Remember the late 80's?

When our parents were trying to pretend like nothing was wrong, walking around with a smile plastered on their faces, while inside they were shitting bricks and hoping the savings account would get them through?

Well, now its our turn:

Check out these two lovely articles from BBC online

US jobs data shows surprise fall

US employers have cut back on jobs for the first time in four years, Labor Department figures for August reveal.

The Department of Labor said 4,000 jobs were cut in August, prompting the Dow Jones index to fall by 141 points in opening Friday trading in New York.

Market alarm spread because economists had anticipated data showing an increase of 110,000 jobs.

The statistics undermined those hopes and confirmed that recent market turmoil is hitting jobs.
Financial services firms are already laying off staff in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage debacle.

Hirings falter

The Department of Labor also cut its estimates for the number of new employees hired in June and July by a total of 81,000.

It's dreadful...it seems to me almost inevitable we're heading for recession
Analyst Michael Metz

The last time the US economy shed jobs was in August 2003 when the total number employed fell by 42,000.

The figures come in the wake of former Federal Reserve Bank boss Alan Greenspan comparing current market conditions to those preceding earlier crashes.

Michael Metz, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer & Co in New York, reacted to the latest employment figures with gloom.

"It's dreadful...it seems to me almost inevitable we're heading for recession", Mr Metz said.

The figures will add to pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has stated that he is prepared to act to prevent credit difficulties sparked by the sub-prime crisis from damaging the US economy.

and

Greenspan points to market 'fear'

Current financial turmoil is identical to that seen in earlier stock market crashes, Alan Greenspan has warned.

The ex-Federal Reserve boss compared today's situation to the crash of 1987 and the fallout from the near-demise of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.

Anxiety over a global credit squeeze triggered by the US housing slump was driven by "fear", he said in a speech.

"The human race has never found a way to confront bubbles," he said, alluding to booms suddenly grinding to a halt.

'Identical behaviour'

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr Greenspan - who headed the Fed between 1987 and 2005 - drew parallels in a speech in Washington with US financial panics down the years, driven either by a collapse in confidence in banks or land speculation turning sour.

The current turbulence is being driven by banks' unwillingness to lend until the full extent of their exposure to the troubled sub-prime mortgage market becomes clear, a situation which threatens to hurt the US economy and spread to other countries.

Fear as a driver, which is going on today, is far more potent than euphoria

Alan Greenspan

History of financial panics

The Federal Reserve has said sub-prime losses could total $100bn and is under pressure to cut interest rates later this month to make borrowing cheaper for banks and consumers.
"The behaviour in what we are observing in the last seven weeks is identical in many respects to what we saw in 1998 and what we saw in the stock market crash of 1987," Mr Greenspan said.
The remarks were made at a meeting in Washington organised by the academic journal Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.

1987 saw the largest one-day peacetime fall in the US stock market, when more than 20% was wiped off the value of the Dow Jones index of leading companies.

The collapse was triggered by the widespread fear that the US economy was set to slow after a period of feverish expansion, in which borrowed money, some of it high-risk, was used to fund huge takeovers.

The financial problems of Long-Term Capital Management, which caused consternation in the global derivatives market, were triggered by the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which spread to Russia and Brazil a year later.

Stock markets in the US recovered relatively quickly after both upheavals.


But our generation is so disillusioned and ironically bitter that we will survive (just like our parent's did only with twice as many drug addictions).

All I can say concerning the possibility of a recession is

"Bring it on, Mutha-scratcher!"

Peace.