Suzie Green

You're doing a great band a huge injustice!

patentcad

Where DO you get these ideas? And seriously, how much time have you spent in Europe? In the past three years I've visited Greece, Germany and Britain, I have family in two of those countries and have spent plenty of time there. Don't worry about the US. They have their own problems over there, and any smart Euro will be the first to admit it. Remember the Banking Crisis that was an American problem? They're not laughing in London and Berlin now pal.

ckelly49

I know. I guess I should have added a

sharkey00

Don't forget the new guy for WAMU. Fishman got 20 million for 3 weeks of work. That is roughly a 1/4 billion a year at that rate.

oilman_15106

Bike boom, nope. You will not be allowed to own a bike under Socialism.

Fat Boy

That scene is hilarious.

patentcad

You obviously haven't spent much time in Paterson. On the other and I have spent considerable time in most of the absolute worst neighborhoods and buildings in NY City: South Bronx, Bed-Stuy, Harlem, etc. The slum building I toured in Paterson was by FAR the worst tenement I ever saw. Indescribable.

So yes, Paterson is not only that bad, it's worse. You really have no idea.

alanbikehouston

Who believes government economic reports? Last week, the government released a report saying prices are stable, and there has been no increase in"average" prices in the past twelve months. But, the stuff I buy (milk and cereal being "favorites") have doubled in price over the past year.

So, the government says I'm doing great...which would be true if I stopped buying milk, cereal, gasoline, electricity, or bikes.

bostongarden

I could, perhaps, see one being okay if one stopped buying milk, cereal, gasoline and electricity. But, stop buying bike? Have you gone crazy??!!

z415

GDP numbers are not the definitive indicator of recessions; that is an inaccuracy portrayed and perpetuated primarily by the media and word of mouth thereafter.

GDP is only one of the factors that can indicate a contraction of the economy. The NBER (Nat'l Bureau of Econ Research) seems to lean more on investment, savings, durable consumption and unemployment numbers.

We are in a recession is my opinion, as is that of most of UF's econ profs. The belief is that the NBER is just hammering out when to peg the recession to (beginning month), but we are most definitely in a recession.

Blame weak investment numbers which is the fault of the housing market which is the fault of financial corporations which is the fault of people not knowing and thinking of the future.

Econ and finance now excites me more then cycling and the TdF...must...get...back...on...saddle...

patentcad

That would move it beyond recession or depression and right into the End of Days phase.

z415

Bikes are a durable good and probably is a laggard to a recession so in a short recession the decline in that factor of consumption could happen afterward when people get scared and start saving more - American savings rates has been nada the last few years. Not good - makes is harder to ride through a recession.

Consumers, even corporate and government, rarely exhibit foresight and always show hindsight.

Sinn

But the prices in the bike industry have gone way up. For example, the price of Hutchinson Fusion 2 tires used to be $35 at my LBS. Now they cannot sell them for under $85 a pop.

bostongarden

Kid, you're growing on me...keep it coming...

orcanova

Not true(about the first world part). And not to mention, China's economy is only 1/6 the size of the US economy, and that's with 1 billion plus population.

The financial sector is weak because of the real estate scam, we are in a recession, but recession is an inevitable cyclical part of the free market economy. The economy will wither the recession, and will rebound with a prosperous period, just like we have had since Black Monday 1987.

The US economy as a whole is still one of envy, that's why the ripple effects come from here, not elsewhere. Its huge and robust.

AlanS

David Lereah, Chief Economist for NAR wrote this in 2005:



Of course, he retired in disgrace when the housing market took a dump.

z415

How ironic that the less propaganda-ish stuff like that out there, the longer the boom would have lasted, ostensibly at a lower rate, which could have made the subsequent depression not as harsh. *tsk-tsk*

z415

"Free market" is used too loosely. I prefer "economy on retractable leash". Not sure what the term for those are since I don't have a dog, but you dog owners know what I am talking about.

z415

I would think that a centrally planned economy, in light of the environmental and economic recession factors, would want to spend the money on bikes for everyone to bolster GDP and take a step towards sustainability.

rruff

Indeed. And guys out of work will drink too much, get a DUI, lose their license, and buy a bike from Walmart or Goodwill to get around on... so that covers the low end market as well.

rruff

Well... of course there are *some* people in the world that envy the US economy, since most of it is far worse. The thing that pisses me off is that for the last 30 years the living standard (median) has been going downhill, and for the last 10+ the only thing keeping us afloat has been massive increases in debt. Now we are maxed out and have to start "paying it off"... one way or another.

This ain't no '87 dip... more like the early 30s... but worse. I give it 10 years or so...

mazdaspeed

Pure socialism exists in textbooks and imaginations. You are able to buy and own things in a socialist government [the implication here being that an existing socialist government would be a mixed system like everything else]

eb314

My point wasn't that the economy is not retracting (it is) it's that we aren't in a recession. I know that GDP is not the only measure of the economy, but it is by definition the only factor in determining whether or not a country is in a recession. A recession isn't a matter of opinion, it's clearly defined. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. The economy can still be doing bad without us being in a recession (evidence: right now.) I just don't like everybody throwing around the term loosely.

Weak investment numbers are the fault of the government. They're the ones who passed legislation saying banks had to lend to unqualified people. The banks knew they weren't going to get their money back, but they didn't have a choice in lending to them. So they sold those assets to Fannie/Freddy who sold them as high-yield AAA rated mortgage-backed bonds. When people who bought the houses realized that they couldn't afford them when rates went up, they wante out. Unfortunately they now owed more on their house than what it was worth, and people began defaulting. Now there's no more money coming in to pay the coupon payments, and everyone who bought those bonds is out of luck. This includes Europe.

rruff

Evidence? Do you have some links? How did they force them to do this? To my knowledge the government only made it *legal* (starting with Regan) to create variable rate baloon mortgages and later some banks invented a loophole to get rid of the risk by packaging and selling these doomed mortgages as low-risk investments... and they were selling this stuff all over the world. Once they had that system in place and it was going well (ie RE prices were rising slowly so defaults were few), there was a frenzy to sell loans to anyone and everyone, since the risk was defered. Lending institutuions no longer cared if the borrower had any way to pay the loan... you could be out of work and broke and get a loan for half a million dollars with zero down! A great no-risk "get rich quick" scheme. You sit on the house for 6 months, sell it for $50k more than you paid and everyone is happy. This forced up RE prices at a crazy rate, and then the bubble popped.

I've seen it often quoted that the government caused this by over-regulation... ie forcing banks to give these loans... but the evidence they always cite are lawsuits regarding race discrimination in lending. That is not evidence.

Government (especially the ones in office when this came to a head) are certainly guilty for allowing this to happen. Any idiot who knew what was going on would have known that a serious crash was inevitable. And whoever rated these packaged junk mortgages as AAA should be guilty of fraud.

cleansheet

I've seen the Crazt Joe Clarke movie. It is that bad. Morgan Freeman said so.