February 10, 2008

We've said that when all is said and done, that TRILLIONS would be lost. January was a good start, with $5.2 trillion in the marketed wiped away.


Thank you US housing market! Thank you realtors! Thank you mortgage brokers! Thank you appraisers! Thank you homebuilders! Thank you housing gamblers!

What's the next set of numbers called after "trillion"? I think we'll need to learn that one soon.

World bourses lost 5.2 trillion dollars in January

World stockmarkets lost 5.2 trillion dollars (3.6 trillion euros) in January thanks to the fallout from the US subprime crisis and fears of a global economic slowdown, Standard & Poor's said Saturday.

"If investors thought the market could only go up, January's wake-up call pulled them back into reality," the independent credit ratings' provider said.

Standard & Poor's said the world's equity markets lost a combined 5.2 trillion dollars as emerging markets fell 12.44 percent and developed markets lost 7.83 percent to register one of the worst starts to a new year.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

isn't this just a sensational headline? trillions were lost in market cap but econ 101 teaches us about supply and demand.... stocks are a commodity,...

Anonymous said...

A sobering article from Mike Whitney:

The Bush Bust of 08: "It's all downhill from here folks!"

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/12708

Anonymous said...

I'm guessing here, but I think it would be Quadrillion. As in bi, tri, quad, pent, sex. Latin prefixes.

Anonymous said...

In the long term this is a good thing that will control inflation even if our ILLEGAL FED reserve bank will not do it.

We were on the way to $20 for a loaf of bread. Maybe it will be back to under $2 in 30 years.

Anonymous said...

I googled that a while ago. Next comes quadrillion... let's hope we don't get there...

Anonymous said...

I googled that a while ago. Next comes quadrillion.

WTF?

You had to "google" that?

Don't they teach counting in U.S. schools anymore?

Anonymous said...

How much of the off sheet derivatives have been washed away?

What is the avg 401k down this last year?

Anonymous said...

It was all fictional capital hallucinated by hyper-leverage. The real money is on the sidelines.

Anonymous said...

A quadrillion? What a sec - there isn't even that much currency printed in all the world!?!

Oh, ok, NOW I see what the problem is with fiat currency...

Anonymous said...

Does anyone have any links from unbiased sources to find out how deeply a bank is exposed to real estate risk, or what shape it's in, in general?.

The customer service rep at my local bank assured me a while back that their exposure to real estate losses was minimal to non-existant, and I had no reason to doubt her. It was a very conservative, small local bank. It was Hell trying to get a loan on a good day!

However, my bank just got swallowed up by a larger bank, AGAIN (second time in two years)! The old neighborhood bank is now reduced to being just a cog in a much larger entity that I know nothing about except by name.

Anybody got any links. It would be greatly appreciated!

Anonymous said...

What is funny is that people still fail to realize their own personal wealth is at risk in these write downs. As if the bankers are going to lose their own personal wealth before their depositors.

Anonymous said...

This is just starting. Five year lows will be tested soon in all of the major indexes. The buy and hold strategy loses again. Suckers buy and hold. Soon people that were underwater from the last 2000-2001 crash will be back underwater even after dollar averaging. No retirement. Work until you drop dead and the coroner will pick up your corpse for burial.

Funny reading the clowns who think the FED sets rates. They follow. You can't force people to borrow. Dopes.

Anonymous said...

here you go stuck

http://tinyurl.com/8utff

i had the same thing, only three bank buyouts in three yrs and wanted to check out the new owners
took a little while to figure out the terms in the report, once I did, i closed out my account pronto