Bloomberg: Worse financial crisis in 1600 years

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Worse financial crisis in 1500 years (Update1)

By Andreas Hippin

Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The United States is facing the worse financial crisis in 1532 years, according to a survey of economist conducted by Bloomberg News. "One must look back to the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D," said Charles Fatkins of RBS Financial Markets. "There is a real sense of fear that America is on the verge of collapse. Forget the Great Depression, we're facing a new Medieval Ages."

Fall of the Roman Empire

The traditional date of the fall of the Roman Empire is September 4, 476 when Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deposed by Odoacer.

The decay of trade and industry was a lead cause of Rome's fall. There was a decline in agriculture production as well as declines in land values, sometimes as a direct result of barbarian invasions. The chief cause of the agricultural decline was high taxation on the marginal land, driving it out of cultivation. Taxation was spurred by the huge military budget and was thus �indirectly� the result of the barbarian invasion.

Blood in the streets

Not everyone is concerned about the financial crisis. John Starnes, a 33-year-old stock trader based out of Glendale Heights, Ill, believes the bad news has already been priced in and that now is the time to buy stocks. "No one cares about the unemployment because it is only 6.7 percent, which is only 0.7 percent higher than the historic range of for to six percent," said the stock trader. Five hundred thousand claims is just chicken soup when you consider the American work force is over 150 million. Also, the market [has] priced this in already when stocks tanked last Monday."
 
And I'm long shields and catapaults. Apparantly, Attila the Hun is about to lay siege.

Untill unemployment starts creeping toward 25%, lets not call this crisis worse than the Great Depression.
 
It's trash like this, where an obscure author wants to get his 15min, that causes irrationality in humans. Then the hedge funds take advantage of it by shorting, making the situation seem all that much more dire.
 
That's just strange. 476 was a bunch of other crises that had financial implications.

Besides wouldn't it be the "worst" crisis in the last 1500 years, rather than the "worse" crisis.
 
Is this real? I thought it was an article from The Onion!
 
TheEconomist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Agree. On the other hand, it could be the dumbest
> statement in 1532 years.


Hahaha. Too classic.
 
Why do you think that? The Roman Empire had a hard money coinage system - gold, silver, copper, electrum, ..
 
TheEconomist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Agree. On the other hand, it could be the dumbest
> statement in 1532 years.


You can say that again!

Oh wait you did :)
 
Tulip mania was a stupid bubble but nothing remotely within 1000 years as bad as the collapse of the Roman Empire.

To get perspective - the best road in Europe in 1400 were the roads the Romans built 1000 years earlier. When Brunelleschi built his dome, he studied Roman ruins to figure out how the Romans would have done it. There were medical "discoveries" into the 1800's that was just rediscovering what was known to Romans. The list goes on and on...

The Fall of the Roman Empire was a 1000 year problem. The Great Depression of the 20's was at most a 20 year problem. Tulip bulbs wasn't really a global problem at all.
 
Cool, someone wrote an article about the second dark ages scenario we talked about weeks ago. What does "survey of economist" mean, doesn't Bloomberg usually survey a sample of economists, are there any numbers? I really miss having a bloomberg terminal...
 
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