Here Comes The Greater Depression?

[Linden]

I don't want to appear as if I'm making light of real world difficulties, but I was wondering if the current stock market meltdown would make a good start for the economic element of the Dark Conspiracy timeline.

Any thoughts?

[Morthrai]

Well y'know, it all happens with this kind of thing...

Personally I'm stockpiling food, water and an arsenal of weaponry

[Zvezda]

I am not too much informed about the current 'crises' in the USA. I would like an invented incident better. Probably modeled after the late 90s bank scandals in Albania and Argentina...with civil-war like unrests and all that. As I said before I don't know what exactly caused the USA difficulties but in Albania and Argentina it was predominantly criminal behaviour.

As for the stickpiling I suggest medical supplies.

[Linden]

I am not too much informed about the current 'crises' in the USA. I would like an invented incident better. Probably modeled after the late 90s bank scandals in Albania and Argentina...with civil-war like unrests and all that. As I said before I don't know what exactly caused the USA difficulties but in Albania and Argentina it was predominantly criminal behaviour.

Trying to figure it out from the financial pages in the paper gives me a migraine. As far as I can make out it's based on risky mortgage loans being transferred around the banking system to: a) spread the risk b) to use as collateral for other forms of credit. I think the key point is that these loans were made to people who had very little proespect of ever peying them back. I don't know if that qualifies as criminal, it certainly strikes me as reckless.

[Zvezda]

Thanks. It depends on how much they knew what will happen I suppose. In Albania they used some kind of Pyramide Game to make the Banks collapse. Since many government officials colluded in the scam the Albanians where somewhat angry...

[fenlason]

This is fertile ground...a crisis that no one understands impacting shadow corporations (such as the secondary money market -- (the source of the crisis in RL) and impacting everyone, especially foreign investors.

Norm

[Linden]

Saw a feature on the news the other night about the effect of the sub-prime crisis in Detroit. It was like the Greater Depression had already arrived. Entire neighbourhoods abandoned, high unemployment, a shrinking tax base, professional people dropping out of the middle class and having to rely on food parcels. Obviously Detroit* is just one city but there was some speculation as to whether its problems would spread to the rest of the US. Made for quite grim viewing really.


*Possibly its depiction in Robocop might not have been too wide of the mark.

[Linden]

Here's a link to the story on the BBC news website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7097585.stm

It's even grimmer than the TV report.

[Morthrai]

*Possibly its depiction in Robocop might not have been too wide of the mark.

When my sister and her husband were visiting friends and relatives in Canada last year they ended up going to Detroit to meet the family of a friend. They were boxed in at one traffic light by a group of all-American pickup trucks and almost forced off the road, simply because they were driving a Honda with Canadian plates! I hate to think what would have happened if the morons in trucks had realised their friend was Egyptian

[Fiannaidhe]

Sadly, we Americans can be pretty bad drivers at times. Sorry your sister had to experience that.

That being said, the same thing happens to "the natives." I doubt that she was singled out for the experience solely for the make, model and license plate of the vehicle. That type of driving behavior is visited upon anyone on the road. At least it is where i live.

It is my belief that Americans are "equal opportunity" practitioners of road rage and general bad driving etiquette.

[Paul Mann III]

It's amazing how close alot of the descriptions of the "The Greater Depression" come to events unfolding in the media these days. It makes coming up with "side plots" for my game remarkably easy.

[Linden]

Getting seriously scary now. Wondering if this thread shouldn't be moved to the real world section?

[Zvezda]

Hell, most of that article can be used as introduction to the world of DC...

[rrank5377]

DC was the first thing that I thought of when the American economy (and, to an extent, the rest of the world) started to visibly fall apart. At this point, though, there are a couple glaring differences.

First, the government has stepped in to try to slow the bleeding. In DC, the governments of the world really didn't seem to do a whole lot. The collapse happened. The dark ones were probably running the governments at that point and just fed off of the suffering which, either, they caused or just did nothing to stop.

Second, the American right to vote has not been put up for sale. (can't speak for other countries) That is, I cannot sell my vote to my employer and become a Prole. That doesn't mean that it won't or can't happen, it just hasn't happened at this point.

Ultimately, I think this economic collapse has been caused by corporate greed. If you want to blame oil companies, they posted record profits while shipping companies, airlines and many other industries had their profits cut into horribly. If you want to blame the banking system, you can blame banks for loaning money to people who really weren't qualified for it. If the banks aren't collecting money, they can't loan money to those who actually qualify, etc. Numerous causes to the real life crisis.

Now, we need to work the darklings into this thing and we can turn it into a really good, very believable game setting. Perhaps darklings are running some of the banks that got deeper into the subprime mortgages with intentions of forcing people onto the streets where they will be easier targets to become food?

I only put about 10 minutes of thought into this, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

[ReHerakhte]

Well that's the best thing about a conspiracy, nobody knows exactly who is involved or what they're doing! Darklings controlling key financial institutions in a co-ordinated, world-wide plot to bring the majority of people to the brink of poverty and thus causing greater fear, worry & suffering is exactly the kind of thing I'd expect from Dark Conspiracy