"Alweg Monorail rapid transit system 43 miles in length, serving the San Fernando Valley, the Wilshire corridor, the San Bernardino corridor and downtown Los Angeles."

Thats all? That yellow line on the map? They were planning to build a large modern city around 43 miles of track? A smaller and less crowded LA would be nicer, but that place was looking to grow...

If you don't believe me - I suggest you read the other thread about "Enthusiastic America".

A substantial portion of the red car dismantling in L.A. was paid for by. . .

GENERAL MOTORS!!!

Google it.

http://www.ustrek.org/odyssey/semester2/021701/021701beckytransit.html

The lower deck of the Oakland Bay Bridge was initially dedicated to rail and trucks. It is all cars now, I believe the tire manufacturers were the ones who pushed this if I recall correctly.

Dropping interest rates is going to make a lot of things worse before they get better, the longer the correction is delayed, the bigger the hit will be

Look at Japan 1990s to present.

How bad the shape of our economy will be recognized soon. The govt always tries to spin it, but it's gotten to a point where it can't be spun any more. All the numbers are bad. Inflation is through the roof. Unemployment is on the rise. GDP is on the decline. Reducing interest rates will spike inflation. There is not much the Fed can do anymore, it's "bag of tricks"/short term "fixes" is pretty much empty now.

It will be an interesting year, with the economy tanking and a Presidential election.

yea..best thing now is brace for the depression that is coming..yea depression.

Sadly I think you may be correct. There are a lot of factors lining up very badly and while I hate to be "doom and gloom" about this, I've been using the "D" word for a while occasionally in conversation now for several months.

I see our prospects as roughly:

5%-10% chance of recovery and optimism within 2 years
20%-25% chance of recession lasting <2 years
40%-50% chance of a prolonged recession/stagflation lasting 2-5 years before any sort of meaningful turnaround
15%-20% chance of honest-to-goodness DEPRESSION with collapses of financial institutions, runs on banks, market crashes, etc.

It's a very real possibility. Here are some of the factors I see as very problemtatic for the economy over the next few years:

- blood-in-the-streets butchery of U.S. manufacturing and loss of jobs to China and elsewhere

- the insane/idiotic run-up in housing prices, making REAL homeownership (not "loanownership" impossible for many families)

- the ever-rising price of energy, particularly oil

- the extremely low prime rate right now (which doesn't leave much to cut)

- rising inflationary pressures (look at Ben Bernanke's comments today for more on this)

- continuing subprime volatility, resulting in (1) unease over lenders extending credit and (2) lots of uncertainty with respect to people not knowing how much "poison" they have in their investments, particularly M.B.S.es (Mortgage-Backed Securities)

- Strong probability of a Democratic administration for the next four to eight years, with associated increases in taxes, spending and welfare programs

- Possibility of a bailout program for subprime borrowers in trouble

- Exploding ARMs (my understanding is the peak of this will come late 2009/early 2010)

- Plummeting dollar value against foreign currencies



(I'm sure I'll think of more later, point is there's not a lot to be partying down about right now)

And yet he signaled more rate cuts. He's keeping Wall Street happy and screwing the rest of us.

i also saw that there is likely to be 100+ banks folding in the next few months. It is gathering steam and beginning to look alot like the depression era beginnings.

The Fed is seeing the economy continuing to deteriorate, including serious pressure on consumer solvency and spending, financial institutions solvency, and credit markets. I think what they are seeing is worse than what the mainstream media is reporting. It appears that, in the Fed's judgment, the risk to the economy is serious enough that they are willing to keep lowering rates despite the risk to inflation.

The Fed also believes, I think, that the risk to inflation is more to wholesale prices (PPI) than to consumer prices (CPI), and thus more to corporate margins than to consumer spending. Whether that is right, I don't know. I do know that PPI is not a great predictor of CPI, if you do a simple regression over the past 30 years. There is a directional relationship but big moves in the PPI produce no moves or small moves in the CPI.