A Voluntary Contraction of the Credit Market resulting in the Involuntary Liquidation of Physical & Derivative Assets at a Material Loss Causing a Severe Recession or even possibly a systemic financial meltdown
"I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."
Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
"This is not a run of the mill recession that we are in. This is a crisis of confidence that we haven't seen since the Great Depression. ... Ultimately I think economic forecasting is more guess work than people realize. In times when you don't have a fundamental change, you can exrapolate curves, and people do that pretty well. But right now I don't trust extrapolation. It also - forecasting - depends on how the new government, how the new president, what he does, how he shapes confidence - and those are also unknowns at this point." And many other interesting comments ... "no one really knows what to do", "we are getting into Ben's nightmare scenario" ... "and then we try some other heterodox monetary policies".
