Originally posted by anachryon
If these measures aren't working - and it seems pretty obvious that they aren't - what will?

Beats me what will end up working but the next step is a major devaluation of the currency. I give it no more than about six months before this is tried.

While everybody is running around screaming about price deflation (while governments are printing money like there's no tomorrow ) they will hit us upside the head with a devaluation. I suspect it will be a concerted move among many G8 nations.

We got nothing but wishy-washy "feel good" statements about working hard on the problem out of that G20 meeting this weekend. The situation is not worthy of another meeting for six months? Yeah right.

I'd like to know exactly what was discussed at that meeting. You can bet big decisions were made. Decisions big enough to remain silent about with "dire warnings" coming from people who will be heard and can pass the message along if you know what to look for IMO. Volcker is one of those people.
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Originally posted by Gools
Beats me what will end up working but the next step is a major devaluation of the currency. I give it no more than about six months before this is tried.

Will a major devaluation be the death knell for the dollar-as-world currency? For one, won't this all but guarantee the end of oil being traded in dollars?

Devaluing the dollar will not lead to expanded economic activity or solve the world's problems. The elite are simply victims of themselves. They took everyones money and now their world is imploding on them as well. The only way out of this problem is to put money in the peoples hands. We need another stimulus package and we also need to make mortgages affordable.

The way to make mortgages affordable is to have the goverment buy every primary mortgage outstanding in the US. That includes everything that has been packaged. They should be able to buy the whole jit and kaboodle for 90 cents on the dollar. Then they turn around and automatically refinance everyone at 90% of appraised value and at 4% interest. This means that many troubled homewowners get a 40-50% cut in their mortgage payment. Over 30 years they would pay back 170 cents on the dollar allowing the program to be run at no taxpayer expense. New homeowners also go through the goverment and get the 4% rate. Home ownership would once again be an attainable American dream and most of the problems in the financial sector would not be problems any longer.

Banks would suffer through lost future biz but they are the ones who caused this. Everyone else wins.

Originally posted by Gools
Anybody with two brain cells to spark together should be moving to a basket of currencies IMO.

True, diversification is the way to go. Still, I can't help but wonder how that fits into a central banking scheme/schematic. I suppose if everyone grows comfortable with global diversification, it won't be long before they want some kind of more simply representation. A fiat currency formed from a conglomeration of many fiat currencies? A global currency index fund? That's probably treading into another topic, though.

I'll check out the link, thanks!