Most of you have already heard about this so-called “Craigslist Killer.” This labeling is the worst type of media laziness and it perpetuates the fear of information technology that our society still can’t seem to shake. Fear of new things is, itself, nothing new. But our ability to rapidly disseminate and amplify that fear certainly is. A couple of years ago – when this same kind of panic had reached new heights with Chris Hansen’s MySpace hysteria – I told Tom Zeller at the New York Times basically the same thing I’m going to say now. At around the same time, Andrew Kantor at USA Today smartly called out our fear of everything tech – cameras, Lite-Brites, and things with “batteries and wires.”
So, I find myself (not) wondering:
If he drove a Toyota, would we be calling him “The Toyota Killer”?
If he wore Nike sneakers, would we be calling him “The Nike Killer?”
The shooting incident happened at the Marriott – why isn’t he “The Marriott Killer?”
And I’m sorry to belabor this, but I noticed the suspect appears to use a Blackberry cell phone – so why aren’t we calling him “The Blackberry Killer?”
Because we’re much more comfortable with cars, sneakers, hotels, and even cell phones (however fancy they may be.)
But online communities still scare us; we don’t get them. They’re still weird, new, foreign, or somehow sinister to most people. So we draw an association that does not exist. And in doing so, we irresponsibly do damage to a brand.
For the are-you-fucking-kidding-me files, we have an article from this month’s issue of Realtor – the official magazine of the National Association of Realtors. In the article “Overcoming Buyer Reluctance“, various ways to trick people into trying to catch a falling knife are discussed. While the piece is primarily excerpted from Gary Keller’s new book, “Shift”, it’s presented as a how-to for realtors who are struggling to find buyers in this market. (They find it odd that people finally seemed to have smartened up, I guess.)
Here is the first tip they offer:
“A simple technique to prove to potential buyers, or even sellers, that they can’t perfectly time the market is to do this easy demonstration: Take out a blank sheet of paper and pen. Now, starting at the top of the paper, draw a line going down and at the same time ask the buyers to stop you when the market has bottomed out. As long as your line keeps going straight down they won’t be able to. The moment you start back up, they’ll say ‘there!’ but of course they missed the bottom. Now, keep drawing your line up while asking them to tell you when the market has peaked. Again, they won’t be able to tell you until you’ve rounded the top and started back down. Then they’ll say ‘there!’ and once again they’ll be behind the peak. This should be a moment of truth for them.”
First, this article requires some personal background: I had meningitis as a kid; as a teen I went to a lot of rock concerts with zero hearing protection; then, a few years ago, had a vestibular infection and/or Meniere’s Disease (even the experts at Harvard’s Mass Eye and Ear couldn’t decide) on my right side.
The net:net, without all the personal whining, is that I’ve ended up with some fairly significant nerve deafness, much worse on the right side. While it doesn’t much affect my day-to-day life, over the past several years I’ve found that I just don’t use the phone like I used to. Don’t like it much at all. No fidelity to the voices, they sound extremely flat, have to ask people to repeat, etc. etc. …… so I generally avoid the phone if I can. I know, I know, I should probably go get a hearing aid or something but I hate the idea – and besides (and more important) – why? I can carry on conversations just fine (unless there’s a ton of background noise), can still enjoy music, and honestly, most of the sound out there in the world I’d just as soon not hear.
“… it will be very alarming if this weekend rolls by without a credible announcement of a new financial rescue plan, involving not just the United States but all the major players.…the only things anyone wants to buy right now are Treasury bills and bottled water… You may think that things can’t get any worse — but they can, and if nothing is done in the next few days, they will.“
NYU Economics Prof Nouriel Roubini presents a grim assessment on his blog tonight:
“The US and advanced economies’ financial system is now headed towards a near-term systemic financial meltdown .. [this] crisis was caused by the largest leveraged asset bubble and credit bubble in the history of humanity..”
Even with aggressive coordination we could see near-term bank or market closures and otherwise fitful times. I reiterate my advice that you each seriously consider a personal or family contingency plan for a potential four-alarm banking emergency. This may seem unlikely – but it’s no longer out of bounds in pleasant conversation. We discussed this very delicate issue in a bit more length here, and I’m hoping to write a little more about it in the next couple of days.
Sorry it’s been a little bleak around here lately.
“The market in my opinion is on the verge of ceasing to function… it is nearing the time when my next post will be an obituary for the fixed income market.”
Valleywag picked up a FriendFeed discussion between a few of us yesterday regarding the bailout bill within which Scoble blames “people like [me]” for the coming “breadlines”. It rings a little hollow considering where I’ve been on all this and where he’s been (i.e. nowhere), but it brings a much more important issue to the fore.
To the thread in particular, I realize how acerbic my tone can be when discussing such things and try to be cognizant of that every time I write. Sometimes my frustration – the result of a bit too much anguish about our national slumber – gets the best of me. But Americans sat mostly silent as international and domestic crimes were perpetrated in their names and their economy was wrecked – choosing to glide along as if they had far more important things to think about.
Robert is right to describe the financial mess as the result of our collective idiocy. The bill for one or two generations of stupidity has now come due and our remaining credit cards have been declined. And for the moment, the social media characters participating in the specific tendril of web masturbation that is Robert’s “what to do” post have come up substantially empty. So, I’ll see what I can come up with.
The bailout will be yet another crime foisted on the American taxpayer. All the reward from the “up” has been consumed – burned away like the vapor it was – and now the risk, the cost of the “down” will be borne by us. Privatized reward; socialized risk. Tonight, House minority leader John Boehner called it a “crap sandwich“ — that he plans to vote for anyway. It’s a really bad idea for many reasons – not the least of which is: it’s not going to work.
Warren Buffett called them “financial weapons of mass destruction” six years ago. But how big is the problem? Surely if the all-powerful government steps in, all is well, right? Not so fast. This ought to give you a pretty good idea of the magnitude [Yes, that little speck on the left is the entire US money supply]:
Never been a huge fan of the man from Alabama. But he had some great words of wisdom at today’s Bailout of the Century hearing:
“I understand the situation is dire. But so is the condition of the taxpayer… yes, the market is overwhelmed by greed, a lack of oversight… and the bottom line, as I see it, is that you’re [sticking] the taxpayer with it. I think that’s shameful myself. I know there are better ways – would it be without pain? Oh no… but the best – and Chairman Bernanke, I’ve heard you say this – the best disciplinary mechanism we have is the marketplace. The marketplace will discipline all of us with pain. But we learn. I’m not sure people will learn if this goes through.”
Late today, the FDIC seized IndyMac. Not surprising – but I am seeing some really ominous numbers. The FDIC statement – issued after the markets closed yesterday – said that their preliminary estimate of the FDIC cost was $4 to $8 billion. About $1 billion of IndyMac deposits were uninsured and will be lost, affecting about 10,000 customers.
But now for the really troubling data: the FDIC’s total insurance fund is less than $60 billion. If IndyMac ends up costing $6 billion, that’s more than ten percent of the FDIC’s total insurance fund that’s been wiped out with a single collapse.
Yet, the FDIC “insures” more than eight thousand banks with about $7 trillion in deposits. The top 150 banks have total assets of at least $20 billion each and deposits exceeding $2 billion each.
“Congress ought to recognize that these firms are insolvent, that it is allowing these firms to continue to exist as bastions of privilege, financed by the taxpayer..”
Bryan Burrough has penned a riveting article in the August issue of Vanity Fair exploring the death of Bear Stearns. Did CNBC reporter David Faber murder it? (No, but what an interesting media angle the piece contains.) Was it a hit job by shadowy speculators? Or did it just die of exposure to years of toxic, high-leverage mortgage shenanigans?
“A very nasty period is soon to be upon us .. as all the [global debt] chickens come home to roost… [the US Federal Reserve] is in panic mode. The massive credibility chasms down which the Fed and maybe even the ECB will plummet when they fail to hike rates in the face of higher inflation will combine to give us a big sell-off in risky assets… economic weakness is spreading and the latest data on consumer demand and confidence are dire.”
If you really are, I encourage you to take a look at what the kids are doing, and what the “big boys” are saying when they don’t think anyone’s listening. Then, you probably shouldn’t need to wonder.
“Over the weekend, the Federal Reserve engineered a $30-billion dollar Saint Paddy’s day present for the JP Morgan bank by handing them the corpse of Bear Stearns. The object of the game is to prevent the ‘assets’ of Bear Stearns from going to the auction block, on which they would be discovered to be nearly worthless, which would instantly render all similar assets held by the other big banks to be similarly worthless, and would result in a universal margin call that would pretty much unwind the hallucinated ‘wealth’ acquired over the past ten years.”
The unraveling of the financial fauxconomy appears to be accelerating. After lying earlier in the week about their liquidity problems, Bear Stearns is on the brink of collapse. Today’s emergency bailout – hastily orchestrated in the wee hours of Friday morning – was the first such move by the US Federal Reserve since the Great Depression. The Fed is authorized to take such action only under “unusual and exigent circumstances,” and the threat of a full market seizure certainly qualifies.
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