15 September 2008

"We're at Impact"

Breaking News from LATOC
Over the last 12 months there have been a number of times when informed people thought "this is it." Well if today and this past weekend aren't "it", I don't know what is. We now have multiple large banks fighting for their lives and a 10 day disruption in gasoline supplies coming out of the Gulf Coast, both on the heels of the government nationalizing $5 trillion in mortgages and the Big Three automakers all letting it be known that they're going to need government bailouts as well. And that's before we even get to the crisis in Georgia over the BTC pipeline, the war in Nigeria MEND declared, or the rapidly collapsing climate.

About six months ago I wrote on this page it was time to "brace for impact". Now I would say forget about bracing for impact, we are at impact right now. It may take a few weeks, even months, for the smoke to clear but I suspect that once it does, people will look back on mid-September as the day "it" happened.

As far as what you can do, my guess is you're already doing whatever there is that you can realistically do. So there's not much for me to tell you other than get ready to roll with the punches as things are about to get very interesting. Even the Wall Street Journal is, more or less, saying as much. In an article posted to its website last night, the Journal predicted that today is going to be "the mother of all Mondays":.... Meanwhile, CNBC is referring to yesterday as "Bloody Sunday" while anticipating "massive triage" and a "complete reorganization" of the financial world:.... BBC News is asking "Is this 1930 all over again?" while describing this past weekend as a "signal moment":....

You would think these developments along with Hurricane Ike and the government seizue of Fannie & Freddie would have been enough to wake the general public from its corn-syrup induced narcosis, but my guess is many (most?) people reading this are surrounded by people who *still* don't have a clue as to what is going on. ....

1 comment: