The Last Christmas

2008 was the year of the great meltdown of the world’s financial systems. In the United States, the media named the housing situation as the main culprit. In reality, the real problem is the 400 trillion dollars in debt the world has produced while establishing the global market.
2009 will be the year of the complete collapse of the financial system. Starting in February, people will realize more stores closing as well as many malls having from one quarter to a half of the stores boarded up. By the time summer rolls around unemployment will be 25%. There will be food riots, a worthless dollar and higher taxes.
The media says a lower dollar will help the United States sell more products overseas. How can this possibly happen when the United States does not produce anything?
Higher taxes may compel people to revolt against the present system and demand change. The best Christmas gift to give this year would be liquor to help drown some of these problems and guns to protect what assets you have left.
As for the stock market, I predict it to drop to 5,000. The best investment will be put options (Put options are short term investments predicting the price will drop) in the commercial real estate market and retail industry.
The way out of this financial crisis is to develop new energy sources or other new technologies to create job growth and reduce/eliminate national debt.

Nick

Hedge Funds and the Financial Crisis

It wasn't enough that the top 10% control almost half of the total income of the United States taxpayers, nor was it enough that they incited inflation with speculating in commodities and oil in particular, but they had to destroy our IRA's and 401k's while they were doing it.

You have to have a million dollars to join most hedge funds. They speculated heavily in the markets with about 30 dollars of debt for every dollar of assets. When the housing market and the stock market began dropping, they moved into commodities. They bought insurance against their gambles with credit default swaps paying a small premium and passing the risk of loss to investment firms and insurance companies. They shorted stocks while the market fell often getting caught, as in the case of Volkswagen, and created the wild swings of 5 to 10% upwards
and downwards movement in the stock market.

Almost everyone got caught up in the greed of the housing boom but no one was greedy as the rich and the hedge funds who have been allowed to wreck the life styles of the working American.



Joe