Where does it stop

[DJRacing]

Yeah this U.S. collapse has made the interest % from dollars under a mattress look bloody good. But on a better note I have noticed that the big spender's on ebay havent been driving the prices up on every small part available. It must be nice to see a part you want and just buy it no matter the price, but now the big rollers seem to see vmx parts as a luxury and have stopped spending, that to me isnt what the sport is about. VMX is a passion and I wouldnt care less if my bikes were worth $1million or on todays market absolutely nothing, I cant lose money on my bikes because of the fun I have had on them and they aint for sale, unlike the U.S. stock market??
I dont understand how there $us falls and takes ours with it.

[Wombat]

Given the scale of the thing I'm just surprised we didn't see it coming.
Maybe some of you did, but the average bloke only notices the daily fluctuations like the price of petrol going up and down like the tide.
But you know it's serious when big Banks start to fall over.

The American mortgage crisis puzzled me the most.
When the events leading to the crisis were made public I was amazed the learned Financial Gurus allowed it to happen.
Giving massive mortgages to people with limited or minimal income was always going to end in tears.
How could that ever work?
Ok, I've over simplified it but surely the average Accountant and Financial Advisor could see that going arse up within a few years.

No-one knew the whole bloody Country was doing it. The scale of it was massive.
But who advises the average American citizen to sign up for a loan they can't repay?
Any Medical Doctor that incompetent around people would be struck from the Register!

It's an arse smacking we'll remember for years! 
 

[grouty]

Most of the U.S. problem is, I reckon down to money grabbing and pure stupidity !
You have only got to look at the movies they make to see how they portray themselves. Advertising to the world through the movie industry that the country is populated by idiots is not the ideal that a sane nation would have.
I am probably being far too harsh, and speaking out of my chrome megaphone, but hey !

[Wombat]

Yeah Grouty I don't know.

For me the 'movie Americans' are from another Planet.
They bear little resemblance to the down to earth Americans I've met over the years.
Entertainment/Celebrity types and the stereotypes they portray in fil-ums are 'Actors'.
And 'Acting' in a way that's far, far removed from the people I've met. 

I cringe at the stereotyped Australians I see on film! 

[MX125B]

Google  " economic clock"  and you will see that it is a normal cycle we are going through, straight after a few years of boom ( rising house prices, rising markets and interest rates) we then get dropping share prices, house values and commodity prices, then rates follow( like today) . next is recession, this is unavoidable, it's coming. then it starts happening all over again. hence the term " economic clock" 
For normal people there is nothing we can do except battle on through it, however the rich can move their investments around, to take advantage of the situation.
Buy low-sell high, only trouble is nobody rings the bell when it reaches the bottom or tops out.

Who cares, i'm going riding, that's all that matters, do a few whips, rail a few berms and the world is beautiful again!

[jimson]

I'm so lucky because I've nothing to lose money and me don't agree every time I get a little its gone  :'( I've worked real hard at times and seen heaps but it just doesn't stick around  jimson

[lyle2212]

The writing has been on the wall for many years that the USA will fall like the roman empire.   Unfortunatley the rest of the world will feel the effects as well.  Their national deficit has just reached 10 trillion dollars. Mind boggling to say the least. The USA is officially bankrupt , but still they borrow more and more money to prop up their ailing economy. If it was a third world nation everyone would be eating each other by now to survive ,as they would have been abandoned by the rest of the world.  In the mean time their minister for propaganda Alan greenspan spruiks that they will get through ok.  And here we are with a booming economy and an Aussie dollar thats being treated like toilet paper.   I,ve been salary sacrificing $500pw for the past 2 years,  But I,ve just stopped that now and the superannuation mob can go and get f---ed,  and I,ll find other ways to invest my money.

[Doc]

ya know it's funny to me as so many people have said to me in the past 5 or so years since I left full time employment, "don't you worry about not adding to your superannuation and such?" "don't you think you should be investing in something instead of simply living week to week?" nope I argued, my biggest argument always (apart from I hate the parasite blood letching filthy profitering banking institutes) but the fact that the arse could fall out of all superannuation due to another world war and/or global monetary collapse..I was close..maybe closer than I wish to imagine but it didn't take a genius to see the good times wouldn't last forever  

[mx250]

.....the superannuation mob can go and get f---ed,  and I,ll find other ways to invest my money.

I know where there is a nice RC500 if you are interested in an investment . I'll just have a little couple laps ride as a spotters fee .

[YSS]

I know about the 7 year circle , but this time we have 2 new players with different rules on the field .(India and China). Thats what worries me.

[shortshifter]

Someone said the US dept is 10 trillion.On the ABC the other day they said US private borrowings/debt was 41 trillion.The fuse has been lit for a massive financial implosion and by virtue of the fact that the US economy is still the biggest,saturated by products made in China with Australian commodities,the oz dollar is seen as a commodity based,therefore a poor bet currency on foreign exchanges.Where does it stop?This is the beginning of the bust cycle,probably years.The new players are what will keep the Oz economy going.But when they've taken everything out of the ground what are we left with?

[Tony T]

Think of it this way , a pair of shocks that was today $200 is now with the crash $240.00

I had an order for CT90 parts ready to go a couple of weeks ago that has gone from $420.00 to well over $500.00............
It's cost us both money as I'm reconsidering now.................. 

[Nathan S]

The way I see it, way too much of the world's economy has been a house of cards, and waaayy too much of it has been smoke and mirrors.

There are compaines that make lots of money every year, simply by speculating on other compaines' fortunes, without producing a single thing. Now maybe that's something that can work on a small scale and/or in the short term, but when you build layer upon layer of such 'businesses', then the whole thing is bound to fail. You end up with lots of people and lots of money being based on nothing tangible, so when we hit a speed bump, they all fall apart.

And I am repulsed by the fundamental notion that we need economic growth to survive. Amongst other things, it forces population growth, which simply cannot be sustainable indefinitely.
It's also why the western world has been so desperate to empower "those stinkin' commies" in China.

Would our lives really be that much worse if we lived simpler lives, where new cars and big screen TVs took a back seat to spending time with the family?
In my life time, I've watched how we (collectively) have become so much more materialistic, and so much less happy for it. I've spent a lot of the last dozen years blaming lil' Johnny for it, but I now suspect that he was only responding to, and encouraging a sentiment that was already there.

And the last recession was a similar deal: We all got too greedy and then we discovered that we were only rich for as long as everyone else thought that they were rich too - its almost like a bunch of kids imagining that they're astronauts or sometihng - while everyone is playing the game, its fun and it works. But as soon as one kid says "Uh, my mum wants me home for dinner" then the whole thing falls apart.

[pmc57]

I just sent an email to a friend last night commenting on the current turmoil in the markets and suggested their may be a few cheap VMX bike going in the near future as individuals percieved wealth is being eroded on the current markets.
It seems i'm not the only one having these concerns, although no one has talked of having fire sales just yet, but it's refreshing in a way to hear peoples thoughts on issues like whether our capitalistic ways are truely a good thing or whether we should allow ourselves to be led around like a bunch of mindless sheep by corporations who in conjunction with governments only seek to suck as much cash as they can from every one of us.
As I see it, it all had to come to a head one day, and it looks like this big festering pimple on the back of the world financial ass is about to explode. We all have to get back to the fundamentals and start to produce things. Selling unaffordable loans just to make commissions was always going to come unstuck, but hey, they don't give a shit, they got their dollar out of it and now they've passed to burden on to the rest of us to carry. It's just plain old greed and unfortunately that's what a capitalist society is all about. What really amazes me is all these so called capitalists are just as happy as pigs in shit when things are going well and stach away the cash, but when things go belly up, they cry poor and look for handouts left, right and centre. I bet they will be scrambling over themselves to get a share of that US$700B so called rescue package drop-kick Bush is flouting.
Hopefully some good will come from it all when the dust has settled, but then again, pigs might fly.   

[Lozza]

Unfortunately we have to somehow cop the notion of "profit is privatised, debt is socialised" as remember these merchant banks were for profit companies, now the public sector has to bail them out and underwrite the losses.You can also take comfort in the fact that the directors and executives of the fallen banks took home over a billion dollars in bonuses................last year alone!
The question nobody seems to be asking is "where exactly has all the money gone"