Wednesday, February 06, 2008

It all comes tumbling down

The lead paragraph in this MarketWatch story delivers a grim message:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is gearing up for the prospect of a large bank failure. So double-check that all your deposits, including interest, are well within FDIC insurance limits...
If you have uninsured deposits at a bank, should you worry? Possibly. Depositors without FDIC coverage lost money in at least two recent failures -- NetBank, Alpharetta, Ga., and Miami Valley Bank, Lakeview, Ohio.
Bookmark bankimplode.com, which tells you which banks are going under.

Meanwhile: Do you know someone who relies on credit derived from the equity in his or her home? Well, that sort of thing will soon come to an end.
Several banks issued statements this week saying they were temporarily suspending withdrawals from open home equity lines out of concern that borrowers could owe more than the house is worth.
The virus spreads:
Another key pillar of the U.S. economy appears to have fallen into recession: the insurers, restaurants, hospitals and the like that make up the massive service sector.
Plenty of websites recommend belt-tightening -- watching movies on DVD, cooking pasta instead of going out to eat. But what if you work in a movie theater or in a restaurant? The economy depends on the average person's ability and willingness to buy unnecessary crap.

Which brings us to Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week:
Recession or no, the fashion-forward shopper is still going to want the latest looks.
Some women will slink toward apocalypse wearing "shimmering lurex and sparkling rhinestones." Lookin' good!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Average personal debt is huge in the US; it's even bigger in the UK, where most of it is taken out against the value of houses, for which prices are at unprecedentedly high levels.

In the UK, the encouragement of debt is wall-to-wall. That's why the government abolished student grants. Meanwhile, adverts promoting debt "rearrangement" and "consolidation" and similar scams are everywhere. It's expensive to be poor! Fall into trouble and all the money-grabbing scum of the earth (funded of course by the banks) will pull out all the stops to "help" you. Finance-capital most definitely has the upper hand.

The ridiculousness of having so much debt based on such high house prices is evident to an even greater extent in Ireland. If Greenspan predicts a fall that could be in double digits in the US, it will be much more catastrophic in Ireland, where such a large proportion of the economy is dependent on construction.

Many people are going to have to get two or three low-paid jobs to keep their homes, or to stay out of jail. And in both the UK and Ireland, immigrant workers in the construction industry (mainly from Poland; also from the Baltic States and elsewhere) are already sleeping five to a room and working 12-hour days...

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Did you know that according to the latest data (2004) the outstanding credit card debt for the median family in the U.S. is. . .

. . .

an astounding. . .

. . .

$0.00

AitchD said...

If the malls don't close up, it's only a mild correction. But they could all close in no time. We could literally grow our way out of the crisis and avoid a catastrophe if we make pot legal, and we can also heat and light our buildings cheap. Canada and Mexico will sign on. We need Canada's coal-tar fuel and Mexico's climate.

Anonymous said...

Joseph, delete that spam comment by Barb Michelson above which leads to mytypingbiz . A google shows it to be malware that's been phishing blogs.