Stock Market Crash by the end of September 2007?

Just a few counter-points I'd like to make to some of the things posted thus far...

The discussion regarding the Gold Standard:  It's true that gold has a value that can change like anything else, but the reason many people convert their wealth to gold in times of trouble is gold has always had a very stable value, even when everything else was going haywire.

Anthony V: I'm having difficulty understanding where you get the idea that dismantling the capitalist system wouldn't put people out of work.  It would put MILLIONS of people out of work.  Any time you switch from one form of economic system to any other considerably different form, things destabilize considerably...  Companies go under, many people go poor and emigrate out of fear and uncertainty, and lack of work.  The collapse of the Soviet Union is a good example.  Most of the former Soviet Republics and Eastern European countries are still recovering from the loss of their economic infrastructure, some have not recovered at all.  New trade aggreements with other countries had to be established from scratch, new currencies created (the old ones were incompatible with western currencies) and a complicated re-organization of the countries internal infrastructure with corporations going from central control to private ownership.  All in all, a huge headache of a mess.  Hence the flood of immigrants from Eastern Europe during the 80's and 90's (myself being one of them).  I think the only reason China hasn't gone kaput is because their change has been so gradual and carefully planned out.  It's taken two decades and not finished yet!

-"In a system of free association people would be able to follow paths that now are blocked because they aren't profitable for owners."

-What do you mean by "a system of free association"?  Free Market?  That's kinda what we already have.  Please elaborate.  Besides, if your business isn't profitable, it means it's products/services aren't needed (Or you're a bad manager).  The free market system is a nice, organic, stimulus-response way of determining needs and priorities, with currency being a neat, handy way to represent value.  If your business is making polka-dot lamp shades where nobody wants or needs polka-dot lampshades, why waste resources making polka-dot lampshades?   One alternative is to have a central authority decide local needs, allocate resources and set prices accordingly,  but it's extremely difficult to measure such things from afar, especially if the central authority has its own priorities.

Also, a different economic system won't guarantee that plants won't be closed down.  If something is no longer needed, it's no longer needed.  The workers will have to work somewhere else.  It's like the people of a city going hungry because local farmers can't find enough workers to help with the harvest, and the powers that be deciding that the factory that's been pumping out ten million tons of roofing nails each month needs to stay open because people need jobs.

-"The exploited workers can NEVER see capitalism as the best system." -  or any other system that's been tried, for that matter.  The grass is always greener on the other side.

-"Supporting an elite class is unnecessary and inefficient, at the very least."- well, I won't argue that, but never in history have there not been some richer than others, nor will there ever be.  Some things work better than others, some people are better organized and better able to sustain themselves than others.  Some people are better at making roofing nails than others, thus would be better able to prosper in a city where the main industry is roofing nails.  It's one of the fundamental laws of the universe.  We can try to make life easier and provide resources and assistance to people in need, (I think that's what a civilization is for, anyway) but trying to eliminate these problems completely is like trying to eliminate death.  Good luck!

I'm not much of an economist, the inner details of the mechanics of the capitalist system are still largely strange and foreign to me, but I think that there have been mechanisms established to prevent a large-scale crash from happening again.  Yes, most of those mechanisms are probably some sort of interventions by the state that probably include the use of some public money.  Fluctuations are a natural part of our economic system, and most likely what's happening now is probably just another one of those bumps in the road.  NO economic system is immune to failure, and when socialist systems crash they can crash pretty hard.  I've lived in Poland while it was still under a communist regime...  We had to buy food and gasoline off the black market because our ever decreasing monthly rations were barely enough to keep hunger away from one person, let alone a family with a growing child.  Grocery stores had line-ups stretching for blocks, often all they had in stock were a couple loaves of bread and a few jars of pickles.

Unless we want to develop a system that combines the best aspects of free market and planned economies, and implement these changes gradually, I think free market economies are more stable and sustainable in the long term than highly centralized planned economies.

But then again, I need to do much more research on these topics before I can say that I really know what I'm talking about.