Category: Credit Crisis 2009
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Saturday, April 11, 2009
Obama's New Financial World Order / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
This article addresses Washington's financial coup d'etat in the context of discussing Michael Hudson's important, very lengthy and detailed one titled: "The Financial War Against Iceland - Being defeated by debt is as deadly as outright military warfare." It reviews its key information in advance of Hudson's April 15 scheduled appearance on The Global Research News Hour to discuss.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Bubble Denier Bernanke's Revolution / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
Inquiring minds are reading a long and glaringly misguided post by the Washington Post on How Bernanke Staged a Revolution .Bernanke's ability to understand and synthesize the views of his colleagues goes a long way toward explaining how he has revolutionized the Federal Reserve, which under his leadership has deployed trillions of dollars to try to contain the worst economic downturn in 80 years.
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Saturday, April 11, 2009
The Financial War Against Iceland Part 2 / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
Continues from Part1 - Nations that have not paid their debts - Let us draw up a roster of nations that have annulled their debts – or run them up with no intention of paying. The list starts with the world’s largest debtor, the United States. Its government owes $4 trillion to foreign central banks. A moment’s thought will show that there is no way it can pay, even if it wanted to do so. The United States is running a chronic trade deficit, on top of which is a deepening outflow of military spending.
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Saturday, April 11, 2009
The Financial War Against Iceland, Being Defeated by Debt is as Deadly as Outright Military Warfare / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
Prof Michael Hudson writes: Iceland is under attack – not militarily but financially. It owes more than it can pay. This threatens debtors with forfeiture of what remains of their homes and other assets. The government is being told to sell off the nation’s public domain, its natural resources and public enterprises to pay the financial gambling debts run up irresponsibly by a new banking class. This class is seeking to increase its wealth and power despite the fact that its debt-leveraging strategy already has plunged the economy into bankruptcy. On top of this, creditors are seeking to enact permanent taxes and sell off public assets to pay for bailouts to themselves.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Obama Evades Government's Role in the Financial Crisis / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
Alex Epstein writes: What must be done to recover from this financial crisis? Barack Obama rightly stresses that we first must understand how today’s problems emerged. It is “only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament."Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Financial Crisis Blaming the Culture of Greed? / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
The Wall Street Journal recently suggested that a ‘culture of greed' may be to blame for today's crisis. Billionaire investor Stephen Jarislowsky has said that he thinks ‘extreme' greed was to blame. And nestled within the mob of protestors ahead of last week's G20 meeting was a little girl, no more than 5 or 6-years of age, holding a sign saying ‘You Greedy BosTards'. Let us simply say, while acknowledging the views of the Wall Street Journal and Mr. Jarislowsky, that the protesting little girl may have been misled.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, April 06, 2009
How FAS 157 Mark-to-Market Helped Slow the Economy / Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2009
There's been a lot of discussion of how the FAS 157 mark-to-market accounting rule may have contributed to the current deep recession. The charts below from Citi Research (using Federal Reserve data) make a pretty compelling case for the unforeseen damage caused by the strict application of FAS 157. We are among those who applaud the Financial Accounting Standards Board for taking action this week to add flexibility in how the mark-to-market rule is used going forward.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, April 05, 2009
The Gold Stocks Sector and The Most Powerful Indicator / Commodities / Credit Crisis 2009
The Gold sector has been performing relatively well over the past month. The price of gold has broken trend line support but is still holding horizontal support and forming a bull flag. Gold stocks and the broad market have been performing well and that has boosted the price of gold stock. Gold bullion has been under pressure, because money is being pulled out of physical gold and put to work in equities, which provides much more potential than gold at current levels.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Letter to Bank of America / Personal_Finance / Credit Crisis 2009
To whom it may concern:
I have been a customer of Bank of America since October 2006. In that time I have maintained, in good faith, a checking account, a savings account, an investment account and two credit card accounts.
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Thursday, April 02, 2009
A Guide to Hiding Toxic Assets / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
Tomorrow marks an important economic decision regarding FAS 157 and marked to market accounting . This is going to be another reason to, at the very least, question government intentions. The following is a complete look into how marked to market accounting has affected the banks, and what the real intentions behind banning FAS 157 really are.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
G20 New World Disorder and Sell the S&P 500 Index / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
Gary North writes: The article was all over the web within minutes. It was first published on Bloomberg's site.
"We cannot see large upside for the S&P 500 above the 825–850 level," Morgan Stanley U.S. equity strategist Jason Todd wrote in a report yesterday. "In the rush to buy a cyclical recovery, it seems earnings or valuation no longer matters. We would be comfortable with this view if the earnings trough was closer, but it is not."
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Bank Losses Spreading as Interest Rate Derivatives Start Imploding / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2009
Martin Weiss writes:For the first time in history, U.S. banks have suffered large, ominous losses in a giant sector that, until now, they thought was solid: bets on interest rates.
In a moment, I'll explain what this means for your savings and your stocks.
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Current Financial Crisis Russia Debt Default Risk Lower than 1998 / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2009
The current economic crisis will be a lot harder than the financial collapse of 1998, a recent report from the World Bank said. WB experts believe that Russia will have to deal with severe problems as a result of the crisis. The economic growth in the country will decline considerably and the recovery will take a much longer time in comparison with the critical period of 1998, when Russia declared default.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, March 30, 2009
Rescuing the United States from the Gigantic Derivatives Fraud / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
It's a bird...It's a plane...No, it's Spitzer to the Rescue - If Obama is serious about restoring confidence in the markets, he should replace current SEC chief Mary Schapiro with Eliot Spitzer. That would send a message to the world that the president is through messing around. Schapiro is another Wall Street toady who believes that the markets can regulate themselves. As the head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, she stood by while the financial giants increased their leverage to unsustainable levels and spread their derivatives-contagion to every part of the system.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, March 30, 2009
U.S. Banks Operating Without Reserve Requirements / Companies / Credit Crisis 2009
Banks typically have 3% of their assets in cash in order to meet customer needs. Since 1960, banks have been allowed to use this “vault cash” to satisfy their reserve requirements. Today, bank reserve requirements have fallen to the point where they are now exceeded by vault cash, which means lowering reserve requirements to zero would have virtually no impact on the banking system. US banks are already operating free of any reserve constraints. The graph below shows reserve requirements falling to zero over the last fifty years.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, March 30, 2009
Geithner's Plan Can Succeed in Stabilising Financial System / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
I am changing my tune. Geithner's plan can succeed. Before anyone collapses on the floor or starts screaming that I have lost my mind, it's important to define what success means and what the plan is.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, March 30, 2009
Nationwide Buys Up Dunfermline Best Assets, Leaving Toxic Assets for the Tax Payer / Companies / Credit Crisis 2009
The Nationwide building society stepped in to buy the profitable assets of the 140 year old Dunfermline building society, as Scotland's biggest building society effectively went bust under the weight of bad loans primarily made to the commercial and buy to let real estate sectors, with toxic debts estimated at some £1.5 billion now dumped onto the British tax payers.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Credit as a Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
A Video in Six Parts Written and Produced by Richard C. Cook
Part One of Six Parts: Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis
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Saturday, March 28, 2009
The SEVEN "Values" of Toxic Assets FAQ / Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2009
The Hiesenburg Uncertainty Principle says the more you know about the weight of something the less you know about how fast it's moving. A toxic asset follows the same principle, which is presumably why investment banks used to hire rocket scientists.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Is the Bailout Plan Breeding a Greater Financial Crisis? / Politics / Credit Crisis 2009
At his March 24 press conference President Obama demonstrated that he is capable of understanding issues as presented to him by his advisers and able to pass on the explanations to the press. The question is whether Obama's advisers understand the issues.Read full article... Read full article...