IWalker
Well-known member
Haha, wow. People certainly get fired up about this stuff.
I work for a bank as a financial analyst, and from all I can tell, there certainly already has been significant recoil from the mortgage mess, but much of that was absorbed in the last 2 quarters of the prior year. The credit default rates, while higher than average, are not apocalyptic by any means, and the majority of those defaults are not the fault of corporations, but rather of people making poor financial decisions. Many people in high rate ARMs are able to refinance now at a much lower rate, due to the lowered interest rates the fed has enacted...making those houses once again affordable where they previously were not. As an economic machine, I don't think there's any reason we'd need to enter anything worse than a very mild recession...but there is the intangible effect of psychology on markets. The capital markets rely on demand and estimation of future value, and if everyone thinks there is a bleak outlook, and thus reduced future value on securities, the prices will fall, and that alone will contribute to a recession (reduced investment capital with lower share prices)...and that can be a spiraling effect.
The important thing to note, when considering questions like this, is to understand that you're part of a 400 million person country, and that while your own situation (or that of your town/city/state/region) may be bleak, that isn't necessarily representative of the country as a whole.
My personal opinion of the media...whatever the bias...is that it's a business based on creating interest, not on presenting an accurate representation of the world we live in, thus we get a skewed perspective of the volume of events. Reading a newspaper on any given day, we'd think we're damn near approaching the end of the world, with all the death,destruction, and scandal that gets reported each day. It's really just not that bad. I read the news every day...but sometimes I have to just take a step back and look around...and see that life's actually pretty great. People who try to take the world's problems as read in the newspaper/seen on the news, and project them upon themselves are bound to make themselves unhappy in the process.
As someone who loves civil discussion on pretty much any topic, I can tell you that as soon as someone starts getting hysterical and making personal attacks, that's when the conversation ends. I appreciate Rich making the effort to re-establish the tone of a civil discussion, and hope I kept it in that realm.
I work for a bank as a financial analyst, and from all I can tell, there certainly already has been significant recoil from the mortgage mess, but much of that was absorbed in the last 2 quarters of the prior year. The credit default rates, while higher than average, are not apocalyptic by any means, and the majority of those defaults are not the fault of corporations, but rather of people making poor financial decisions. Many people in high rate ARMs are able to refinance now at a much lower rate, due to the lowered interest rates the fed has enacted...making those houses once again affordable where they previously were not. As an economic machine, I don't think there's any reason we'd need to enter anything worse than a very mild recession...but there is the intangible effect of psychology on markets. The capital markets rely on demand and estimation of future value, and if everyone thinks there is a bleak outlook, and thus reduced future value on securities, the prices will fall, and that alone will contribute to a recession (reduced investment capital with lower share prices)...and that can be a spiraling effect.
The important thing to note, when considering questions like this, is to understand that you're part of a 400 million person country, and that while your own situation (or that of your town/city/state/region) may be bleak, that isn't necessarily representative of the country as a whole.
My personal opinion of the media...whatever the bias...is that it's a business based on creating interest, not on presenting an accurate representation of the world we live in, thus we get a skewed perspective of the volume of events. Reading a newspaper on any given day, we'd think we're damn near approaching the end of the world, with all the death,destruction, and scandal that gets reported each day. It's really just not that bad. I read the news every day...but sometimes I have to just take a step back and look around...and see that life's actually pretty great. People who try to take the world's problems as read in the newspaper/seen on the news, and project them upon themselves are bound to make themselves unhappy in the process.
As someone who loves civil discussion on pretty much any topic, I can tell you that as soon as someone starts getting hysterical and making personal attacks, that's when the conversation ends. I appreciate Rich making the effort to re-establish the tone of a civil discussion, and hope I kept it in that realm.
