Wall Street 2013: Imagining Financial Dystopia

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 12/01/2008 09:35:00 AM
This is some forecasting care of Wired magazine: a Photoshopped image carrying the caption "Artifacts From the Future: Wall Street 2013 - Brother Can You Spare a Yuan?" [click image to enlarge]. Aside from the US and Chinese flags flying side by side, I like the fictional Suze Orman book being promoted, Solvency is a State of Mind. Also notable is the reduction of stock trader Schwab to an "Ultra Lotto!" and 401ks transformed into "Scratch and Win." Far fetched? Given how bleak America's near-term prospects are, you can't discount it. Like I've suggested before, don't offend the Chinese, the real owners of America. Call it an updated Amerika scenario: instead of a Soviet military takeover of the USA, it's a financial one accomplished by the Chinese without firing a single shot. And, of course, it will have been brought on by America's fiscal depravity. The American dream has been foreclosed; when a free lunch society has exhausted the patience of its benefactors, life's fortunes may become...just a game of chance. In the end, the deepest wounds are often self-inflicted.

Click through the rest of the collection of pictures. Cramer appearing on Bloomberg? Truly, those will be lean times. Here's the caption:
Here's our vision of the future of Wall Street in 2013. The logo of the New York Stock Exchange is written in English and Chinese. Ticker tapes, blaring cable news network updates, and new advertising overlays all bespeak a bummed out bear market that never bounced back.