Stories tagged with "crash"

An interview with Stoneleigh - the case for deflation

Posted by Euan Mearns on October 31, 2009 - 10:57am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: crash, deflation, depression, economics, stock market, stoneleigh [list all tags]

At the ASPO conference in Denver, October 2009, I had the good fortune to meet Stoneleigh, former editor of The Oil Drum Canada, who left the The Oil Drum crew with colleague Ilargi to set up The Automatic Earth where they publish stories, news and analysis of the unfolding financial crisis. I spent a couple of days chatting with Stoneleigh where she recounted her rather gloomy prospects for the immediate future of the global economy. The following interview is a summary of her analysis of the unfolding situation. Note that in a departure from convention, my questions are set in "blockquotes" to distinguish these from Stoneleigh's responses.

Stoneleigh, the world economy seems to be suffering from two great structural woes at present, namely stubbornly high energy prices that are linked to demand that is persistently ahead of the supply curve, and a level of debt that has destabilized the global finance and banking systems. Can you explain for us the scale and structure of this debt and to what extent write-downs and quantitative easing (QE) have solved this problem?

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So they all knew it was a bubble, now?

Posted by Jerome a Paris on August 18, 2007 - 1:45pm
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: bubble, crash, finance, ideology, original [list all tags]

(Note: this was written Thursday for European Tribune. There's a lot of additional info in the original thread, including insider info from several French bankers. I also posted an add-on on the (partisan) political lessons emphasising the last part of this text this morning on DailyKos, where the recent Fed decision is also discussed.)

As the markets keep on going through turbulence, and many conflicting opinions are heard as to whether this is just a harbinger of things to come (my position) or just a "welcome correction" (still that of most "serious" pundits and the conventional wisdom), what's most striking to me - and very revealing on its own - is how suddenly everybody is talking about the real estate bubble as it if were the most obvious thing.

The very people that, in many instances, denied that there was any kind of bubble, or that house prices were a problem in any way, and denied that market valuations of certain assets were completely unreasonable, are now saying, in hindsight, that it was indeed a bubble and, while they are still saying that nothing much will really happen fro mthe end of the bubble (other than silly people getting punished), they are already hard at work trying to pin the blame elsewhere.

"A cheerleader, moi?", they ask, outraged.

But their new attitude ensures, right now, that the crisis WILL spread. Let me tell you why.

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