Holy moly - Congress has voted against US bail out

[dinny]

Goodness me

my brother is associate director of a Japanese investment bank.
He is glad he is a lawyer first and not a banker...

thanks PontipineFG
i knew the market was rubbish really
(that's what you're basically saying, right> )

Well, I'm not panicking, I'm enjoying watching the show (that might be because I have no mortgage, no savings, and nothing to lose).

And I'm a lawyer. We always clean up in the end .

Typical - we have seen a house we really want to buy - think this may dissaude us

now explain that economic paradigm thingy

There is no more guarantee of mass panic, justabout, than there is of this package even working (and yet the bill will still need to be paid whether it's successful or not).

I agree sometimes property ownership and the responsibility to keep earning more and more to fill said property with things...

Oh justa give him a nudge, can he remind about the short sellers and wtf they did again?

I do know but I sort of forgot [dim]

We were going to buy next year Dinny, waiting till year after now.

People there think differently. They just do. Even from one another. It's a very vast place with a lot of ethnic and regional diversity.

But on the whole it is much more capitalist.

It's not over yet.

They'll go again and vote again.

Macroeconomics - the study of the economy works as a whole, is extremely faddish. Every 20 years or so, it reinvents itself and comes up with a whole new way of analysing things.

Almost inevitably, this follows a period when the last model of the world has worked pretty well, and then stopped working due to either old age or just somethat that noone foresaw.

I think we're at that point at the moment. The Bank of England, for example, is likely to remain independent but I'd bet good money that in 5 years time it's not going to have an interest-rate only target. Until the macroeconomists work out the next "right" way of approaching things (or at least something that will work for 15 years or so), I think there will be quite a bit of uncertainty in the market.

Basically, I think we're at the point where a lot of economists start getting inventive. Let's hope it doesn't take macro and monetary economics long to come up with a story convincing enough to make those that actually do business more comfortable :-)

JAS - just such a risk as market will fall from this point onwards (LUSH house though )

new paradigm is a change in beliefs, values etc

blimey

Have you seenWill Hutton's interesting comment on the US proposal this morning? Makes the point that the particular proposal (ie the one which has been voted down) had some fundamental flaws - not radical enough. And reference to the Swedish meltdown of 1992 - which I'd completely forgotten, and is a precursor to this.

GM - we were planning to buy in 2009, then 2010. But have seen this house which is sawying our resolve (though currently u/o, so all academic anyway!)

if all the banks go bust, how long will it take for the financial markets to sort themselves out?? its all going downhill very fast but how long will it take for it to get better?

It's not looking very good for McCain. Obama knows this. Think he's playing it cool at the moment, trying to look see as much as possible.

Because he wants this very, very much.

He's no fool.

mmm, he certainly talks the talk, BO does

Slur, short selling is where you "sell" shares that you don't actually own. The reason why it's "short" selling is that after you make the deal, you're "short" the share that you've promised to sell.

There are a couple of ways that this can work, but basicallly it's a bet that the price of the share will fall (and by enough to cover your costs of doing two different sales).

It's legal in some places and illegal in others. In England it's legal but depending on the size of the backlash this might change.