double dip bitches.

Wall Street Baffled by Slowing Economy, Low Yields: Trader

I had to type the address to get it to work.

Yastrow said. "We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.
YIKES.....I knew we were in a depression.....guess it could be upgraded to "great great depression"....Thats not the news I wanted to hear today.

cf., liquidity trap.

focusing our country's debate and efforts on reducing the debt and cutting spending is the absolute worst thing to be doing right now.

once the economy has stabilized and starts growing, go for it, but not now. effin' republicans are tanking us by letting the tea party ideals frame the debate.

Agreed, the logic behind "let's cut everything, but keep the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy (at $80bill for 2 years) and the 2 wars ($20bill per month)" is just insane.  

Sad thing is, if the economy does go into a true double dip (I don't think it'll go that far, nor do many others it seems, besides the extreme bears), then the R's will have a much better chance of getting in office.

"...then the R's will have a much better chance of getting in office."

Sure, that's one view. Here's mine: The Repubs ran the Titanic into the iceberg during the Bush years ... then handed the wheel over to Obama ... and then, from the safety of their lifeboats, they have taken every possible opportunity to criticize, and undermine, his efforts to keep the badly damaged ship afloat.

From my chair, this remains a problem of Bush / Cheyney's making. No matter how hard the Repubs try to point the finger at somebody else, I think the voting public will remember who caused these problems, and who resisted reasonable efforts to fix these problems, when election time rolls around again.

But hey, that's just my opinion.

From today's New York Times, regarding the Repub's ridiculously dangerous brinksmanship concerning the national debt ceiling:

"Worriers from Washington to Wall Street increasingly recall how, amid the financial crisis of September 2008, House Republicans voted by a two-to-one ratio against the proposed Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as the bank bailout. Cable networks split screens, showing stock markets going down simultaneously with the House vote; the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 777 points, its largest single-day point drop."

distant,

dead on. Rs gamesmanship is causing most of the problems, even if they're no longer at the helm. only solution is to vote the tossers out (and hopefully replace them with smarter folks, or at least better Rs)

and by better Rs, i don't mean dingbat conspiracy theorists, racists and bathtub drowning lunatics.

You guys do know the top contributors from Wall Street firms sent their money to the Democrats right?  Face it, your just convenient liberal vote plantation for the harvest.  Get some balls, get out of your Femobile, shake off your white guilt, and go get some of these motherfuckers.

 According to the Center for Responsive Politics Web site OpenSecrets.org, out the top 25 political contributors for the 2008 election cycle, nine were Wall Street banking or investment firms, including the now defunct firm Lehman Brothers. Employees at eight of those nine firms gave more money to Democratic candidates – nearly $17 million to Democratic candidates versus only $11 million to their Republican counterparts. That’s 60 percent for Democrats to only 40 percent for Republicans. 

 Four of the top six overall donors are Wall Street financial firms participating in part of the recently passed $850 billion bailout – Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Citigroup (NYSE:C), JP Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). Employees of those firms gave $10.4 million to Democrats and $6 million to Republicans or 63 percent Democrat. Employees of bank Goldman Sachs alone gave $3.6 million to Democrats and $1.3 million to Republicans, a nearly 3-to-1 ratio.

interesting...my dad has been telling me since '08 that when the great depression started, it took 3-4 years to really hit bottom, and then they bounced along the bottom for a while --- not saying that is going to happen, but the thing that bothers me about our situation is that even now, three and a half years after the crash, the underlying causes of many of the issues have not been addressed.  so if we do slip back into a deeper recession, i don't know why anyone would expect us to bounce out of it anytime soon --- already the changes are deep, structural and not positive for most professions --- if we fall deeper into recession or depression, it may get very ugly

right trendzetter..cause all of these problems were created and started while the dems were in power...as opposed to the 8 years before that.

in hindsight, fdr regretted not spending more in the new deal in order to kick-start the economy, it took a world war to address that.

we're in precisely the same situation right now - the stimulus package was too timid to have done anything except keep us flat-lining.

@trendzetter - no idea how your comment addresses the current debate in the capitol....

larson, Republicans while being terribly slanted towards business, tend to side with manufacturing interests, lowering pollution standards, lowering business taxes, etc.  Wall Street is different animal in that it's primary food source is public sector union pension funds.  Wall Street is not the economy, it is a casino of horrors at odds with free market capitalism and industry.  While both parties have tremendous blood on their hands, I think we need to look at the repeal of Glass-Stegal and the .com frenzy to find the real source of this depression. 

jeffe -no new spending.  The crash will come, all we are doing is delaying the inevitable correction.  If TARP hadnt passed, as it shouldn't have since the will of the people was firmly against it, the big banks would have been destroyed.  Economic hell would have reigned for a few months.  Then when it was clear who was capitalized and sound, the economy would have roared back and we would be growing again, just like a classic panic should play out.  But they didnt let that happen.

burn, baby burn

TZ - "Economic hell would have reigned for a few months. "  Really?  You really think that BofA and AIG could fail, and it'd only take a few months to "recover"?  Now where would I be sending my mortgage payment into?  Certainly not one of the billions of local banks that did fail and closed.

I do agree that the mess goes around.  It isn't completely one sided, but Bush's policies and wars did push things past a point of reason (including the size of the gov.'t, overall spending, etc.).

So what you say about them tax cuts for the wealthy?  Or those wars?  Reagan's "trickle down theory" is proven not to work over and over (just look at corporate profits, CEO compensation, etc.).

distant - I hope you are correct, but look at Ron Paul's soaring popularity (I have to admit liking many of his ideas, but some are just too extreme).  Many people think that a 'change' would be a good thing, anything different.  I can't say I've been too happy with Obama, to be honest (still gots wars, no focus/discussion on jobs, no follow throw with any housing solutions).

I pray this is all just a bump and we don't fall off that cliff.  If we do, architecture will be the last thing we have to worry about.

i'm ambivalent about TARP. the cash was needed but not enough conditions were applied to it.

but TARP was only a part of the stimulus...

TARP has largely been paid off. Much larger bailout actually happened in late 1980's. Took a number of years for things to stabilize (it cost Bush Sr. his presidency) but then we had almost a decade of relative stability. One can only hope for the same this time around.

I fully agree with el jeffy. Not enough conditions were placed in the bailout, and we are bound to make the same mistakes again in no time. Speculators are at it again, and actual value has taken a back seat to perceived one. If wall street says we are doomed, then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

ah yes... TARP. we can harp all we want about it, there would be no recovering from total institutional failure, despite what paul, rand and the like think.

TARP (final cost expected to be below $25B picked up by taxpayers) was peanuts compared to the S&L scandal ($124B picked up by taxpayers)

Politicizing this as a he-said-she-said argument overlooks who the important stakeholders are here— the federal government doesn't dictate the shape and size of every city in the United States. And the states themselves often exert little influence in these matters.

This really comes down to local governments who dictate what can be bought and sold in a municipality, how one can use it, where they can use and what can or can't be done within that area.

There's close to 40,000 incorporated towns and cities in 3,100 counties in the U.S.. They're principally the ones that approve how many houses get built, where they get built, how they get built and who can build them. These are also the same entities that say whether or not you can eat on sidewalks, how late you can purchase alcohol, how you cut your grass, where you park your car and decides how and where your dog poops.

These 40,000 cities and 3,100 counties are more important to business, how the economy functions, the price of housing and what your standard of living is than the federal government can ever be.

But the credit, lending practices, interest rates, etc. - all the factors that led to the demise was national (even international), not really localized/isolated (with the exception of some local banks that had the balls not to follow the herd with their lending practices).

Yes but it's local planning boards and permitting offices that give the documents the stamp that allow people to get financed in the first place. It's a great revenue booster to collect a whole pile of impact fees, permitting fees and look at the potential revenue stream that a smattering of over-priced homes will bring. But someone should have realized or tried to investigate the practicality of it.

My argument is that the banks came up with a clever loophole to finance a giant restructuring of America— a bank by itself, nor can a collection of real estate agents or developers, cannot build or develop land on its own terms. There's at least three different approval processes (planning, permitting, Army Corps of Engineers) that could have struck any of these projects down.

When you do the equivalent of building entire cities out of nothing, you should stop and think whether or not these cities can or will actually do anything to be productive.

And it doesn't take a genius in planning to realize that most of what was built in the last 10 years is relatively unproductive.

TARP has largely been paid off.

Sure, sure, sure  I could probably wipe out my bills in no time too if instead of paying taxes I was given a pile of cash by uncle sam

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11059978/1/bank-of-america-pays-no-taxes-gets-1b-refund-report.html