> Unlike the name-calling Mark Jones, I don't think the crash will be
> followed by a descent into
> depression and all-around economic hell, like what's happening in
> Russia and Asia.
At least you stood up and got counted. You still aren't seeing beyond the end of Main Street, USA, tho. Nothing can insulate the US from Asia etc, because the deflationary meltdowns elsewhere are cause/effect interconnected with the asset bubble.
US prosperity is based on not paying your bills; the leverages which produced the Wall St bubble work as opposite-sign multipliers elsewhere. Those other crises are not going to go away, they are going to deepen, intensify and become sharply politicised. When the US bubble bursts it will do so in the context of an already-raging world deflation. The effects of an Anglo-Saxon meltdown are not exactly incalculable but they are more serious than you think. 1931 led to Hitler. You are absolutely confident, aren't you, that no such unpleasant outcome will follow this crash, even tho the crash of 1999 will be immeasurably more intense, generalised and profound. Of course, if you weren't confident -- if you began to fear the worst -- you would have to change your life, join a political party and do something about it. But this kind of uncomfortable thing is not what we talk about here, is it? ... sorry I shook your tree (there are so many clever people on LBO; I just read another fascinating posting from Rakesh about Darwin and Malthus; Rakesh is quite an activist, too. But we are already beyond the time when we can expend our little grey cells on anything not intimately and directly connected with the overarching, consuming political catastrophe and it will be TOO LATE if you wait until the lights go out in Wall Street. Now is the time to organise.).
Mark