posted on Jan, 28 2008 @ 12:06 PM
The only real problem with this, is the fact that it's not a strategic battle. It's a tactical one, where victory is defined merely by survival.
This isn't a a gran d imperial economic war, where any of the sides has an arsenal of weapons.
This is a Global Catastrophe, where nationalistic greed will be the key factor.
For example, the fed dut rates the other day, but why?
In the past, you would cut rates to stimulate lending, and subsequently growth. The problem is that lending itself is in trouble, so cutting rates is
like drinking more coffee after you have already been strung out on coffee, it's not going to help at all. And in fact will make it worse.
So why did this happen? If the consumers aren't going to be getting loands, then what good does this do?
The first is simple "Conditioned Reaction", any time the fed cuts rates, stocks rally for a bit. It's pavlovian, even though the rate cut is now
meaniningless given how it's worked in the past.
However, whats really scary about this rate cut, is that it made money available to US banks at a cheaper rate, so that they could in turn lend that
money to foreign banks, like Societe General. It was this rogue trader which caused SocGen to lose 7.5 B USD, and because of that they had to borrow
the money from American banks to make up for it.
This is a crazy new world we are living in.