Thread: Roach: Subprime ‘Dwarfs’ Dot-Com Bust

Roach: Subprime ‘Dwarfs’ Dot-Com Bust

Friday, Feb. 1, 2008 10:48 a.m. EST

Think the subprime mortgage problem is just another version of the dot-com crash, or maybe an echo of the S&L crisis of old?
Think again, says Morgan Stanley Chairman Stephen Roach.

Speaking in Davos, Switzerland, Roach told investors that this time it really is different. Echoing similar comments by global financier George Soros and his former partner Jim Rogers, Roach said that the coming downturn will be severe.

Why? Because the portion of the economy linked to this collapse is six times larger than IT spending was at the time of the dot-com bust, according to reporting on the comments in the Financial Times.

This recession will be more than a year long and three times deeper than the last one, he warned. "The magnitude dwarfs anything we saw seven years ago," Roach said.
The problem has been easy money, Roach explained. Our national addiction to credit is simply on a different scale and its eventual cost will be higher than ever before.

Britain is in the same fix, Roach said, and there is little governments will be able to do to offset the coming pain for families and consumers.

"If we had been running our economies the old-fashioned way, for example, where saving and consumption were funded by income, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess we are in now,â€

Someone help me out here, is this Mr. Roach, Soros' ex partner suggesting that we hold our hand out to China for more financial help?

Anyone know what a sovereign wealth fund is?

Pat Buchanan has written much lately on Sovereign Wealth Funds

http://www.buchanan.org/blog/?p=813

Thanks Captainron, very interesting article.

Sounds like a bit of fear-baiting going on. Roach. ex-partner of Soros (do not hear much good about this fellow.) promotes SWF's. Would like to see us allow a more open market to the Chinese, Saudis, and others to our more high tech markets and companies. (Why not allow China to own controlling interest through share accumulation of a company like Boeing, of a large US bank.)

Pat Buchanan on the other hand is screaming from the rooftop, "Let's not go there."

Did I get that right?

Anybody know anything about this Roach? Like-minded like his ex-partner George I. Might Be Liberal Soros.

And I was told that communism was dead!