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Related video: - Why America deserves G. W. Bush

When President Bush announced his economic stimulus in January, he bragged that his package was the “right size” and would “boost” the economy:

I am pleased that this agreement meets the criterion that I set forth last week to provide an effective, robust, and temporary set of incentives that will boost our economy and encourage job creation. This package has the right set of policies and is the right size. The incentives in this package will lead to higher consumer spending and increased business investment this year.

It sure has led to “higher consumer spending,” but not where Bush had probably hoped. The adult pornography industry reports that has seen a huge uptick in business thanks to Bush’s package. According to a press release from the Adult Internet Market Research Company:

An independent market-research firm, AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks have appeared in millions of Americans’ mailboxes across the country.

According to Kirk Mishkin, Head Research Consultant for AIMRCo, “Many of the sites we surveyed have reported 20-30% growth in membership rates since mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a slow period for this market.”

Jillian Fox of LSGmodels.com (nsfw) said that in a survey to its members, “thirty two percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either become a new member, or renew an existing membership.”

The Bush administration has attempted to wage an aggressive fight in the War on Porn. In fact, cracking down on “manufacturers and purveyors” of pornography was “one of the top priorities” of Alberto Gonzales while he was Attorney General, often coming before terrorism prosecutions.

Ironically, the porn industry is now thanking Bush for his policies. “Getting more people to buy porn was probably the last thing Bush had on his mind when he came up with his ’stimulus package,’ but we’ll take it,” said Fox.

July 02, 2008

Source: Think Progress

Tags: Bush administration, Economy, G. W. Bush, pornography, Sex, U.S.

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BRUSSELS / AMSTERDAM (DFT) - Fortis expects within the next few days to weeks to complete the collapse of the U.S. financial markets.

That explains the bank insurers interventions of the series Thursday at dealing with € 8 billion.

“We are ready at the last minute. It goes in the United States much worse than thought, “said Fortis chairman Maurice Lippens, who maintains that CEO Votron to live. Fortis expects bankruptcies of 6000 U.S. banks that now lack coverage. “But Citigroup, General Motors, there begins a complete meltdown in the U.S..”

Fortis took yesterday € 1.5 billion with a share issue. At the end of last year was the Belgian-Dutch group € 13 billion of new shares for the takeover of ABN Amro, for which it paid € 24 billion. Lippens bases its concern on interviews with bankers. “Two months ago we knew not so bad that it is in America. And it will be much worse. We have a thick mattress needed for the next eighteen months to come when we can bring to ABN Amro. ”

Two weeks ago reported the U.S. investment bank and adviser to Fortis Merrill Lynch certainly € 6.2 billion in additional capital was needed. The VEB yesterday demanded clarification of Fortis: CEO Jean-Paul Votron stopped in late april Fortis maintains that after the purchase of ABN Amro does not need on the capital market. In one year € 30 billion in market capitalization destroyed. After Votron last confession kelderde the share price by 19.4%, although yesterday climbed by 4.4% to € 10.65.

The massive unrest around the bank insurers, especially with our neighbours in Belgium as a bomb broken. While the fuss arose in the Netherlands to the limited financial world, it is with our neighbours the call of the day. Not only is the bank dominates the streetscape, but by the mokerslag for the Belgian volksaandeel are also hundreds of thousands of small investors hit hard.

All Belgian newspapers opened yesterday with real rampenkoppen, where the free fall of the bank insurers was wide coverage. ‘Fortis crashes, “” Rampdag for Fortis’ and’ Fortis loses 5.3 billion, “opened three leading newspapers.

Continue reading »

Tags: ABN Amro, bank failure, bankruptcy, Citigroup, crash, Depression, Dollar, Economy, Gold, Meltdown, Merrill Lynch, Recession, Silver, Stock Market, U.S., Wall Street

Maybe even tougher than lowering the interest rates, creating money out of thin air, destroying the Dollar and stop publishing the monthly report on M3 because of skyrocketing Inflation! - The Infinite Unknown
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Top Federal Reserve officials on Tuesday hammered home the U.S. central bank’s determination not to allow inflation to get out of control, cementing views that interest rates will rise later this year.

The remarks by two regional Fed presidents followed hard-line comments on Monday from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke that the U.S. central bank would “strongly resist” any deterioration in inflation expectations. Analysts and markets viewed the comments as a sign the Fed — like other central banks — was turning its sights on inflation.
(It’s sometimes very enlightening to have a closer look at ones own creations. - The Infinite Unknown)

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher, who solidified a reputation as one of the most hawkish members on the Fed’s interest rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee with three dissents against steep rate cuts, echoed Bernanke.

“We want to make sure the message is clear … that we will not countenance building inflationary expectations,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Continue reading »

Tags: Ben Bernanke, CFR, China, Council on Foreign Relations, ECB, Economy, EU, Fed, Federal Reserve, Inflation, U.S.

Fed auctions $75 billion to banks to ease credit woes, total is $435 billion since December

WASHINGTON (AP) — Battling to relieve stressed credit markets, the Federal Reserve said Tuesday it has provided a total of $435 billion in short-term loans to squeezed banks since December to help them overcome credit problems.

The central bank announced the results of its most recent auction — $75 billion in short-term loans — the 11th such auction since the program started in December.

It’s part of an ongoing effort by the Fed to help ease the credit crunch, which erupted last August, intensified in December and January and took another turn for the worst in March.

The housing, credit and financial crises have weakened the economy and threaten to push it into recession.

In the latest auction, commercial banks paid an interest rate of 2.220 percent for the loans.

There were 71 bidders for the slice of the $75 billion in 28-day loans. The Fed received bids for $96.62 billion worth of the loans. The auction was conducted on Monday with the results released Tuesday.

In mid-December the Fed announced it was creating an auction program that would give banks a new way to get short-term loans from the central bank and to help them over the credit hump. A global credit crisis has made banks reluctant to lend to each other, which has crimped lending to individuals and businesses. Continue reading »

Tags: Bear Stearns, Credit Crisis, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, financial crisis, Inflation, Recession

GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner (AP)

General Motors Corp. officially blew up its old business model Tuesday, closing four pickup truck and sport utility vehicle factories, announcing a new small car that could get 45 miles per gallon and shedding 8,350 jobs in the process.

Now the world’s largest automaker by sales needs to figure out how it can sell enough cars to make money in a shrinking U.S. market and stay ahead of the bill collectors.

The automaker said it would idle pickup and SUV factories in Janesville, Wis.; Oshawa, Ontario; Moraine, Ohio; and Toluca, Mexico, as it tries to deal with a shift to smaller vehicles brought on by $4 per gallon gasoline. GM also took aim at the Hummer, one off the largest vehicles on U.S. highways, saying it would either be sold or get a remake.

The move cuts about 2,900 jobs in Oshawa, about 2,800 in Janesville, about 2,400 in Moraine and about 250 in Toluca, said GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson.

GM said the truck plant cuts, which will reduce capacity to produce pickups and large SUVs by about 35 percent, will save the company $1 billion per year, and when combined with earlier measures, by 2011 will save $15 billion over 2005 costs.

GM’s moves, which come after a series of restructuring measures since 2005, are the result of a huge shift in U.S. consumer preferences for small cars and crossovers during the past two months.

“We at GM don’t think this is a spike or temporary shift,” Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said. “We believe that it is, by and large, permanent.” Continue reading »

Tags: Economy, General Motors, GM

As banks look to shore up their balance sheets in the wake of the credit squeeze, Philip Aldrick asks whether it is all short-term trickery

Investors gather in New York’s financial district after the stock market crash of 1929, which heralded the onset of the Great Depression

‘We are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s,” warns the eminent financier George Soros in his latest book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets. It’s a rather extreme view, but the man who broke the Bank of England is not alone in his dark funk. At a recent event, one banker laced Soros’s sentiment with a little gallows humour, ruefully predicting “10 years of depression followed by a world war”.

Comparisons with the great crash of 1929 are inevitable and the parallels manifold. Then it was an over-inflated stock market that burst before wider economic malaise ushered in the Great Depression.

This time, in the words of Intermediate Capital managing director Tom Attwood, sub-prime was merely “a catalyst” for the inevitable pricking of the credit market bubble as “disciplines were bypassed in favour of loan book growth at almost any cost”. Again the talk is of recession, certainly in the US and possibly in the UK.

Perhaps the most intriguing parallel, though, is the crude attempt at self-preservation made by the investment trusts in 1929 and the banks now.

In the great crash, investment trusts with vast cross-holdings in each other tried to stem their collapse by buying up their own stock in what the economist JK Galbraith in his book, The Great Crash 1929, described as an act of “fiscal self-immolation”. At the time, “support of the stock of one’s own company seemed a bold, imaginative and effective course,” Galbraith wrote, but ultimately the trusts were just “swindling themselves”.

Modern economists have compared the trusts’ actions with what the banks are now doing. “They seem to be just papering over the cracks,” says Brendan Brown, chief economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities. Continue reading »

Tags: Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Depression, Deutsche Bank, Economy, financial crisis, George Soros, Inflation, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Recession, Stock Market, U.K., U.S., UBS, War

Relentless rise in oil prices tests economy’s resilience

WASHINGTON — Only a few weeks ago, prominent policymakers and economists were cheerfully asserting that the U.S. economy would dodge recession and keep chugging forward despite a housing bust, a credit crunch and continuing job losses.

“The data are pretty clear that we are not in recession,” said President Bush’s chief economist, Edward Lazear. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. declared “the worst is likely to be behind us” and confidently predicted that more than $100 billion in tax rebates would help create half a million new jobs by the end of the year.

But instead of clearing, the skies over the economy have ominously darkened in recent days. The chief reason is oil. And there are signs the nation may have reached an economic tipping point after years of shrugging off the petroleum problem.

“We may finally have crossed the line where the price of crude actually matters for most companies,” said Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at New York financial firm Miller Tabak & Co. “The stock market has been in la-la land when it comes to oil, but they got a pretty good dose of reality the last few days.”

The ill effects of the latest price hikes would not be so surprising if it were not for the fact that the nation’s economy and financial markets remained blissfully unruffled by oil’s upward march during most of the last five years. Until this week.

“The economic outlook has been taken hostage by the relentless surge in oil prices,” said Robert V. DiClemente, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup in New York.

“We’re seeing an inexorable increase, and it doesn’t seem like anybody’s in charge or can do anything about it,” added Bank of America senior economist Peter E. Kretzmer.

Big, small firms take hits

Among the signs that the economy may finally be feeling the effect of rising oil prices was Ford Motor Co.’s announcement Thursday that it was abandoning any hope of making a profit this year or next now that sales of its gas-guzzling pickup trucks and Explorer sport utility vehicles have plunged.

And experts said that the other two U.S. automakers, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler, may be in even greater trouble.

Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally said the industry had “reached a tipping point” where energy costs were fundamentally changing what kind of vehicles Americans buy.

Meantime, to cope with higher energy prices, American Airlines and United Airlines both raised ticket prices, and American announced plans to impose a new baggage-handling fee. But experts say the price hikes barely begin to make up for recent losses.

“The airline industry is devastated. It can’t survive $130-a-barrel oil,” said industry analyst Ray Neidl at Calyon Securities in New York. Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of America, Citigroup, Economy, G. W. Bush, Henry Paulson, Oil, Oil Prices, Stock Market, U.S., Wall Street

Eurozone inflation surged to the highest rate for 16 years on the back of sharply higher oil prices as consumer spending in the 15-country region showed further signs of weakness.

Annual inflation in the eurozone reached 3.6 per cent in May, according to official data released on Friday, up from 3.3 per cent in the previous month. That appeared to rule out any chance of an early cut in interest rates by the European Central Bank, which aims to keep inflation “below but close” to 2 per cent.

Evidence also emerged that higher prices were wreaking economic damage by forcing households to retrench. Germany reported a surprise 1.7 per cent drop in April retail sales, extending a 2.2 per cent fall in March.

This week, the European Commission reported eurozone consumer confidence had plunged in May to its lowest level for almost three years.

As well as driving inflation higher, the soaring cost of fuel has led to Europe-wide protests this week - with fishermen blocking ports in France and on Friday giving out fish free in Madrid. Continue reading »

Tags: Dollar, ECB, Economy, EU, euro, European Central Bank, Inflation

Source: You Tube

Tags: Bernanke, bubble, Commodities, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Jim Rogers

Peter Schiff is the author of the book: Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse

Source: You Tube

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Tags: Commodities, Depression, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Food, Food Prices, Food shortages, Gold, Inflation, Oil, preparedness, Recession, Ron Paul, shortage