Added: 3. März 2010
Tags: AIG, Bailout, Banks, Bill Clinton, Bubble, CO2, Commodities, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Economy, Financial Crisis, Global News, Goldman Sachs, Government, Henry Paulson, Internet, Larry Summers, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Oil, Oil Prices, Politics, Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner, U.S., Wall Street
Now it’s the American nightmare!
- US: Wealth Disparities Approaching 1920s Levels
George Carlin …
- George Carlin: The American Dream (Must-see!)
“They want your f****** retirement money. They want it back, so that they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.”
… was right:
- Failed Banks May Get Pension-Fund Backing as FDIC Seeks Cash (Bloomberg):
March 8 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is trying to encourage public retirement funds that control more than $2 trillion to buy all or part of failed lenders, taking a more direct role in propping up the banking system, said people briefed on the matter.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The percentage of American workers with virtually no retirement savings grew for the third straight year, according to a survey released Tuesday.
The percentage of workers who said they have less than $10,000 in savings grew to 43% in 2010, from 39% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s annual Retirement Confidence Survey. That excludes the value of primary homes and defined-benefit pension plans.
Workers who said they had less than $1,000 jumped to 27%, from 20% in 2009.
Confidence in ability to save enough for a comfortable retirement hovered at 16% of respondents, the second lowest point in the 20-year history of the survey. Continue reading »
Tags: Economy, FDIC, Pension, Retirement, U.S.
Date: 7th Mar 10
Tags: AIG, Ben Bernanke, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, Global News, Marc Faber
I would call this already a war between the US and China.
The US government is creating unprecedented amounts of debt, that can ‘never be paid back’, according to Ron Paul. Of course he is correct.
The Fed monetized 80% of government debt last year, according to PIMCO’s Bill Gross. The Fed created that money out of thin air. ‘Quantitative easing’ sounds so economic, but it is nothing more than just ‘printing money’, which devalues the dollar, which in turn devalues China’s investment!
The US started the war by devaluing China’s assets, but China has already won the war. If China would officially press the ’sell’ button on their US government debt holdings and their foreign exchange holdings in the US dollar, the USS Titanic would sink immediately.
Of course that victory would come at a great prize and so China is buying time to diversify itself out of the US dollar, that will be soon as good as bad toilet paper.
China will have to buy a lot more gold, silver and other commodities.
In essence the US government has sold out America and is now completely bankrupting and destroying it.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will be prudent in adding gold to its official reserves, wary that any move to buy the precious metal would only serve to drive its price higher, the country’s top foreign exchange manager said on Tuesday.
Yi Gang, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said that while gold was “not a bad asset,” it would never become a big part of China’s overall investment portfolio.
“The international gold market is very limited. If I purchase gold on a massive scale, it will definitely push up global gold prices,” Yi said at a news conference on the sidelines of China’s annual parliament.
“So, as for suggestions from many friends that we should increase gold holdings, we will give prudent consideration to this, according to market conditions.” Continue reading »
Tags: China, Economy, Gold, Government, Politics
In the course of getting to know the online forex landscape, we came across the following.
That’s right. When you do a search for “Casino Bonanza Online” you get two ads for online casino-based sites, but the very first is an add for CitiFXPro.com, which is, yes, a retail Forex trading site run by Citi.
Now, it’s not really shocking that a multi-headed behemoth as big as Citigroup (C) has a retail Forex site, but here they’re specifically advertising against gambling-related terms, and showing up right next to Best USA Online CASINOS.
Major Wall Street firms are frequently likened to casinos, but they’re usually not this blatant about it, and usually their services are geared towards sophisticated, institutional investors. But CitiFXPro.com is pure retail, requiring only $10,000 to open an account. That’s not non-trivial, but it’s way less than the threshold for anything that would be regarded as institutional.
And if all this alone weren’t enough to make Paul Volcker lose his lunch, check out what Citi lists as its advantages. Check out the fourth one, specifically: Continue reading »
A rescue fund to bailout (intentionally) incompetent governments, that have bailed out greedy, (intentionally) incompetent banksters with taxpayer money.
All of that taxpayer money ultimately landed in the hands of the elite criminals, that control the governments, the central banks and banks (and almost all corporations) and that have planned this entire financial crisis.
And as solution to the crisis will be the New World Order.
See also:
- EU considers creating IMF-style rescue fund (Washington Post)
- Euro Monetary Fund Has Promise, Problems (Wall Street Journal)
- Brussels ready to back eurozone monetary fund (Financial Times)
(Updates with details, quotes, background)
BRUSSELS, March 8 (Reuters) - The European Union’s executive is considering a new rescue fund for euro zone countries to prevent future financial crises like that in Greece, a spokesman said on Monday.
“Basically the (European) Commission is ready to propose such a European instrument for assistance which will require the support of all euro area member states,” Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj told a daily news briefing.
“There is a clear sense of determination to improve economic governance of the euro area.”
The idea of creating a European monetary fund was floated at the weekend by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who said he favoured a body that commanded “the experience of the International Monetary Fund and similar executive powers”.
Altafaj stressed it was too early to say whether the fund would be just a financial instrument or a new institutional body with a separate staff and budget.
“We are in very open discussions at this point in time, considering ways and means to be more effective both on the intervention side … but also the preventive side,” he said. Continue reading »
In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave.
This latest program, which will allow owners to sell for less than they owe and will give them a little cash to speed them on their way, is one of the administration’s most aggressive attempts to grapple with a problem that has defied solutions.
More than five million households are behind on their mortgages and risk foreclosure. The government’s $75 billion mortgage modification plan has helped only a small slice of them. Consumer advocates, economists and even some banking industry representatives say much more needs to be done.
For the administration, there is also the concern that millions of foreclosures could delay or even reverse the economy’s tentative recovery — the last thing it wants in an election year. Continue reading »
Tags: Barack Obama, Economy, Foreclosures, Obama administration, Politics, U.S.
Congress should act immediately to abolish credit default swaps on the United States, because these derivatives will foment distortions in global currencies and gold. Failure to act now will only mean the U.S. will be forced to act after these “financial weapons of mass destruction” levy heavy casualties. These obligations now settle in euros, but the end game is to settle them in gold. This is so ripe for speculative manipulation that you might as well cover the U.S. map with a bull’s-eye.
Credit default swaps are not insurance. If you buy fire insurance on your home, you must own the house. If you buy credit protection on the United States, however, you do not need to own U.S. Treasury bonds. If your protection gains value after you buy it — not because the U.S. defaults, but because of market mood changes — you can resell that protection and make a profit.
Lower credit risk means a lower price for protection. Zero implies zero risk. The higher the basis points, the higher the implied risk. When U.S. credit default swaps were first introduced, the price of protection was around two basis points. According to Bloomberg, the price for five-year protection was around 38 basis points (per annum) on Friday. But the price in the over-the-counter market — where this stuff actually trades — was almost double or around 75 basis points.
Since most traders in U.S. credit default swaps don’t think the U.S. will default any time soon, why are they trading U.S. credit default swaps? They are speculating on price movements the way a day trader buys and sells stocks to speculate on stock price movements.
Volume in U.S. credit default swaps is relatively small, but it can explode rapidly, just as volume expanded rapidly for credit default swaps on mortgage debt in 2006 and 2007.
Speculators Want U.S. CDS Payoffs in Gold
Remember AIG? When prices moved against AIG on its credit default swap contracts, AIG owed cash (collateral) to its trading partners. AIG paid billions of dollars and owed billions more when U.S. taxpayers bailed it out in September 2008.
U.S. credit default swaps currently trade in euros. After all, if the U.S. defaults, who will want payment in devalued U.S. dollars? The euro recently weakened relative to the dollar, and market participants are calling for contracts that require payment in gold. If they get their way, speculators on the winning side of a price move will demand collateral paid in gold. Continue reading »
Tags: AIG, Banks, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Economy, Gold, U.S., Wall Street
March 7 (Bloomberg) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the European Union must support Greece or risk destroying the euro as Prime Minister George Papandreou heads for Paris to lobby support for the debt-laden country.
“If we created the euro, we cannot let a country fall that is in the eurozone,” said Sarkozy yesterday before a meeting with Papandreou in Paris today. “Otherwise there was no point in creating the euro. We must support Greece because they are making an effort.”
EU leaders have so far refused to give financial aid to Greece and have ordered the government to cut its budget deficit, the EU’s highest, on its own. While Papandreou says steps taken this past week to slash the shortfall warrant more help from the EU, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said yesterday that his country is “not going to write a blank check.”
Papandreou is visiting Berlin, Paris and Washington after his government passed a 4.8 billion euro ($6.5 billion) austerity package on March 5. A poll published in To Vima newspaper today showed 51.9 percent of voters support him even after the cuts, compared with 47.5 percent who don’t. Continue reading »
Tags: Debt, Economy, EU, Euro, France, Global News, Government, Greece, Nicolas Sarkozy, Politics
Highly recommended article.
A woman tends vegetables at a giant Saudi-financed farm in Ethiopia.
We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia’s largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 20 hectares - the size of 20 football pitches.
The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 500m rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tonnes of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13 million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 3m hectares of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world’s most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.
The 1,000 hectares of land which contain the Awassa greenhouses are leased for 99 years to a Saudi billionaire businessman, Ethiopian-born Sheikh Mohammed al-Amoudi, one of the 50 richest men in the world. His Saudi Star company plans to spend up to $2bn acquiring and developing 500,000 hectares of land in Ethiopia in the next few years. So far, it has bought four farms and is already growing wheat, rice, vegetables and flowers for the Saudi market. It expects eventually to employ more than 10,000 people.
But Ethiopia is only one of 20 or more African countries where land is being bought or leased for intensive agriculture on an immense scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.
An Observer investigation estimates that up to 50m hectares of land - an area more than double the size of the UK - has been acquired in the last few years or is in the process of being negotiated by governments and wealthy investors working with state subsidies. The data used was collected by Grain, the International Institute for Environment and Development, the International Land Coalition, ActionAid and other non-governmental groups.
The land rush, which is still accelerating, has been triggered by the worldwide food shortages which followed the sharp oil price rises in 2008, growing water shortages and the European Union’s insistence that 10% of all transport fuel must come from plant-based biofuels by 2015. Continue reading »
Tags: Abu Dhabi, Africa, biofuel, China, Congo, Corporations, Economy, Environment, Ethiopia, Farmers, farmland, Food, Food shortages, Ghana, Government, India, Kenya, Kuwait, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Politics, Quatar, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Society, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Water, Water shortages, Zambia, Zimbabwe
