The economy killed by the press…

13 thoughts on “The economy killed by the press…”

1. Hi Tim,

   >> First, the press takes an issue and hypes it up to a point where regular Joe’s are rushing out to draw their money out of a successful bank for fear of it collapsing.

   I thought that it was only the USA in trouble?

2. If they did stop reporting on it, you might not be as likely to watch or read their stead stream of hype. If you stop paying attention, then they get less $$ for advertising. Everything (well, almost everything) is connected. Stop watching the news and then things will get better. If they don’t, at least you won’t have to hear about how they’re not getting better so you can remain happier! 🙂

3. Here in Aus, the Reserve Bank is putting up interest rates (three times since November) to try to cool down the economy and rein in inflation, and the banks are putting them up even more to cater for the difficulties in borrowing money from the US. We don’t need the newspapers to tell us the mortgage is going up (plus fuel price increases driving up prices everywhere).

4. Don:

   The bigger problem in the UK is their deposit guarantee is only something like 35K pounds. In the US, the $100K limit can be played with by having accounts with multiple banks, with multiple people like spouses and children in multiple combinations. Don’t know if you can do that in the UK, but the lower limit is that much more likely to cause a run. Less regulated banks in the US are more likely to be run on – that’s what the Bear Sterns thing is all about, it hasn’t happened in the past simply because they weren’t allowed to be banks until relatively recently, and only more recently have had the “new” financial instruments (like packaging up subprime mortgages and selling them) that hide risk better from investors. It’s too bad that people who want less government regulation will rationalize this away, but perhaps the time of Reagonomics is nearing its end. Someone might actually notice that depending on private investment for retirement savings is a bad idea as millions see their nest eggs go bye-bye.

   Tim:

   Yes, it has long been true that perception can trump all, especially in a paper tiger economy. But buying gold at a peak isn’t a good idea unless the world economy is going to collapse. If blood is running in the streets, stock up on meat 🙂 Some people are noticing the guy in charge of Morgan Stanley (the company that bought Bear Stearns for two bucks a share, wiping out the retirement savings of most employees there), is a genius, just like JP Morgan in the Panic of 1905.

   Most of us don’t have to worry until we actually lose our jobs. That was definitely a consideration for me a few months ago when I switched from years of being an independent to a perm (the major issue for me was health care, a problem in the US).

   My dad (Great Depression hit when he was 12) predicted the economy would collapse in the ’70s. Someone I worked for in the ’80’s (same age as my dad) thought the economy was about to collapse (and I followed his specific advice at the time and made enough on Noble’s to buy my Lincoln). My brother and the UCLA Anderson forecast predicted the US housing market would collapse after the turn of the century. They were wrong year after year, until last year. Now the UCLA group are saying, literally, don’t worry, be happy.

   So would you rather have the media give some semblance of the truth, or even more useless pabulum?

5. I thought JPM bought BS?

6. Joel: I don’t mind hearing the truth. It’s the hours of endless speculation about how the (financial) world is going to end that gets on my nerves. Report facts, not scaremongery. That’s what I say. 🙂

   Cheers

   Tim…

   PS. I don’t own any gold. I’m not a bling-bling type. 🙂

7. It isn’t just the economic reporting, it is 2 years of non stop U.S. presidential election press reporting that is driving me completely up a wall. OK, so far it is a mere 15 months of nonstop election – since the day after the 2006 election. I’ll vote when the time comes. Until then, ENOUGH!!!

8. We’ve been getting a lot of coverage of the US pre-elections over here also. It all seems a bit strange and longwinded to me, but then I guess a campaign in the USA is like 50 elections in the UK wrapped up in one. It’s a big place. 🙂

   Our last Prime Minister in the UK (Tony Blair) was a total media whore. If there was any chance to get on the TV he was there. By contrast, the current Prime Minister (Gordon Brown) seems to be a recluse. I disliked the vanity of Tony Blair, but I’m not sure the reclusive approach taken by Gordon Brown will win him many votes.

   Cheers

   Tim…

9. DJ, you’re right, slipped a mental gear there. They split into an investment bank and a commercial bank in the ’30’s. I said the wrong one. In ’90’s, the laws that caused the original split were partially repealed, leading to the current mess.

   I’m with Claudia about the election coverage. I was able to tune it out for a while, but…

10. @Claudia

    TRUE ! Here in India also, in international news, daily they are telling stories of Hillary n Obama but i just find it stupid that how long they are going to take to decide it 😀

11. The problem is there isn’t enough real news to fill 24 hours a day with, (at least not stuff people will watch) so the news channels have to repeat the same items over and over to fill the time between adverts, analysing the same story with different presenters, of course there is no excuse for the BBC which doesn’t have any advertisers to keep happy..

12. Chris_C: Surely you have some jovial stories about rescuing kittens from trees that can be used to fill time. 🙂

13. It’s not a cave as such…but I’m happy for you to store your gold at my house…for a small handling charge!

    😉

    Jeff

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