Lost for words

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• 1. At 1:07pm on 02 Oct 2008, Menedemus wrote:

  Paddypower are not offereing very good odds so obviously their bookmaker has calculated that riots are more likely than not and has also calculated New York and then Paris wil be the first Cities to host riots.
  
  London is third most likely to see riots.
  
  I wonder when London will cancel the 2012 Olympics as it cannot afford the luxury of hosting the 4-yearly most expensive beanfeast that any city ever takes on? If London continues the preparations for this expensive Olympic jamboree and people feel their own money is disappearing in hyperinflation or their house starts to become worthless, I can envisage the odds of there being London riots shortening.

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• 2. At 1:14pm on 02 Oct 2008, MarcusAureliusII wrote:

  Interesting that the authors did not consider cities in China. The success of China's economy has depended largely on exports of mostly discretionary consumer products from electronic toys to clothing. America is one of its two most important markets. As Americans tighten their belts, imports from China will to a large extent dry up IMO. Even today with the credit crunch, America businesses are having problems just getting the cash on a short term loan basis to stock their stores with Christmas goods which on average represent about 1/3 of their sales. I don't expect this to be a particularly good Christmas sales season. Some merchants are so worried, they are starting their Christmas sales now, a full two months ahead of the traditional after Thanksgiving start at the end of November.
  
  I keep hearing about the government raising taxes to pay for the bailout Congress is in the process of enacting into law. This not only would be a terrible idea, it really can't happen. Draining liquidity from consumers would only assure more personal bankruptcies and would destroy consumer confidence. The purpose of the bailout and much more to come will be to make it easy for American consumers to get their hands on money. This will be highly inflationary. It will decrease the value of the US dollar against foreign currencies initially meaning its buyng power will go down sharply and it will increase interest rates causing the stock market to eventually fall. (There's an old saying on Wall Street, when interest rates are high, stocks will die.)
  
  The US economy which drives the rest of the world's economies whether anyone likes it or not, is not going to be of any help to foreign countries for awhile except to those countries from which it imports oil and gas. The US economy will stabalize when there is sufficient new money in circulation to pay down most of the existing debt including the foreign debt.
  
  BTW, I think it may be misleading to look at GDP as a measure of a nation's relative productive wealth. GNP is a better measure because it considers repatriation of profits from overseas which are available to citizens of a particular country to spend as they see fit. Therefore, when looking at the income of China for example, it has to be considered that much of the profits are exported back to the nations where the shareholders who own the companies that made them live. This is for the most part the US and the EU.

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• 3. At 1:54pm on 02 Oct 2008, threnodio wrote:

  We had better hope for rain then. I have noticed here in Hungary that rioters will put up with water canon, rubber bullets and gas canisters but, as soon as the weather turns nasty, they all go home.

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