Are Angels Going to the Devil?

Do you think they'll give away the store to angels in order to get funding?

My reading leads me to believe the paradigm in Silicon Valley is to VC your least excellent idea and fund your best idea with the proceeds - since you will have to give away the farm to get the initial funding for the first idea.

Such it has ever been since the 80's. No?

History and everyone I have spoken to believe that the recession turnaround will be around Q3 or Q4 of 2009.

That isn't such a long time. The financial issues are a bit of a new twist to the typical recession, but that has been driven by the real estate market. Trends show an upswing in home sales, so I cautiously predict a recovery by the end of the year.

All this is without a bailout plan. The bailout plan will not significantly change anything right now. It is more psychological.

Meanwhile, everything slows down.

This recession is no way near an end, and just because a few areas are showing an increase in home prices, is no reason to expect an up-turn.

We find ourselves in the current predicament because of policy that was aimed at the middle class, almost killing it completely, only the rich got richer. that type of policy is like a poker game, as the players are eliminated the gains increase, but at some point there is only one winner who holds all the chips. This sort of policy will eventually lead to a depression, which may indeed happen in this go round. World leaders don't panic to the extent they have been just for a recession, world wide depression is very possible and still quite likely.

The middle class is up to its eyes in debt, homes have no equity and are loosing value, banks have stopped foreclosing, not because they care, they just don't see a market for all the excess houses. Credit, impossible to get with no equity no matter your credit rating.

Combine the market collapse of recent months with the Ponsy(sp) scheme run by one of the major players and the volume of wealth wiped off the face of the earth is staggering, the US economy alone lost over a Trillion dollars.

So with no money in the hands of the people who typically spend, how on earth is the economy going to recover in the next six to ten months? Sorry it just is not going to happen.

I have heard forecasts from six months to five years, when it comes to the crunch no one really knows, we have been in this evolving situation for some time, it can be traced back to the telecoms bubble burst past, massive wealth was lost at that time, again greed took over and the middle class lost big time.

Why are the 'angles' not investing? They lost too.

I now hand over the orange crate for anyone else who wants to rant...

Interesting, the first commentor was indicating that the economy would turnaroud, as in the economy would stop its overall decline in more like 6 months, but the second commentor believes that to mean a recovery of the economy to the levels it was at during the housing price balloon of the last decade. The economy will likely bottom out in at most 6 to 9 months and turn around, but it might be decades before we can see the valuations of properties as high as they were during the unregulated speculation of the previous housing price boom. Like every speculative boom, the people who got in latest were the ones who could least afford to invest and bought in way over value, because much like sheep they saw the other sheep going towards the greener grass and assumed it was an everlasting condition. You get our current situation when you combine all of this with increasing speculation by land developers and manipulations of State and local planning and building department policies, an ever declining standards for loans, declining oversight by government, government policies pressuring banks to make loans at increasing risk to promote home ownership amongst the poor or those unable to attain adequate credit, and the fact that the people with the poorest credit are the ones most likely to take that 2nd or 3rd mortgage to buy a boat, jet ski, etc. and then default. What surprises me is that those speculators who wanted a more free-market capitalistic system with less government oversight of their activities are the first to cry for a bail out when their overinflated bubbles and schemes come back on them, and then many jump ship when they get bailed out and told they wont receive a bonus for this year because their business failed. I think that if you were an officer or agent of a bank within 1 year of its failure and bail out, you really should be unemployable and in jail. However, foreign banks Us offices end up hiring these guys and then giving them bonuses for trying to implement the same schemes they learned way back when they started out in corporate management working for ENRON, Waste Mgmt, or such. I know that if i designed structures that consistently failed 3 to 5 years after they were built, i would be unemployable and likely in jail. If doctors consistently had patients die immediately following surgery, they would be unable to practice and probably in jail. why do we not have the same expectation of responsibility when it comes to adminstration of finances.

the only good news seems to be there is nothing left to destroy, telecoms are all but done, automotive is sinking, banks are closing, oil are already crooks, no manufacturing to speak of, steel industry has been there done that. What is left?

I think fingernail shops are still hanging on (by their fingernails). Let's see, other than that... I'll have to come back in a week or so, after having given it more thought. There must be something that has not tanked or is about to tank.