Let’s see. Japan’s credit rating got downgraded, and not much happened. Except borrowing got more expensive.

A $100 billion tantrum from our unpatriotic, anti-American Republican friends on the other side of the aisle.

Individual debt in Japan is very low. Our own economy is wallowing in it. Big difference for those who owe on, say, ARMs or credit cards.

Good morning, Ruth. Or who are being foreclosed, or can’t move because they’re underwater on their mortgages. Which is the most basic problem here. Can’t spend what you don’t got.

Seventy million people all simultaneously playing the Republican version of the American Dream Game for eight years, and all of them got caught with their pants down.

Still, I don’t think Wall Street is quite ready to sink the boat just yet. There’s still plenty more to loot.

True, but finding banks can’t foreclose on properties they can’t produce papers on is a rather pinching way of having ‘skin in the game’.

Good morning, pups. It’s The Pasty Little Putz and Krugman today. In “Waiting For a Landslide” the Putz ‘splains to us how dreams of a final victory are downgrading our politics. Prof. Krugman, in “Credibility, Chutzpah and Debt,” says America’s a mess, but Standard & Poor’s has no right to judge.

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, the cold drinks are in the fridge, and the biscuits are out of the oven. I’m starting the week feeling like I’m peeking out of my little bunker, wondering if something else is going to blow up. Not a particularly comfy feeling… Have a great day.

Thanks, Marion. Hope you have a nice garden going, too.

Imagine time-traveling back to 2008 and trying to tell the folks back there what’s going on now, and how everyone feels now…

I’m guessing they’d throw you out of their forums and call you a racist. Who else could possibly question such a perfect Presidential candidate?

Caves

Good morning all,

How’s the wars going, anyway ? We’re # 1 in war for sure !

Will we win this anyone of them this week ?

Unemployment and underemployment is still a huge problem. And our leader intends to sign legislation for more job killing free trade agreements as soon as Congress passes it. This will bring some of that touchy-feely bipartisanship we here so much about.

read yesterday tha 40% of adults (19-64) had trouble paying medical bills in 2010. medicare for all would’ve been nice. food pantries are begging for donations. not a good time to gut social programs but gut they will.

from Marion’s link, from Krugman;
‘the United States has far higher health costs than any other advanced country, and very low taxes by international standards. If we could move even part way toward international norms on both these fronts, our budget problems would be solved.

So why can’t we do that? Because we have a powerful political movement in this country that screamed “death panels”’

Austerity! Except for the rich but don’t they deserve just a little bit of luxury?

Because we have a powerful political movement bunch of lunatics in this country that screamed “death panels”’

Fixed that for you… Also, the lunatics have a major news outlet that shills for them 24/7.

I saw a woman on cspan yesterday bemoaning how she has to tell clients that they need to get rid of their pesonal trainers and cease with the home visits from their masseuse. Woe is me.

When these types talk about folks paying no taxes, they’re whining about folks that are too poor to pay, not about businesses with attorney services to prevent paying them.

And hack into cell phones for their news.

Imagine time-traveling back to 2000 and trying to tell the folks back there what’s going on now, and how everyone feels now…

Well, that’s where the best news gossip is.

When these types talk about folks paying no taxes, they’re whining about folks that are too poor to pay, not about businesses with attorney services to prevent paying them.

I’m hep. “Shared sacrifice” to them means that they don’t think the poor are paying enough.

Durn shame isn’t it? I’m often astonished at how clueless people with a lot of disposable money can be. Tens or hundreds of millions of people in this country worry about paying for their next meal or utilities or rent and these people are lamenting having to cut a house calling masseuse or a personal trainer out of their budgets. I’ll try to work up some sympathy. Give me a few years…

Forget “shared sacrifice”. It’s not sacrifice to pay for what you get. It’s called honesty.

No wonder I feel like I’m hunkering in a bunker. Cripes.

i don’t think they’re clueless, i think they’re vicious.

i’m not even astonished anymore, Margaret, it’s what i expect from them.

Was just listening to CNN news while fixing some breakfast, and viewer comments on the economic scene, one was going on about visiting poor homes and seeing flatscreen tv’s – which obviously is total fiction.

There are no savings and/or credit left.

yeah, i heard that too. the viewer’s final sentiment that “these people aren’t poor, they’re lazy” is typical of the current fad of blaming and bashing the poor.

This piece of crap was put forth to shorten unemployment benefit payment period, under the pretense that folks wouldn’t work while they could collect on the amount they paid in for it.

Guess those were the “welfare queens”….Good morning. Those are probably already sacrificing.

Morning, and of course, they all drive Cadillacs to the ‘welfare office’.

He/she said that…Yep, just want all those food stamps.

Yeah, who would have guessed that the stock of Hopenchange (stock symbol BHO) would turn out to be fraudulent and seriously overvalued.

Imagine time-traveling back to 2008

Imagine time-traveling back to August-September 1931 (when Credit-Anstalt failed, taking down the mark and forcing Britain off the gold standard. We may be there by the end of this week.

In a curious but not unprecedented coincidence, the economic historian Barry Eichengreen, who wrote the book on the policy failures of the 1920s and early 1930s, will be giving his Presidential address to the Economic History Association’s Annual Meeting in Boston, on September 10. Should be an exciting session. Living history, as it were. The economic historians have done a better job analyzing the current crisis than most economists, few of whom have any training in economic history.

And there is a bushel-basket full of right-wing economic papers to prove it!

I wonder how much money Cantor made shorting his T-Bills?

Speaking of which,

According to Bloomberg, The Euribor, the European equivalent of the Libor (remember that from 2008?) is locking up as banks decline to lend to each other. Those European banks that do have money are putting it in the ECB overnight in preference to lending it to the European banks that desperately need it – such as Santander in Spain and all the Italian Banks led by UniCredit.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/market-upheaval-update.htm

there goes the sex lives of the upper middle class ;^)