Five Years, Four Thousand Dead.... What is Winning Now ?

[Nickdfresh]

Is The Security Situation Crumbling?

March 29, 2008
U.S. Planes Attack Militia Strongholds in Basra Fighting
By ERICA GOODE

BAGHDAD —American military forces for the first time conducted air strikes on targets in Basra late Thursday, joining Iraqi security forces in trying to oust Shiite militias in the southern port city.

Two American war planes shelled two separate targets in Basra, entering the battle at the request of the Iraqi Army, which asked the American and British forces to strike two militia strongholds in the city, according to Maj. Tom Holloway, a spokesman for the British Army in Basra.

The air strikes are the clearest sign yet that the coalition forces are becoming involved in the fighting in Basra. Up until Thursday night, the American and British air forces had been working in cooperation to provide surveillance support for the Iraqi Army.

The assault on militia forces in Basra has been presented by President Bush and others as an important test for the American-trained Iraqi forces, to show that they can carry out a major ground operation against insurgents largely on their own.

But the direct participation of coalition forces suggests that the Iraqi military has been unable to successfully rout the militias, despite repeated assurances by American and Iraqi officials that their fighting capabilities have vastly improved.

A failure by the Iraqi forces to secure the port city of Basra would be a serious embarrassment for the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and for the Iraqi army, as well as for American forces who are eager to demonstrate that the Iraqi units they have trained can fight effectively.

However, Major Holloway said that coalition forces only took part because Iraqi security forces did not have aircraft that can conduct such strikes. “I think the point here is actually that Iraq’s army is capable, they are strong and they have been engaging successfully,” Major Holloway said.

He said the first target of the American strikes was a militia stronghold in the city and the second target was a mortar team that was targeting Iraqi Army forces.

On Wednesday, Mr. Maliki set a 72-hour deadline for Shiite militia fighters in Basra to lay down their arms or else face harsh repercussions. While that deadline still holds, on Thursday he offered an additional cash reward to any residents of Basra who turn in heavy weapons or artillery.

After fierce clashes on Thursday in Basra, the streets of the city were quiet Friday morning before Friday prayers, according to Iraqi police officials on the scene.

However, fighting continued in the al-Qurna district, 40 miles northwest of Basra, with three civilians reported injured.

In Baghdad, the Green Zone office of the one of Iraq’s vice presidents, Tariq al-Hashimi, was hit by two rockets or mortar shells on Friday afternoon, killing one person, according to Mr. Hashimi’s daughter and chief secretary, Lubna al-Hashimi. Mr. Hashimi’s office later said a security guard was the person killed.

Ms. Hashimi, weeping, said in a telephone interview that at least three Iraqis were also wounded. There was no immediate information available about whether Mr. Hashimi was in his office at the time, or whether he was hurt in the attack.

An American official in the Green Zone confirmed the attack on the vice president’s office and said that the wounded had been taken to the combat support hospital there.

The attacks, which resounded with sharp cracks about an hour after the finish of Friday prayers, put a violent end to a morning of relative calm in the capital, which is under a strict curfew. However, in Sadr City in Baghdad gunfire was heard and American helicopters were flying low to the ground. Police and hospital officials in Sadr City said American planes conducted at least two air strikes on Friday.

The fighting this week in Basra against the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political movement led by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, has set off clashes in cities throughout Iraq, and raised tensions. Major demonstrations have been staged this week in a number of Shiite areas of Baghdad, including Sadr City, the huge neighborhood that is Mr. Sadr’s base of power.

Although President Bush praised the Iraqi government on Thursday for leading the fighting, the Iraqi government has also appeared to pursue its own agenda, calling the battles a fight against “criminal” elements but seeking to marginalize the Mahdi Army.

The Americans share the Iraqi government’s hostility toward what they call rogue elements of the Mahdi Army, but will also be faced with the consequences if the battles among Shiite factions erupt into more widespread unrest.

The violence underscored the fragile nature of the security improvements partly credited to the American troop increase that began last year. Officials have acknowledged that a cease-fire called by Mr. Sadr last August has contributed to the improvements. Should the cease-fire collapse entirely, those gains could be in serious jeopardy, making it far more difficult to begin bringing substantial numbers of American troops back to the United States.

Although Sadr officials insisted on Thursday that the cease-fire was still in effect, Mr. Sadr has authorized his forces to fight in self-defense, and the battles in Basra appear to be eroding the cease-fire.

During a lengthy speech on Thursday at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, Mr. Bush praised Iraq’s government for ordering the assault in Basra and portrayed the battle as evidence that his strategy of increasing troop strength was bearing fruit.

“This offensive builds on the security gains of the surge and demonstrates to the Iraqi people that their government is committed to protecting them,” he said.

“There’s a strong commitment by the central government of Iraq to say that no one is above the law.”

Mr. Bush also accused Iran of arming, training and financing the militias fighting against the Iraqi forces.

Mr. Bush spoke after three days of briefings with senior advisers and military commanders on the situation in Iraq and the options for reducing the number of American troops there beyond the withdrawals already announced. It was one in a series of speeches he has been giving to build support for his policy before Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior commander in Iraq, testifies before Congress next month.

In a videoconference with the president on Monday, General Petraeus recommended taking up to two months to evaluate security in Iraq before considering additional withdrawals, officials said Monday.

On Thursday, medical officials in Basra said the toll in the fighting there had risen to about 100 dead and 500 wounded, including civilians, militiamen and members of the security forces. An Iraqi employee of The New York Times, driving on the main road between Basra and Nasiriya, observed numerous civilian cars with coffins strapped to the roofs, apparently heading to Shiite cemeteries to the north.

Violence also broke out in Kut, Hilla, Amara, Kirkuk, Baquba and other cities. In Baghdad, where explosions shook the city throughout the day on Thursday, American officials said 11 rockets struck the Green Zone, killing an unidentified American government worker, the second this week.

Another American, Paul Converse of Corvallis, Ore., an analyst with a federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, died of wounds suffered in a rocket attack on Sunday, a spokeswoman for the agency said Thursday.

The Iraqi government imposed a citywide curfew in Baghdad until Sunday.

Thousands of demonstrators in Sadr City on Thursday denounced Mr. Maliki, who has personally directed the Basra operation, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite cleric who leads the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a political party that is a crucial member of the coalition keeping Mr. Maliki in power.

The Supreme Council’s armed wing, the Badr Organization, is one of the most powerful rivals of the Mahdi Army in Basra, where Shiite militias have been fighting among themselves for years to control neighborhoods, oil revenues, electricity access, the ports and even the local universities.

Contributing reporting were James Glanz from Baghdad; Steven Lee Myers from Ohio; Graham Bowley from New York; and Qais Mizher, Ahmad Fadam, Mudhafer al-Husaini, Hosham Hussein, Karim al-Hilmi, and other employees of The New York Times from Basra, Kut, Baghdad, Hilla, Kirkuk and Diyala Province.

NYTimes

[Guitar Shark]

Re: Is The Security Situation Crumbling?

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
March 29, 2008
U.S. Planes Attack Militia Strongholds in Basra Fighting
By ERICA GOODE

[snip]

A failure by the Iraqi forces to secure the port city of Basra would be a serious embarrassment for the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and for the Iraqi army, as well as for American forces who are eager to demonstrate that the Iraqi units they have trained can fight effectively.

However, Major Holloway said that coalition forces only took part because Iraqi security forces did not have aircraft that can conduct such strikes. “I think the point here is actually that Iraq’s army is capable, they are strong and they have been engaging successfully,” Major Holloway said.

[snip]

Watch... the next thing we can expect to hear from the Bush administration is that we need to equip Iraq with some airstrike-capable aircraft so that they can ensure their own security.

[DLR'sCock]

Originally posted by kwame k
It would be easy to say that the past 5 years have shown economic growth and you are right on several of your points. Short term economic growth not sustained economic growth. I liken the economy to the current situation a lot of Americans are now facing. Our spending and over extending ourselves with credit and mortgages has come back to haunt us. So is the Iraq war. So is corporate greed. Maybe my dislike for the current administration only causes me to focus on the negatives and I can not give Bush, Inc. any credit on his few successes. We are paying for the failures of this administration right now. Whether we had economic growth in the past is a moot point.

As with Bush’s shortsightedness and lack of a post-war rebuilding plan with Iraq we have nothing but unpaid loans to foreign countries that is crippling the US economy and by default the World’s economy.

We will be paying for this war and the failed policies of this administration for years to come. A Democratic President will not be able to stop paying for this war whether they decide to pull all of our troops out or not. We are saddled with enormous debts and a crippled US economy as a result of an Administration who‘s only interest is in serving the Corporate sponsors who put them in office.

“……Of course, there are also causes such as the subprime scandal, derivatives madness that has led to irresponsible leveraging and raging commodity prices.
But the Iraq war is monstrously expensive and, unlike Vietnam, not simulative economically speaking.
That is because, like Wall Street, Washington has put the cost entirely on the tab. It is a war paid for on credit obtained from foreigners. This means tens of billions of dollars flow out of the currency and economy to outside creditors and will do so for decades if warmongering Republicans keep getting elected.
The war, and its reckless execution, affects the world by hurting the economy, trade flows, fragile credit markets and currency values.
The war, and America's foreign indebtedness, is contributing to soaring gold and other commodities' prices, the U.S. dollar's demise, scary credit markets, consumption drops, lower economic growth among trading partners who buy American goods, and, most likely, a guarantee that a Democrat will occupy the White House come the fall.

Washington is borrowing US$15-billion a month for Iraq and Afghanistan, a burn rate that will likely total US$3-trillion by 2017, according to the latest book by Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001.
He estimates that for one-sixth of the cost of the war the United States could fully fund social security for 50 years without benefits being lowered or contributions raised.
The war will represent a bigger number than Vietnam (US$670-billion) by the end of 2008, even if the Democrats get in and start pulling out troops.?

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=999e7591-f0af-49f4-bb45-d550623b3001&k=14322

We’ve already covered the Bears S&L scandal ?8 but here’s even more of our money going out to bail out the sub-prime fiasco.

“Last Wednesday, Federal regulators agreed to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac take on another $200 billion in subprime mortgage debt. The two government-sponsored enterprises (GSE) would buy mortgages from banks, a process known as buying on the secondary market. They then package these into mortgage-backed securities, and resell them to investors on Wall Street. All will go well if the mortgages are good, but if they turn south, then the two GSE's would be liable for the debt. (Source: Washington Post, More Cash for Mortgages, March 21, 2008)
This is in addition to the $200 billion in Treasury notes the Federal Reserve announced it will loan to bail out bond dealers who are stuck with mortgage-backed securities and other collateralized debt obligations (CDO's) that they can't resell on the secondary market. (See Fed $200 Billion Loan Probably Won't Help)
What It Means to You
If Fannie, Freddie and the Fed get stuck with the $400 billion in bad debt, then this will cost three times as much as the Savings and Loan Crisis, which "only" cost the taxpayers $124 billion.
In all likelihood, however, last week's actions have avoided a financial meltdown. Although it is possible that the economy is already headed for a recession, it will be less painful than if the government had done nothing. The worst case scenario is that this debt would get added to the $9 trillion national debt, which is a chronic situation that continues to depress the dollar and raise the price of imports.?

http://useconomy.about.com/

So the economy is now being effected by the 5 years of war in Iraq and Oil prices that are at an all time high. The point that a lot of people miss is when gas prices soar all our consumer goods soar.
The majority of all consumer goods are shipped by truck and with fuel prices soaring the natural effect is that consumer goods have to increase or adjust accordingly.

“Nearly 90% of all freight is carried by trucks, hauling everything from hazardous waste to ice cream.
"Over 75% of communities in the US get their freight only by truck," Mr Costello told BBC News Online. "No other mode of freight transportation goes there."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1399618.stm

So not only are our daily goods increasing in price but our wages are not adjusting to keep up with the changes.

http://stats.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#b00-0000

I can’t really say we have any sustained economic growth in this country. All of the economic indicators I have looked at say that any growth we have seen in the last five years has been negated by the enormous amount of debt we are incurring now. Also we have been sliding slowly into the mess we are now facing and the Bush Administration has done nothing to correct or sustain long term economic growth. They have done the opposite.

Everything you posted here is more than true, and I cannot believe that so many people aren't really seeing this. I worked part-time in the mortgage industry over the last 3 years(I would never broker a loan for a client that could not really handle), and there are alot of poeple that don't have jobs now, our company is closed down, and the two companies used to license nationally through are gone as well, one went bankrupt. A small view of things as they are, and how they can get worse. Those who aren't feeling the affects are their monthly bills are lucky, but everyone has to see that everything has gone up. Everything.

[scamper]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
How about answering the thread question first?

What is considered "winning" in Iraq at this point int time to you?

Peace?

Surrender?

Never going to happen. Never.

Have we learned NOTHING from history?

Imperialism and / or Democracy at Gunpoint doesnt work.

We've personally overthrown Democraticly Elected Leaders in the region in the past and installed dictators.

What kind of credibilty do you think we have there?

TELL US WHAT YOU WOULD CONSIDER A WIN AT THIS POINT, SCAMP.

My response was to Seshs statement that we're in worse economic shape then we were in the depression. As far as the war goes, there is no way we can win it, there never was. It was a not too bright presidents grasp at glory.

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by scamper


. As far as the war goes, there is no way we can win it, there never was. It was a not too bright presidents grasp at glory.

EXACTLY.

Another Con who gets it...

[hideyoursheep]

You really like rubbing their noses in it, eh?

[Seshmeister]

Originally posted by scamper
Show me the numbers.....

I thought by now everyone in this forum knew everything I ever post is entirely accurate.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article3602042.ece

Big recessions really hurt. In the Anglo-Saxon world, we have forgotten what they look like. Between 1930 and 1933, annual output of the American economy fell by nearly 30%. This dry statistic disguises what big recessions feel like. A similar one in Britain today would destroy 8m jobs. More than one in four employees would be thrown out of work.

But there is more: in 1929 US shares fell modestly in value, losing a little more than 10% from their 1928 peak. By 1932 they had lost three-quarters of their 1928 value. And they did not get back to that level for almost a generation, until 1952.

This catastrophic collapse, by far the worst to hit the western world in the 200 years from the industrial revolution to the present day, was almost entirely unforeseen. There was no more than a slight hint that some mildly choppy water might be encountered.

This is not because economists at the time were wilfully stupid. Forecasting the economy is an incredibly difficult scientific problem. What happens in an economy is not something that can be controlled as if it were a machine.

What happens depends on the decisions of millions of individuals and companies, all of which interact in complex ways. Each reader of this newspaper has to make regular decisions about how much to spend and how much to save. Each company, big or small, has to consider whether to expand and invest in new capacity or whether to cut back and get rid of people.

At any point in time – today, for instance – every individual will feel optimistic or pessimistic. Most of the time, across the country as a whole, these individual feelings will more or less cancel one another out, or at least not create too much of an imbalance either way. But occasionally sentiment spreads like a contagious disease. It is not so much the wisdom of crowds, but more the madness of crowds.

This is exactly how big recessions can start: not so much with a bang, to borrow TS Eliot’s phrase, but a whimper. Since the Northern Rock debacle last August, the newspapers have been full of rather disquieting news. But, to set against this, many things go on in a reassuringly normal way. Unemployment hasn’t really changed, stock markets haven’t actually collapsed, restaurants and wine bars seem pretty full, the transport system remains predictably bad and even the England cricket team continue to display their usual mix of skill and rubbish.

All these things, and myriad more, contribute to the degree of optimism or pessimism that any individual feels. We each have our own private opinion of how good or bad things are for us. But we hear from our immediate circle of family, friends and colleagues and we pick up stories about the economy from the media.

Each of us can be persuaded to become that bit less optimistic, even when our personal assessment is that things are fine. And in turn, when this happens, our sentiment becomes part of the broader picture, increasing the chances of other people turning pessimistic. Every so often, this bursts out of control. People and firms lose confidence about the future and cut back their spending, and a full-blown recession ensues.

The good news is that economies can withstand seemingly devastating shocks and emerge almost unscathed. In October 1987, completely out of the blue, stock markets collapsed. In a single day, the value of the world’s biggest companies fell by 20%. But nothing happened. Pessimism did not spread like the Black Death. Indeed in Britain the excesses of the boom of the late 1980s continued unchecked. House prices continued to soar; City traders continued to quaff champagne and collapse in stupefaction on their trains home to Essex. It was only two years later, for entirely unconnected reasons, that this particular party came to an end.

Even more telling is the experience of Japan over the past 20 years or so. By the late 1980s, Japan was the success story of the postwar era. Once derided for their cheap and nasty, unreliable products, Japanese companies had come to bestride the globe. Visiting American bankers were obliged to overcome their squeamishness and consume live lobster sashimi in deference to their hosts.

Yet in 1990 pessimism suddenly infested the economy, and during that year the Nikkei share index lost 40% of its value, bottoming out in 1993 at 80% lower than its peak of just under 40,000. Even now it is only about 12,000, less than one-third its level of 20 years ago.

The collapse in land values was even more complete. In the late 1980s rumours had abounded that certain golf courses in Tokyo were worth more than the entire real estate of California. Prices fell in large parts of the market by no less than 90%.

Imagine. You are living in a house apparently worth half a million. You wake up the next day and find its value slashed to £50,000. Surely that would precipitate mass pessimism and a recession just as bad as the American one of the 1930s.

Logic says it would. But it didn’t. In Britain we are each, on average, about 40% better off now than we were then, whereas in Japan the increase has been just less than 20%. Not brilliant, but far from being a disaster.

Quite how the Japanese avoided catastrophe is still a bit of a mystery. Certainly not just once but several times, most of the main Japanese banks became technically bankrupt. With great aplomb, the Japanese central bank simply changed the rules and said they no longer were.

But the contrast between America and Japan shows that mass psychology, the percolation of pessimism or optimism across the economy, is almost impossible to judge in advance. In America in 1930 shocks in financial markets led to a stupendous collapse of the economy. In Japan in 1990, in apparently similar circumstances, things just bumbled along.

For all this, there is undoubtedly a sense of unease out there. The technical phrase “sub-prime” has become common parlance, with even the tabloids feeling able to use it. There is a good reason for these worries. The slowdown in the American economy is not merely a figment of forecasters’ imaginations: it has actually been happening.

Debt. That is the word everyone is worrying about. Why? The chart on page two shows the growth of debt in America from 1920 until now. Of course, over such a long period of time population grows, the economy grows and prices change. We cannot simply compare the amount of debt out there in simple money terms. What the chart does is divide the total amount of outstanding debt owed by people and companies, including financial ones, by the size of the economy.

Shock, horror! Compared with the size of the economy, debt now is even greater than it was in 1929 – the blip in the left-hand side of the chart, just before the Great Depression. The value of debt owed by individuals and companies is now nearly three times the size of the economy. Surely this means we are headed for economic meltdown.

Up to a point, Lord Copper. The striking feature is the continuous rise in debt compared with the size of the economy over the entire postwar period. But the postwar period has been a time not of economic gloom but of unprecedented rises in living standards. A willingness to take on debt can often be a sign of confidence about the future. For individuals, it is a confidence that things will get better and the debt repaid. Even more important, companies with new plans, new ideas, need loans to translate them into reality.

Such plans often fail, but when they succeed the rewards can be spectacular. In the past 20 years or so we have seen American companies grow from nothing to become the biggest in the world, drastically altering the way we live our lives – Microsoft, Google and Facebook, to name but three. The people now working away in their garages in Silicon Valley with visions of overturning Microsoft – if they are actually going to do this at some point they will need to incur debt, and probably lots of it.

The problems, for both people and firms, usually start in one of two ways. Either you can no longer pay the interest on the debt. Or there is a sharp fall in the value of the asset that you have bought with the loan. When the value of the loan exceeds the value of the asset – negative equity – confidence tends to ebb away.

These things happen all the time. It is when they start happening to lots of individuals at the same time that we have real trouble.

“Sub-prime” means what it says on the label – “prime”, as in “prime beef”, meaning high quality. These are loans made to people who are not high quality in their ability to pay not only the interest but eventually the loan itself.

Sub-prime as such is not a bad thing. For a whole variety of reasons some people are less creditworthy than others. A spell of illness leading to a period out of work, a stressful and expensive divorce – such things can affect the best-intentioned individual.

It would be wrong to exclude such people from access to credit, but it comes at a price. Their loans are more risky, so the interest charged is higher. Every good, responsible bank or building society will make sub-prime loans. It is not inherently wicked but a normal part of business to weigh up the higher risk against the higher return.

The sub-prime crisis has arisen because the restraints on prudent behaviour broke down. Putting out risky loans came to dominate the strategies of some companies. Northern Rock’s notorious loans of five or more times the borrower’s income on more than 100% of the value of the property were almost tailor-made to end in tears.

Yet the board of Northern Rock was not made up of scallies from Liverpool or cockney wide boys. Far from it – most of its members had years of service at the highest levels of financial and consultancy companies. How did they think they could get away with what on the face of it appears to have been obviously irresponsible behaviour?

The answer goes back about 40 years, to a trio of American academics leading successful but blameless careers. These three men discovered ways of applying concepts from statistical physics to financial markets. Fischer Black, described by one of his close friends as “the strangest man I ever met”, left academia to make millions at Goldman Sachs before his death in 1995. Robert Merton and Myron Scholes received the Nobel prize in economics in 1997 for their findings.

Their highly esoteric discoveries had immense practical significance, enabling the creation of today’s industry of financial derivatives, worth over $500 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

The basic idea of derivatives – so called because their value is derived from, or related to, that of an underlying asset – is simple. Suppose an investor holds some Vodafone shares. He or she might worry that the price will fall. Someone else might think it will rise. A contract can be struck between them to trade the shares at a specified price at a specified future date.

The crucial feature of derivatives is that their price fluctuates much more than that of the underlying share to which they are linked. The rewards from getting it right can be much bigger, but so too can the losses. At present Vodafone trades at about 150p a share. If I feel optimistic about the company, I can buy the shares now. If at the end of April they are 300p, I will have doubled my money. But I could instead buy the right to buy them at, say, 250p at the end of April for virtually nothing, 1p say, since it is so unlikely that such a big increase will happen in such a short time.

If I am proved right and the price really is 300p, I have the right to buy shares at 250p and can then sell them immediately for 300p. My 1p has turned into 50p – far, far more than doubling my money. But if I am wrong and the price stays below 250p, I will lose everything I put in.

In short, derivatives both satisfy and create an appetite for risk. They enable much riskier bets – sorry, considered investment judgments – to be made than if you can just trade in the underlying shares themselves.

As it happens, Merton and Scholes got their comeuppance when they totally misjudged some risks. Their financial company, Long-Term Capital Management, collapsed in 1998 with a loss of nearly $5 billion, and was bailed out by the Federal Reserve, the US central bank. So today’s problems are not exactly without precedent.

But the trio had initiated a period of stupendous innovation in financial trading. The introduction of high-powered mathematics into the markets has created all sorts of previously undreamt-of possibilities. One of them goes by the name “securitisation”.

It is this obscure and seemingly anodyne concept that the board of Northern Rock relied on to dispose of the huge risks it was taking. And it is this that led the board to create Granite, the trust in the Channel Islands that has proved such a complication in the rescue of the company.

The Northern Rock board surely knew it was making loans to high-risk individuals. But the company could collect the fees for making each of the loans, and then bundle them up into a package. This package, containing a large number of risky individual mortgages, was sold to Granite. So the risk was no longer borne by Northern Rock but by Granite, an entirely separate outfit.

Granite found the money to buy the package by issuing securities. These securities were bought by sophisticated financial market operators, who could then in turn sell them to someone else, almost like shares on the stock market. The value at any point in time would depend upon how the individual loans were performing and on how different people assessed the risks involved in buying the package.

The mathematics of pricing these concepts soon gets hair-raising. But it is essentially a high-powered game of pass-the-parcel with a twist. Unlike in the children’s birthday party game, whoever is left holding the parcel when the music stops loses.

Northern Rock had been able to make the first pass in the game. The company had its fees and the lump sum paid by Granite for the package of loans and had offloaded the parcel. With a single bound it was free. Or so it appeared.

Northern Rock’s problem essentially was that other, bigger operators in America had already been passing the parcel for some time. Massive amounts of sub-prime loans had been wrapped up and sold on. But so much of this activity was hidden by Granite-like devices that financial institutions began to wonder what would happen when the music stopped. How many parcels were out there and who was holding them?

In addition, the maths of pricing many of the individual parcel-passing trades is so complicated that even the theoretical physicists doing it couldn’t always be relied on to get it right. It is certainly far beyond the capabilities of most board members in even the most august financial institutions.

This last point really gets to the nub of the current problem. A system has been created that is so complex, so convoluted, that even at the very highest levels in financial companies nobody really understands the level of risk that is being carried at any point in time.

The net result was that banks began to doubt one another’s credit-worthiness. So they simply stopped lending to each other. A real, no-holds-barred credit crunch.

For Northern Rock, that was a disaster. Not only had it been bundling up high-risk debt, but the company had also been borrowing large amounts of short-term money to expand the volume of its business – much larger amounts, relative to its size, than any other British bank or building society. When the time came to repay these loans, nobody would lend it the money to do so.

Much more worrying is the general loss of confidence among big financial institutions, where pessimism really has spread like the Black Death. Once this has happened, it is hard to turn round.

The Federal Reserve is doing its best under its chairman, Ben Bernanke. Luckily, one of Bernanke’s interests as an academic was the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its full mysteries have still to be unravelled even now, but Bernanke has more idea than most of what might help to prevent a recurrence.

One thing he has done is to cut interest rates sharply, but there is a limit to how far this can go. It is hard, for example, to cut them to the point where they are negative, where savers pay the bank to hold their money.

Much more important, the American authorities are willing simply to print money to keep the financial system going. For the past 25 years, governments and central banks have thought printing money a very bad idea. Printing money is supposed to lead to higher inflation. Keeping it low has been the main policy target of western governments since the 1980s.

This idea has not just gone out of the window in America; it has been positively thrown out. In all but the technicalities, the US Federal Reserve is giving American banks large amounts of freshly minted cash in exchange for their potentially dodgy loans.

In addition, Bernanke has reintroduced the concept of what might be called “moral suasion”. The governor of the Bank of England made the phrase “moral hazard” famous. It means making banks suffer for their misdeeds as an example to others, and it is the rationale behind the governor’s reluctance to bail them out.

Moral suasion is how the Bank of England used to operate before the complicated, rule-based, hugely expensive and bureaucratic tripartite control systems of the Financial Services Authority, the Bank and the Treasury were introduced.

The big American bank Bear Stearns appeared to be in serious difficulties. Using moral suasion, the chairman of the Federal Reserve persuaded JP Morgan, a rival bank, to take it over, with all its potential liabilities, over the course of a weekend. JP Morgan was under no legal or regulatory obligation to do so. But, somehow, it did.

This is exactly how the Bank of England solved the previous banking crisis in the 1970s. The shareholders of Bear Stearns have lost out, but a huge financial collapse has been avoided, at least for the time being.

There can never be a guarantee that policies will work. Pessimism could still spread, could still invade the economy as a whole in its sinister, insinuating way. But the Americans are doing their level best to prevent that.

We might reasonably ask: is all of this fair? Why should the ordinary person bail out the ostentatious and expensive lifestyles of the denizens of financial markets? The short answer is, quite simply, that it is not fair. But the alternative, simply to allow a potentially massive financial crisis to unfold, would not exactly be desirable. The expensive Mayfair and Central Park apartments, the country seats in the Cotswolds, the mansions in the Hamptons, these would still belong to the bankers even if they were unemployed. The problem is that millions of the rest of us might be out of work as well.

The abiding lesson from the 1930s is that, in a financial crisis, banks are more important than individuals. No matter how much money individual people may lose, the monetary authorities have ultimately to defend banks and not people.

Northern Rock shareholders have lost most of their money, and many Northern Rock staff face redundancy. But the bank itself has been kept going.

When put in these brutal terms it seems – indeed it is – grossly unfair. But letting big banks go under would run the risk of creating another great recession, with at least 30m people unemployed in America.

The real issue is how we got here, how risk has come to be rewarded within the financial system. Some of the trades being made have been simply lunatic, with no conceivable rationale other than to ramp up the risk to create the chance of making a killing now.

The whole panoply of expectations of financial players, of traders, of directors, of shareholders, has got out of hand. It is not just that the focus on returns is very short term; even more important is the size of returns that is now expected.

A perfectly viable, healthy and wealthy system could exist with lower overall levels of return. But current expectations demand leverage, the taking of risky positions and the creation of complex financial instruments, to satisfy the demand for that risk.

More and more rule-based directives and regulation is not the answer. Regulation of this sort can be actively counterproductive, for by setting explicit rules it encourages creative individuals to find (legitimate) ways round them. And going down this route leads us little by little, almost imperceptibly, to a stage where we really no longer have a dynamic, market-oriented economy but one that will end up like the basket case that the centrally planned Soviet Union eventually became.

Punitive intervention and regulation is the nuclear option. Governments have the power to use it and maybe, unless the financial sector itself starts to clean up its act, one of them will. In a democratic society there can be only so many James Caynes before governments feel compelled to strike. Cayne, the chairman and chief executive of Bear Stearns, was paid $40m between 2004 and 2006 and made millions more by selling his shares. But he has just presided over the destruction of virtually the whole value of the shares in the bank.

Finally, what are the prospects for the ordinary person in all this? Not good, I’m afraid. If there is another great recession, tens of millions in the West will suffer real hardship. If we manage to avoid it, even more will feel it in their pockets in a much less dramatic but still noticeable way.

The cost of all these exotic financial schemes gone sour has to be paid for, whether by reduced pensions as the value of bank shares held by the pension funds falls, by higher taxes or by higher mortgage fees and rates as banks build up and restore their balance sheets. It is simply too late to do anything else this time round.

The real challenge is to make sure we do better when the next financial crisis happens. When will that be? Neither I nor anyone else knows the answer. What we do know is that at some unknown point, at some unpredictable time, there certainly will be one.

Paul Ormerod is the author of Why Most Things Fail and a director of Volterra Consulting

[Nitro Express]

Very good article on recessions and depressions. The problem I have with these academics like Bernanke is they try to play God in a system that is so complicated, nobody really understands it.

One reason I think letting the free market guide itself than trying to shore it up with central bank manipulation is better. Sure we can avoid recessions and even depressions, but the poor performing banks always get bailed out, nobody learns a lesson and we set ourselves up for even greater failure in the future. If the system does finally break, it's catastrophic and worldwide. If the derivative market goes south nobody is fixing that train wreak.

[Nitro Express]

Saying these rich Wall Street bankers must be saved because they create jobs is laughable. Wall Street used to employ a wide range of people and used to be a great place to climb the ladder coming out of business school. Not anymore. There is no ladder to climb since all the entry level analyst jobs have been outsourced to India. Wall Street has been downsizing during it's boom and all that is left in New York City is the top dogs who live in the Hamptons.

Plus bailing out bad banks and printing money only inflates the dollar. The argument that it make US goods cheaper is laughable. Our biggest export is bailed corrigated cardboard (I'm not kidding). You know the recycle bins down where you put the box your new computer from China or your kids toys from China come in. Yup, we bail them up and ship the cardboard back to China.

Gee, Bernanke has just made buying a Barbie Doll more expensive and China gets a break on the cost of the box it comes in. Good going!

[Nitro Express]

The only real truth is just about everything coming out of Washington DC and Wall Street these days are big fat, fucking LIES. A piece of shit is worth something if you can convince the customer it is. Some people make a good living sell manure.

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by hideyoursheep
You really like rubbing their noses in it, eh?

LMAO

Not at all...

It's just very satisfying to watch the BuSheep, one by one, all come to the conclusion that they were DUPED.

Look at BigBadBrian, Warham, Cathedral, Joahn Ashcroft...

ALL hard-right Conservatives, and staunch Bush apologists in here for years, who now disown this administration and its failed policies.

Once they've seen the light, I leave the "nose rubbing" to others.

I welcome them to the side of right, reason, and logic.

[scamper]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
LMAO

Not at all...

It's just very satisfying to watch the BuSheep, one by one, all come to the conclusion that they were DUPED.

Look at BigBadBrian, Warham, Cathedral, Joahn Ashcroft...

ALL hard-right Conservatives, and staunch Bush apologists in here for years, who now disown this administration and its failed policies.

Once they've seen the light, I leave the "nose rubbing" to others.

I welcome them to the side of right, reason, and logic.

Actually I'm a registered Democrat, but if you're calling me a conservative I am. The strange thing about the war is that almost all of my liberal friends were for it while I was against it, so I've never changed my tune. That being said I don't think we can just pack up and leave without fixing some of the shit we messed up. As far as being a Busheep I voted for him the first time because Al Gore is a freak. The reason I didn't vote for him the second time had nothing to do with the war it was all about him doing the opposite of what he said he was going to do. That being said I don't bitch about the president because I threw away my vote that year, and will probably do the same this year because they all suck ass.

[kwame k]

What is winning?

I agree with the “Powell Doctrine” when it comes to warring. Boots on the ground, overwhelming force by Air, Ground, and Armament. The historical mistake this Administration made was letting the civilian arm of our government run the war. Rumsfeld made the Viet Nam mistake. Politicians running the campaign and ignoring the advice of the Generals in charge.

The administration laughed at the initial estimates of up to 400,000 troops needed to invade and secure Iraq. They went with a smaller force that was insufficient to “Clear, Hold and Defend.” Although that strategy was implemented later on, it was another misstep in an already flawed invasion/occupation plan.

Bush Inc fucked themselves by not following the “Powell Doctrine” and now there’s no way we can increase the size of our Army to the numbers needed to sufficiently secure and rebuild Iraq. Bush could not request 400,000 troops and get away with it at this point.

We are stuck in the position we are in and the only way to realistically “win” this war can never be implemented. When everyone is screaming, “Troop Reduction”, how can they conceivable escalate the troop levels?

We will never be able to change a tribal culture and IMO Iraq will never be united into a homogenous nation. The administration never understood the Iraqi culture enough to understand we would never be greeted as Liberators and Democracy would usher in a new era for Iraq. In some instances Democracy doesn’t work. At least the Americanized version of it. This romantic notion that we are The Defenders of Freedom and we have to fight the oppressors of Freedom everywhere is nonsense. The harsh reality is the whole world doesn’t think, act or even want to be like The USA.

Iraq may split into three separate Nations/States and that may be the only alternative. Not a great compromise considering what that would do to the region.

To win this war we would have to escalate our troop involvement and basically re-invade, for lack of a better term, Iraq.

War should always be a last resort but if we are going to war, go in with overwhelming force, define your objective early and clearly, and step the fuck out of the way and let the Generals do what they are trained to do. As the civilian branch of the government, after making the decision to go to war, your only job after that is figuring out how to win the peace. Whenever we go against those strategies we get into the mess we are in now.

So to answer your question! Fuck, I don’t know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Hoongood]

36 DAYS, OVER 6,000 DEAD. (Actual combat deaths) WHO WON?
The battle of Iwo Jima.

[kwame k]

Originally posted by Hoongood
36 DAYS, OVER 6,000 DEAD. (Actual combat deaths) WHO WON?
The battle of Iwo Jima.

Well, these two guys won.
Best Achievement in Sound Editing
Alan Robert Murray
Bub Asman
Letters from Iwo Jima



Losers
Clint Eastwood Lost for Best Picture


Oh Yeah!
These guys didn't do too good.