does anyone know the answer to any of these questions..?thank you....

with all that stock market carnage on friday,where did all the money go?

and if it just disappeared where does it come from when it comes back?


who exactly keeps check on how much money there is in the world..?someone must know?

is it the case that if countries are businesses,you can prop em up all you like but eventually their gonna go bust?with saying that is it obvious that australia is doing so well because it has more to sell to the world where as the u.k etc. has sod all?

so what would happen if all those big wigs said right were going to work out how much money everyone in the world has,and were all going to share it..
would you be any worse or better off...

have that trump and all those shakes and that bird from harry potter got to much money?why would you want that much money,you must get sick of it.".look at all this frickin money ive got..i wish i could be skint for just a few days.."

oh and last but not least,how are they going to sort this mess out?the poor ol yanks aint got nobody to have a war with,we all want peace man....?

I've been asking the same questions since they sold of the Gas and Fuel Corporation here in Melbourne about 17 years ago. At the time it was making 1 million dollars profit a day for Victoria. It was the most profitable government body in Australia. Distributing it's own owned gas from bass strait.... It's service is now the pits, at that time you could get a service man to your door in less than 3 hours.

I've been keeping an eye on sold government bodies since that time here and around the world. The money seems to evaporate into the ether... it definitely isnt disappearing though. Feels like it's going in one direction to me...Mainly because all of the sales follow a similar pattern, being a wind down of services and a steady reduction in staff via attrition and redundancy packages. We are getting exactly the same at Aus Post at present which was one of the most profitable mail handlers in the world until 2 or 3 years ago.. . Where the money is going remains a mystery to me though.

When I put my pessimistic hat on Aston, I look at history and it tells us that at times like these there is usually a war. I concur there cannot be a world skirmish, it would be over in 10 mins once it started in earnest....... hence my money is on civil war in America. Once they get hit with Austerity measures the shit will hit the fan... with loaded guns as per every Americans right and the Tea Parties blessing. The richer states could well want to look after themselves. Plus as we speak every right wing American is being Taught that Obama is a Communist..

Problem we have is History nearly always repeats itself.... Something will happen for sure.

Thing is it may seem like your choice... but it really isnt.

When I first came to Aus and became employed at the Gas and Fuel as a Meter Reader.... which from my point of view was just going to be a fill in job until I found some employment that I had background in. IE: Shipbroking back up.... I ended up working for the next 12 years or so for around 3 hours a day from home for about the average wage. We were moved from getting our work home delivered, to a base for my final 4 years of the 16 years I spent as the Gas and Fuel. Such were the conditions of Meter Readers at the time, with the work getting delivered to our own homes and picked up the next day. It was pretty hard to match that, so I stopped looking for other employment.

It was the powers that be that affected my leisurely lifestyle dramatically in selling off the Gas and Fuel.

Now the Powers that be are about to affect me again. Right now I have to work Night Shift with overtime to get the average wage. Aus post is definitely going to be privatised within the next 5 years... probably sooner. I wont ever work full time again from that point as I'll be too old at 56+ years.

So what happens in the hands of the decision makers affects us more than most people realise.

Thing is who is making the big decisions now. I'm pretty damn sure it's not the local Victorian government.

I wasn’t surprised at the market fall.

My take on it is this:

I the 1990s Economists pushed open trade barriers, which had two effects: a brief but discernable rise in economies across the world and a leveling of trade across the world. The latter proved popular with socialists, and the former with capitalists. There was little opposition.

However as I argued in the mid 90s, when this crap was taking place, it would remove the key foundation of the global capitalistic economies - employment in high consumer countries.

Employment in china or Vietnam is useless if the worker doesn't earn enough to purchase goods – and have the consumer culture. So now this apple laptop is manufactured by Chinese workers who don’t want to buy one. So the wealth created by manufacture fails to reinvest.

The west fixed the loss of purchasing power with two mechanisms - government spending via funding raised from bonds, and by allowing low interest consumer borrowing.

And so we staggered through to the new millennium and beyond on debt. The GFC was a first and relatively small wake up call. Consumers had borrowed way beyond their means. Many in the USA didn’t even have jobs. The onselling of debts was just a side issue that the media licked up on. The real truth is that in many western countries people had continued to live a lifestyle far beyond their means. The west had given away its manufacturing jobs, and had allowed the displaced workers to carry on as normal by living on debt. They were living on borrowed time as well. When the reality was recognised the floor fell in.

The second crisis relates to governments, who did exactly the same thing as the consumers. They issued bonds that they were never going to be able to pay, and borrowed from banks money that they couldn’t repay. Like a giant Ponzie scheme, they funded the repayments on one bond by issuing another. They did this to keep up a standard of living that their manufacturing base was no longer funding. Hospitals, medical care, roads, infrastructure, armies – all funded on debt to make it look like everything was ok.

Then when the GFC arose, they simply printed more money. Billions more, essentially devaluing the currency. Quantitative Easing was economic suicide.

Instead of cutting back dramatically and telling the population that the times have changed and we are lowering our standard of living, they just printed money to buy time.


The US bonds hit the limit last week. The arguments about increasing the bond limit was incidental to the real problem. The USA is so deep in debt that it is essentially bankrupt. So too are half of the nations in the Eurozone.


Now we are stuffed. Totally stuffed. Let me explain why:

Everything is manufactured in cheap Asian countries. The workers in those nations don’t earn a lot, and spend even less. The model was based on cheap Asian manufacturers and rich western consumers. The rich western consumers just took a bath and there isn't a clean towel. The westenr consumers don’t have jobs and have a shedload of debts. Pretty soon the consumer demand for goods will dry up. The Asian manufacturers will then suffer loss of markets. They will then collapse too.

Meanwhile Western governments owe serious amounts of money – mainly to those Asian manufacturing nations that are about to collapse. There is no way in hell that they can repay. They can only cut back on services and spending. If you think its bad now, wait until around 2014 when it really sinks home. Countries will default. Confidence will be lost, and nations will crumble.

Its a simple concept. Only spend what you can afford, and employ as many of your own people as you can. The concept was lost in the 1990s, and now the results are looming up. Its not going to be good.

When the mess subsides around 2025 the world will look different. The USA will be a poor nation struggling to survive. The Eurozone will have collapsed, protectionism will rule. Westerners will be poor, and so will the rest of the world.

Succinct Post Slapphead

Ok another Issue I have with all of this, is history tells us there usually is a major conflict at these times. There really cannot be a major world conflict... it would be over in 10 mins. So could there be a Civil War in America ? Imagine when the Austerity measure hit them and they respond in the same way as the Greeks....although this time with Guns.

Then again, the world could just muddle through like it always does.

None of us know what is going to happen, and it's put of our control anyway.

One worrying issue is the growing disparity across nations not only socially but geographically. The Red Shirts issue in Thailand relates to poor living conditions in Issan compared to BKK more than anything else.

The same problems exist in the UK, with London doing OK and everywhere else suffering.

Im sure you are right, and civil wars and insurrection will become commonplace.

We "muddled" through WW1 and 2, and through the great depression. Not sure its the way I want to see it happen.

It WAS in our control when short term greed and socialist ideals allowed free trade agreements to become commonplace.

I just a quick check, EVERYTHING I am wearing, and the laptop on this desk, came from china. even the bloody LAN cable is Chinese. No pop into Beijing and see how much US or British made goods there are.....

We sold our future for a bag of false promises and rank stupidity.

There cannot and will be WW3

The world will muddle through

I'm always surprised at what people wish on themselves

Tea Party are hell bent on causing division and persuading all the nut bags in America that Obama is a closet communist.

It's in the bank account of the person (or corporation) who sold it at the peak.

Although they may have then done something with that money so it'll be somewhere else.

But can they win an election? America usually (not always) chooses the middle ground. At least they want to reduce America's out of control spending.

The central banks try to keep a handle on it but they can never be completely sure.

Banks and other financial institutions can create money through loans and other financial thingies. The money they magic up is basically money borrowed from the future. If the amount of expected future money becomes less than that loaned out then the poo starts to hit the fan.

Yes. Celebrities, footballers, musicians, celebrity chefs, corporate CEOs, etc. are all in the game of moving money from poor to rich.

I don't think they worry about how much they have.

I dunno. When you consider what the actual value of money is, nothing, the debt and such take on a whole different meaning. And! when you consider those that have those debts are in a very strong negotiative position (ever heard the saying: when you owe the bank $500,000... you have a problem. When you owe the bank $5,000,000... they have a problem) I'd say there'll be some very serious negotiations and restructuring of economies on the horizon - maybe a few will disappear... It won't be the best of times but I don't see the kill yer self now while you can type of situation you're predicting. If I'm not mistaken this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. The US went through a very similar situation in the late 1800s didn't they.