Sep 15, 2008

Melt Down

For those of you that are not paying as much attention, the stock market plummeted today, and the pundits are crediting bad news from investment banks and lenders as the primary cause for today's carnage.  

Bloomberg.Com ran an article today about some of the reasons for the subprime mortgage crisis. What I particularly like is the social science, rather than finance or business management angle in this article...

"[Robert Schiller,]the Yale economist and author of ``Irrational Exuberance'' says the crisis has unleashed forces that are tearing at America's social fabric and will probably slow economic growth for years. He likens the struggle to the punitive reparations imposed on Germany after World War I.

"Once again, many people, unable to repay their debts, are being pursued aggressively by creditors,'' creating a sense of helplessness and betrayal, he says. We may be witnessing what he calls ``the first act of a long and complex tragedy.''

Click the title of this post for the full article.  There are links as well to Schiller's book and other relevant topics on this as well at Bloomberg. 

On a more positive note, here is why you should not get too worked up.

That's what I've got tonight.  Thanks for reading and all that.

1 comment:

  1. We (Americans, and others, too) are not as rich as we thought we were. I predict that this is going to become glaringly obvious to us all in the next year or two.

    ReplyDelete