How the Crash Will Reshape America

How the Crash Will Reshape America

(Source: The Atlantic Monthly, March 2009)
The current economic crisis is unlikely to result in the same kind of shared experience. To be sure, the economic contraction is causing pain just about everywhere. In October, less than a month after the financial markets began to melt down, Moody’s Economy.com* published an assessment of recent economic activity within 381 U.S. metropolitan areas. Three hundred and two were already in deep recession, and 64 more were at risk. Only 15 areas were still expanding. Notable among them were the oil- and natural-resource-rich regions of Texas and Oklahoma, buoyed by energy prices that have since fallen; and the Greater Washington, D.C., region, where government bailouts, the nationalization of financial companies, and fiscal expansion are creating work for lawyers, lobbyists, political scientists, and government contractors.

No place in the United States is likely to escape a long and deep recession. Nonetheless, as the crisis continues to spread outward from New York, through industrial centers like Detroit, and into the Sun Belt, it will undoubtedly settle much more heavily on some places than on others. Some cities and regions will eventually spring back stronger than before. Others may never come back at all. As the crisis deepens, it will permanently and profoundly alter the country’s economic landscape. I believe it marks the end of a chapter in American economic history, and indeed, the end of a whole way of life.

Turkish Airlines plane crash at Amsterdam airport. Breaking News

Turkey plane crashes in Amsterdam, Turkish Airlines plane at Amsterdam airport, The plane crashed away from the runway
(Source BBC News, Photo NOS.nl)
For our Turkish readers, Reports say: 135 people on board, no or very few fatalities. According to Eye Witness reports, the plane simply dropped out of the air from very low altitude on near approach to the runway, the accident looks like a technical failure - with a heroic effort from the pilots to keep the plane in the air and reach the runway.
Update 18.45 CET Amsterdam, according to the latest report on NOS.nl (Dutch Television), there were 8 fatalities, 6 critical wounded and 86 wounded victims of the crash.
We apologize for the delay in reporting but we only put this on the site for our Turkish Visitors before we had to leave for other activities. However, reporting about the crash has been all afternoon on the Dutch, Turkish and International Media and TV.

A Turkish Airlines plane has crashed on landing at Amsterdam's Schiphol international airport.
The plane, with 135 passengers on board, crashed near the A9 motorway and suffered significant damage.
It was Flight 1951 from Istanbul and was a 737-800 aircraft.
One person has been killed, and 20 passengers were injured. But Turkish media said at least 50 people had survived unhurt and some 20 people were seen walking away from the plane.
The BBC's Geraldine Coughlan in the Hague says Dutch television has been showing pictures of helicopters at the scene, with about 20 ambulances and fire engines.
Schiphol is the fifth-largest passenger airport in Europe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7909683.stm

Ignore the Stock Market Until February

Ignore the Stock Market Until February
by Andy KesslerFriday, November 21, 2008
provided by The Wallstreet Journal

Down in the morning, up in the afternoon. Or is it the other way around? The topsy-turvy stock market is tough to read.
In the last year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has briefly been over 13,000 and below 8,000. The past month has felt like the Cyclone roller coaster on Brooklyn's Coney Island -- lots of ups and downs, the whole rickety thing feeling like it's going to crash at any minute.
Great investors are taught to listen to the market. Each tick of the tape has something to say about expectations for growth, inflation, policy changes and looming recessions. The stock market is like a giant mass of pulsing plasma doing price discovery and a game of hot potato, getting stocks into the correct hands with the right risk profile. It's way too big for any one person to manipulate, let alone touch directly. Instead, millions of us provide input with our buying and selling decisions.
When it's at its most efficient, with buyers and sellers neatly matched up at the right price, it's a pretty good predictor. The Crash of 1929 announced a recession, and the wake-up call unheeded might have caused many of the bad policies leading to the Great Depression. The Crash of 1987? Not so much.
You see, the market is a great manipulator. In September, the Dow dropped 700 points intraday after the House of Representatives voted down the Treasury's TARP bank-rescue bill. Spooked, the House passed the bill the next week. Or how about this? The Dow was up 300 points on Election Day applauding an Obama victory and then down 1,600 points since. Read more...