A thought provoking analysis of the most dire situation in this generation.

OTC Hockey Stick Problems Of The Derivatives Beast

I let the comments speak for themselves->

“You are by far the most knowledgeable, enjoyable, and informative writer. I love your blog. I work in the derivatives beast, trading ETF’s of no vlaue all day in massive quantity. It truly is amazing how wall st. is “funny money world”. Its a complete disgrace, totally fraudulent, completely surreal, and no one in power ever questions the stupidity of it all. Every “derivative beast” trader I know cannot beleive how the stock market goes up,up,up in the face of massive insolvency,housing crisis,no jobs etc. I try to send them to your blog or lemetropolecafe.com for some doseage of reality. May God bless you and your fantastic blog. Without you we are doomed, with your knowledge, we can at least try and do something to protect ourselves and try and learn to produce “real” wealth instead of destroying it by shuffling paper around day in and day out.”

“Elaine,
I read today that consumer credit expanded sharpley in April (mostly credit cards and auto loans, since home equity loans are a thing of the past). I also read that the average work week dropped by 1.8 hours (that’s 4.5%!!). At first I was stunned: wages are stuck; oil, food, and everything else is inflating drastically; banks are going under; houses are becoming worthless as assets; consumer confidence is in the basement; etc, etc. What the Heck is going on? Why would people (already spending more than they earn) go on a credit-based buying binge at a time like this? I don’t buy the argument that they have to borrow to buy the basic necessities - I know they’ve already got too much crap, plan to take their vacations to Disney World, smoke, drink, gamble and indulge in all their usual vices, and already have at least one TV, auto, etc. A real recession (in terms of unemployment) hasn’t even happened yet, so they haven’t been hammered like 1982. And then I got it. The upsurge in April credit is because the tax rebate checks will be coming out in May (this was announced in April). These idiots are spending their rebate checks before they get them. How are you going to save the people from the credit-insane “financial system” when the people are just as credit-insane as the oligarchs and pirates?”