features mainly posts from NAMA-sceptic economist Karl Whelan

'What we now know is that the banks have been actively working to keep development properties off the market, so that their true values are kept out of the public domain. However, to work through our current problems, these property assets are going to have to be dealt with – either sold at a reasonable price or else demolished or returned to agricultural usage.' oh dear

more cheery stuff from Dmitry Orlov, this time in much greater depth than the "Collapse Gap" slides

I came across this a while back and have been looking for it again for a while. Good document on what happened in the former USSR after its society collapsed -- pretty funny too. A bit heavy-handed in its criticism of the US though (via Bruce Sterling)

article by the author of "Liar's Poker" on the sub-prime crash -- chock full of insane details about just how stupid and greedy the Wall Street bankers are. lock 'em up!

'The world is treating us like we’re dead. Bank accounts frozen. No business without cash payments in advance. No currency can be bought. [..] Imports have stopped because of closed currency markets and diapers, flour, sugar and other necessities are selling out in the shops.'

whoa, that came by surprise. I still have vouchers, dammit! ;) More seriously though, staff received hours notice that the shops would not be reopening...

'SUVs as an everyday commuter car is largely going away... sales of large SUVs plummeted 28% in the first quarter this year, while subcompact sales rose 32%, according to Autodata Corp.' Surprisingly not in the tackier parts of Dublin, bizarrely

Irish Times allowed themselves to publish made-up house sale price figures from the estate agents -- despite knowing they were faked for months. 'The problem for you, as a newspaper, is that we can’t believe what’s printed in your newspaper.'

'Orna Mulcahy, property editor of the newspaper, said the misreporting of prices was ‘‘endemic’’. ‘‘Reported prices were simply being plucked out of the air. Many were as much as 20 per cent off the mark. What was going on was fairly shocking'

"is a global stock market crash on January 21, 2008 and January 22, 2008." interesting to see WP affecting stock prices this way

Estonia going through a tech renaissance, as Ireland did in the '90s. cool

Morgan Stanley's chief economist predicts massive US crash. yikes

The Economist suggests that France has the US beaten, using a more accurate measure of productivity