Crisis of Credit

[phattonez]

This is an incredibly uneducated statement. Spouting off vast generalizations and truisms doesn't make you sound smart, man. Stick to what you know: easy money was a big contributor in this current situation.

Any honest economist will admit there are multiple theories of recessions and their causes, and will tell you that some are true for certain cases and some apply in others (when the necessary assumptions of the models are present).

Doesn't a boom generally precede a bust? What are the factors that lead to a boom?

And also, according to that, recessions would be almost impossible to predict. But that doesn't make sense since the Great Depression was predictable and our current recession was predictable. The Austrian Business Cycle Theory explains both.

[rock_nog]

Cannot a recession also be caused by say, an energy crisis that results from instability in the middle east?

[firebug]

You're always going to have economic issues when the people 'creating' the money are doing so for profit. Any debt-based economy is doomed to fail. Money is treated as a commodity. It shouldn't be. In reality it's just a means to an end, not a commodity in of itself.

I really like how Abraham Lincoln used the greenback as currency. No business or bank was allowed to print it, only the government. And it wasn't ever given out on loan with interest (which for me is the basic flaw of our monetary system; the fact that the people making the money are allowed to charge interest. Where the fuck does that interest come from if they're the only ones printing currency?). It was simply used to pay for the government budget, which leaked the cash out into the public naturally, as the government at that time had to pay private companies for any work done. Of course there was a bit of inflation, but Lincoln had the ingenious idea of destroying money as it filtered back up if it wasn't needed, thus naturally creating deflation.

I'm not saying it would work now, with the world economy we now harbor. But it's a hell of a lot better of a system than what we do have.

[Pryme8]

so basically a bunch of idiot home owners were irresponsible but were still able to get loans and mortgages that they were not capable of even remotely paying back, which made respectable people not have any chance of getting them.

and stuck everyone else in the line with something that they really cant even do much with.


I mainly blame the mortgage brokers and the US federal reserve and Wall street!

[phattonez]

Cannot a recession also be caused by say, an energy crisis that results from instability in the middle east?

You mean like the oil crisis of the 1970s? It was a part of the stagflation, but I'd be hard pressed to prove that it was the sole cause. I can show how price controls and inflation could do it, especially since price controls caused the oil shortage. Prices should have shot up, but it was restricted, hence the lines.

EDIT: And I just want to clear something up. Theoretically, something like a food shortage could cause a recession, but in today's world, that's not really a problem, at least in our country. The only thing today that I think could cause a recession like that would be some kind of oil embargo. Even then I think it would go by quickly. This recession we have right now is a part of the business cycle and was caused by the terribly low interest rates of years prior.

[Revfan9]

I personally love how Alan Greenspan admitted to finding a "flaw" in his model, that flaw being that people are greedy cheaters who will abuse the system given the chance with no regard for the consequences. Seriously? How the hell did he miss that little whoopsie?

I can't help but mention the tin-foiling Mises argument here: Greenspan, Bush, and the like aren't capitalists, but just like to say they are. And after all, the socialists are having a WONDERFUL time right now pointing and saying "Oh look, the free market failed!", aren't they? Just saying.

[Manwich]

of course if you are lazy and just taking free money, you are going to blame the free market when you go broke. most of these unemployed people didn't really do any hard work except when the boss was looking. you can't just take a loan, buy a nice home and a nice truck and think everything's going to be peachy. gotta earn it by the sweat of your brow