NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159's Blog

Europe puts more on the line for banks than US

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:24:25 -0700

ANGELA CHARLTON and EMMA VANDORE

Associated Press
October 14, 2008

PARIS - Europe put $2.3 trillion on the line Monday to protect the continent’s banks, a figure that dwarfs the Bush administration’s $700 billion rescue program, in its most unified response yet to the global financial crisis after a stumbling start.

The pledges by Britain and the six countries that use the euro helped soothe stock markets, along with a promise by top central banks to provide unlimited short term dollar credits.

The action by Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Britain came after weeks in which the governments often acted at cross purposes and sniped at each other — a piecemeal approach that failed to stop steep and frightening slides on financial markets.

“The time of each one for itself is fortunately over,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, following a Cabinet meeting that approved France’s spending in the framework of the plan.

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Bond Market Collapse is Imminent

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:38:52 -0700

Adrian Douglas

Goldseek
Ocorber 12, 2008

Imagine a country such as Venezuela announced that it was bailing out an investment bank, then just days later said it was nationalizing its mortgage industry, and then just days later that it was bailing out its biggest insurance company, and then just days later its government pledged 700B$ to inject into its failing banks, and then just days later its stock market fell 20%. Would you feel comfortable having your money invested in such a country, in its stock market, in its bond market or in its currency?

I hope you answered “No” or “Hell, No!” to the above question! So why should you feel any different about the situation if the country is called “America”? I am going to show you that the US Bond market is on the brink of collapse and with it will come the collapse of the currency, just as you would expect to be the outcome of such ridiculously inflationary policies in any other country.




Figure 1 US 10 Year Note Price and MFA

In figure 1 the 10 Year US Treasury Note price is shown in black. The Market Force Analysis (MFA) is shown in red. From 2000-2003 the MFA was rising and in a bull trend identified by the trend channel labeled “1”. The bond price was generally rising (falling yields). In late 2003 the MFA exited the channel and entered into a declining trend labeled “2”. The bond price as a consequence was falling (rising yields). In early 2007 the MFA fell rapidly and exited the lower side of the channel. This seemed to be signaling an imminent rapid decline of the bond price. But then in mid-2007 the first news broke of sub-prime mortgage problems. There was a sudden rush to “prime” and safe debt in the form of Government Treasury debt. The MFA did a reversal and entered into a new rising trend labeled “3” and the 10Y note commenced a strong bear market rally. In early 2008 the MFA exited this trend and has been tracking sidewards suggesting a topping process. Ominously the bond price has made a pronounced double top and is looking ripe for a collapse. As the stock market had its worst week in history the financial press reported on short term treasuries rallying as the initial reaction of investors was to rush into “safe haven” treasuries. The 10 year note tells a different story. It initially rallied on Monday October 6 to 118 but by the end of the worst week in stock market history it had fallen to 113.5. Hardly indicative of a safe haven play!

All the bailouts and “recapitalization” plans of the Treasury and the FED are highly inflationary and require issuing massive amounts of Treasury debt. The bond vigilantes are waking up. They are going to dump bonds like they have gone out of style. Bond prices will drop like a stone (as indicated by the black arrow in figure 1), general equities will drop more and the dollar will nose dive.

This highly inflationary scenario will make money rush into the tiny precious metals market and explode their prices due to paltry supply. The lack of supply of the metals will mean that money will have to spill into anything silver or gold such as the mining equities. Money will also flow back into commodities because the money leaving the bond market and the equities markets will be just too large to be accommodated anywhere else.

On Friday October 10 as the stock market selling intensified and 10 Year note prices were falling CNBC Rick Santelli was saying this was a sign the credit market freeze was easing! This was as the LIBOR-TED spread reached an all time high!

What is more likely is that bond holders were waking up to the certain hyperinflation coming as a consequence of the largesse of the government’s massive rescue plans.

Many analysts are incorrectly talking of deflation. Falling stock markets or falling housing markets do not contract the money supply. The government’s bailouts and “liquidity” injections on the other hand increase it. John Williams shows at shadowstats.com that the money supply is expanding at 14% and when the government guarantees all bank deposits and probably all interbank lending I can’t imagine what it will be!

Imagine that instead of living through this nightmare yourself you were watching this complete financial drama unfolding in Venezuela. Who in his right mind would predict that Venezuela would experience massive deflation as a result of creating massive amounts of money and credit out of thin air? So why is it different for America? The laws of economics are not country specific.

Because the Cartel hit gold and silver in the middle of the night on Thursday October 9 many started invoking deflation theories. This is nonsensical and the bond market is about to confirm it!

We have seen the mega-shorts on TOCOM reduce their shorts in gold and silver to next to zero. They know what is going to happen to the prices of precious metals!

Many investors are starting to think that after this stock market rout and with a G7 package things will begin to improve. That is not the way things work! 20 years of excesses with even more monetary excesses about to be heaped upon us as a “rescue package” do not get unwound in 5 days. This is just the beginning. The bond market is the biggest market in the world (if we ignore the ridiculous, unregulated casino peddling OTC derivatives!). When the bond market heads south the money that has to find a safe haven somewhere else is in the trillions. Just a small percentage of this capital will blow the precious metals to unimaginable levels.

The authorities keep saying that they will “use all tools available to them”. They only have one…it’s an electronic version of the printing press. They will spin it in many different ways using jargon like “increased liquidity” and “injection of capital” and “buying equity stakes” and “buying toxic debt” but it all translates to “create more money out of thin air”. Gold and silver and the mining equities will be the place to be and soon thereafter commodities in general.

Clarity will come when the metals reach new highs and at that point a child of six will be able to say where to invest. Of course, that is the greatest incentive for the Gold cartel to prevent new highs being achieved! But new highs are already being achieved in the retail market and on e-bay. The silly manipulation on the COMEX will soon end.

Money Markets Ease on Unlimited Dollars Pledge

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:35:24 -0700

Reduters

October 13, 2008

Money market rates eased on Monday after Europe’s central banks said they would lend commercial banks as much U.S. dollar funding as they need.

In the latest joint bid to thaw frozen money markets the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank also scrapped their existing dollar auction systems and replaced them with a new fixed rate system.

“Counterparties in these operations will be able to borrow any amount they wish against the appropriate collateral in each jurisdiction,” the Fed said in a statement.

“Central banks will continue to work together and are prepared to take whatever measures are necessary to provide sufficient liquidity in short-term funding markets.” The Bank of Japan said it would also consider similar measures and the Fed said it would increase its currency swap lines with the ECB, SNB and BOE by an unspecified amount to fund the operations.

The moves were welcomed by traders and had an instant impact as three-month Libor dollar rates fell.

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US Officials Said to Offer Protection to Japan Investors

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:34:03 -0700

Andrew Ross Sorkin

The New York Times
October 13, 2008

In what could set an important precedent, federal officials assured a big Japanese bank that its planned investment in the embattled Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley would be protected, according to people involved in the talks.

After two days of tense negotiations, Treasury officials urged a hesitant Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to proceed with its $9 billion investment in Morgan Stanley, which has sought the capital infusion to reassure investors and customers about its stability.

The deal is considered a crucial step in the government’s strategy for revitalizing the financial system by luring outside investment while it considers buying stock in banks directly. The transaction’s failure would deal a blow to that effort and potentially unnerve the financial markets.

The Treasury’s assurances amount to another extraordinary move by the government and could serve as a model for future deals. The tense, weekend talks were so critical to the financial markets that they drew in both the Treasury and the Japanese government.

Mitsubishi and the Japanese government pressed the Treasury Department over the weekend to guarantee that if the United States were to inject money into Morgan Stanley at a later time — a step the Treasury has ruled out for now — the move would not wipe out Mitsubishi’s investment.

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Dollar, Euro, Sterling May Be Destroyed Zimbabwe-Style

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:32:59 -0700

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet
Monday, October 13, 2008

Private investment advisor Martin Hennecke warned this morning that the endless printing of money to bail out collapsing banks would lead to hyperinflation and the Zimbabwe-style destruction of the dollar, euro and sterling.

Asked by CNBC how the three currencies could be destroyed, Hennecke, senior manager of private clients at Tyche, highlighted the collapse of Iceland’s banks.

“They have a lot of external debt in other currencies so they wouldn’t be able to print up more of their own currency - meaning hyperinflation to get out of their debt - but the UK, the U.S. and the rest of Europe could do it….this is the first step down the road to hyperinflation,” said Hennecke.

Noting that there was a gold rush and panic buying taking place while gold dealers worldwide had to close their doors, Hennecke agreed that gold prices would explode as hyperinflation crept up, and said that relatively modest overall price rises in the precious metal were partly a result of deleveraging as well as, “manipulation as the central bankers and the politicians don’t want you to panic out of their debt and go into gold.”

Hennecke dismissed the new rescue plans announced over the weekend as merely new taxpayer funded money being printed up and thrown at the problem, which will lead to accelerated inflation.

Asked if he believed whether the Euro and the U.S. dollar could go the way of the Zimbabwean dollar, which has suffered annual inflation of over 200 million per cent over the last few years, Hennecke responded, “Actually it’s interesting to know that the world’s leading standard rating agency Standard and Poor has predicted that all the major western governments are heading towards default on their sovereign bonds - that was predicted way before the crisis even started and now with tax revenues drying up and much much more money needed for these bailouts and privatizations of the banks to prevent a bank run, clearly that is likely to be happening earlier (rather) than later.”

“Most investors are saying cash is the safest thing but it might just turn around with cash being one of the highest risk investments if this inflation accelerates,” Hennecke concluded.

Early last month, before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the announcement of the $700 billion bailout package, Hennecke warned that the U.S. and Europe were both heading for depression and that the U.S. would eventually be forced to announce national bankruptcy.

Rescue for the Few, Debt Slavery for the Many

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:31:24 -0700

Michael Hudson

Counterpunch
October 13, 2008

We are now entering the financial End Time. Bailout “Plan A” (buy the junk mortgages) has failed, “Plan B” (buy ersatz stocks in the banks to recapitalize them without wiping out current mismanagers) is fizzling, and the debts still can’t be paid. That is the reality Wall Street avoids confronting. “First they ignore you, then they denounce you, and then they say that they knew what you were saying all the time,” said Gandhi. The same might be said of today’s overhang of debts in excess of the economy’s ability to pay. First the policy makers pretend that they can be paid, then they denounce the pessimists as spreading panic, and then they say that of course students have been taught for four thousand years now how the “magic of compound interest” keeps on doubling and redoubling debts faster than the economy can squeeze out an economic surplus to pay.




The amazing feature of today’s crash is how many Wall Street firms actually believed that the game of musical financial chairs could go on before they had to stop dancing and indeed, escape from the room.

What has ended is the idea that “the magic of compound interest” can make economies rich without having to work and without industry. I hope we have seen the end of derivatives formulae seeking to make money by playing in a zero-sum game. A debt overhang always ends either in foreclosure of the debtor’s property, or in a debt annulment to preserve the economy’s overall freedom and equity.

This means that the postmodern economy as we know it must end – either in financial polarization and debt peonage to a new oligarchic elite, or in a debt cancellation, a Jubilee Year to rescue society. But when the government says that it is reviewing “all” the options, this reality is not one of them. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s first option was to buy packages of junk mortgages (collateralized debt obligations, CDOs) to save the wealthiest institutional investors from having to take a loss on their bad bets. When this was not enough, he came up with “Plan B,” to give money to banks. But whereas Britain and European countries talked of nationalizing banks or at least taking a controlling interest, Mr. Paulson gave in to his Wall Street cronies and promised that the government’s stock purchases would not be real. There would be no dilution of existing shareholders, and the government’s investment would be non-voting. To cap the giveaway to his cronies, Mr. Paulson even agreed not to ask executives to give up their golden parachutes, exorbitant annual bonuses or salaries.

Plan A (the $700 billion to buy mortgage-backed junk that the private sector will not buy) failed partly because it let financial institutions avoid putting a fair value on the debt packages they were selling. Instead of telling the truth about their financial position by marking assets to market prices), they can “mark to model,” Enron-style. We have seen the result: A solid week of plunging stock market prices. The public media call this a panic, but there is nothing irrational about it. Who in their right mind would buy securities or buy into a bank without knowing what the securities were worth? Faith in junk mathematical models has ended.

So we still await a public response to the problem of how to write down debts. Whose economic interest will have to give: that of debtors, as increasingly has been the case over the past eight centuries; or that of creditors, which have fought back to create a neoliberal economy controlled by the FIRE sector?

It is not too late to decide which road to take, but Wall Street bankers and creditors have taken the lead in positioning themselves. Seeing which way the political winds were blowing, they moved to empty out the Treasury before the November 3 elections much like medieval citizens fleeing a horde of Mongolian raiders under Genghis Khan. “We’re moving. Clean out the cupboards,” much as Lehman Brothers emptied out their foreign bank accounts in Britain and elsewhere just before declaring bankruptcy, taking what they could and steering it to their best friends.

The pretense was that a bailout was needed to restore confidence. But the ensuing week showed that the claims were false. It didn’t turn the stock market around as promised. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,200 points from Wednesday, October 1 through the following Friday October 10 – eight straight trading days, not even pausing for the usual zigzags. Friday’s plunge was 100 points a minute for the first seven minutes – a 690 point drop to under 8000. Each 100 points was more than a 1 percent drop, which was reflected on the NASDAQ. Nothing could withstand the pressure of so many Americans cashing in their mutual funds overnight and so many foreigners in earlier time zones putting in sell-at-market orders.

Short sellers made one of the largest and quickest fortunes ever, and then covered their positions by buying back the stocks they had pre-sold. This pushed prices up even into positive territory just before 10:30 AM when George Bush began to speak. Half the financial stocks showed gains – a sign that the Plunge Protection Team had jumped in. But Mr. Bush said nothing helpful and stocks went back into freefall, ending down another 128 points despite the upcoming weekend G7 meeting. There was no talk at all of reducing debt levels – only of giving more money to banks, insurance companies and other money managers, as if “pushing on a string” somehow would lead them to lend yet more to an already debt-ridden economy.

If Congress really wanted to restore confidence, here’s what it might have done: First, mark to market, not to model. Investors no longer believe America’s Enron-style accounting, debt rating agencies or monoline risk insurers. They don’t trust U.S. banks to be honest about their financial positions. They worry about the fraud charges brought by attorneys general in eleven states against predatory lenders such as Countrywide and Wachovia that Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America were so eager to buy.

So is it too late for Congress to change its mind and repeal the giveaway? If the $700 billion handout didn’t stabilize the unsalvageable for small investors, pension funds and even the financial sector itself, what did it do?

What the Fed has been doing while the media have not been looking?

Let’s put the giveaway in perspective. While Senators and Congressmen subject to voters’ choice were debating $700 billion for the major Wall Street contributors to both parties (admittedly only for starters, Mr. Paulson explained), the Federal Reserve already had given even more, without any public discussion and without the major media noticing. Since Bear Stearns failed in March, the Federal Reserve has used the small print of its charter to go outside its normal customers (which are supposed to be commercial banks), to give investment banks, brokerage houses and now large corporations almost indiscriminately some $875 billion in “cash for trash” swaps. (The statistics are released each week in the Fed’s H41 report.) Like Aladdin offering new lamps for old, the Fed has exchanged Treasury securities for junk mortgages and other securities that brokerage houses and investment banks did not have time to pawn off onto OPEC, Asian sovereign wealth funds or other investors.

The press lauds Mr. Bernanke as “a student of the Great Depression.” If he were, he should know that what led to the 1929 collapse were harsh U.S. Government creditor policies toward its World War I Allied governments. This created a situation where the Federal Reserve had to provide easy credit to hold interest rates artificially low so as to encourage U.S. investors to lend to Britain and Germany, which would use these dollar inflows to pay their Inter-Ally arms and reparations debts. Mr. Bernanke’s predecessor, Alan Greenspan, promoted easy credit simply for ideological reasons, to enrich Wall Street by enabling it to sell more debt.

A student of the Great Depression would understand the conflicts of interest between retail commercial banking and wholesale investment banking and money management that led Congress to pass the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933 – conflicts unleashed once again when Pres. Clinton backed then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and Republican leader (and McCain hero) Senator Phil Gramm in leading the repeal of this act, opening up the floodgates to today’s financial double-dealing that has cost the American economy so much.

If Mr. Bernanke does know this history, his behavior is simply that of an opportunistic student of the art of political self-advancement, toadying to Wall Street in campaigning for one last great rip-off before the Bush Administration goes out of business. The Fed has given Wall Street newly minted Treasury bonds, added to the national debt out of thin air. It has done this without feeling any need to rationalize it by drawing absurd public-relations pictures about how the government may “make a profit for taxpayers.”

The Fed Chairman is not elected democratically. He traditionally is designated by the Wall Street financial sector that the Fed is supposed to regulate, acting as its lobbyist for creditor interests – the top 10 percent of the population – against that of the indebted “bottom 90 percent.” This “independence of the central bank” is trumpeted as a hallmark of democracy. But it is undemocratic, precisely by being isolated from public control.

The Age of Oligarchy

Treasury Secretary Paulson has no such luxury. The Treasury is supposed to represent the national interest, not that of bankers – even though its head these days is drawn from Wall Street and acts as its lobbyist. Mr. Paulson presented his almost totalitarian giveaway gruffly to Congress on a take-it-or-leave it basis, announcing that if Congress did not save Wall Street from taking losses on its mountain of bad loans, the banks were willing to crash the economy out of spite. “Please don’t make us wreck the economy,” he said in effect. As Margaret Thatcher used to say while selling off the British government’s crown jewels in the 1980s, TINA: There is no alternative.

In making this bold threat Mr. Paulson behaved as arrogantly as Lehman’s CEO Richard Fuld did when he tried to bluff Korea and other prospective investors into paying the full, fictitiously high book value for his company. (His bluff failed and Lehman went bankrupt, wiping out its shareholders, including the employees and managers who held 30 percent of its stock.) There turned out to be an alternative after all. Responding to the loudest public condemnation in memory, Congress called Mr. Paulson’s bluff.

What made his $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) so much more visible to the media than the Fed’s actions is that Congress is involved, and this is an election year. The level of deception and false argument is therefore enormous – along with a few tradeoffs and tax cuts to distract attention. Erstwhile Republican opponent Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama came right out and said that “This bill has been packaged with a lot of very popular things to give it even more momentum,” so that (as The New York Times explained), “instead of siding with a $700 billion bailout, lawmakers could now say they voted for increased protection for deposits at the neighborhood bank, income tax relief for middle-class taxpayers and aid for schools in rural areas where the federal government owns much of the land.”

Left behind while Wall Street’s believers in the rapture of free markets were swept up to heaven by “socialism for the rich” have been mortgage debtors, student-loan debtors, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC, some $25 billion short), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC, about $40 billion short), as well as Social Security which, we are warned, may run up a trillion dollar deficit thirty or forty years down the line. Only the wealthiest have been beneficiaries, not voters, homeowners and other debtors.

Still, Congress was panicked into acting on Friday, October 3, because a week earlier, September 26, stocks fell 777 points after Congressmen responded to an unprecedented volume of voter protest against the bailout. “This sucker could go down,” Pres. Bush warned as Wall Street’s lobbyists blamed the market downturn to the failure of Congress to preserve the “monetary system,” and specifically the banks and insurance companies that already had lost their net worth and were plunging deeper into Negative Equity territory. Democratic leaders Barney Frank and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, in effect, “Look what you’ve done! You irresponsible politicians are grandstanding on principle, and wiping out peoples’ stock market savings and threatening their pension funds. If you don’t give Wall Street firms enough money to cover their losses so that everyone wins, they’ll kill the economy until they get their way.” Well, they didn’t quite say this, but that was basically their message. It certainly was Wall Street’s message: “Wall Street to Economy: Your money or your life.”

So Congress gave in. Democrats ran like lemmings to “save the economy.” Yet the stock market fell a few hundred points, and kept on plunging all week long, much worse and much faster than had occurred right after Congress had initially defeated the bill.

The “Reality Problem”

What did the “free market” theory underlying the giveaway leave out of account? For starters, “the monetary system” turns out to be a euphemism for the fortunes of financial gamblers using junk mathematics (the Merton-Scholes derivatives formula) based on junk economics (blessed with Nobel Prizes) to buy, speculate and even to insure junk mortgages, junk bonds and junk commercial paper and derivatives based on their relative prices. So what is left out first of all was full knowledge of the value of what is being bought and sold. Mark-to-market models leave the price up to the investment bankers. If trust existed and there really was honor among these thieves, a government bailout would not be necessary, because “the market” could clear.

“Free market” ideology assumes that each party will act in his or her self-interest. If this is so, why should foreign governments accumulate more dollar claims on the U.S. Treasury, which already owes their central banks $4 trillion? When there hardly were enough Treasury securities to go around even as the United States ran unprecedented federal budget deficits, U.S. officials urged these banks and sovereign wealth funds to buy packaged mortgages yielding a higher rate of return. And at least by buying these bonds, foreign governments would not be accused of funding America’s war in Iraq that most of their voters opposed. But investors made a fatal mistake in believing U.S. representations of the value of their junk-mortgage packages. This trust has now been lost, all the more so since the bailout’s permission to keep on “marking to market.”

Congress thought that its $700 billion would distract attention at least until the November 4 election. But to no avail. Markets fell 157 points on Giveaway Friday, and kept on going down another 800 points on Monday, October 6 (to about 9500) before bouncing 500 points off the floor, only to fall even more through Friday. So the giveaway failed in its stated purpose to rescue stock market investors (“peoples’ capitalism”) or their pension funds. But that was not its real purpose. The time simply had come to clear out and take whatever one could.

Making banks and insurers in the zero-sum derivative game whole, so that winners can collect their bets while losers can sell their bad investments to the Treasury, is supposed to re-inflate the credit pyramid. The idea is to solve the debt problem with yet more debt to prop up housing prices once again to unaffordable levels! This is not a long-term solution, but it would give insiders enough time to arrange a do-over and get out of the game more quickly, to sell out their junk mortgages and junk bonds to the proverbial “greater fool” – in this case, the “greater fool of last resort,” the U.S. Treasury, as long as it can be run by Mr. Paulson or, under Mr. Obama, perhaps the former Goldman-Sachs official Robert Rubin.

The banks are to “earn” their way out of their negative equity position by selling more of their product – credit – to increase the economy’s debt levels and hence receive more interest payments. The problem is that most families are already “loaned up.” They have no more discretionary income to pledge to carry more debt. Without writing down their debts, there will be no fresh lending, and hence no source of credit and purchasing power for new autos, appliances, goods and services in general. Debt deflation is being imposed on the “real” economy. Creditors and speculators alone are to be made whole.

If no revenue was available for future Social Security, public health care and repair the nation’s depleted infrastructure before this giveaway, think of how bare the cupboard must be now that the government has run up the recent trillions of dollars in new debt rather than writing off a penny of the bad mortgage debts being blamed for causing the debacle.

We can see where this is leading. The wealthiest 1 percent of the population will come into possession of even more returns to wealth than the 57 percent that they are now taking. In contrast to the Statue of Liberty’s inscription “give me your poor … yearning to breathe free,” the Fed – and now the Treasury, with Congressional blessing – is taking from the public purse and giving to America’s wealthiest investors and insiders. This “Robin Hood in Reverse” program is being done without strings, without asking banks to stop paying dividends, exorbitant executive salaries and golden parachutes, and without taking over banks with negative net worth of the kind that many homeowners are experiencing.

Nobody is talking about a debt write-down or moratorium. The subprime mortgage problem could have been solved by writing down just $1 or $2 trillion of the face value and interest rates of predatory loans. Instead, the $10+ trillion in financial-sector damage in recent weeks reflects Wall Street’s fraudulent packaging and sale of junk mortgages at unrealistically high prices, using junk mathematics to calculate junk derivatives and sell them to gullible investors who believe that the pretenses these mathematics, credit ratings and projected income have a basis in reality.

The amazing feature of today’s crash is how many Wall Street firms actually believed that the game of musical financial chairs could go on before they had to stop dancing and indeed, escape from the room. I remember one day back in the 1970s when I warned Frank Zarb of Lazard Freres about the likelihood of Third World debt defaults, and suggested that the firm should do an ability-to-pay analysis. “We don’t have to do any such thing,” he replied. “We have the schedule of what they owe right here in this IMF report.” It was a thick printout of the scheduled debt service for an African country that soon became insolvent. But Wall Street’s mentalité was that of Herbert Hoover on the eve of the Great Depression: A debt is a debt, and that is that. The response is to blame the victim, as if the irresponsibility lies with debtors rather than creditors.

No reversal of the Bush tax cuts is offered to re-inflate the economy, no move toward more progressive taxation of Wall Street speculators who pay only a 15 percent “capital gains” tax rate instead of the much higher income-tax and FICA withholding rates that wage-earners pay. (Wall Street has its own golden parachute program, so why should it pay for Social Security for the rest of society?) There is to be no reduction in the special tax benefits for real estate, whose tax favoritism led to the crisis by “freeing” more income from the tax collector to be pledged to mortgage bankers as interest. The Bubble Economy is to be re-inflated by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA lending to help buyers bid up housing and commercial office prices once again to a rate that promises to impose debt peonage on homeowners.

The budget deficit will soar, without any prosecution of tax evasion scams by UBS or KPMG. Instead of a fiscal or regulatory comet driving these dinosaurs to extinction, the climate has turned more conducive to their proliferation. Our Age of Deception is to be locked in even more tightly. The Congressional bailout’s suspension of mark-to-market rules to rely on Wall Street’s “self-regulation” should win a prize for Oxymoron of 2008 as investors have no clue as to what financial assets are worth. No wonder lending has dried up, especially to banks themselves.

Just as financial victims fail to vote and support their self-interest, predators also turn out to pursue self-defeating “free market” strategies. The financial sector’s short-termism is the greatest enemy to its survival. It has translated its wealth into a fatal political control of its legal climate, blocking [with the explicit support of Barack Obama, Editors] Congressional efforts to rewrite the oppressive bankruptcy laws that credit-card banks lobbied so hard to pass, [with vital help from Joe Biden, the senior senator from credit card company HQ, the state of Delaware, Editors] crucial. These hard bankruptcy terms prevent the courts from renegotiating homeowner debts to keep property occupied, accelerating the real estate price collapse. The result is today’s negative equity, posing the question of just who is to bear the cost of bring debts back in line with the economy’s ability to pay. Will it be the financial institutions that sponsored asset-price inflation and lobbied for deregulation of lenders? Or, will it be the debtors who thought they were riding the wave to get an inflationary free lunch?

Instead of requiring creditors to absorb losses on the excess of debts over what can be paid, the debts are being kept in place, not scaled back to what the economy can pay. The government is to make creditors and computerized derivatives speculators whole – and will act as collecting agent for the overhead of bad debts the economy has run up.

Today we can see the debt-fueled bubble of asset-price inflation that Alan Greenspan trumpeted as real wealth creation for what it really is – credit creation to bid up real estate, stock market and packaged-debt prices. Tangible capital formation has been left out of account, as if postindustrial economies no longer need it.

Will voters see the asymmetry in Congress’s failure to offer debt relief for homeowners as real estate prices plunge below the mortgages that are owed? Will its members be blamed for not rewriting the nation’s bankruptcy laws to free families from debt peonage – and free housing markets from the price declines that result from today’s proliferation of foreclosure sales? For that matter, will there be no relief for corporations having to cut back investment in order to service their junk bonds and other debts with which Wall Street’s corporate raiders and “shareholder activists” have loaded then down?

Evidently not.

Good Read! - The October Surprise: Global Panic

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:29:54 -0700

Stephen Lendman

Global Research
October 13, 2008

Since 9/11, the notion of an October surprise has been around. The idea going something like this. Another real or manufactured terror attack. The dominant media stokes fear. The public is again traumatized. The Bush administration pledges all effective measures to protect national security. Formerly seizes total power. Suspends the Constitution and declares martial law. Mass detentions follow. Beginning with dissenters and elements of the public considered “dangerous.”




	Today’s crisis isn’t an accident or from happenstance. It was planned.

This may be coming with the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team back in the US as of October 1. According to the Army Times, as “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Augmented by USNORTHCOM.

According to Wayne Madsen’s recent article titled “FEMA sources confirm coming martial law,” it gets worse. He cites “knowledgeable” FEMA sources saying that “the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan (to declare) martial law in the US with various scenarios anticipated as triggers.” Economic collapse. Massive social unrest. Bank closures. Street protests. Violence in response, and another stolen election.

Early in the month, a different October surprise arrived. Not the expected one. Not yet at least. The Wall Street Journal put it this way: “The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) capped the worst week in its 112-year history with its most volatile day ever, as hopes for a major international bank rescue plan were overwhelmed at day’s end by another wave of selling.”

The DJIA dropped 22% over the past eight trading sessions. Investors were “shell-shocked.” Many spent Friday “trying to protect themselves from further declines. The past week’s (October 6 - 10) 18% decline “and Friday’s 1018.77 point swing from low to high were the biggest since the Dow was created in 1896.” The VIX measure of market fear hit 69.95. By far its highest level ever, and some investors think it may touch 100 in the current climate. Until now, the Dow’s worst week was in 1933. Trading volume also set a record at 11.16 billion shares.

“Market crash shakes world” headlined the Financial Times (FT). Mass trauma, fear and uncertainty sent tremors everywhere, and no one knows if Friday ended it. Maybe just began it. First markets crater. Then world economies, and finally the inevitable human fallout. Affecting many tens of millions everywhere. Innocent people paying dearly.

Morning headlines say it all. And they’re getting grimmer. On October 10, the Wall Street Journal said the “Market’s 7-Day Rout Leaves US Reeling. Stocks in a Slow-Motion Crash….After Year of Declines, Investors Lose $8.4 Trillion of Wealth.” Most scary is what’s ahead and how much more people can or will tolerate.

The Financial Times was just as grim headlining “Global equities plunge….Japan leads Asian market rout…Wall Street in biggest fall since 1987 crash.” Once the nation’s largest company, General Motors may now face bankruptcy. Its October 10 stock fell to its 1950 valuation and now has a market capitalization of just $2.6 billion. Shockingly expressed in one headline saying “Wheels falling off for General Motors.” Add the engine and chassis, too.

Ford Motor’s outlook is little better. Its stock price is the lowest in decades, and one analyst warned that “the accelerating deterioration in industry fundamentals will be a serious challenge to liquidity (for both companies and Chrysler) during 2009.” JD Power and Associates was even grimmer saying that the global auto market may experience an “outright collapse” in 2009. And we’re only talking about autos.

Look at banks and world finance. The source of today’s crisis and reason global economies are reeling. Economists like Nouriel Roubini were once scoffed at. No longer. He warned for months that “the risk of a total systemic meltdown is now as high as ever since the credit crunch is gripping European banks as well” and spreading globally. Affecting good ones as well as bad. Trashing the baby with the bath water. Erasing savings for tens of millions everywhere. And for seniors who may not have time to recoup.

The crisis didn’t emerge like Topsy. It’s been simmering for years, and in July 2006 historian Gabriel Kolko warned about it in an article titled “Bankers Fear World Economic Meltdown.” He noted how:

the “whole nature of the global finance system has changed radically in ways that have nothing whatsoever to do with ‘virtuous’ national economic policies….The investment managers of private equity funds and major banks have displaced national banks….moving well beyond regulatory structures….Traders have taken over from traditional bankers because buying and selling shares, bonds, derivatives and the like now generate the greater profits, and taking more and higher risks is now the rule….They often bet with house money (and) low interest rates….let them do things….that were once deemed foolhardy.”

Compounded by the irrational development of global finance, liberalization and loose regulations. Playing fast and loose and betting on the come. The potential gains are enormous and so are the risks of a major financial crisis. A meltdown. Now we’ve got one that global institutions are “utterly inadequate” to deal with.

Kolko warned then that “the entire global financial structure (was) becoming uncontrollable….financial liberalization produced a monster….contradictions wrack the world’s financial system (that’s) both crisis-prone (and) immoral. (We) may very well be on the verge of serious crises.” Now we’ve got one and in dire straits.

Because “a kleptocratic class (took) over the economy,” according to economist Michael Hudson. A criminal element betting on high returns through computerized gambling “and when bad bets are made, bailouts are the (payoff) for campaign contributions.” For having friends in high places as well.

Today’s crisis isn’t an accident or from happenstance. It was planned, according to economist and critic F. William Engdahl in his recent article titled “Behind the Panic.” To “shape the future of global banking” through creative destruction. Panic incited by a well-designed “long-term strategy.” To change the “face of European banking.” Weaken it with toxic junk. Asset Backed Securities. Force enough of it into liquidation or cheap enough to buy at fire sale valuations. The idea being to “create three colossal global financial giants - Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs.” Add Bank of America and make it a foursome. Then use their “muscle to ravage European banks.” Even if they wreck the US and world economies. Resuscitate them so they can “advance their global agenda over the coming years.” To dominate world finance and increase US hegemony in the new century.

That’s the scheme, and Engdahl calls it “a fight for the survival of the American Century.” Built on “the twin pillars of American financial (and military) dominance,” but the game is far from over. “Battle lines are drawn.” EU nations have their own ideas. Stabilization and recovery plans as well that differ from Washington’s and look much sounder. It remains to be seen where things are heading and whether competing nations can work together and do it effectively. They haven’t much time.

Washington’s Efforts to Shape the Last Century

Engdahl recounted some of them in his important book on war, geopolitics, oil and finance: “A Century of War.” He explained how Washington designed “the greatest confidence game” ever. A “special hegemony” to:

– print limitless amounts of dollars;

– accumulate huge trade deficits;

– “inflate (the) currency beyond imagination;”

– have the government pay bankers interest on its own money; and

– create an unprecedented public and private debt to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

Up to now it worked. Let America rule the world. Control its energy and finance. Avoid serious challengers and crush potential ones.

From the early years of the last century, US muscle flexing took many forms. From conflicts to geopolitics to controlling world resources to financial warfare. JP Morgan and other Wall Street notables were experts on the latter. Creating panics for greater power. Like today’s with similar aims.

In 1969, Richard Nixon had his own scheme with the country in recession. Interest rates were cut. Dollars flowed abroad. The money supply was expanded, and in May 1971 America recorded its first monthly trade deficit. It triggered a panic US dollar sell-off. Gold backed the currency then. Reserves were one-quarter of official liabilities, and (on August 15) Nixon unilaterally imposed a 90-day wage and price freeze. A 10% import surcharge. An 8% currency devaluation, and he closed the gold window. Suspended dollar convertibility into the metal and ended compliance with Bretton Woods’ core provision. He pulled the plug on world economies. Shook them and on February 12, 1973 did again. With a further 10% dollar devaluation that created the worst global instability since the 1930s. What lay behind his actions?

To buy time ahead of a bold new monetary “paradigm shift.” To revive a strong dollar and US hegemony. By a “colossal assault” on world industrial growth. Through an engineered oil embargo. A 400% increase in oil prices. A flood of petrodollars to be recycled into US investments and purchases. Big Oil and major banks to profit hugely at the cost of economic crisis. The worst since the 1930s. Causing bankruptcies, unemployment and stagflation.

Under Jimmy Carter in 1979, Fed chairman Paul Volker advanced his own radical monetary policy on the pretext of fighting high inflation. It was another Washington scheme to preserve dollar hegemony. Keep it the world’s reserve currency, and do it by crushing industrial growth to let political and financial power prop up dollar strength.

It worked by raising interest rates from 10% to 16% and then 20% in weeks. The US and world economies plunged into deep recessions, and the dollar began a strong five year ascent.

In the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, Mexican president Jose Lopez Portillo wanted to use his oil revenue to modernize and industrialize the country. To make it stronger and more independent. That prospect was anathema to Washington and it reacted. With a scheme to demand rigid repayment of Mexican debt at exorbitant rates.

In 1981, it began with an orchestrated run on the peso. Stories were circulated about an impending devaluation and capital flight. Portillo instituted an austerity plan, and his government cracked under pressure. The peso was devalued 30%. Mexican industry was devastated. Industrial production cut. Bankruptcies followed. Millions of Mexicans suffered grievously. The nation became effectively insolvent. It had to accept IMF help. Took on large amounts of debt, and major banks profited hugely by working with the government and IMF. Socializing the debt. Spinning it off to tax payers and privatizing gains through structural adjustment looting. Similarly in other countries. Causing mounting debt. Charging onerous interest rates, and earning greater profits from hundreds of billions of dollars in servicing costs.

Reagan-era deregulation caused the S & L crisis. A lesser version of today’s. By letting banks invest in speculative real estate. Engage in massive fraud. And get the right wing Cato Institute to say: “If Congress had set out in 1980 to create an environment that would lure all the crooks and frauds in the country into one industry, few would have been more suitable than” this one. “It was easy (finding) disenchanged S & L owners who were willing to sell out for a reasonable price, and once one had an S & L charter, opportunities abounded.”

It ended up bankrupting hundreds of banks. Shrunk the industry from 4500 in 1979 to about 2200 in 1991 and hundreds more afterward. It also cost taxpayers around $200 billion. Pocket change compared to the trillions needed for the current crisis.

In the 1980s, Japan was the country that could say “no.” At decade’s end, it was the world’s economic and banking leader. Because reckless speculation left American banks in deep crisis. Japan operated more prudently. It prospered, and challenged American dominance. Washington feared former communist countries would adopt its model. This was anathema. It might shut out US companies. Show Japan’s way was superior so it had to be stopped.

The 1985 Plaza accord was the scheme. To get Japan to exercise monetary and fiscal measures to expand domestic demand and reduce the country’s external surplus. At the same time, the Bank of Japan held interest rates at 2.5% from 1987 - 1989. To stimulate US goods purchases. Instead cheap money went into Japanese stocks and real estate. It created two colossal bubbles. A lost decade followed, and the economy is still recovering and under new duress from the current panic.

The 1990s Asian crisis was also manufactured. In summer 1997, it hit. For no apparent reason beyond rumors that the Thai baht was in trouble, and Thailand had too few dollars to back it. “Asian Contagion” was unleashed. Hot money came in earlier. Then exited electronically. From Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines, and other Asian Tiger countries. Through a Washington-engineered scheme because these nations’ economic model bested America’s and threatened it.

Tiger countries grew by protecting their markets and barring foreign companies from owning land and national firms. They also restricted Western and Japanese imports to grow their own economies and homegrown industries. Again anathema so it had to be stopped.

The countries were hammered. Forced to devalue their currencies and get IMF help. With strings. Accepting debt bondage. Opening their markets. Structural adjustments. Privatizations. Spending cuts. Mass layoffs and constrained wages and benefits. The whole toxic package in return for aid. The regional toll was devastating. An estimated 24 million lost jobs. Its growing middle class destroyed. A black hole of misery for around 20 million people. Forcing them to do anything to survive. Crushing the Asian miracle to let Western brands replace local ones. Bargain hunters get great deals at fire sale prices. The New York Times called it “the world’s biggest going-out-of-business sale.” The region now hammered again from the current crisis. No secret where it was manufactured. No telling how it will end up. No guessing many millions feel pain and are fearful.

No end to other notable examples. Two especially stand out. The 1990s ones affecting post-Soviet Russia and South Africa. In each case, neoliberal “shock therapy” was devastating. It empowered an oligarch class in Russia. Let them strip mine the nation’s wealth and offshore it to tax havens. Impoverished tens of millions of people. Bankrupted 80% of farmers. Caused mass unemployment. Created a permanent underclass. An annual 700,000 a year population decline and much more.

South Africa fared no better. Despite Nelson Mandela’s pledge to support black economic empowerment. As president he surrendered to capital. The consequences were horrific. Far worse than under apartheid. Double the unemployment rate and number of people in desperate poverty. Millions of poor blacks without homes. Another million evicted from farms. One-fourth of the population with no running water or electricity. Around 60% with inadequate sanitation. A 13 year life expectancy decline since 1990. Appalling human wreckage much like what happened in Russia and elsewhere. To empower capital at the expense of people. Heading for America and in one week took a quantum leap.

Spreading everywhere. On October 2, enough for The New York Times to say that Latin American leaders have gone from “schadenfreude to fear(ful).” Hugo Chavez skipped the UN General Assembly opening to visit China and said Beijing is more relevant than New York. Venezuela and Bolivia expelled their US ambassadors, and Brazil’s Lula da Silva railed against an American regional naval presence and said his nation’s warships must be on alert in response. He’s also furious at Wall Street and Washington for the current crisis and said: “We did what we were supposed to do to get our house in order. They spent years telling us what to do and they themselves didn’t do it.”

Argentina’s Christina Fernandez de Kirchner was also bitter in stating: “We are witnessing the First World, which at one point had been painted as a mecca we should strive to reach, popping like a bubble.” And the Chicago Tribune quoted an Inter-American Dialogue expert saying that “whatever credibility the US had in the region, on economic management, that’s clearly gone.”

Forty world specialists from 20 countries attended the International Conference of Political Economy in Caracas, Venezuela from October 8 - 11. To analyze and propose South-based, alternative solutions to the financial crisis. Venezuela’s Minister for Planning and Development, Haiman El Troudi, highlighted his country’s relative strength. Its impressive economic growth (at 6% in first half 2008), and recommended that Venezuelans repatriate their US investments given the current climate. To protect them from unsafe American banks.

He and President Chavez also criticized the IMF and called for it to “dissolve….kill itself.” They were harsh on the World Bank as well. Chavez added that “We are decoupling from the wagon of death.” El Troudi said we are witnessing the end of neoliberal hegemony. Others agreed that a new model is needed. The old one clearly failed.

The Current Panic and Meltdown

Credit today is frozen. From a debt crisis, not a liquidity one. Markets are reeling as a result. Crashing in free fall from severe financial stress. From the largest ever leveraged asset and credit bubbles. Multiple ones. Imploding. Starting with housing. Causing widespread mortgage defaults and huge financial institution losses. Multi-trillions more asset dollars at risk. Compounded by banks reluctant to lend. Fearing they won’t be repaid. Prices are falling. Trust is eroded. Losses mounting from destructive deleveraging. Mortgages, stocks, bonds, commodities, credit, private equity, hedge funds imploding more intensively than since the Great Depression.

Forcing troubled companies to the wall. Each one exposing others. Some too big to fail but they did. Getting investors to run for the exits. Selling good assets to cover bad ones. Freezing up money markets. Making short-term Treasuries the only safe bet. Getting world governments scrambling for solutions. Already in recession and getting worse. Fearing an intensified financial crisis. A systemic collapse.Turning a deepening recession into a global depression. A disaster only urgent, well-designed, and coordinated actions may prevent. But no assurance anything will work this late.

Here’s what Nouriel Roubini and others recommend. Mirror opposite of EESA that will do more harm than good:

– additional rapid rate cuts globally; at least to 1% in America; much lower in the EU, Asia and elsewhere;

– guarantee all deposits until stability is restored at least;

– partially nationalize troubled banks; recapitalize them with public funds; in some form that now seems the plan according to The New York Times in its October 11 article headlined: “White House Overhauling Rescue Plan;” capital to be injected into banks by buying non-voting shares; what’s known is Henry Paulson’s October 10 statement that “We can use the taxpayer’s money more effectively….if we develop a standardized program to buy equity in financial institutions;” it remains to be seen what, in fact, happens; Paulson represents Wall Street; not the public, national or world interests;

– he’s not for reestablishing responsible regulation to curb market excesses; what economists like Roubini recommend;

– freeze all home foreclosures; establish a 1930s type Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) to refinance homes and prevent foreclosures; let foreclosed homeowners retain their properties and pay affordable rent;

– ease the debt burden of distressed households; cap credit card and other high consumer loan interest rates at much lower levels; put cash in peoples’ hands; lots of it; at least several hundred billion dollars for starters; more if needed; as much as it takes;

– provide solvent financial institutions with as much liquidity as they need; corporate sector companies as well, including small businesses;

– save solvent companies; liquidate troubled ones too far gone;

– fund massive stimulus to revive the economy; for public works, infrastructure, education, alternative energy, unemployment benefits, job training, tax rebates to the needy, and state and local governments strapped for cash; money for what’s needed most and that can do the most good;

– get stronger, more solvent countries to help weaker, more indebted ones; and

– move on these policies fast; world governments have little time left to save themselves; there’s no assurance they can; and these measure don’t address our destructive military Keynsianism; permanent war economy and need to redirect those funds for constructive homeland needs; mirror opposite of a reported a new Pentagon document requesting an additional $450 billion over the next five years.

Reeling from One Policy Response to Another

First came EESA. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. To reward fraudsters and not address the root of the crisis. Nor help millions of troubled households. Homeowners in foreclosure. Others threatened. The public traumatized by the most calamitous economic events since the 1930s.

Europeans formed their own plans. Different from Washington’s. On October 10, G-7 finance ministers met to discuss policy. In early evening, they presented an action plan. Long on promises. Short on specifics. The New York Times reported that: “Many investors had hoped the ministers would (propose) more concrete steps” and quoted Peterson Institute of International Economics deputy director, Adam Posen, saying: “This fell short.” But he wasn’t giving up entirely or saying what they have in mind or will later decide can’t work.

They agreed to:

– act decisively with all available tools to support financial institutions and prevent their failure;

– unfreeze credit and money markets; assure banks and other financial institutions “have broad access to liquidity and funding;”

– ensure banks and financial intermediaries “can raise (sufficient) capital from public (and) private sources;” to rebuild confidence and get them again lending to households and businesses;

– ensure national deposit insurance protection is sound so people have confidence in the safety of their deposits; and

– take appropriate action “to restart the secondary markets for mortgages and other securitized assets;” assure accurate valuations and transparency according to “high quality accounting standards.”

Besides the US Treasury planning to “buy equity in financial institutions,” AP reported on October 12 that the 15 euro-zone countries will “temporarily guarantee future bank debt to encourage lending….for an interim period and on appropriate terms” for up to five years. Recapitalizing banks is part of the plan. The hope is to unfreeze credit and get markets operating normally again.

According to The New York Times on October 12, “each country will announce concrete figures for the measures they expect to take individually.” Belgian finance minister Didier Reynders said “There is no question of setting up a European fund.” A final proposal will be presented to the full 27-member EU summit later in the week, and individual parliaments will have to vote on it.

Key to understand about whatever emerges in final details or any that follow - world governments will loot their treasuries to save powerful capital interests. Despite bold pronouncements we can expect more of ahead, practically nothing will be done for many tens of millions of people globally in greatest need. At best for them….crumbs.

In the coming days and weeks, we’ll see statements become policies and how world markets react. Given the immensity of the crisis, no one’s sure if anything can work. Nor is it reassuring to hear George Bush say remain calm. We’ve got things under control. On October 10, the Dow dropped 300 points while he spoke.

In an October 13 Barron’s interview, noted money manager Jeremy Grantham (now age 70) was asked if he thought we’d learn anything from the current crisis. His response: “an enormous amount in a very short time, quite a bit in the medium-term, and absolutely nothing in the long-term.”

He’s been bearish since last year but added that “the fundamentals are turning out worse than” he expected. “The terrible thing - after all this pain - is that the US equity market is not even cheap.” It was so high in 2000 that it hasn’t come down to trend, but it’s getting close. However, “the really bad news is that great bubbles in history always overcorrect.” He believes S & P 500 fair value is around 1025 compared to its 899.22 October 10 close. But “typically bubbles overcorrect by quite a bit, possibly by 20%. This is very discouraging,” so he’s not rushing to buy but he fears he’ll act too soon. He predicts a market low in 2010.

Where he sees things going from here was also posed. He’s highly respected as an expert, and yet he emphasized “how little (he) understand(s about) all of the intricate workings of the global financial system. (He) hopes that someone else gets it, because (he) doesn’t. And (he) has no idea, really, how this will work out….(It’s) so intricate that all (he) can conclude, by instinct (and from history), is that it will be longer, harder and more complicated than we expect.” Quite an assessment from a man called “the philosopher king of Wall Street.”

The Human Cost of Manufactured Crisis

Ordinary people are hit hardest. Millions will suffer grievously for years as a result of this totally avoidable crisis. Fraudsters who caused it are rewarded. Innocent homeowners, households, and workers are punished. Mercilessly. The result:

– trillions of dollars lost; likely trillions more ahead;

– millions of lost homes, homeowners behind in their payments, or threatened with foreclosure in the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression; ultimately may exceed it given current estimates of up to 10 million foreclosures before stability and recovery;

– likely well over a million 2008 personal bankruptcies and much higher numbers in 2009 compared to 800,000 in 2007 and 573,000 in 2006; figures below the 2000 - 2005 1.5 million average before passage of the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act; according to Samuel Gerdano, American Bankruptcy Institute director, consumer over-indebtedness “made worse by the home mortgage crisis” is the problem; it won’t likely recede in the near or intermediate-term;

– rising unemployment; not the spurious 6.1%; including discouraged workers and people working part-time who want (but can’t find) full-time jobs, economist John Williams puts the real figure above 12% and rising;

– consumer over-indebtedness; maxed out on credit but needing more of it to survive; and charged usurious rates to get it;

– declining wages and benefits in the face of soaring expenses; making it all the harder to cope;

– food banks and homeless shelters facing increasing demands but forced to turn away people for lack of resources; and

– things overall are worsening; to the edge of the abyss according to some; even the most optimistic fear what’s coming; who can know; no one dares be complacent.

Whatever final policies emerge. In whatever form they take. Unless they address the human dimension, they’ll do nothing for people in most need. Growing millions. Desperate and in trouble. Their issue is economic and ethical. The G-7 statement addressed neither. It dealt only with saving Wall Street. Industrial capitalism. A better idea is let them die and replace them with a new order. A workable one. Respecting people, not capital.

Brown: Use This Crisis To Create New Financial World Order

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:24:10 -0700

Steve Watson

Infowars.net
October 13, 2008

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for a new Bretton Woods system, saying that the financial crisis should be used to make world leaders agree to fresh rules and regulations under a long planned new global financial order.

“Sometimes it takes a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago, can no longer be postponed,” Brown told an audience earlier today.

Speaking at Thomson Reuters’ editorial headquarters, Brown called for “a new financial architecture for the global age”, stating that the Bretton Woods system devised after the second world war was out of touch with the new world order.

Brown said: “This crisis demonstrates beyond doubt that a global capital market requires much stronger global cooperation and supervision. And we need to ensure that we have an effective global early warning system to alert us across continents to economic and financial risk.”

Brown contended that the current financial system is “too clouded with opacity, conflicts of interest, irresponsible risk-taking, and when problems occur countries have tended to look inwards and deal with them in isolation when it is clear they should look outwards and join in international co-operation.”

“We are proposing a world leaders’ meeting in which we must agree the principles and policies for restructuring the financial system across the globe,” Brown added.

His speech came after the UK government announced it would bail out three high street banks - RBS, HBOS and Lloyds TSB - to the tune of £37bn. Since that announcement, shares in the banks have plunged on the stock market.

Brown’s call echoes that of elite figures such as CFR member Jeffrey Garten and Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who have both recently called for a “new global monetary authority”, a de-facto global financial dictatorship, operating across borders and forcing nations and corporations to register and adhere to strict monitoring and regulations.

The call is also similar to plans recently touted for a new centralized system of financial supervision across the EU providing greater regulatory powers.

Watch a Reuters report on the story:

Blatant Banker Manipulation Of Gold Prices

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:23:14 -0700

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet
October 13, 2008

Despite the dramatic fall in gold prices from Friday’s high of around $930 an ounce to today’s current low of $830, sales of actual physical gold continues to trade for anything up to $300 over spot price, proving again that official COMEX gold future numbers are completely divorced from reality and banker manipulation is rife.

Panic buying of physical gold has gripped Europe as consumers fear their savings accounts are no longer safe in light of numerous bank failures, prompting dealers to run dry on gold bullion which in turn is driving up premiums.

Since buyers are finding it near impossible to get gold bullion from recognized dealers, many are turning to Ebay where auctions for one ounce Krugerrands and Maple Leafs are fetching anything up to £150 ($260) over spot price.

Over the weekend, when gold was around £500 an ounce, a Krugerrand went for £645.75. A one ounce bullion bar, with nearly 3 days of the auction still to run, has already attracted a bid of £670 - a whopping $336 above current spot price, despite the fact that bars are usually subject to lower premiums than gold coins.

Respected bullion dealers who charge lower premiums because they are able to buy gold in bulk are still slapping customers with $150+ premiums - and judging by the continued dearth of one ounce coins such as the American Eagle and the Austrian Philharmonica - people are perfectly willing to pay the exorbitant premiums.

The true value of gold is what people are prepared to pay to obtain it, and judging by that criteria, the actual value of gold is currently around $1,100 an ounce based on a conservative estimate.

The official spot price of gold is currently around $830, but this merely represents a rush by investors to sell their paper contracts in search of liquidity and as a means of jumping back on the stocks and shares bandwagon.

As Alex Wallenwein at The Market Oracle points out, “Gold is gold, paper is paper, and “Comex gold” is nothing but paper masquerading as gold while simultaneously pretending to be the price-setting medium for actual gold in the world. Now, finally, Comex-gold is in the process of being unmasked.”

“Real investors in real gold are enjoying their shopping spree – except that the spree turned into a treasure hunt as the shelves and display cases of gold dealers look more and more like the supermarket shelves in the old Soviet Union - bare.”

“With this split, this disconnect, between Comex illusion and gold reality, one thing or the other will have to give, and it won’t be physical gold that gives.”

Numerous fund managers and top investors like Jim Rogers are now predicting that global central banks’ insistence on printing their way out of economic turmoil is setting the stage for a hyperinflationary holocaust, a knock-on effect of which will be gold’s acceleration towards $2,000.

But as many have pointed out, gold price manipulation is rife as central banks desperately attempt to stem the flight from paper currencies into gold, a process that anecdotal evidence strongly suggests is happening across Europe at an alarming pace.

Anatomy of the American Financial Crisis: How It is Turning into a Worldwide Crisis

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:21:06 -0700

Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

Global Research
October 13, 2008

"The basis for optimism is sheer terror." Oscar Wilde

[After the March 2008 Bear Stears bailout] "As more firms lost access to funding, the vicious circle of forced selling, increased volatility, and higher haircuts and margin calls that was already well advanced at the time would likely have intensified. The broader economy could hardly have remained immune from such severe financial disruptions."Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman (March 2008)

“In accounting 101 we learn that high yields equal high risk. We know the CEOs had an incentive to disregard this because they were getting huge bonuses.” David Hartzell, dean of the University of Delaware’s business college and a former vice-president of Salomon Brothers

“Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest U.S.-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown.” Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Head of the IMF (October 11, 2008)

The Bush administration’s way of dealing with the ongoing financial crisis has been frantic, but probably less than adequate. In fact, tragic errors may have been made that must be remedied as quickly as possible.

The most damaging error may have been to let the global investment bank Lehman Brothers fail ($691 billion of assets at the end of 2007), on Monday September 15. This fateful date may have to be remembered in the future. This was the largest failure of an investment bank since the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1990. In contrast, the Fed and the U.S. Treasury moved quickly in mid-March (2008) to save a similar global investment bank in distress (but half the size of Lehman), Bear Stearns, by quickly lending and guaranteeing $29 billion to the large universal J. P. Morgan Chase bank in order to absorb it. —(N.B.: Let us keep in mind that it was the collapse in June 2007 of two internal Bear Stearns hedge funds that had been heavily invested in mortgage securities that kicked off the full-fledged market panic that unfolded in August 2007, and which today has turned into a full-fledged international financial crisis).

Why was the same treatment not offered to Lehman? Possibly because of a personal lack of empathy between Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. (a former chief executive of rival investment bank Goldman Sacks) and Lehman’s CEO Mr. Richard S. Fuld Jr., or possibly because the Bush administration wanted to make an example that all investment banks, no matter how large, could not count on being rescued by the government. The Bush administration did not even bother to appoint a trustee to supervise Lehman’s liquidation in order to make it orderly.

Such a liquidation of a large international bank, known for its worldwide interconnections and unsound banking practices, was nearly a repeat of the mistake made in letting the large Vienna-based Creditanstalt bank fail, on May 13, 1931. This was a bank that had borrowed large amount of money in London and in New York to finance its activities. Its failure created a domino effect among other international banks that had lent to each other in the international credit chain. So much so that the failure of the Creditanstalt forced them to severely tighten their lending to absorb their sudden losses.

Seventy-seven years later, in 2008, the Bush administration’s decision to let the Lehman Brothers bank fail has produced a similar ripple effect throughout the international financial system. And, perhaps more important politically, it signaled to the markets that the Bush administration was willing to let a dangerous debt deflation and an ominous credit crunch proceed. This may turn out to have been a most tragic mistake.

Indeed, Lehman’s bankruptcy forced the global investment bank to quickly write down its huge portfolio of debt, a fair amount of it in derivative products. But since banks are creditors of each other, especially Lehman which dealt with large institutions, this had the consequence of spreading the American financial disease all over the world, and especially in Europe. Why? Because Lehman’s London office was a huge center of sale and distribution for its more or less toxic derivative products all over Europe. Indeed, many European banks had invested in Lehman’s securitized paper, and when it failed, they were left with large losses. As a consequence, they had to curtail their domestic lending and that’s the reason the credit crunch is now moving to Europe.

The second mistake was to address the “liquidity problem” of American investment and mortgage banks without tackling at the same time their underlying “solvency problem”.

As we wrote right at the very beginning, on August 24, 2007, the financial crisis in the U.S. is not only a classic “liquidity problem”, when banks find themselves short of cash to pay immediate redemptions and withdrawals while their longer term loans are secure, but also and above all a “solvency problem”, because the huge losses that banks had to absorb when they wrote down the value of their toxic assets-backed securitized paper, eroded their capital base to an extent that they became de facto insolvent. Market operators saw that and they sold the banks’ shares short and the price of these shares plummeted.

With many banks’ solvency now in doubt, inter-bank lending has nearly stopped, and because of a ‘flight to safety’, the Ted spread [the difference between three-month U.S. Treasury bills yields and yields on three month eurodollar contracts, as represented by the London Inter Bank Offered Rate, called Libor] exploded, and banks cut down their lending. Credit became tight and scarce. Because banks as a whole ordinarily lend between 10 and 12 times their capital base, the most liquid money supply (M1) began to contract in real terms. Even money market funds suffered heavy losses, and a run on them was in full swing when the Treasury stepped in a month ago to offer an emergency $50 billion guarantee.

The U.S. economy may be approaching what can be called a classic “liquidity trap”situation, wherein the Fed is lowering interest rates while lending through its discount window and printing money on a high scale, however the liquid money supply figures, in real terms, are not increasing, but are rather falling. Thus, there is no immediate inflation, but the money supply is contracting as banks reduce their lending and make a rush to T-bills (their yields nearly fell to zero). The short-term result is a net deflationary effect for the overall economy and on the stock market (although the long term bond market sees inflation ahead, and long term rates are rising). —The result is stock market crashes in repetition.

In fact, this is precisely what has happened over the last few weeks, not only in the United States, but also in the U.K and in other European countries. This is a very dangerous development for the real economy, because money data in real terms are a leading indicator of the future course of the economy. Six or nine months down the road, the consequences of the credit crunch will appear in production and employment declines, because the credit crunch has the effect of placing a serious squeeze on most companies. Since the credit contraction really began in June (2008), the early part of 2009 is bound to show severe economic weakness.

On Friday, September 19 (2008), the Bush administration announced its solution to the growing banking crisis. It made public the $700 billion Paulson plan (US Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act, EESA) that primarily focused on creating a government market for some of the bad mortgage-backed securities on the banks’ books. —But this was only half of the problem. The other half of the problem was the need to stop the money supply from declining, by restoring bank credit lending and allowing companies to have access to working capital financing. The goal here is to prevent banking problems from morphing into a general contraction of consumption and capital investment plans, thus slowing down production and raising unemployement in the coming months.

For this to happen, however, banks must be allowed to find badly needed new capital. But in a time of crisis, with stock markets declining, it is doubtful that much private capital can be found. The recent association of Warren Buffett with Goldman Sachs may be more of an exception than a rule.

When private capital is not available, the government has no other choice but to inject equity (by buying the banks’ preferred shares) into the national banking system, while taking steps to safeguard the public interest by obtaining common share warrants that can be resold profitably later, when the situation stabilizes.

In conclusion, we may ask if it is possible to avoid a repetition of the U.S. Great Depression of the 1930s or the more recent Japan’s protracted recession of the 1990s, both the result of a similar severe banking crisis? The answer is yes, if the vicious cycle of asset price decline, banking credit crunch and money supply contraction can be avoided, or, at the very least, stopped and reversed. —In economics, as in medicine, it is never too late to do the right thing.

Ron Paul on the State of the Economy

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:10:08 -0700

Campaign For LIberty
Sunday, Oct 12, 2008

On Restoring Confidence in the Markets

On Market Intevention

On the Possibility of the End of Capitalism

On the “Safety Net” Concept

On Capital and Capitalism

On Pending Dollar Collapse

Canadian Premier hopes to integrate economy with European Union

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:07:02 -0700

Globe and Mail

Ocotber 12, 2008

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONT. — Canada’s premiers will play a pivotal role in the country’s efforts to integrate its economy with the 27 nations of the European Union, Quebec Premier Jean Charest says.

Preliminary talks between Canadian and European officials will begin on Oct. 17 at a summit in Montreal. The provinces’ role in the negotiations will be instrumental to the fate of the proposed massive agreement because it involves issues that primarily fall under their jurisdiction, Mr. Charest told The Globe and Mail yesterday.

No deal could happen without the premiers at the table, he said.

“Unless we are fully involved in the negotiations, we are not going to get the deal we want,” Mr. Charest said.

He described the proposed pact as a groundbreaking initiative on a scale that has never been attempted. The accord would go well beyond the scope of the NAFTA agreement between Canada and the United States by encompassing not only trade in goods and services but also the free movement of skilled workers and an open market in government services and procurement.

Mr. Charest said the federal government can sign a treaty with other countries dealing with these areas. But he said Ottawa does not have the power to commit the provinces to areas that fall under their jurisdiction. “It is without effect if we don’t sign on,” he said.

The fact that provinces will be at the negotiating table reflects their efforts to play a major role in charting the country’s destiny on key issues where their interests are at stake. The push to remove trade and investment barriers with the EU countries comes as Canada is making an effort to lessen its dependence on the United States, its largest trading partner.

Mr. Charest was in Niagara-on-the-Lake yesterday, where he and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty spoke on a panel at the Ontario Economic Summit about the toll the weakened U.S. economy has taken on Central Canada. Thousands of manufacturing jobs have vanished in Ontario and Quebec in the past few years, and the pain is far from over, economists say.

Mr. McGuinty told the audience that Canada’s premiers will lead their first-ever trade mission to China later this fall. “We need to find more ways to market ourselves as a nation,” he said.

Mr. Charest has been involved in the initiative involving the EU countries for two years, including lobbying business leaders in its member countries. He said it is up to Canada to “hustle” for the proposed trans-Atlantic accord because no one is going to come knocking on its door.

“There’s no one who gets up in the morning in the world community saying, ‘why don’t we make a deal with Canada today?’ ” Mr. Charest said. “If we want these types of agreements, we have to go out there and fight for them and hustle for them.”

The pitch he is making to Europeans is to do a deal with Canada that can serve as a model for something far more ambitious with the United States.

“We’ve always had a very clear view that it’s our responsibility to promote our interests abroad,” Mr. Charest said.

Brown lawn means jail time

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:05:31 -0700

Jodie Tillman

St. Petersburg Times
October 12, 2008

BAYONET POINT — On Friday morning, Joseph Prudente put on a pair of shorts and his “Grandpa Gone Wild” T-shirt. He took off his wedding band and put his heart medication in a plastic Wal-Mart bag.

Then his daughter drove him to jail. Grandpa had time to do.

His crime? He had disobeyed a court order that he sod the lawn at his Beacon Woods home.

His bail? Zero.

Prudente, 66, must stay in the Pasco County jail in Land O’Lakes until the required sod work is completed, under a September court order signed by Circuit Judge W. Lowell Bray.

“He’s in prison for God knows how long because we can’t afford to sod the lawn,” said his sobbing daughter, Jennifer Lehr.

Prudente has owned a home in the deed restricted community since 1998. The covenants require homeowners to keep their lawns covered with grass.

Read article

Financial crisis: Countries at risk of bankruptcy from Pakistan to Baltics

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:03:52 -0700

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Telegraph
October 12, 2008

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is bleeding foreign reserves at an alarming rate leading to fears that it could default on its loans.

There are mounting fears that Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Argentina could all now slide into a downward spiral towards bankruptcy, while western banks exposed to property bubble across Eastern Europe have seen their share price crushed.

The markets are pricing an 80pc risk that Ukraine will default, based on five-year credit default swaps (CDS) – an insurance policy on a country being able to pay its debts.

The country’s banking system has begun to break down after years of torrid credit growth; its steel mills are shutting as demand collapses; and the political crisis is going from bad to worse.

President Viktor Yushchenko dissolved parliament this week in a dispute that risks bitter conflict with the country’s Russian bloc. Diplomats fear Moscow could be drawn into the crisis – or even use it as a pretext to occupy territory in a replay of the Georgia invasion this summer.

Ukraine’s government seized Prominvestbank this week, suspending payments to creditors. It closed the Kiev stock market, which has fallen 73pc this year.

Read article

Two More Banks Closed by Regulators

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:03:04 -0700

MARCY GORDON

Associated Press
October 12, 2008

Regulators on Friday shut down two small banks, Main Street Bank in Michigan and Meridian Bank in Illinois.

They brought to 15 the number of federally insured banks that have failed this year.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the banks. Main Street Bank, based in Northville, Mich., had $98 million in assets and $86 million in deposits as of Oct. 7. Meridian Bank, based in Eldred, Ill., had assets of $39.2 million and deposits of $36.9 million as of Sept. 25.

The FDIC said all of Main Street Bank’s deposits will be assumed by Monroe Bank & Trust of Monroe, Mich. The two offices of Main Street Bank will reopen Saturday as branches of Monroe Bank & Trust.
All of Meridian Bank’s deposits will be assumed by National Bank of Hillsboro, Ill. Meridian’s four offices in Altamont, Carlyle, and Eldred will reopen for normal hours on Saturday, and its Alton office will reopen Tuesday, as branches of National Bank.

The 15 bank failures so far this year compare with three for all of 2007, and federal banking officials have said that more banks are in danger of collapse.

Regular deposit accounts are now insured up to $250,000 as part of the financial rescue legislation enacted last week. The FDIC formally approved the increase from $100,000 per account at a meeting on Friday. The limit on individual retirement accounts held in banks remains at $250,000.

Read article

Who is Henry Paulson?

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:02:13 -0700

Tom Eley

WSWS
October 12, 2008

The plan to rescue the US financial industry arrogates virtually unlimited money and power over the financial affairs of the state to the office of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Paulson is a figure with a long history of intimate connections to the political and financial elite.

In 1970, fresh from the Masters program of the Harvard Business School, Paulson entered the Nixon administration, working first as staff assistant to the assistant secretary of defense. In 1972-73, Paulson worked as office assistant to John Erlichman, assistant to the president for domestic affairs. Erlichman was one of the key figures involved in organizing President Richard Nixon’s notorious “plumbers” unit that carried out illegal covert operations against the president’s political opponents, including espionage, blackmail, and revenge. Ehlichman resigned in 1973, and in 1975 he was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury, and conspiracy, and was imprisoned for 18 months.

Utilizing his connections, Paulson went to work for Goldman Sachs in 1974. In a 2007 feature, the British newspaper the Guardian wrote, “Not only was he well connected enough to get the job [in the Nixon White House], but well connected enough to resign in the thick of the Watergate scandal without ever getting caught up in the fallout. He went straight to Goldman back home in Illinois.”

Paulson rose through the ranks of Goldman Sachs, becoming a partner in 1982, co-head of investment banking in 1990, chief operating officer in 1994. In 1998 he forced out his co-chairman Jon Corzine “in what amounted to a coup,” according to New York Times economics correspondent Floyd Norris, and took over the post of CEO.

Goldman Sachs is perhaps the single best-connected Wall Street firm. Its executives routinely go in and out of top government posts. Corzine went on to become US senator from New Jersey and is now the state’s governor. Corzine’s predecessor, Stephen Friedman, served in the Bush administration as assistant to the president for economic policy and as chairman of the National Economic Council (NEC). Friedman’s predecessor as Goldman Sachs CEO, Robert Rubin, served as chairman of the NEC and later treasury secretary under Bill Clinton.

Agence France Press, in a 2006 article on Paulson’s appointment, “Has Goldman Sachs Taken Over the Bush Administration?” noted that, in addition to Paulson, “[t]he president’s chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Jeffery Reuben, are Goldman alumni.”

“But the flow goes both ways,” the article continued, “Goldman recently hired Robert Zoellick, who stepped down as the US deputy secretary of state, and Faryar Shirzad, who worked as one of Bush’s national security advisors.”

Prior to being selected as treasury secretary, Paulson was a major individual campaign contributor to Republican candidates, giving over $336,000 of his own money between 1998 and 2006.

Since taking office, Paulson has overseen the destruction of three of Goldman Sachs’ rivals. In March, Paulson helped arrange the fire sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase. Then, a little more than a week ago, he allowed Lehman Brothers to collapse, while simultaneously organizing the absorption of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America. This left only Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as major investment banks, both of which were converted on Sunday into bank holding companies, a move that effectively ended the existence of the investment bank as a distinct economic form.

In the months leading up to his proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Paulson had already used his office to dole out hundreds of billions of dollars. After his July 2008 proposal for $70 billion to resolve the insolvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed, Paulson organized the government takeover of the two mortgage-lending giants for an immediate $200 billion price tag, while making the government potentially liable for hundreds of billions more in bad debt. He then organized a federal purchase of an 80 percent stake in the giant insurer American International Group (AIG) at a cost of $85 billion.

These bailouts have been designed to prevent a chain reaction collapse of the world economy, but more importantly they aimed to insulate and even reward the wealthy shareholders, like Paulson, primarily responsible for the financial collapse.

Paulson bears a considerable amount of personal responsibility for the crisis.

Paulson, according to a celebratory 2006 BusinessWeek article entitled “Mr. Risk Goes to Washington,” was “one of the key architects of a more daring Wall Street, where securities firms are taking greater and greater chances in their pursuit of profits.” Under Paulson’s watch, that meant “taking on more debt: $100 billion in long-term debt in 2005, compared with about $20 billion in 1999. It means placing big bets on all sorts of exotic derivatives and other securities.”

According to the International Herald Tribune, Paulson “was one of the first Wall Street leaders to recognize how drastically investment banks could enhance their profitability by betting with their own capital instead of acting as mere intermediaries.” Paulson “stubbornly assert[ed] Goldman’s right to invest in, advise on and finance deals, regardless of potential conflicts.”

Paulson then handsomely benefited from the speculative boom. This wealth was based on financial manipulation and did nothing to create real value in the economy. On the contrary, the extraordinary enrichment of individuals like Paulson was the corollary to the dismantling of the real economy, the bankrupting of the government, and the impoverishment of masses the world over.

Paulson was compensated to the tune of $30 million in 2004 and took home $37 million in 2005. In his career at Goldman Sachs he built up a personal net worth of over $700 million, according to estimates.

After Paulson’s ascension to the treasury, his colleagues at Goldman Sachs carried on the bonanza. At the end of 2006, Paulson’s successor Lloyd Blankfein was handed over a $53.4 million year-end bonus, while 11 other Goldman Sachs executives raked in $150 million in year-end bonuses combined. That year, the top investment firms Goldman Sacks, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns handed out $36 billion in bonuses. At the end of 2007, the executives of the same firms, excepting Merrill, were handed another $30 billion.

The Next Derivatives Bloodbath: Insurance and Auto Makers

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:01:10 -0700

George Washington’s Blog

Sunday, Oct 12, 2008

This essay is about future derivatives problems. But before we look to the future, let’s recap what happened yesterday, to gain some perspective.

Post-Game Analysis on Lehman

As the Washington Post writes today about yesterday’s auction of some $400 billion dollars in credit default swaps for Lehman:

‘If we see defaults from the standpoint that protection sellers don’t pay up, then we’re going to have a huge problem in the market,’ Telpner said. ‘But we don’t have any explicit evidence indicating that sellers ultimately are not going to be able to pay the amounts owed to buyers.’

And the Sunday Times writes today:

“The valuation leaves the insurers of the debt a bill of about $365 billion. It is not clear whether the insurers, which are required to settle the bill in the next two weeks, will be able to pay – a development that could further undermine increasingly stressed capital markets.”

Will the “insurers” of Lehman’s CDS be able to pay up? The big bank insurers to the Lehman swaps have been hoarding cash, and so can presumably pay.

The bigger question is whether the hedge funds - such as Citadel - will be able to pay up or will go belly up. The next couple of weeks will tell.

But even if no companies are wiped out by their Lehman CDS obligations, it is clear that yesterday was, indeed, a traumatic day for the world economy. As today’s Sunday Times article put it:

“Lehman’s corporate debt default promises to increase the stress across global credit markets. Sean Egan, of the Egan-Jones ratings agency, said: ‘This is a killer. Lehman said a month ago that it was in terrific shape and now you can’t even get ten cents on the dollar for its debt.

(Article continues below)

‘It underscores the deep structural flaws in our financial system, knocks confidence in the financial markets and raises the cost of capital. It also demonstrates that we are experiencing not only a crisis of confidence, but a crisis.’”

Next Up: Automakers

The next phase of the derivatives wipeout will hit insurance companies and auto makers.

Initially, Standard and Poor’s is saying that GM and Ford may very well go bankrupt.

As of 2004, “GM was among the five companies most frequently included in credit-derivatives contracts in 2004, along with Ford Motor Co., France Telecom SA, DaimlerChrysler AG and Deutsche Telekom AG, Fitch said.”billions of dollars in GM credit default swaps traded per day. Fitch’s noted that “GM CDS are the second most included named in synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), behind Ford, as disclosed in several Fitch analyses of the CDS market.”

Indeed, according to Fitch’s, as of 2004 and 2005, there were perhaps

On October 3rd, Bloomberg wrote:

General Motors Corp. saw its credit default swaps rise to a record after the automaker said Sept. 19 it was going to draw down the remainder of a $4.5 billion revolving credit line to preserve cash because of the instability in the financial markets. Detroit-based GM, the largest U.S. carmaker, has lost almost $70 billion since 2004.

As of June of this year, “The cost to insure GM’s debt with credit default swaps rose to 33.5 percent upfront . . . plus annual payments of 500 basis points” and “Ford saw its credit default swap spread increased to 30.5 percent upfront, plus 500 basis points annually“.

According to financial advisor Mike “Mish” Shedlock, there are appromixately one trilliondollars of credit default swaps for GM.

If GM goes bust, there would be huge credit default swap liability. While I have seen no estimates of the current amount of Ford CDS, it is probably also quite high, given that it was one of the most common CDS issued in 2004.

Insurance

The insurance companies are also getting hit hard by CDS.

The October 3rd Bloomberg article states:

“The cost to protect against default by Hartford, Prudential Financial Inc. and MetLife Inc. soared to records and shares fell yesterday on speculation that turmoil in financial markets may be spreading to insurance companies.”

As an article at Naked Capitalism explains:

First it was banks and securities firms, and now the focus of worry has widened to include insurance companies. Reader John referred us to a Reuters article that MetLife credit default swaps are now trading on an upfront basis, which means buyers of protection against the default of MetLife bonds must make an upfront payment as well as agreeing to periodic fees. Only companies seen as being in serious risk of failure trade on an upfront basis. Another story shows similar pricing of XL Capital CDS.

Concerns about MetLife became serious when the company announced it was writing down its investment portfolio and withdrew its 2008 earnings forecast.

From Reuters:

Metlife Inc’s credit default swaps on began trading on an upfront basis on Thursday, indicating perceptions that its credit quality is considered distressed.

The cost to insure Metlife’s debt rose to around 10.5 percent the sum insured as an upfront sum, or $1.05 million to insure $10 million in debt for five years, in addition to annual premiums of 5 percent, according to Markit Intraday.

The swaps had closed on Wednesday at a spread of around 717 basis points, or $717,00 per year for five years to insure $10 million in debt, according to Markit.

The second Reuters story:

Credit default swaps on XL Capital Ltd [an insurance copmany] began trading on an upfront basis on Thursday, and its stock price plunged more than 37 percent.

The cost to insure XL’s debt rose to around 12.5 percent the sum insured as an upfront sum, or $1.25 million to insure $10 million in debt for five years, in addition to annual premiums of 5 percent, according to Phoenix Partners Group….

The swaps had opened at a spread of around 750 basis points, or $750,00 per year for five years to insure $10 million in debt, according to Phoenix.

Instead of being the end of the derivatives bloodbath, Lehman was probably just the beginning.

The Quadrillion Dollar Powder Keg Waiting To Blow

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:00:11 -0700

Bob Chapman

The International Forecaster
October 12, 2008

Derivatives at the heart of the crisis, catastrophic losses are inevitable, financial system headed for oblivion, the new world disorder, EU doomed, Credit Default Swaps at the heart of the problem, Plunge Protection Team history, coverups for globalization failures, Bloodbath for the Yen,




	It is this powder keg that has everyone trembling with fear and foreboding, because the inevitable losses will be catastrophic, with losses which may exceed the entire world’s GDP, thus obliterating the balance sheets of every major Wall Street commercial bank, including the Fed itself

The heart of the current crisis is the quadrillion plus derivative market. Roughly half of these derivatives are listed on exchanges, but the other half are on the totally unregulated, totally opaque, poorly documented and mostly naked (no reserves or collateral given to secure performance) OTC derivatives market. The subprime and Alt-A mortgage debacles, and the soon to be recognized prime mortgage debacle, are little more than a side show with what will become their one to two trillion in losses which the Phony-Fraudie nationalization and the Paulson Ponzi Plunder Plan are meant to address, albeit futilely. However, the real estate derivative problems created by these debacles have been important catalysts leading to the loss of confidence that is preventing banks from lending to one another, because these problems, like a Zippo lighter on high flame, metaphorically speaking, have lit the fuse leading to the quadrillion dollar powder keg waiting to blow any day now, and Hanky Panky and Helicopter Ben are running around like raving, corporatist, fascist lunatics trying to stomp out the lit fuse before the whole world financial system goes up in a blaze of glory.

It is this powder keg that has everyone trembling with fear and foreboding, because the inevitable losses will be catastrophic, with losses which may exceed the entire world’s GDP, thus obliterating the balance sheets of every major Wall Street commercial bank, including the Fed itself, while virtually every major bank and financial institution in nations throughout the world join them on the receiving end of a destructive juggernaut of loss, insolvency, failure and bankruptcy. In the aftermath, most will be nationalized. All of Western Civilization is about to become a smoldering collection of fascist police states. The entire world financial system is headed for oblivion, and there is nothing on earth that can stop it. All they can do currently is try to delay and hide the destruction so that they can continue to milk their Ponzi system dry, ripping off the sheople in one final orgy of fraud and profligacy before the government and financial system are merged into an all-powerful super-entity that will rule all non-insider institutions with an iron fist. Frankly, from what we have seen lately, we are already there. The final step to nationalization of our financial system will be little more than a formality. Their intention is to take total control, to make markets do whatever pleases them, thus creating their own reality.

The Paulson Ponzi Plunder Plan is the first installment of their final attempt to bankrupt the sheople, who they hope to beat into submission by hyper-inflating and Weimarizing them with bailout after bailout, ad nauseam, knowing full well that these bailouts are futile and useless. The Illuminati will now attempt to force the poor, hapless sheople into a fascist police state as the next giant step toward the creation of a New World Disorder called Novus Ordo Seclorum (a New Order of the Ages), as set forth on the back of every dollar bill under the all-seeing eye overlooking the unfinished pyramid, both symbols of the new age, the occult and the ancient mystery religions. What else would you expect from the satanic trillionaires who hope to become the new lords of the universe. Nice try fellas, but we suspect that God, the current and eternal Lord of the Universe, has other plans. Many of their own henchmen are going to go down in the chaos to follow, but the raving madmen we refer to as the Illuminati will gleefully sacrifice them on the alter of world government.

The New World Disorder is the hope and dream of the Illuminati which they have been planning for centuries. But we believe that something is going to happen on the way to that Forum, and that in the end they are all going to end up “swingin’ in the breeze.” Their plans are unraveling. The destruction is far greater than they had planned. The whole plan is going up in smoke thanks to the bungling of their “Chaos” henchmen in our government and on Wall Street. To think that they attempted to use naked credit default swaps to cover bonds and derivatives secured by houses borrowers could not afford on such a gargantuan scale tells you everything you need to know about their financial acumen. They even permitted ownership of derivatives by those who did not own the underlying assets to be hedged (known as “dry derivatives,” which are essentially the equivalent of insurance policies taken out on someone or something in whom the policy holder has no insurable interest), thus turning the world’s financial markets into a giant gambling casino, with the added bonus that many unscrupulous people were put into a position where they could force an event that would give them a big payoff without suffering any pain on their end. In essence, by coming up with all these obtuse, Byzantine, rocket-scientist-created derivatives, the smugly clever Illuminati have finally outsmarted themselves.

Then there is the one-rate-fits-all plan in the now-doomed European Union. What a freaking blooper that was! We have been saying that this conglomerate banking scheme could not work from the inception of this ill-conceived union of what are very diverse and culturally unique nations, but of course no one listened. They have so thoroughly destroyed the financial system that there is now no hope of keeping the EU together. The plan did not even work well in a period of substantial prosperity, and now they are going to attempt to keep the plan going in circumstances, which are the antithesis of prosperity. Good Luck! If they hadn’t allowed their system to be corrupted by all these financial weapons of mass destruction, out of their unending, boundless greed to milk their sheople, they might have had a shot at preserving the EU and then moving on to world government. Now they are the proud owners of 75% of all the toxic waste derivatives produced by the American branch of the Illuminati. And they have piles of banking bonds covered by credit default swaps issued by AIG, and by who knows what other zombie entity, so their stock and bond ratings, as well as their cost of capital, are in serious jeopardy. As the implosion of these derivatives transpires, the majority of their economies are going down in flames as inflation, recession, and eventually depression set in, adding to their already substantial woes. Their fascist dream is about to go up in flames along with their precious EU, the revived British Mercantilist system and the debt-based, fractional reserve Ponzi scheme of the evil European bankers and their Black Nobility clientele. Their American counterparts will fare little better.

Note that the major Wall Street investment banks, all leveraged to the hilt, are now all gone, whether by bankruptcy, buyout or change of charter. Goldman Sachs, the only investment bank, which has retained its namesake, other than the bankrupt Lehman Brothers, is on the verge of going under in a Bear Stearns-like squeeze on their liquidity and net equity. The recent demise of all these investment banks is just the first round. Things are going to get much worse as the money from the Paulson Ponzi Plunder Plan gets doled out to the various Illuminist toadies. The latest idea, suggested by the Bank of England (what a feeling of confidence we get knowing that this bastion of financial acumen supports this idea!) and now adopted by Hanky Panky, is to make liquidity injections into the fraudster banks in return for equity positions, such as preferred stock ownership. What a joke. Like that is going to chase the credit default swap monster away and restore a feeling of safety and confidence so banks can start lending again. We have news for you. Even the bondholders of these toxic waste sites are going to get vaporized, so the sheople stockholders can expect to get a Big Zippo. At least by acquiring toxic waste assets we might have an outside chance of picking up some chump change later, but with this new plan to fleece the sheople, you are throwing your money down a rat hole. We are told that this will get the money to where it is needed faster. The only “faster” we see is the rate at which taxpayers will get fleeced.

All these toxic cesspool repositories are headed for bankruptcy and nationalization. All you will be doing is keeping people employed with exorbitant salaries and bonuses as they continue to rip you off with insider trading and fraudulent derivative schemes. These witless, pipe-dreaming dolts seem to think that they can get their fractional reserve multiplier going again as the Illuminati try to reinvigorate and re-inflate rampant market speculation along with their profligate money and credit system. They seem to think they can re-inflate the otherwise tanking real estate markets, using their perfect fraud machines, Phony and Fraudie, because they no longer have to worry about ticking off wealthy, influential and politically connected entities that own their stocks. All losses that are suffered by Phony and Fraudie will now go directly to the sheople, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

What are these people thinking? Again we say: “It’s the swaps, stupid!!!” The credit default swaps will be the first to blow as we move from hundreds of billions to trillions in quarterly losses. That will send risk into the ozone while the bailouts send inflation into the stratosphere. And that of course means double-digit interest rates are on the way, which are the main fuse leading to the interest rate swap powder keg, which is the largest of all the derivative powder kegs by notional value, and thus by potential loss. Take JP Morgan Chase for example, and their $90 trillion derivative portfolio by notional value. Let’s say that $50 trillion are in interest rate swaps. If they have even a mere two percent overhang where they have to pay out variable rates of interest on two percent more of their total interest rate swaps than the portion of swaps on which they are, by contrast, receiving variable rates of interest, they could suffer horrendous losses that could easily put them under. Let’s say that everything balances at 4%. But now rates move to 14% as everyone totally ignores the rates set by the central banks sending LIBOR and T-Bill rates to unheard of levels, which are the types of rate indexes commonly used in these swaps. (Note that corporate debt in Europe, due to the lack of so-called insurance from credit default swaps, has already doubled from previous lower single digit rates into much higher double-digit rates in the 12% area). Two percent of $50 trillion is a trillion dollars of notional value overhang on which you are now paying out ten percent more, and ten percent of one trillion is $100 billion, a killer loss. That would put them under. Even an overhang of only one half of one percent pumps out a loss of $25 billion. And what if the overhang is 5%, or 10%, or 20%? With an overhang of 20%, we hit one trillion in losses. Now, what if rates go to 24%? And this is only one bank! As you can see, assuming that the system can survive the credit default swaps, which we very seriously doubt, we will be jumping out of the fire only to land face down in a red-hot frying pan.

It is only fitting that the credit-default swaps lie at the heart of the problem, which the fraudster banks now face. When you look at what has been done by these reprobates in the past, this is a most fitting fate for them. First, they had President Reagan pass an Executive Order in 1988 forming the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets so they could manipulate markets 24/7 with the PPT. That was forced by the 1987 Stock Market Crash, an event orchestrated by the Illuminati to convince everyone that we had to have an interventional team to stop such extreme market gyrations. Then Slick Willie does away with Glass-Steagall in 1999 to do away with the system of checks and balances that allowed banks to pass on paper that was falsely rated as AAA on to their patsy clients. Then for a double whammy, Slick Willie leaves OTC derivatives unregulated with the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, so Wall Street could write insurance policies called credit default swaps without having to comply with annoying, silly and burdensome rules requiring such things as loss reserves or an insurable interest. These were all passed to cover up the devastating losses our economy was suffering on account of free trade, globalization, off-shoring, outsourcing and both legal and illegal immigration.

The PPT moved our markets, contrary to what market fundamentals would indicate, to give the appearance of prosperity when we were really getting hammered by the free trade agenda. Our government chimed in with their deceitful and fraudulent economic statistics by use of hedonics. Then credit default swaps were used to falsely suppress interest rates by insuring the risk of default for potential investors, and never mind that there were no loss reserves, collateral or requirement of an insurable interest. AAA credit was assigned to otherwise risky companies based on Ponzi scam bond insurers who were insuring bonds with little or nothing to back up their promises. If our corporations were forced to pay the higher rates demanded by the market without the benefit of these swaps, our corporate earnings would have been dismal, and would have reflected the losses suffered by the globalist free trade agenda. Then the falsely rated subprime derivatives were created so that Wall Street could earn oodles of fees, commissions and spreads by continually rolling over the same money which they were borrowing short-term and lending long-term. These earnings helped to boost our GDP and thus to further cover up the losses being suffered by our bloodied manufacturing sector as everyone became Walmart greeters and hamburger flippers instead of being tool and die makers and machinists and as 5 million of our best-paying jobs were moved overseas. Let’s hear it for the Illuminist free trade agenda. Yeah, rah.

It appears that for whatever reason the Illuminati now want Obama to become president instead of McCain. The current financial carnage is of course being associated with Caligula, and since McCain is a Caligula Clone, by association he gets hit vicariously with voter ire. Listen to the two of them promise to save the borrowers who were given mortgages based on fraudulent information about their financial circumstances. Let’s bail them out too. Why should the fraudsters on Main Street be treated any differently than the fraudsters on Wall Street? Now we will have equal opportunity bailouts. It’s enough to make you puke. Worse yet, Obama is the biggest recipient of big banking largesse in the form of campaign contributions, especially from Fannie and Freddie, and he actively encouraged these organizations to pump out mortgages to people who could not afford them. Fortunately for Obama, McCain is not much better.

So what’s going down in Illuminati town? In pondering the current pounding of gold and silver, we smell lots of rats. We hold out to you the following potential scenario: On September 15 and 16, the Illuminati thought they had the precious metals markets under wraps, driving gold below $800 per ounce and silver below $11 per ounce, in anticipation of their coming announcement of the Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch debacles that were made public late on September 16. Then the specs go wild, and gold is up $90 in one day, giving the Illuminists a collective myocardial infarction. As punishment for such insolence, on Friday, September 19, the SEC takes away their right to short 800 financial companies, a big money maker. They are told to butt out, or they will never get to place another short again, but if they cooperate, they will get the mother of all crashes, which they can short with impunity. Note how open interest in COMEX gold futures declined from 398,386 contracts on September 15 to 321,021 on October 8. Yet the price of gold during this period kept pressing past $900, which means that there was some short-covering to the tune of some 77,000 contracts. The specs under threat from the SEC, are told to butt out while the commercials cover their shorts. They are told that a crash is on its way, so they short all the non-financials, and stay out of the commodity markets. Then the Paulson Plan is introduced around September 20, and prior to the vote, the markets are crashed to make it look like a “no” vote will send us into the deepest depths of Mordor, knowing all along that markets will be crashed anyway no matter how Congress votes. Fortunes are being made shorting with knowledge of when markets will be crashed. A short-covering rally occurs on Tuesday, September 30, as word is received that the Paulson Plan will be reconsidered and probably passed, but insiders know this is all for show as roughly half of Monday’s 777 point loss on the Dow is recovered. Markets are crashed again on October 1 and 2 erasing Tuesday’s gains, those being the two days leading up to the second vote on October 3, to convince Congressional boneheads that the Paulson Plan must be passed to save the markets, and when the vote starts to look positive on October 3, up the markets go in the early going that day just before the vote in order to give our bribed and threatened Congressional morons the impression that markets will rally if the Paulson Plan is passed. Congressional dimwitted idiots pass the bill, and the markets nose-dive, all as planned. On October 6, paragon of virtue Jim Cramer scares the living daylights out of retirees, telling them they must get out of the markets. Panic hits the streets, and the cascade of losses is under way. The shorts are now cleaning up and are rolling in dough, but of course that was not enough for them. The Paulson Ponzi Plunder Plan also calls for an end to the ban on shorts against financials just before midnight on Wednesday, October 8, and because the specs have all been good little boys, the SEC lets the ban on shorts expire even though they could have extended it another week. The bloodbath continues on Thursday and Friday as the financials get bombed, the specs are fat and happy, and down go gold and silver while the grateful specs look the other way. Meanwhile, the carry trade is unwound and both the dollar and the yen go ballistic due to the crashes around the globe which send traders into yen and dollars to buy Japanese and US treasuries, respectively, and the yen even outperforms the dollar, causing precious metal liquidations by thoroughly bloodying carry traders while the stronger dollar hits the metals also. And of course, just as we predicted, oil gets hammered below 80, giving more dollar support through the euro effect, and reducing the need for gold and silver as a hedge against higher oil costs.

European summit works on “ambitious” crisis plan

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:58:49 -0700

Tamora Vidaillet and Huw Jones

Reuters
October 12, 2008

European leaders raced against the clock on Sunday to clinch a rescue strategy for banks battered by the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, under intense pressure to throw them a lifeline before world markets reopen.

At a summit in Paris, the focus fixed firmly on how much state money governments could mobilize to buy into banks if needed, and if they would also underwrite lending between banks, paralyzed for now by fear and distrust.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters the meeting would come up with an “ambitious and coordinated plan” to tackle the crisis, which spread from the United States more than a year ago but hit fever pitch in recent weeks.

Officials suggested action rather than rhetoric could emerge from a gathering that involved the leaders of Britain and the 15 countries of the euro currency zone as well as European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet.

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Scramble to save banks as IMF warns of meltdown

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:58:02 -0700

James Mackenzie and James Grubel

Reuters
Sunday, Oct 12, 2008

Rich nations rushed to shore up the global financial system after the International Monetary Fund warned of meltdown, with Australia and New Zealand guaranteeing bank deposits and newspapers reporting plans for Britain’s biggest retail bank rescue.

The International Monetary Fund said it backed a Group of Seven plan to try to stabilize markets and urged “exceptional vigilance, coordination and readiness to take bold action” to contain a firestorm that pushed global stocks to five-year lows.

Under the Australian plan, all deposits in the country’s banks, building societies and credit unions, would be guaranteed by the Australian government for the next three years, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters.

The government would also guarantee term wholesale funding to local banks until global financial markets stabilized.

In the UK, the Sunday Times newspaper said Britain will launch its biggest retail bank rescue on Monday when the four largest, HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and Barclays, ask for a combined 35 billion pound ($60.5 billion) lifeline.

France promised that a meeting of European leaders in Paris on Sunday will detail measures to keep a market panic from triggering the most severe global downturn in decades.

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Financial crisis reshapes world order

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:56:49 -0700

David R. Sands

Washington Times
October 12, 2008

As shell-shocked central bankers and finance ministers gather in Washington to confront the world’s financial meltdown this weekend, that grinding noise in the background is the sound of the global balance of power shifting.

In sharp contrast to past crises — from the Latin American debt problems of the 1980s to the Asian and Russian currency collapses of the 1990s — the emerging markets of the developing world boast the strong balance sheets and deep financial pockets while the United States and Western Europe lurch from crisis to crisis.

Associated Press ‘INTERCONNECTED’: President Bush met with (from left) Jean-Claude Juncker of Eurogroup, Shoichi Nakagawa of Japan, Condoleezza Rice, Henry M. Paulson Jr., Christine Lagarde of France and James M. Flaherty of Canada.

“In a very bizarre way, roles have been reversed in the global economy,” said Alex Patelis, head of international economics at Merrill Lynch. “The typical troublemakers of the global economy, the emerging markets, are actually now the world’s creditors.

“We do need a new world financial order, and we will probably get one as a side effect of this crisis,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. gave a clear signal of the new pecking order last week on the sidelines of the annual Washington meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

With world financial markets reeling, Mr. Paulson said, he was following up an emergency meeting Friday of finance ministers from the traditional Group of Seven industrial powers — Britain, France, Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy and the United States — with a larger gathering Saturday of the so-called Group of 20, which includes China, India, Russia and Brazil.

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The End Of American Capitalism?

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:28:40 -0700

Anthony Faiola

Washington Post
October 10, 2008

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is claiming another casualty: American-style capitalism.

Since the 1930s, U.S. banks were the flagships of American economic might, and emulation by other nations of the fiercely free-market financial system in the United States was expected and encouraged. But the market turmoil that is draining the nation’s wealth and has upended Wall Street now threatens to put the banks at the heart of the U.S. financial system at least partly in the hands of the government.

The Bush administration is considering a partial nationalization of some banks, buying up a portion of their shares to shore them up and restore confidence as part of the $700 billion government bailout. The notion of government ownership in the financial sector, even as a minority stakeholder, goes against what market purists say they see as the foundation of the American system.

Yet the administration may feel it has no choice. Credit, the lifeblood of capitalism, ceased to flow. An economy based on the free market cannot function that way.

The government’s about-face goes beyond the banking industry. It is reasserting itself in the lives of citizens in ways that were unthinkable in the era of market-knows-best thinking. With the recent takeovers of major lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the bailout of AIG, the U.S. government is now effectively responsible for providing home mortgages and life insurance to tens of millions of Americans. Many economists are asking whether it remains a free market if the government is so deeply enmeshed in the financial system.

Given that the United States has held itself up as a global economic model, the change could shift the balance of how governments around the globe conduct free enterprise. Over the past three decades, the United States led the crusade to persuade much of the world, especially developing countries, to lift the heavy hand of government from finance and industry.

But the hands-off brand of capitalism in the United States is now being blamed for the easy credit that sickened the housing market and allowed a freewheeling Wall Street to create a pool of toxic investments that has infected the global financial system. Heavy intervention by the government, critics say, is further robbing Washington of the moral authority to spread the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism.

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Berlusconi Says Leaders May Close World’s Markets

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:27:47 -0700

Steve Scherer

Bloomberg
October 10, 2008

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world’s financial markets while they “rewrite the rules of international finance.”

“The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,” Berlusconi said today after a Cabinet meeting in Naples, Italy. A solution to the financial crisis “can’t just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much 8.1 percent in early trading and pared most of those losses after Berlusconi’s remarks. The Dow was down 0.5 percent to 8540.52 at 10:10 in New York.

Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers are meeting in Washington today, and will stay in town for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings this weekend. European Union leaders may gather in Paris on Oct. 12, three days before a scheduled summit in Brussels, Berlusconi said today, while Group of Eight leaders may hold a meeting on the crisis “in coming days,” he said.

Berlusconi didn’t give any details about what kind of rules leaders were looking to change, except to say that leaders are “talking about a new Bretton Woods.”

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Paulson: Crony Communist or Businessman?

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:26:55 -0700

David Sirota

Common Dreams
October 10, 2008

Is Henry Paulson a crony communist or a businessman? The answer could be the difference between economic disaster and recovery.

Understanding Paulson’s role in stopping-or fueling-the credit crisis requires a review of two axioms from Economics 101: 1) A credit crisis occurs when banks stop lending and 2) The amount banks can lend is a multiple of the capital in their vaults. Therefore, ending a credit crisis means prompting new lending-and that means maximally increasing bank capital.

Enter Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs executive and current Treasury secretary. The bailout he fearmongered through Congress aims to waste almost a trillion taxpayer dollars buying banks’ bad mortgages-a scheme all but ensuring a disastrous outcome.

If Paulson pays banks exactly what their mortgages are worth, he will not increase banks’ capital (or their lending ability)-he will merely convert one asset (mortgages) into another (cash), making no impact on the credit crisis. If, to protect taxpayers, he buys mortgages at lower prices than banks list them, banks will have to write down their capital and consequently contract lending-and the credit crisis will worsen. If Paulson overpays for mortgages, he may marginally augment bank capital, but also incur massive taxpayer losses when he later resells the mortgages at their real price.

The silver lining is a little-noticed provision in the bailout bill allowing Paulson-if he chooses-to buy ownership stakes in banks. According to Robert Johnson, the Senate Banking Committee’s former chief economist, this would cost roughly $375 billion less than the mortgage-buying plan-and, better yet, more aggressively attack the credit crisis.

Mortgages may be underpriced today, but they retain some value on banks’ books. So rather than purchasing mortgages (a capital-neutral transaction), Paulson could buy bank stock, infusing banks with new capital on top of their mortgages. That would exponentially increase lending capacity, prevent taxpayers from buying toxic assets, give the public a share of future profits and grant regulators ownership leverage to restructure bank management.

This is where Paulson’s personal proclivities come in.

A crony communist looking to socialize risk and privatize gain would consider these options and choose to buy mortgages-that is, choose to ignore the credit crisis, reward discredited executives and permit banks to keep any subsequent profits-all while inhibiting a potential government-mandated housecleaning of Wall Street. Indeed, the Financial Times’ Wolfgang Munchau says Paulson’s mortgage-buying program is driven by “a wish to benefit the investment banks he once chaired, and which stand to gain handsomely from such a package.”

A businessman, by contrast, would limit taxpayers’ exposure, give us a stake in future gains and demand management control. He would, in short, treat taxpayers like Warren Buffett treats his Berkshire Hathaway shareholders when buying banks with their money.

This is how Sweden successfully confronted its banking crisis in 1992, and how England is addressing its own meltdown today. In fact, world leaders are citing our crony communism as a cautionary tale. “This is not the American plan,” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in announcing his bank rescue. “We will have a stake in the banks-we are not simply giving money.”

The bailout bill’s failure to make this course of action mandatory should have killed the legislation in Congress. But banking CEOs and their lobbyists turned “should have” into “didn’t.” They love crony communism and hate government ownership stakes because, as financial analyst Luigi Zingales says, “Nobody likes to pay for their own mistakes-it is much better to have the taxpayers pay.”

Considering the opposition, then, it is a miracle any ownership stake language slipped into law. Whether Paulson now uses that language will signal how deep Washington corruption runs.

World Bank Under Cyber Siege in ‘Unprecedented Crisis’

NEilliƎИ π = 3.14159 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:26:06 -0700

Richard Behar

Fox News
October 10, 2008

The World Bank Group’s computer network — one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, FOX News has learned.

It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution’s highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank’s network for nearly a month in June and July.

In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month.

In a frantic midnight e-mail to colleagues, the bank’s senior technology manager referred to the situation as an “unprecedented crisis.” In fact, it may be the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution. And it has left bank officials scrambling to try to understand the nature of the year-long cyber-assault, while also trying to keep the news from leaking to the public.

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