award tour

it’s pretty excellent.

ya, it really is quite good. it does a great job of explaining each step in the chain and the supply and demand factors that made it such a huge bubble.

i think if anyone asked me “so what the hell is the credit crisis about?” I’d pretty much just summarize what was said in this program.

forget the american housing crisis, sean’s only concerned with the ‘toronto historic loft conversion’ crisis, and me with the ‘80 year-old house/renovation money pit’ crisis.

i think you’ve got me confused with someone else. i’m an enormous bearded man who lives in a 90-year-old house in kitchener.

what i really liked about that program was there wasn’t a “bad guy” - they explain everyone’s motivations as well as highlighting the fact that everyone made poor decisions. that being said, they did do some subtle maneuvering by showing that in the end, it was mainly black americans who got supremely fucked by this whole thing.

don’t worry matt, you’re not the first person to mix up waterloo sean with toronto sean on awardtour.

and on sean’s point, I heard a woman on Real Time with Bill Maher say that foreclosures amongst African Americans was jumped a full year before elsewhere and that the media really didn’t really cover it until it started happening to white people.

Agreed - this was an elucidating discussion, but what struck me most was the epilogue they failed to include. i’m not much of an economist, so correct me if I’m off the mark, but it seems that the rise in commodity prices must be related to the divergence of investment funds from this whole crisis. How much has the price of oil, gold, and wheat increased in the past six months? Thus, it seems that each time you fill up your car, or buy a wedding ring (hmmm…well, this might only include me), or even a loaf of bread, the inflated cost of these commodities goes to pay back the funds lost as a result of many extremely greedy and irresponsible investors. That’s all right, I suppose, for developed nations who are complicit in this fiasco, but to think that those living on less than $2/day have to suffer the consequence of this mess is shocking.

Um, just to clarify, the rising prices for commodities and the credit crunch have nothing to do with each except that investors are looking for safe things to put money into- and oil and gold are always safe, boosting the buy side. this is why economists are afraid there is ‘a perfect storm’ brewing, no credit AND higher input costs could cause a massive recession. but really, your poorest nations get their credit from the world bank which has its own reserves. and if that doesn’t work the chinese development bank has been handing out money like confetti for the past 5 years.

I think you’ve actually emphasised my point when you say that investors are looking for safe things to put money into - e.g. oil, gold, and also soft commodities like wheat, (what next, water?) You’re right that the rise in commodity prices was not caused by the credit-crunch. They are both in part side-effects of the housing crisis. It yet seems that the trillions lost in the sub-prime fiasco is now being clawed back by gradually increasing the prices of commodities the entire world relies on. I’m not sure what access the 3 billion people out there living on less than $2/day have to China’s hand-outs, but I guarantee they are now eating even less food than they were before.

i’m going to try to keep this thread alive….

the Globe and Mail have a thorough analysis of the role of speculation in food commodity markets:

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080530.wcover0531/BNStory/Business/home/?pageRequested=6

Sounds like a Master’s in Finance is a pre-requisite for being a wheat farmer….