#111114 by Verne Arnold on 11/02 at 3:12 am: “...My question is; what has and will, keep this financial bubble from bursting?  We keep going to the brink and the thing that stops us from going over just starts the process all over again….yes…?”

So far, its been the Yen (mainly) and gold carry trades - but they are unwinding now (borrowing in Yen at a low interest rate and investing elsewhere at a higher rate in another currency) http://www.moneyweek.com/file/9351/what-is-the-carry-trade.html and also http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2007/06/27/croesus-chronicles-yen-oped-cz_rl_0627croesus.html etc etc.

They been propping this house of cards up for some time now with fudging the numbers Enron-style. Not much longer can they pump in billions to prop it all up. Though, one has to wonder, if GAP, for example has child slaves offshore, bypassing environmental regulations, taxes, ect, while the US loses jobs, that might inflate the stock market but not the economic reality of most Americans.

The next year is going to be a wild ride. When gas hits $5 a gallon you can bet there will be civil unrest.

L.A. is a city that was built on cheap oil and gasoline, as it is now 90% of the people who live here are on the edge of financial ruin on any given day.

Whats coming should be obvious to everyone.

It is sort of like the builders in Southern California I read about who now have clearance to build “trophy” houses in the backwoods and not build the exit roads needed. They are building “fireproof” houses on dead-end streets and telling people that, in the case of one of those wildfires that move with the force of a hurricane and are 300 ft tall, all they have to do is stay in their house and wait for the fire fighters.

If you believe their BS and turn into a crispy critter…...Oh! Well!....That land is cleared nicely! Now what are we going to build on it? Oh, right! we wanted to try houses twice as big and expensive! And I bet “if we build it they will come”

WHEN DO YOU THINK WE WILL REACH CRITICAL MASS ON GULLIBILITY?

It would seem that if we had a repeat of ‘29, it would actually be much worse.  This would be the golden opportunity for the neo-fascists, et al, to complete their work in progress.  The closer we get to ‘08 the farther away it looks.  Methinks this whole political frenzy may be much ado about nothing: The nothing being; there may be no election. 
My question is; what has and will, keep this financial bubble from bursting?  We keep going to the brink and the thing that stops us from going over just starts the process all over again….yes?

The hyperflation really sapped the morale of Germans in the Weimar years. During the monetary collapse fathers were acting as procurers, using their wives and daughters as prostitutes. The need for foreign exchange was acute. Landlords were thrown into desperation. The best bargain a German family had was rent if they were under contract. Workers quit working, and stores quit stocking their shelves. Their was a boom in tourism of course. Randy Englishman stalked the cities for food and entertainment. The strange thing was that real estate would not sell, unless it was bought with foreign bank notes. Real estate is the worst thing you can own during a hyperflation. There is zero liquidity, and there are still bills that need paying. If you owned foreign bonds or trust accounts you could make out like a bandit. Some of the beneficiaries were Hamburg merchants who sold export goods down the river. They received foreign money. Unfortunately since a good many of these traders were Jews they would be remembered in the 30’s as profiting from the great inflation, which was mainly the fault of German banking officials who kept printing up notes. Thyssen, a German business man was able to consolidate German industry in this period into cartels and monopolies due to the liquidity that he was favored with by connections and hard assets. He would later become one of Hitler’s biggest political funders.

#111030 by Paracelsus on 11/01 at 6:20 pm: “...I think it is more the fall of 1922 in the Weimar Republic of Germany…”

Paracelsus is right but the implications are that, with the idiot Bush still in charge,  it could all end up like Germany in 1939 instead, uhh. That is, wars and invasions for the greater glory of the Neocon “fatherland”!!!

I think it is more the fall of 1922 in the Weimar Republic of Germany. Germany had just gotten out of the Great War with tons of debt, and reparations payments to boot. The economy was lackluster, and people’s real wages were going down. It seems that the economy was slowing down. So the gov’t decided to help but creating lots of money. My prediction is that our government will do everything to bail out the big finance businesses. On top of that we are in a war that is creating lots of debt. In addition we have trillions of unrepatriated dollars that seek purchases in American assets. There will be a rush dollars coming in to buy buildings, real estate, tollways, farm land, condos, and whatever else. WE don;t make anything so foreigners can’t spend it on anything outside of Boeing airplanes and Cray supercomputers. We will have a hyperflation similar to Argentina’s. Those houses Americans can’t afford to buy will vacation homes Chinese and Arab holders of excess dollars. We have written claim checks against ourselves, so America is going to be a gigantic sheriff’s auction. I see the dollar being worth 1/3 of 1 Euro banknote. So borrow as many dollars as you can accommodate, and buy some American Gold Eagles. In other words short sell American dollars. This will make the collapse of the Soviet ruble look tame.