A Trifecta!

Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and AIG.

Justin Fox waits for the morrow:

The Day Wall Street Stood Still: [O]n Monday we'll get to see what the failure of an investment bank with $600 billion in assets looks like. And more important, we'll get to see if the obviously deeply flawed American financial system will be able to retain the confidence of the foreign lenders and investors who keep it going. One crucial thing to remember in all of this is that none of the experts on Wall Street have any real idea of what they're dealing with. What has worked for the past quarter century or so has stopped working. And nobody knows what American financial institutions are going to look like going forward. Probably a lot more like the universal banks of Continental Europe. But anybody who says they know for sure is lying...

Comments

[Leila Abu-Saba]

And yet life goes on; we go out to eat, the streets and shops are busy; kids go to school, college campuses buzz, commerce and society continue.

Is this worse than '87 stock market crash? Because we all carried on after that one, too... and the recession around the Gulf War '90, and the dot com bust, and 9/11 (remember how quiet things were for a month or three? and when we traveled to L.A. in November '01 people thanked us in line at the museum for showing up - it was considered remarkable that we went on vacation). And Iraq invasion 2003, when the only people in Central Coast hotels were military reserves called up for training and duty - we went on vacation then, too.

The doom and gloomers on the Peak Oil boards are telling us to stock up on pasta, whole wheat berries, hand tools and water pumps. They seem cracked to me. Gas is down and the libraries are still open.

Very, very curious times we live in.

[christofay]

Leila, clue you in, shops not busy. Shops closing fast.

There has been a false claim on this blog that Paulson Bernanke's moves (shield your eyes from the brilliance, peasants) have so far averted our bankrupt finance system from pancaking down on the real economy.

That's bs phd

The High-Tech Strategist, Sept 4, 2008

Some companies can't get all the funds they need at reasonable rates. Chrysler Financial last month tried to renew $30 billion in short-term debt coming due, but only succeeded in raising a little less than $25 billion. That's probably part of the reason why Chrysler shut off its leasing options last month and likely contributed to the 35% plunge in Chrysler's auto sales in August. Ford's sales were down 27% year-over-year in August, GM's sales fell 20% (despite massive incentives), Toyota's declined 9% and Honda's dropped 7%. It was the tenth straight month of declining auto sales in the U.S. market. GM and Ford both cut second-half production plans yesterday (September 3rd). Last week Toyota cut its 2009 sales forecast by 7% (700,000 vehicles), acknowledging the downturn could last until the end of next year. Toyota had already cut its 2008 forecast in July....

The latest S&P/Case-Shiller home price index report (for June) was released last week, showing a record 16% year-over-year declines....

Target's same-store sales for the quarter ending August 2, fell 0.4% [helped by increased prices for daily necessities], even with the lift from the $100 billion in government stimulus checks issued in the period [borrowing from our children so Presidential Bush doesn't have to face reality]. Target's CFO said: 'The use of credit cards is determining our same-store sales." According to J.P. Moregain Securities Inc., issuance of credit-card asset backed securities in July ($4.4 billion) fell to half the level of a year earlier.

Yes, live goes on. That I agree. To say there is no pain is wrong. It's on the side of the tracks that Tommy Franks 'n Beans grew up on, not on the side Bush grew up on, and probably the side where many of the blog readers here live.

[christofay]

Lots and lots of market action on Sundays lately, as we are a Christianist nation, shouldn't we all have been in church?

[christofay]

Bush Trifecta: stoppable terrorist attack that kills 3,000 people in New York, fortress Pentagon also scratched

losing two small wars, one of which was not necessary and is now the United States' second most costly war

bankrupt finance system after debt fest and greed nation weekend that lasts Fall 2001 through 2006

We are Trifecta now.