get it every week... instead I have to live off their free stuff online: [www.economist.com]
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@Ein2015: Although it doesn't take the initial hit down any, I ended up getting $35 back, eventually, from buying it from Magazines.com via Microsoft Live Search Cashback (Go to MSLSC to start the process).
The Economist is pretty much impossible to find a deal on, and this is the best I've seen so far. Make an MSLSC account, then you pay normal subscription rate (high-$90s, IIRC), but after 6 months (an MSLSC measure to account for possible returns), you can request the rebate check. Status is tracked online on an account, and the check came rather promptly when I asked for it, so I'm quite happy with the process.
One caveat, though, is that Magazines.com has an auto-renewal feature that you have to opt out of, through a process I still have to find out and undertake.
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@Ein2015:
Also, you can get a free subscription with frequent flier miles. Only 3000 miles for 1 year subscription.
@Ein2015: You can get student gift subscriptions for ~$95. Comes with free stuff, too. If you know anyone / any office that gets it, the promotions are pretty rampant & you should be able to find one.
Then again, if you know anyone / any office that gets it, just take it!
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As I understand it, SO FAR, what we've gone through isn't yet at the level of the 1987 squeeze. I'm not too worried... yet.
And kudos to the Democrats for forcing banks to give loans to people who couldn't afford them!
I say YES to 4 more years of failed Democratic economic policies!
(Before you argue with me...do your homework and watch [www.tinyurl.com] - please.)
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\"kudos to the Democrats for forcing banks to give loans to people who couldn't afford them!\"
I call super ,duper , metaphysical bullshit on this. Real parrots don't know that they are just repeating stuff,you should know better.
You are just taking your talking points from a bunch of right wing kooks that need someone,ANYONE to pin this mess on. For them,the Democrats will do nicely. This is a made on Wall Street fiasco and don't try to pretend that greed and deception are limited to one side of the political spectrum. Not after the Republicans auctioned their support for a bailout for a cool $150 Billion just last Friday. The fact is nobody forced anybody to do anything. The assholes that cooked up these products knew that the whole thing was a house of cards,but like one wrote in an e-mail \"I hope we are rich and retired when it all collapses\".Well, by God,it has collapsed,and there were a lot of fingerprints on this thing,Republican and Democrat.But the biggest share of the blame goes to the people that packaged this financial dynamite and (apparently) shipped it all over the world. Now,perfectly innocent,hard working folks in Berlin, Hew Hampshire and Berlin,Germany will have to suck it up and lower their standard of living so that the rocket scientists at Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns,Washington Mutual and God Knows who else can have lights on their tennis courts and a fucking helicopter landing pad.Whoever wins the election next month will have one hell of a mess to clean up and it looks like they are going to have to do it amidst partisan sniping. If you had two brain cells to rub together,you should be ashamed of yourself.
@MaxSmart32: Look, all of this finger pointing is useless. I think the Dems caused it, some of you agree...some disagree. So what...
The more important thing here is the FACT that the $700 billion bailout is NOT going to fix this. there are more ARM resets on the way - more than there were in the subprime fiasco. The only way to head off a depression (IMHO) is to force the banks to flip all of these ARMs into fixed rate (6-8% depending on credit scores) 30 year mortgages. If they don't do that, having a second wave of foreclosures, due to a weak economy and massive ARM resets, will push our already battered economy into territory that few living people have seen - or want to see.
Check out the charts posted on this site at [consumerist.com] . They pretty much sum up what we are up against.
I have emailed these charts and links to economists that discuss them to news organizations all over and NOBODY will discuss the coming wave of ARM resets or how the bailout does NOTHING to address them. You have to wonder why....
@squishyalt: If the CRA was responsible for all this, don't you think the collapse would've happened sooner than, well, 30 years later?
@drjayphd:
Bingo . The volume of speculative mortgages and other hocus pocus finance really took off after 2001. The CRA is just a (lame) excuse for the failure of both the Democrats AND Republicans to rein in Wall Street.
@squishyalt: I call bull...err, I respectfully ask that you cite a legitimate economist that believes this. Banks made money hand over fist selling subprime loans. The government doesn't exactly have to force companies to do things that are highly profitable.
@squishyalt: Enough of the wing-nut stuff. This is simply the right-wing trying to convince people that somehow the poor caused massive failure of the financial system. Sure they did. Do your home work and watch 60 Minutes from last night online. I can promise you that the $300K plus townhouses down the street that foreclosed were not bought by any body poor. This is in Loudoun County, VA, highest average and mean income in the United States.
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PunditGuy is correct... You show that you have a very thin understanding of how this whole mess came about.
I'd suggest doing your homework. This is not 4chan... many of us are professionals in the fields that are covered here and you only make yourself look foolish by posting things that are incomplete and one-sided and expecting for that to go unchecked.
To be clear, the error here was a lack of judgment on the Bank's parts. They leveraged themselves to death in pursuit of very high profits at unreasonable risk, thus causing a cascade effect when the sub-prime borrowers defaulted.
@Secret Agent Man: Haha... and I also owe you an apology. I didn't notice that you were referencing PunditGuy with a link but actually replying to squishyalt, who hardly deserves a proper explanation after his baseless assertion.
Sorry about that.
@Secret Agent Man: I'm not saying everything PunditGuy wrote is correct by any means, but if you're going to talk about how you're a professional, and speak of calling someone on incorrect statements, shouldn't you actually call them on some of those statements by correcting them instead of simply posing?
It is ridiculous to suggest that our government didn't have a hand in this. Our government is responsible for pushing unaffordable loans in sub-prime areas and for overturning important limitations on banks regarding banking/speculation/investment enacted after the great depression, among other factors. Both of these changes took place under the Clinton administration. The frequently overlooked fact associated with this is that these changes passed the house/senate with such support that they were veto-proof by the time they reached Clinton's desk (not that he would have given the ol' veto to either of them).
@XianZhuXuande: Not to mention that was a Republican headed house and senate to boot that was backing it, and as was a lot of stuff during the Clinton years brought through with bipartisan support we haven't seen in 8 years.
Both sides screwed the pooch, both sides have and both sides will always as long as they feel like butting into financing.
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@XianZhuXuande: Again, just goes to prove that it is ALL of Washington's fault. (The District, not the state. The good people of Washington State had no more to do than the rest of us did!)
@MaxSmart32: No... not all Washington's fault. We've seen the difference between banks that took risks and banks that proceeded conservatively. They had options. And nobody was putting a gun to the many Americans that plunged themselves into a life of debt that they couldn't afford.
I blame the government for a lot, but not all of this.
@OletheaEurystheus: Agreed 100%.
They were veto-proof because both parties loved them.
@XianZhuXuande: Clarification: the blame to be placed on the politicians in DC, and there is some that goes there, goes equally around, left, right, centerist or extremist...
Of course there were a lot of other factors that come into play, nothing is ever black and white. Except a black and white cookie. Oh so delish.
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@squishyalt: Democrats forced banks to use the same criteria for loans everywhere they operate -- so to the extent that Joe Suburb was able to get a Ninja loan, Joe Inner City had to have one too if their credit profiles were similar.
You may not be old enough to remember when banks could legally discriminate, and they did so with impunity. The subprime mess isn't the logical outcome of anti-redlining laws -- the banks could have used common sense when loaning to white people and black people.
By the way, the economic meltdown is related more to the derivatives and securities around the subprime mortgages, not the mortgages themselves. If a bunch of people defaulted on their home loans, and that was all that happened, a few banks may have suffered liquidity issues in areas where the housing market was particularly bad. What the brainiacs on Wall Street managed to do was create assets out of thin air by bundling mortgages and insuring them -- essentially, they gambled that housing prices would continue to rise, and they lost that bet.
But you go ahead and blame us colored folk.
@PunditGuy: I'm simply amazed how people don't understand how the destruction of the dollar is \"worth\" bailing things out.
800 billion was pretty much the current money supply before the bailout. Print another 700 billion and your money is worth half as much. But there's been the bailout you all know, the approval from the fed to print another 600 billion on top of that, and of course the 1 trillion plus given to defense in the same week that the news didn't even cover. When inflation catches up to the inflated money supply (give it about a year) your money will be worth about a quarter of what it is now.
Remember that 250,000 limit raise for the FDIC? Well since you'll need about 400,000 to match the same value your 100,000 can buy now, you actually LOST in that deal.
Maybe it will stop at a quarter of it's value right? You think all the bailouts are done? Not a chance.
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@sirellyn: I would say that anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence understands that the bailout was necessary. They problem most people see is that \"the man\" or institutions are getting the bailout in trickle down economic form while most people seem to believe lately that trickle up would be better.
I for one think that had anywhere near that amount of money been set aside for people who were upside down in their houses, and then the mortgages paid off, we wouldn't be in the situation we are. Credit would be restored and the banks would have the mortgage paid off.
The main problem with my idea though is that it would take so much oversight it would be rediculous. Many people would try to play the system. But, I like thinking the best about people.
@squishyalt: Since when does watching YouTube videos count as homework? Where was YouTube when I was in school?????
@squishyalt: Ahh...yeah...a poorly edited YouTube video, with no real sources cited, clips from infotainment 'news' shows, and things taken out of context. Of course, it is going to be taken as gospel!
If you think any one party had a hand in this over the other, then you seriously need to do some homework. They are ALL at fault.
Is this for real???
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Nice Shop, Ben.
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Any guesses as to what the font is? I've saved this image and want to insert my own message.
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@pschroeter: Its a black background with white font. Erase it, type in OH FUCK! and whatever message you want then all the fonts will be the same regardless of what font they used.
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Priceless!
That's classic!!! Thanks, Ben, for brightening my evening with a nice chuckle. Oh fuck indeed!
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Nicely done. I laughed.
This image just made my day awesome.
Uh, before we all wet our panties, the article says it's a spoof cover.
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Spoof, shmoof. Spot on, as they say in old Blighty.
This seems to have become a come phrase now a days. Every time you have to pay bills, when you look at your stocks account, when you see the foreclosure notice, when you get you car taken away...
Nice cover! Very simple and true feeling...
Obama, Pelosi, and Reid calling the economic shots at least until the midterm elections ...
WE'RE FUCKED! WE'RE FUCKED! WE'RE FUCKED!
@Ssscorpion: For proof you're talking out of your ass (sorry, everyone else got all the good shots in), see squishyalt's ass-reaming above.
@drjayphd: Time will tell the tale, won't it? I'll make it a point to remember your name and rub your nose in it when Obama/Pelosi/Reid try to put out the fire by throwing gasoline (more taxes, more government mandates overruling market forces, etc.) on it.
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@Ssscorpion: Wow. So even bigger deficits and even less regulation & oversight of the financial sector is your solution to this problem?!
Bravo!
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Finally...a summary of the situation that we can all agree upon.
The irony is that it is this magazine that has been selling Reaganomics, Fly Now Pay Later crap, that you can stimulate an economy by spending on yourself. Bottom line, increased consumption and waste in a world of finite resources and poverty does not add up. It is a shame these guys didn't invest all in Liehman.
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Ironically, the only magazine that nobody in the meltdown would ever give up to save money.
As a subscriber, I'm severely disappointed that this isn't the real cover for an upcoming print edition.
@Vilgrom: Same here. I'd keep one and place it next to the black-framed Time magazine of the WTC being attacked that I've saved.
They'd make nice place markers for the alpha and omega of the era of The Permanent Republican Majority.
Dude... your site is great and I can see how this is funny but the use of such expletives keeps some from returning to your site because this can be very offensive. I was going to forward a different article to a group of friends but couldn't because the site had this image on the same page. Again, I love the site and will come back.
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Thank you for the new desktop.
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I love it, though I think in actuality The Economist would not have used all caps, nor an exclamation mark. More \"Oh, fuck.\" rather than \"OH FUCK!\" if you catch my drift.
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![[www.economist.com]](\"http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayCover.cfm?url=/images/20080927/20080927issuecovUS400.jpg\"){kind=link}
HAH!