Speculation thread

[Thoth]

Porn...

Fixed.

[DaShi]

Respectable industry, outside of Europe.

[giblets]

i've said numerous times before that i'm in the finance industry. as it's small, and there's plenty of dickheads on this forum, that's as detailed as i'll go.

Finance? You can't be serious:

more broadly, i expect that the entire financial system is going to implode sooner rather than later.

* greece and italy cooked the books to enter the european financial system. we allowed it, hoping that we could better their ways, so in part we're responsible. their spend-now-let-the-next-generation-worry-about-the-consequences-mentality is draining the competitive/hardworking part of europe.
* 25% of greece's workforce are bureaucrats in employ of the state. that means they are sucking money out of their little productivity rather than contributing to it. this rigid mentality is symbolic for their view on the future: let someone else do the work, we'll sit tight and watch you sweat.
* the u.s. has hit the debt ceiling. this means they can't borrow money any more. this means they're sucking it out of pension reserves, and that the government hasn't been able to become financially viable.
* gold and silver are sinking, indexes going down as well. where to go for risk-free investments if governments can't guarantee they can repay their debts, and old metals devaluate at the same time?
* we've outsourced most of our material production to china and other low-cost countries. in the meantime they've accumulated know-how as we've simultaneously lost it.

i suspect that the knowledge work era (1990's-now) will be remembered by future generations as the biggest farce in history. it could only be sustained by printing money and letting others do the material work. in world where time and space are bridged by technology, you still need people to do material transformation (e.g. the kind of work that puts food on the plate, bricks in the wall, cars under your behind, and pellets in your chimney).

when china stops accepting dollars and euros in exchange for goods, we'll have to barter with material commodities. which we've outsourced to the them. which are all (by chinese law) owned at least 50% by chinese investors. in other words, they're in control.

the real crisis is looming. what we've experienced so far is nothing compared to what's on the doorstep.

[SlowwHand]

I'm no finance guy, but a lot of what he says would seem to relate to one of my bigger concerns, becoming a service-orientated country. I'm a manufacturing believer.

[dannubis]

Tell me... what fraction of it's manufacturing demand does the US "outsource"?

[SlowwHand]

A hell of a lot. Mexico, China, many others. That's the problem, in large part.

[DaShi]

How is service-orientation a bad thing? Do you think one is better than the other? That the work manufacturers do is more important, valuable, or somehow honorable than service jobs?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I find myself wondering which areas of the finance sector employ people with such an apparent lack of critical self-awareness. If they're in any way linked to the area I work in, they'll soon experience a risk monitoring audit descending on then like the fist of an enraged god.