The Depression of 2008

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Posted By: Fred C

Yesterday's near collapse of Bear Stearns is, we are afraid, is
mearly the "tip of the iceberg."

That sounds about right to us. Bruce, sorry about this next opening line but I couldn't resist:

We feel that whilst the subprime mortgages may be the beginning of a downward spiral there are more economic ills to be illumend.

Many speculators, common everyday people, were jumping on the real estate bandwagon only to find out that the wheels were coming off as they were getting on. Now it's going to be time to pay the piper. We have a government that believes in artificially propping up the sagging real estate market rather than just letting it find it's own natural bottom. Throwing good money after bad is not a wise decision. They will prop up the housing market for a short while but the bottom line is trying to qualify a person for a loag these days. Salaries have not increased proportionally to housing prices so either the home prices have to come down or salaries will have to escalate.

It will be interesting to find out how much "credit" is out there and how this "credit" will be repaid as fuel, energy and food prices increase. Default, default, default, bankruptcy, bankruptcy and bankruptcy... who pays for all of that? If someone has a $100K credit line (which was used to pay for all kinds of things) and they default on the payments then WHO gets to pick up the tab?

Ok, so what's the price of tea in China got to do with baseball cards? Nothing, but the economic whoas of our country will definitely take a peice of our discretionary spending cash away from baseball cards. - BUY LOW and enjoy.

I tend to think that the rare stuff may come out into the market but you have to figure that if your so bad off that you can't buy the cheap stuff, there probably isn't much way for you to buy the high end stuff.