What happened in the housing market was a portent for the rest of the phony, Ponzi scheme economy. Everything was pumped up and kept alive solely due to the flow of easy credit, while at the same time real wages and savings were going backwards. Everyone was betting the farm that the game would never end. But once the easy credit/musical chairs game stopped, we smashed into a wall. Thus, as with housing, there is no magical fix that will restore economic "growth". The greedy anti-union types who are hoping for a collapse of Detroit are going to be devastated right along with everyone else.

The grim economic reaper will play no favorites.

Toyota to cut output, Nissan downbeat

Reeling from a relentless sales slide, Toyota Motor Corp said on Wednesday it would stop all of its North American factories for two days next month, while rival Nissan Motor Co renewed its pessimism over the industry's near-term prospects.

Tight credit and worries over the spread of recession around the world have battered car sales in all major markets, forcing automakers to cut production to prevent inventories from ballooning further.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081119/bs_nm/us_autos_2

A Sea of Unwanted Imports

Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/business/economy/19ports.html

re: it's going to be ugly, and then its going to be weird ugly

What really worries me is that as bad as things will get here in the U.S., other countries -- including a few with nukes -- are going to be hurting a lot worse. A starving, restless population + nuclear weapons is a bad combination.

Also, Mother Nature is blind to the economic crisis. Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, climate change, etc., will only add to the woes. Imagine a Katrina-like event in the middle of an economic depression.

The only prudent posture is to prepare for disruptions in normal supply chains and a possible lack of access to liquid funds.

The only certainty as we move forward is your long-standing prediciton of "weird ugly".

re: A gooberment based on telling bidness what it must do like giving mortgages to families with no credit history

They Warned Us About the Mortgage Crisis

State whistleblowers tried to curtail greedy lending—and were thwarted by the Bush Administration and the financial industry

State enforcers and legislators tried to contain the greed and foolishness. They were thwarted in many cases by Washington officials hostile to regulation and a financial industry adept at exploiting this ideology.The Bush Administration and many banks clung to what is known as "preemption." It is a legal doctrine that can be invoked in court and at the rulemaking table to assert that, when federal and state authority over business conflict, the feds prevail—even if it means little or no regulation.

http://tinyurl.com/422gtg

re: Politics rule economics

The majority of Americans recognized this in the recent election, which is why your ilk was drummed out of office.

re: This has been going on for a year or so now as shareholders have responded to the polling numbers, and, over the last six weeks, Obaba's assumed and then actual victory.

Everyone please observe this statement. The drinkers of the neocon Kool Aid blame the economic/stock market collapse and incipient depression on Obama -- in spite of the fact that he doesn't even take office for 2 months. The last eight years of Bush never happened.

re: until President Elect Lindsey Graham comes riding to the rescue four years from now

BWAHAHAHA!

re: Once Obama won the nomination, the downward trend increased. As Obama gained in the polls, DJIA slipped more.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because (on account) of this", is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one." It is often shortened to simply post hoc and is also sometimes referred to as false cause, coincidental correlation or correlation not causation. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc, in which the chronological ordering of a correlation is insignificant.

Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection. Most familiarly, many superstitious beliefs and magical thinking arise from this fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

All of this arguing over bailing out Detroit assumes that it's just a matter of crutching them along until the economy somehow magically recovers (by some method no one can explain) and folks are back to the halcyon days of buying new cars, etc.

The U.S.A. is beyond bankrupt, and Bush & Co. are practicing a scorched earth policy as they retreat to ensure that there is nothing left but ashes. We'll be lucky to have food, shelter and clothing as we move forward.

We must face reality and start dealing with the massive homelessness and starvation that is coming upon us.

I'd love to be proven wrong.

But I won't be.

“The problem is there is absolutely no silver lining visible,” said Arjuna Mahendran, head of Asian investment strategy at HSBC Private Bank in Singapore. “The financial crisis may now be at its tail end and we are now in a second phase where corporate distress is the key issue. A third phase may come early next year, when emerging markets will really struggle as the crisis widens and exports continue to shrink.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/business/21markets.html?hp