Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesus H Christ
Absolutely, so the real question is we're already fucked so should we just ride out as much free credit as we can and postpone the inevitable or pull the plug and try to salvage what we have and move forward.
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Pull the plug and move forward.
I was in Russia when the government devalued the Ruble and first defaulted on the GKO bonds. Yeltsin gave a speech the night before the Ruble was devalued reassuring everyone that they would not devalue the Ruble and in the morning, the entire financial system was in shambles... I knew many bank presidents that had no idea it was coming. I had a shitload of money tied up in banks that couldn't release any money for months, simply because they had no clue what it was worth... or what it would be worth in 5 minutes or 10 or 15. The streets were red with blood in Moscow and St Petersburg of bank owners who had their licenses yanked by the government and funds seized or assets frozen for being unstable, and/or money laundering banks.
BUT... guess what?
Life went on. Things were weird for a few weeks as an economy relying on imports tried to adjust to the fact that goods were bought at XX.XX$ but had to be sold in Rubles and there was no way they could sell for enough to recoup enough Rubles to convert back to $ to repay the credit lines.
Life went on. Everyone adjusted. Everything adjusted and a few months later, you would have never known it even happened. Out of the ashes rose a stronger, more reliable system and the currency also began to stabilize after almost a decade in a free fall.
The only real problem is "confidence" with currency, investments etc. However, what everyone seems to willfully ignore is that the financial markets don't work that way in an absolute sense. Where confidence erodes, there is opportunity, there will be investment. Where people walk away, other more risk tolerant investors step in. Where people are abandoning a currency, there are no shortage of investors willing to capitalize on the chaos. Where people abandone a market, there are no shortage of investors willing to capitalize.There will NEVER be a collapse... simply an adjustment. The USA is not a 3rd world country. We are part of a very tightly integrated global economy. A cog in a massive machine that will never fail in the sense people seem to think it will/can. A full out default will be a temporary problem and the simple truth is that we will most likely never know it happened or feel it. Chaos is opportunity. Opportunity brings investment. That is always true in a free market economy.
Since everyone in this thread and all the people that think they "know" haven't experienced this stuff first hand or witnessed it or lived through it, I wouldn't take anything said seriously.