crisis scenarios
Dagmar has once again consider carefully whether they should make the German course at the Princeton Adult School for $ 150 anyway. She is unemployed in their late 50s and more recently. "Merrill Lynch" she says, only smiles, resigned. Whether they still find a new job, or whether you have saved enough by now to retire, is unclear. Your 401 (k) balances, the tax-favored savings plan with the Creating U.S. workers money for old age is melting, in record time. "Right now, it's probably already better to invest in education," David says sarcastically when they check the issued for the course.
Phil remembers his orders, that grows the financial crisis on general economic crisis. Hardly anyone can still expand the attic, affords a complete kitchen renovation or a new bathroom. Only "odd jobs" he could do at the moment, says the self-employed craftsmen, minor repairs, such as occur constantly in the typical single-family homes. Today he is glad that he also had built up a customer base as a "handyman". Drains, repair, install new lighting, hang pictures, all for $ 40 per hour. Phil and his wife expecting their second child in November. It must stop sufficient for four.
Ann is worried about the market value of their company. She works as a consultant for a technology company with a diverse range - including alarm systems, fire extinguishers, sprinkler systems, medical equipment, fittings and steel components for the automotive industry. "After all, we sell real products, we produce something that is needed on the market," she says. But despite a good financial year, the share price in recent weeks is almost broken in half. Poor prospects for investment and jobs.
David fearing for his job already acute. He works for an advertising firm in New York - and their advertising budget crisis-stricken companies emphasize first together. With his wife he is now considering whether both are to sacrifice their last dollar savings and pay off the mortgage on their semi-detached house. Then at least the roof over your head for now would be safe.
While all of these people are still waiting on how much they get the impact of the financial crisis to feel Andrew Dechet looks far beyond that. The 40-year-old Princeton graduate and partner of private equity firm Texas Pacific Group, three years ago most hated Müntefering grasshopper presented as a keynote speaker at his former University of the crisis in power point format: Turbulent Graphs and charts, the losses are already priced in, almost ticked off, movement brings a new profit opportunities. Not all capital is destroyed, many billions are just waiting to be re-invested. Good for his business. to generate
Dechet job is not to obtain, industrial jobs, but attractive returns; for wealthy investors, but also to pension funds. Companies bought on credit, wrote the debts of the company concerned in the balance - if the benefit goes well, supposedly all, it goes wrong, the acquired company is sitting on the debt, not the so-called investors. Smart.
In Dechet world is as "smart", who without the use of capital and with the help of a junk mortgage at reasonable interest rates for two years a house "owns" that he could never afford the rent. Increases the interest rate to Priceless, press one of the bank the keys in his hand and moves on. In Dechet world has bad luck, who is busy at the moment, pure skin where the crisis properly, reach retirement age and 401 (k) balances finds shrunk to less than the subsistence minimum.
How does it work now? Frank Schirrmacher is threatened in the FAZ after the "bankruptcy of the metaphysics of the market " our social order, expressly not by the too-human greed each individual, but by the decoupling of economic elites from the rest of society. He quotes the American evolutionary biologist and geographer Jared Diamond: "After Diamond increasing willingness acting elites to ruin a company, in proportion to their ability to isolate itself from the larger society economically." These elites "feel safe," said Jared, " because they are very concentrated and occur in a manageable number. . They are by the prospect of fast, secure profits motivated, while distributing the losses always a very large number of individuals "
Now they have gone too far, concludes the German intellectuals: "The crisis not only changes the world. It changes the thinking. "
not for the wonder child of the Anglo-Saxon world of finance. Dechet also examined according to the rapid decline of the power-point curves: "the world changed", but naturally responds in the negative. The crisis he read no break, no end, he tells them as part of the cyclical economy - although in this round of unusually violent eruptions. That the American investors and consumers could ever be as sustainable as pessimistic about the Germans, he may not even imagine: "I am sure that in the end, the American consumer will always be optimistic." some point it goes up again.
To the extent it is - be flexible and to invest in education, then one should Dechet student who asks where he is soon to get a job: "Go to grad school!" - Make your doctor.
we leave the final word to the newly anointed Nobel laureate in Princeton, Paul Krugman . He wrote earlier this month under the title "Edge of the Abyss" safe to New York Times , is currently only one thing: "The next administration's economic team had better be ready to hit the ground running, because from day one it will find itself dealing with the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. "
(Princeton Post XXI)
