Gas will almost definitely go below an average $3.00 (today's dollar) sometime soon; a side benefit of the recession for some will be shrinking commodity prices because other people have fewer reasons to use those commodities. This helpful site shows that some states are below $3.00 and that the price average is dropping like crazy already. Plus, there's stuff like this being developed.

That is all.

Yves Smith is really cool. I plan to bookmark her blog and start reading it regularly.

I agree with the other commentors in that it was too short. My own metric has been to count the ads for electricians in my local papers Sunday classified section. Electricians are ubiquitous and needed by enough different types of people that the number doesn't bounce around too much. At its peak (summer of 2004) you saw 29. A good normal number is 12. A bad number is 4 to 6. We are at three. That is about where we were deep into the 2001 downturn, and particularly troublesome because commercial construction has been pretty busy up until very recently and the good mid-size electrical contractors are only just now seeing real short falls.

"BHTV is now the sort of site where the principal invites his high-brow audience to listen to 'turd' jokes while his thug 'moderators' hurl feces at board members and guests alike." What are you talking about? Could you be specific? You are just so snarky, such an unreasonably bilious, smug, and self-satisfiled commenter.

This was very good. Yves Smith was very good. We need a bloggingheads that addresses the following questions in a concrete and specific way. Can the shadow banking system, and the derivative markets, be decoupled from the problem of poorly underwritten mortgages? That is, Greespan's view, as summarized in the recent front-page NYT piece, was that the derivatives market is self-regulating. An attempt to regulate it would be unnecessary. An intereresting thing here was that the interlocutors implied that the shadow banking system, and here one suspects that they mean the derivatives market, poses greater risk to the financial system than do the poorly underwritten residential mortgages. This is the reverse of what the majority of people think. It makes sense to think that the greater risk is posed by the securities which underly derivatives, that the risk posed by derivatives is entirely derivative. So, we need to understand more about derivatives, and the risk they may or may not pose. The diavlog Wilkinson had with Arnold somebody took us a certain way, not too far, this one added a little to the picture, but we really need to have a diavlog between someone

Quoting ledocs: So, we need to understand more about derivatives, and the risk they may or may not pose. The diavlog Wilkinson had with Arnold somebody took us a certain way, not too far, this one added a little to the picture, but we really need to have a diavlog between someone who thinks that derivatives are inherently dangerous and someone who takes the opposite view, and they should be well-informed students of the question. If BHTV does this, it will have performed a valuable service. You could perhaps get the law professor at San Diego who is cited in the NYT article about Greenspan to take one side of the argument.

Although my understanding of economics if very limited, and I'm intending to keep it that way, it seems that what you want to understand is exactly what everybody wants to understand and nobody has been able to elucidate. This is the core of the debate, particularly for those that for years have promoted derivatives and other deregulated 'self-correcting' policies. The entire world is trying to figure out whether this economic theory should go to the garbage or not. It is

The entire world is trying to figure out whether this economic theory should go to the garbage or not. It is not surprising there's so much effort put on blaming the borrowers. Understanding how derivatives diffused responsibility and facilitated the bubble's growth is not very convenient for economists, institutes and politicians who backed it up. If this issue is indeed completely uncovered we may be in for some interesting and surprising revelations, and policy change... We'll see.

Yes, this is a classic case of "If I admit I was reckless and didn't really know what I was talking about then, how can I expect to be taken seriously as someone is isn't reckless and knows what I'm talking about now?" I think to figure this out we'll need a new generation of economists who'll be too young to have participated in the crash way back in 2008.

Quoting Wonderment: Yes, this is a classic case of "If I admit I was reckless and didn't really know what I was talking about then, how can I expect to be taken seriously as someone is isn't reckless and knows what I'm talking about now?"

I think to figure this out we'll need a new generation of economists who'll be too young to have participated in the crash way back in 2008.

I'm hopeful that at least a few will have enough honesty to admit the mistakes and learn form them. And there have always been economists who rejected the extreme liberalization of markets, but whose voices were silenced. Let's be optimistic.