Financial Crisis

As you all know, Iceland is facing a meltdown while AIG (The World's Biggest Insurance Company) recently went bankrupt and the US government just rescued it in form of 85 bil loan. Opinions? Thoughts?

Great, now we have more debt.
Money sucks

You got that right. Just like the nosy U.S. to save someone else's collective butt while our own ass is in the fire.

It's really worrying to see almost every stocks in the stock market dropped about 10%, and almost all currency in the world has plunged.

If this can't be solved quickly, a domino-effect of Bankruptcy will surely happen to many companies in the world.

It's the Great Depression, round 2, modern age. (Or soon to follow if things continue to deteriorate at this rate.)

Some currencies, such as the Japanese Yen, have become "stronger". This is most probably due to other currencies becoming weaker as compared to itself.

According to some theorists, a free market economy would be most efficient. However, if governments all over the world did nothing to salvage the situation, then most of us will probably end up unemployed and penniless... eventually. Some would argue that interferance is a factor leading to the current mess.

Let us see how the stock market performs when it opens after the weekend.

I don't think we'll slip into a depression that fast. Maybe we might avoid it. The first great depression was even worse than what were going through now.

Maybe if we had more government intervention instead of letting these big companies/CEOs decide their own salary many would have seen this coming. The 'experts' don't even really give us the full scoop, some acted as if they didn't see this coming.

Indeed Japan's currency is getting "stronger", especially when these big name companies are coming to small name Japanese companies for help.

well on the plus side the DOW seems to be on its way back up, so that's some good news.

And I don't think humanity as a whole is stupid enough to allow for another great depression. the prevention of it is surprisingly simple, it just depends on people trusting banks and the market and using both.

That is an understatement. Today Monday/13 it made a record profit. The DOW went up by 900 points. The Dow has never made that kind of gain ever since it was created.

well a lot of that was caused by the government bailout, the key is to ensure that people keep using the stock market and we don't have another massive bailout

The massive drop in the market from the last two weeks was the markets response to the bailout. The market spoken very clearly, they don't want government meddling in their business. yes, punish the people who abuse the system but, not every company is doing bad things. Those good companies and investors hate the idea of government interfering. Now that we were below 10,000 on the DOW that was basically the bottom and the waters are going to calm down...hopefully.

Moral of the story. Wall Street hates Washington interfering.

but you can't deny that it was necessary. I agree that there probably was a better way to handle the problem, but as a short term solution it worked quite well.
I think a good next step is working to improve the countries infrastructure, stuff like reducing the national debt, improving taxes(notice i said IMPROVING, not raising or lowering) and working on improving foreign relations. get the US back to being an undisputed superpower

Say all you want, but the rise in points in DOW was also due to government interference.

that's exactly what I was saying (or were you not talking to me?)

As long as the general masses have this mentality of making America a welfare state, allowing the Government to impede of constitutional rights and allowing the Government to nationalize large industries like GM, Ford, Banks and those "evil" oil companies. Then America will never become a superpower again.

Face it, this Financial Crisis is one nail in the coffin of the American superpower. China and Russia will take our place as the world's superpowers

oops, I meant that as a direct response to Fiery_penguin, but you got a post in before I did.

The government, I believe, did a direct transfusion of capital into the banks, saving the ones worth saving, thereby increasing the DOW market points. Whether or not it'll work, we'll see.

well, I sincerely hope it'll work. I however plan to continue to use banks and spend money, it's one of the best things to do in this scenario, the other best thing is to move into the middle of nowhere and establish an agrarian society.

Bailout Bill caused massive drop in the DOW

Cash injection into the banks may have helped the DOW gain back some of the loss. How much it helped we may never know but, I believe we can agree that the record gain is a silver lining in a pretty cloudy sky.

Stop posting comics that I read. I'll feel like your watching me. Hell, I already feel like Hibia is staring at me 24/7.

To say something on topic. Last time I check today the DOW was hovering around +150.something something

Edit:Scratch that. The DOW is down 270.80 as of the moment I am posting this.