> PS Gloom? What gloom? We're celebrating, aren't we?
Yeeehaaawww! This particular radical mammal celebrated with a late afternoon Guinness, then hit a coffee shop where a friend of mine told me that last Friday he decided to get his mutual fund out of equities and into the safe haven of a money market (this was after a long conversation, in which I told him that, any way you sliced it, Wall Street was a bubble heading for perdition). Marxism, the ultimate hedge fund strategy! Then it was off to a union meeting (we know the system is liquidating itself, but it doesn't hurt to hurry up the process). And here I thought things would stabilize till October, before the final meltdown set in. But History had other ideas. Well, after all, Asia is exploring the depths of the Marianas Trench, Russia is joining them presently, the US and UK are entering recessions, and only Europe, thanks to the Bundesbank's 3% interest rates and EU subsidies, is making even the slightest attempt (and it's a feeble one at that) to buck the neoliberal tide.
All aboard for the bubble bust of the century -- followed by a global bailout which is going to make the 1992-96 Japanese bailout look like chump change. 3% Fed funds, anyone?
-- Dennis