Houston may lose economic cushion, Area becomes more vulnerable to downturn if oil prices continue to decline, economist says.

Oil prices that have slumped to barely half of last summer’s record highs could make Houston more vulnerable to the economic woes afflicting the rest of the country, a top local economist predicts.

Houston isn’t facing a repeat of the 1980s oil bust that gutted a city then so dependent on such a cyclical business, said Barton Smith, the University of Houston economic guru who saw that slump coming when most others didn’t.

But now that crude has fallen 47 percent from its summer highs north of $140 a barrel, he predicted, Houston’s pain will be more like everyone else’s.

“A global recession translates into weakness in demand for oil, and that’s the danger for Houston,” Smith said.

Crude for November delivery closed down 10 percent at $77.70 a barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Natural gas tumbled by 4.2 percent to $6.535 per million British thermal units on the Nymex.

“It took some 22 years of crude oil futures trading to realize the first WTI settlement price of over $60 a barrel. Consider then, that in the last 90 days, the value of sweet crude has dropped by in excess of $62 a barrel,” Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, said of West Texas Intermediate crude.

When crude reached $77 a barrel in July 2007, it was about halfway up the climb to this summer’s all-time highs. The rise helped fuel a boom in exploration and production spending, from deeper waters to Canada’s oil sands to more expensive efforts to squeeze more oil from existing wells.

At first, crude rose despite growing economic worries, even as U.S. demand started shrinking when oil at $145 translated into gasoline at $4 and above.

Demand remained robust then in emerging economies of China, India and the Middle East. That reduced the sting on Houston’s energy hub — which has much of the world’s exploration and production expertise.

But the demand from those emerging regions began shrinking, too, as the financial crisis spread. Banks in the U.S. and elsewhere started failing or getting bailouts. Investors started running for the exits.

The Dow Jones industrial average on Friday closed out its most volatile week ever, down more than 18 percent, while stocks in Great Britain, Germany, Japan and France were nursing bruises as well. The federal government’s $700 billion bailout and interest cuts by the Federal Reserve and central banks in other nations have yet to thaw frozen credit markets or restore frazzled investor confidence.

In addition, energy stocks took a beating throughout the week. Shares of Exxon Mobil slid nearly 13 percent Friday even though it has $40 billion in cash on hand — a boon in times of tight credit.

And suddenly predictions of $200 oil from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and others became a memory.

Simmons & Company International projected in a note to investors Friday that continuing economic troubles next year will cause “the first contraction in oil demand since the early ’80s.”

That removes some of energy-centric Houston’s cushion and throws it in with the rest of the struggling crowd.

Before the oil bust of the 1980s, 82 percent of Houston’s job market was connected to energy. Now it’s just over half. That protected Houston when low oil prices in 1999 prompted the loss of 25,000 energy jobs while the nonenergy sector gained 50,000.

In a worst-case scenario of the current slide, energy job growth that has ranged from 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent could flatten, Smith said.

While that wouldn’t mirror job losses in other areas, “I’m talking about losing the competitive advantage that allowed us to be above the other big urban areas of the country,” Smith said.

This week OPEC scheduled a meeting for Nov. 18, a month ahead of its regular meeting in December, to consider cutting production to stem crude’s slide. Most analysts believe the cartel wants to squeeze supply enough to keep crude at $80 a barrel or more.

But Smith said that would simply increase OPEC’s spare capacity. A few months ago analysts said OPEC had about 2.5 million barrels a day to fill the gap if other production was disrupted, compared with 10 million barrels more than 20 years ago.

Increased spare capacity would take some of the pressure off oil companies and governments of oil-rich nations to find and produce more, Smith said.

“With prices weak and OPEC struggling to prop them up, it’s not going to be an attractive environment to make the investments we’ve seen over the last two or three years,” Smith said.

Still, analysts said lower crude prices and economic woes don’t erase the future need for increasing production. With economic recovery will come renewed demand, particularly in emerging countries, and revived pressure to find more oil and gas.

“The world is hardly awash in oil,” Kloza said.

The following are just comments. Please leave your views afterwards:

The new economy: Sell a product or a service that is wanted or needed instead of gimmicks, tricks and get rich quick schemes.
“Houston isn’t facing a repeat of the 1980s oil bust that gutted a city then so dependent on such a cyclical business, said Barton Smith, the University of Houston economic guru who saw that slump coming when most others didn’t.
But now that crude has fallen 47 percent from its summer highs north of $140 a barrel, he predicted, Houston’s pain will be more like everyone else’s.”
In 1986 when I asked an executive of a major oil company in Houston, if the oil industry was really losing money or were they just not making as much as they thought they would, he told me they were just not making as much as they thought they would. So much for the oil bust of the 80s. Makes a person wonder how real this one is. Can I take a capitol loss on my taxes because I did not get the raise I wanted?

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Wall Street Stock Markets: Give us a financial help to over credit crisis. If Wall Street wanted to keep the pressure on world leaders for another huge government-led bailout of the global financial system, maybe the rally in the final hour today wasn’t the right strategy.

Nonetheless, hope for a rescue that will finally turn the tide helped pull stocks up sharply from their lows. Some market sectors even scored significant gains for the day — although they barely made a dent in the week’s losses.

The Dow Jones industrials finished off 128 points, or 1.5%, at 8,451.19, after being down as much as 695 points, or 8.1%, at the start of trading.

So we were on our way to Black Friday — for about six minutes. That was followed by a rally that briefly lifted the Dow into positive territory (up about 90 points), then another sell-off, then a major rally in the final hour, then another pullback.

Just another day of insane volatility, except this one was even more insane than usual: The Dow’s intraday swing spanned 1,006 points from its low to its high — the first time that has ever happened.

 For the week, the Dow lost 18.2%, the biggest percentage drop in the index’s 112-year history. The New York Stock Exchange composite plunged 19.5%.

“It’s got to end somewhere,” said Michael Mainwald, head of trading at Lek Securities in New York.

But whether this was it — with the Dow, at its low for the day, off 44.3% from its record high one year ago this week — only the market knows for sure. And it isn’t giving many clues.

A rally in bank stocks set the tone for the day’s recovery, traders said: Everybody was expecting the Group of 7 industrialized nations this weekend to put forth some new package of fixes for global credit markets, which remain largely frozen.

Banks could be the major beneficiaries of any new moves. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson said after trading ended today that the U.S. would move ahead with a plan to inject capital directly into banks and other financial institutions, taking non-voting shares in return. This would be part of the $700-billion bailout Congress approved last week.

In regular trading, JPMorgan Chase & Co. jumped $4.96 to $41.64; Citigroup rose $1.18 to $14.11.

Awaiting concrete action by policymakers, financial institutions and other investors continued to hoard cash early today. The annualized yield on three-month Treasury bills sank to 0.19% from 0.52% on Thursday as buyers swarmed.

Many analysts believe that G-7 finance chiefs have gotten the message, after the mammoth losses in stock markets worldwide this week. Yet the statement policymakers put out this afternoon was filled with generalities. Markets will want something more specific — or else.

“The G-7 has to come up with some really new and profound ideas for lubricating the world’s banking system and restoring the flow of credit to the private sector,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y.

“Otherwise, the ensuing liquidity trap will lock up the world economy and throw us into a recession within a matter of days and weeks, not months and years.”

See economist Nouriel Roubini’s proposals for massive government intervention in this earlier post.

The following are just comments. Please leave your views afterwards:

It is interesting to note what the financial powers that be are willing to acknowledge and what they seem to be unable to disclose. There is a crisis in the credit market, made quite visible mostly by the way the equity market is imploding.

Businesses that do not retain earnings to fund future operations rely on new lending all the time (not particularly wise), but are not able to sell commercial paper. Home buyers with the best credit rating are not granted decent-rate mortgages. What has happened? Why are investors dumping bank stocks? Why are people buying gold and silver? People don’t know whether to put their money under the mattress or spend it as fast as it comes in. Does this mean that bankers are becoming wiser and ordinary people becoming more stupid?

No. This means that reputations, or the credibility of the borrowers of the world are in question, and that the fiat currencies are failing. Our money, after all is based on debt. Moreover, the consequences of this leads to a contradictory mix of communications.

What is being disclosed is that it is a bit more difficult to get a loan. Interest rates “suggested” by central banks are being lowered at the very time that actual rates for new loans can hardly be discussed (if you must ask, you cannot afford it). What are we not told?

Among the things that the financial powers seem unable to disclose are the true consumer price index (CPI: is it the mere official 5.9% or the over 14%, to which the growth of the money supply leads?), the true growth of the national debt or the current deficit, the fact that the income tax is a ruse to hide the true legalized theft of monetary debasement, the true GDP (now negative), the effect of past government regulations that caused the bubbles of the last two decades (CRA and Fair Lending).

The G7 is meeting with the ultimate monetary questions of the table. Now no one is safe. You could wake up Monday morning with financial markets closed for days, with a new world currency, linked in some way to precious metals. If you own gold you may not benefit from this. Who knows what these self-designated geniuses will come up with?

We may now expect any of a variety of desperate measures to mask these government failures that are blamed on the market: massive creation of credit through the Federal Reserve, a new war, censorship, martial law, who knows. The banking-government complex insists on ultimate victory. I, my family and you all are just collateral damage.

We were not expecting to get out of this alive or to take it all with us anyway.
Let it burn, let it all burn! I live in a simple house which I can afford. I take what I can pay for and have no credit card debt. There is one for sale sign in my neighborhood. Drive one minute to the next neighborhood over, with homes in the $500,000 range. Why are their 10 times the amount of homes in foreclosure here? The answer is simple. People got greedy and simply bought too much house. These people CHOSE not to live within their means and now the government is going to wipe their tears away by reaching into my pocket. I meanwhile will keep making my payments with no help. That is what I get for making “smart decisions”. Perhaps I’ll go ahead an make some “bad choices” since following the rules apparently doesn’t pay off.

…”ripping off the poor and middle class to fund the wealthy”??

I am a volunteer tax prepreparer for low and moderate income earners - mostly minorities and seniors. They don’t pay any taxes, thanks to the Bush tax cuts, so it’s not their money that’s going to bail out our credit system. In fact, if they’re under 65, many of them get the Earned Income Credit, another form of government welfare, which BO wants to expand.

Wall Street goes up and down based on imagination and people make a living imagining what it all means. It’s all enough to let your imagination run wild.

$750 billion added to a $10 trillion national debt and the lala land politics that created it is good material for another Golden Compass type movie with Nicole Kidman. Imagine climbing a stack of dollar bills that reaches into space over three times the distance to the moon on your way to magic land.

The only problem is that, this time, imaginations have turned into madness. It’s time to pull the plug on this fantasy movie.

Four homes around me were sold to them whom could not afford them, I do hope they are lost, as they are being run down, that devalue my home, In a 2003 speech BUSH took full credit for the sale with no down payment of homes, i do not fell well about the bailout. it is like paying to have your home wrecked.

Any sane person would realize the markets crashed BECAUSE the bailout passed.

First, it was proposed and the markets went way down. Then the house nixed it and the markets went back up. Then the senate and house passed it and the markets collapsed.

Every sane investor realizes the only thing the government can do is damage, in the form of Paulson ensuring that his buddies at big investment firms are made whole at the expense of the rest of us. So the only sane things to do are sell everything you have right away, or bet on Paulson not being able to actually conduct the rescue due to political harassment.

This reasonable fear that the government is going to save the big institutions at the expense of the rest of us is greatly amplified by the very overt media invovlement in political lobbying to make the bailout happen, and to protect the big institutions that need to be liquidated for the market to recover.

The real way the media can help stabilize the markets is to go over Paulson, his associates, and what he proposes to do with a fine tooth comb so people have some confidence they understand what is going to happen and why. Without confidence based on actual knowledge the only rational presumption is a lot of the stocks I hold are worth zero, because the stocks Paulson’s buddies at Goldman Sachs bought are going to pumped up by government intervention.

What the markets are saying in response to all the “rescue” plans is that no matter how many hundreds of billions of dollars governments conjure out of thin air to give to the corporations that give them the biggest bribes — uh, campaign contributions — that money isn’t going to make it to shareholders, and the shareholders have figured that out. The “rescues” just add to the burden of the typical shareholder/taxpayer. They might reduce pain in the short term, but they increase it in the long term.

How about giving us a plan to become energy independent. Very little is being said about the link of our dependence on foreign oil and it’s exorbitant price and the rapid decline of our economy. The high cost of fuel drives up the cost of food and EVERY consumer product. Families are suffering tremendously from filling up the car to paying electric and heating bills to the rising cost of food. There is little to no money left over to save or invest. Jobs and homes are being lost at a record rate with no end in site. We need to utilize natural sources of energy such as wind and solar as well as integrate all modern technology such as hybrid cars, plug in cars, bio fuels etc. We have the technology and knowledge what our nation seems to lack is a plan of action. We are drowning in our dependence on foreign oil. We need to wake up, educate ourselves and be proactive in demanding our elected officials do everything in their power as leaders of our nation to extract us from the iron grip of our dependence on foreign oil. I just read a book called “The Manhattan Project of 2009″ by Jeff Wilson. I think maybe we should elect him for president! he is brilliant so is his book

The Federal Government is likely to own the banks, the domestic auto companies, some hedge funds, and who knows what else. So, in the future you better only pick investments which are likely to receive government guarantees or funds in a pinch. In China, those specific companies which are politically connected get all the long term contracts, amounting to billions and billions of dollars in business. The government allocates capital. This is our future, as well.

i think the best thing for governments to do is to initiate massive tax increases on those who are able to pay them. this will reduce the ‘crazy money’ out there and will take some of the speculation out of the market place, where greed has driven this market into what we’re seeing now.
with these tax revenues governments should invest in massive public works projects to revitalize nations’ infrastructures, education systems and health systems. this will keep people working and will inject money into circulation and from this a new economy will emerge.
then, governments should initiate policies to reduce market place speculation (such as imposing high taxes on investments sold before a defined time period and a minimal tax on all buys and sells).
next, governments should make a big effort to pay down debt, a real drag on all economies. those lately who have claimed the ‘fundamentals of the economy are strong’ were complete idiots: how can ‘fundamentals’ be strong when governments don’t make an effort to pay their debts.
I would argue that the current measures being taken by the Bush administration and the larger group of “finance ministers” from the G7, are demonstrating an underlying truth which would be impossible for any of them to admit: this melt-down is not a crisis of confidence in the US economy, it is a recognition by investors at large that the global financial industry, lead by the major firms on Wall Street, have constructed a rigged game, the rules of which limit the upside potential of all investors. On the downside, the rules are such that the operators of the game can speculate with the assets entrusted to them, and when their schemes go wrong, tacitly hold their governments hostage to the corrosive effects of near-term financial losses, and thereby effect bail-outs of many varieties in order to sustain the canard that the game itself is honest.

What should a President do about it? I believe he should consider an aggressive investigation into the individuals who perpetrated the sub-prime mortgage irregularities, and use whatever legal means available to expose their malfeasance, and recover assets they have acquried with the compensation they have extracted over the entire course of this loosely understood “racket” they have been operating. He should also draw upon expertise from those who are not part of the racket, but who understand how it works. Two good examples: David M. Walker, former Comptroller General of the GAO, and William Isaac, former head of the FDIC under Ronald Reagan.

The current crisis and the measures being taken give the appearance that Secretary Paulson is willing to spend an unlimited amount of money, as long as the solution protects the status quo in terms of who actually holds power on Wall Street, and their cohorts in Congress. The reason so many voters opposed the bailout was precisely because we wanted to see the manipulators and opportunists flushed out of the system. Until that happens, no one with any sense is going to rely upon Wall Street for anything. It’s clearly a rigged game, the sub-prime mortgage episode has left a massive e-paper trail which substantiates that.

The middle class is the heartbeat of this great nation. When the middle class can’t afford to buy a house, we have real problems. Home values are over inflated in Florida and they SHOULD come way down. I don’t think the houseing market is necessarily “crashing”. Nor do I think capitalism is broken. On the contrary I believe capitalism is working, driving the prices of homes BACK to where they should have been to begin with.

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Great Depression on Wall Street? US Markets Make for worse, and cry for help. Economic policymakers of the G-7 industrialized nations meet in Washington this weekend. If they don’t have their own blueprint for action, Roubini just gave them one.

If ever there was a setup for a Black Friday on Wall Street, this is it.

We can hope it doesn’t happen. But better that investors are realistic about the risks. Global markets and the world economy are at a dangerous point in this debt-fueled debacle, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

On Thursday the U.S. stock market suffered its seventh straight loss, and the 7.3% drop in the Dow Jones industrial average — down 678.91 points to a five-year low of 8,579.19 — was the biggest yet in this latest sell-off.

In other words, the get-me-out-at-any-price mentality is more intense than even a few days ago. Many people are morose, demoralized, desperate. They can’t take any more.

 ”Investors are in survival mode,” said Robert Bissell, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Los Angeles. “Stocks of major companies are at ridiculous prices,” he said, but no one cares. “This is what panics are all about.”

Much of the selling now is forced: Hedge fund managers may not want to let stocks go at these prices, but their clients want their money back. Ditto for mutual fund managers, who are facing a surge in redemptions. Selling begets more selling.

There wasn’t much new in U.S. markets Thursday, and that was the problem. Credit markets remain mostly frozen, as wary banks still refuse to lend to one another despite the federal government’s attempts to break that logjam.

The plan for the Treasury to buy up $700 billion in bad loans from banks now is roundly viewed as too little, too late, or just wrong-headed. Critics say it won’t get the banks to lend again any time soon.

New reports from Washington on Thursday said the Treasury might try another approach: injecting capital directly into banks. Yet that revelation also failed to lift market sentiment.

Coordinated, but modest, interest rate cuts by the world’s major central banks Wednesday didn’t work either.

Maybe it’s time to start listening to people other than the same ones who let things get to this point.

Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University and head of Roubini Global Economics, over the last two years has predicted much of what has since come to pass. His critics dismissed him as Dr. Doom; now they wish they had heeded him.

Roubini is warning that the world has reached the brink of financial and economic calamity. This is from an e-mail he sent to clients late Thursday:

At this point the risk of an imminent stock market crash — like the one-day collapse of 20%-plus in U.S. stock prices in 1987 — cannot be ruled out as the financial system is breaking down, panic and lack of confidence in any counterparty is sharply rising and the investors have totally lost faith in the ability of policy authorities to control this meltdown.

When in markets that are clearly way oversold, even the most radical policy actions don’t provide rallies or relief to market participants. You know that you are one step away from a market crash and a systemic financial sector and corporate sector collapse. A vicious circle of deleveraging, asset collapses, margin calls and cascading falls in asset prices well below falling fundamentals, and panic is now underway.

He says governments have no choice but to take much more dramatic steps — in unison — to try to restore confidence. His list includes:

– another round of interest rates cuts by central banks, at least 1.5 percentage points in size.

– a temporary blanket guarantee of all bank deposits.

– a “rapid reduction of the debt burden of insolvent households preceded by a temporary freeze on all foreclosures.”

– a “massive direct government fiscal stimulus package that includes public works, infrastructure spending, unemployment benefits, tax rebates to lower income households and provision of grants to strapped and crunched state and local government.”

– government recapitalization of financial institutions and a reduction of the debt burden of distressed borrowers.

Economic policymakers of the G-7 industrialized nations meet in Washington this weekend. If they don’t have their own blueprint for action, Roubini just gave them one.

The following are just comments. Please leave your views afterwards:

My comment/question here the other day about Jim Cramer calling a bottom was perhaps made out of ignorance, of which I have plenty.

Here’s my question now: For those who have been in cash for quite some time now, what’s the best way to get into the market as a bottom nears?

Dollar cost average in — into what? Individual stocks? ETFs, mutual funds?

Whom to ask for help? Most people have no idea where to begin.

Vanguard, for instance, will do a cookie-cutter plan, for a fee that depends on how much you have with them. Some experts would say that a cookie plan from Vanguard is much better than doing nothing or sticking with a stock broker. Is it?

Mr. Petruno is the one financial journalist I trust with this question.

I SAW A COMMENT WHERE YOU BLAMED THIS ON THE ELECTION? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND!!!! GREED IS THE PROBLEM. THE MARKET IS JUST BALANCING ITSELF OUT FROM YEARS OF RIDING THE BULL BUT TO CLAIM SOMEONE IS A MARXIST AND A MESSIAH IN THE SAME PHRASE IS ABSOLUTE STUPIDITY. OUR INFRASTUCTURE IS NOT SOUND! AND THE QUICKER WE INVEST IN REVAMPING IT, THE MORE JOBS, MONEY AND BETTER THE US WOULD BE. I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WOULD BLAME SOMEONE WHO SUPPOSE TO BE “A NEW KID” ON THE SCENE FOR THIS MESS. HOW ABOUT THE POLITIANS WHO HAVE MAJOR INVESTMENTS IN EXXON, JPM, AIG, CITI, WHO CAN’T BARE TO SAY THE TRUTH B/C THEY KNOW THEY WOULDN’T HAVE A FIGHTING CHANCE. HOW ABOUT THE POLICTIANS WHO WERE TEXTING THEIR BUDDIES(CEO’S OF MAJOR COMPANIES) LETTING THEM KNOW THEY CAN BREATH B/C THE BAILOUT IS GOING THROUGH. OUR GOVERNMENT WASN’T BASED UPON VALUES, IT WAS BASED UPON CORRUPTION. AND IT IS ABOUT TIME THAT WE HAVE SOME ACTUAL PEOPLE IN OFFICE AND NOT PUPPETS.

“freeze on all consumer debt payments including mortgages” - are you kidding me? We are in this mess because people spend money they don’t have. New car every year - big screen TV - the McMansion. The people living beyond their means should be allowed to crash and burn. I don’t have a new car each year and live in a house I can afford - why should I have to pay for the toys of the reckless spenders now that they can’t pay for them on their own.

Ahhh, so NOW the media starts paying attention to Roubini. Shame it didn’t start back at the BEGINNING of the crisis - instead of just labeling him Dr Doom and mocking him. Maybe the politicos will finally even consider asking him for advice, rather than simply relying on the people who got us to this state….

The inexorable laws of economics are leading us to worthless money, no-value assets and debt that is unimaginable and unpayable! Half-measures like bailouts will merely prolong the ever-deepening agony. UN should convene a new Bretton Woods Conference of G8 plus China, India, IMF, World Bank and WTO. With a global economic freeze to calm things -temporarily nationalising everything without payment and cancellling all debts- we can start again with a new agreed international basis for currency, markets, business, international relations, international law and trade. The new basis of value cannot rely on the dollar which has been wantonly destroyed. The new basis must be the value of the one thing that is permanent and indestructible - all the land on earth.

The free market was like a drunken party — out of control. Cutting off the flow of booze, throwing out the most rowdy players, and if necessary imposing a curfew is not necessarily the end of life as we know it… or the end of partying.

Some things don’t work. Credit to uncreditworthy borrowers, for example. Duh.

It was past time for a “get real” wake-up call, painful as it is. The fear will stop when it becomes clear that there are basics still there we can count on. You know, supply, demand. Rules that cut off the liquor to the drunkest guests. We’ll still have a hangover but we’ll get over it.

Thanks GW, it could be worse, just imagine if we would of taken the brilliant idea of GW and replace SS with the stock market, there would be riots in the street by now. I am a Republican and please vote this illiterate pathetic moron and McCain the same out of office. Please send him back to Texas where he blends.

FINANCIAL CRISIS: THE MUSICAL
The economy is no laughing matter. But this parody about the economy is.
Windfall had a lot of it right with a few exceptions. Bush did not practice diversity by allowing the unqualified to receive loans because of affirmative action. He, Rove, and Cheney directed Greenspan to reduce interest rates so that the booming economy of the 90’s, fueled by computers and the internet, would not decline under a Republican. This encouraged the housing industry to do anything and everything they wanted including making some very bad lending decisions.

As far as Obama being a Marxist, that seems a little simplistic. Maybe he is, maybe not. What I have seen, though, is that all Presidents seem to do about the same thing, no matter what party they belong to, in response to events they encounter. It has been a very long time since we have had a leader who knows where he is going and takes us with him.

THE DEMOCRATICS ARE 100% THE BLAME FOR THIS GLOBAL MARKET
CRASH,BY PLAYING GAMES FOR 2 WEEKS WITH THE 700 BILLION BAILOUT. I HAVE BEEN A DEMORCRAT VOTER FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS.
THIS YEAR I AM GOING TO VOTE REPUBLICAN ALL THE WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
I HAVE LOST MY LIFE SAVING BECAUSE OF THE DEMORCRATS!If the gov’t waves its magic wand and dismisses all consumer debt, does this mean that consumers have to give back the Range Rovers, flat-screens, Jimmy Choo’s, and all the other assorted bling they’ve padded their (now underwater) nests with for the past 8+ years?

Yes, we are soon rid of the feeble-minded simpleton bush, and the repub neo-convicts (oh, how we WISH!!!) but then, I look and see Pelosi, Reid, Blarney Frank, Chris Dodd, LIEberman, Boxer and Feinstein….THIS will be better?????

We have 1 chance to truly express our wrath; VOTE AGAINST EVERY INCUMBENT! (Sorry, Waxman….but ‘YOUR’ Party is GUILTY as ‘ell, too!) The dems have had too much power for far too long; anyone over 35 KNOWS how far Calif has sunk into an abyss, created by sniveling dems. How many welfare recipients now have Govt jobs? How many got a Govt credit card for ‘expenses?’ And how many Detroit garbage scows are they driving, on YOUR taxpayer dollar??? We shudder, to think about THAT!!!

Capitalism, the impostor of universal wealth creation and where it has to be replaced with a universal humane and sustainable value system

Isn’t it now perfectly clear that governments do not run the world but the rich and powerful? For now as investors (the rich) pull out their capital from stock markets all around the world, the global economy is in free-fall, punishing most of humanity in the process. Therefore the ‘capitalist’ system as an economic system is highly unstable and volatile. For what they do affects us all through capitalism and super-capitalism (globalization) and the effects brought about by them alone. This system is therefore bankrupt in human development terms, as when it goes wrong it harms everyone on this planet except the very few rich who undeniably perpetrate this harm on humanity. Therefore when we are all over this human disaster, governments around the world have to change the economics of the world from basically just being there for the rich to that of human sustainability and need. If we do not, the world will continue to be enslaved by capitalism, which makes the very few rich beyond their wildest dreams and the majority unsustainable. In this respect over half the world is still living in poverty and more will be doing so in the future due to the dictates of the capitalist market system. It is the majority of humankind therefore who really suffer when things in this system fail, go so very wrong and where the few who instigated the problem get off scot-free. At the end of this month, if anyone is interested, the WIFC is publishing the ‘independent’ reasoning of some of the world’s most eminent independent thinkers on what can replace our present economic system. It will be published on Press TV. But overall, we have to change completely for our own good, our mere existence and for the lives that our young will now inherit, or may be not.

Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity (WIFC)
Bern, Switzerland

Ps. To show that the system is so good for the few I noticed today that Aston martin’s new One-77, the most expensive road car in the world at $2 million a go, is oversubscribed already although it has only just been unveiled this week at the Paris motor show. this shows the system for what it really is and where the rich have no problems and we the majority have them all.

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