Author Archive
Posted by seumasach on November 1, 2008
What is wrong with these Germans? Our banks have been accepting handouts for a year now. They understood that government handouts were necessary. not only to bankrupt the state treasury, but for the consolidation of an all- powerful oligarchy. What is it about that the Germans don’t understand? Can’t they see how indispensable Gordon’s plan is?
Merkel Urges German Banks to Tap Government Rescue Fund
Deutsche-Welle
1st November, 2008
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged banks to make use of a government bailout fund worth up to 500 billion euros ($637 billion) that few financial institutions have tapped so far.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bailout, financial collapse, Financial crisis | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on November 1, 2008
Mercopress
31st October, 2008
Argentina Economy Ministry sources reacted angrily to a debt ratings downgrade by Standard & Poor’s on Friday saying it was “another mistaken decision”. S&P downgraded Argentina’s foreign-currency rating to “B-” from “B”.
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Posted by seumasach on November 1, 2008
“Asked about the likely bonus culture after taxpayer-funded bail-out, the source said: “If the government does end up becoming a shareholder, RBS is still a listed entity. It remains the board’s responsibility to ensure it is run commercially.””
So there, Gordon! So much for your “partial nationalsiation”.
Simon Bowers
Guardian
1st November, 2008
Royal Bank of Scotland, which is being bailed out with £20bn of taxpayers’ money, has signalled it is preparing to pay bonuses to thousands of staff despite government pledges to crack down on City pay.
The bank has set aside £1.79bn to cover “staff costs” – includingdiscretionary bonuses – at its investment banking division for the first six months of the year alone. The same division caused a £5.9bn writedown that wiped out the bank’s profits for the same period.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bailout, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on November 1, 2008
Daily Times
1st November, 2008
ISLAMABAD: British Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw on Friday opposed repeated United States incursions into Pakistan’s territory, and urged Washington to respect the sovereignty and integrity of its vital allies.
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Posted in Drive to Global War | Tagged: bombing of Pakistan | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on November 1, 2008
Antiwar.com
31st October, 2008
US General Henry Obering is “very concerned” this week as Polish lawmakers still haven’t ratified August’s deal to host a US interceptor missile base in Northern Poland. The base, ostensibly aimed at preventing Iranian missile strikes but being built well outside of the range of Iran’s missile arsenal, will not see its first interceptor missile “in the ground in Poland until 2012″ according to the General. Even then, the base’s full complement of 10 missiles won’t be online until 2013 or 2014 even if Poland ratifies the deal by year’s end.
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Posted in Drive to Global War | Tagged: missile defence system | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on November 1, 2008
We wouldn’t be true Brits if we weren’t betraying someone, but in our view this is the “right betrayal”, as New Labour might put it. We recently speculated as to a possible shift in policy corresponding with the appointment of Mandelson. Is this it?
David Blair
Telegraph
30th October, 2008
Britain is preparing to “sell” Georgia and hand a “victory” to Russia by agreeing to start talks on a partnership agreement between Moscow and the European Union, according to senior European diplomats.
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Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: georgia, Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on November 1, 2008
Independent
31st October, 2008
Isn’t it about time the Serious Fraud Office is called in over the collapse of Lehman Brothers? In the US, Federal investigators are crawling all over what is now unambiguously the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, yet in Britain, no criminal investigation of any aspect of the banking maelstrom has yet been announced. This is despite growing evidence of malfeasance in connection with the Lehman’s insolvency in particular, but also more generally in the market-ing of some of the securities at the heart of the crisis. Where there is financial meltdown, there is nearly always fraud, so why isn’t the SFO in there asking questions, collecting evidence and bringing prosecutions, as its US counterparts are in spades?
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: financial collapse, Lehman | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on November 1, 2008
“The new financial system should have common sources based on many global financial centres and many reserve currencies,”
“Medvedev said he would propose to the summit that the world economy reduce its reliance on the US dollar as the main reserve currency.”
“They should be based on a harmonised system, not like the one we have now when those who use the rules of continental Europe feel unhappy about the Anglo-Saxon model,” he said
The Peninsula
1st November, 2008
MOSCOW • Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will tell a summit on the financial crisis in Washington next month that the health of the world economy should no longer be reliant solely on the United States, he said yesterday.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: financial collapse, new global financial system | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 31, 2008
Naomi Klein
Guardian
31st October, 2008
In the final days of the election many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But don’t be fooled: that doesn’t mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700bn bail-out out the door. At a recent Senate banking committee hearing, the Republican Bob Corker was fixated on this task, and with a clear deadline in mind: inauguration. “How much of it do you think may be actually spent by January 20 or so?” Corker asked Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old former banker in charge of the bail-out.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bailout, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 31, 2008
Henry C.K. Liu
Asia Times
31st October, 2008
More than three years before the current financial crisis, in a series Greenspan, the Wizard of Bubbleland that began on September 14, 2005, I warned:
Through mortgage-backed securitization, banks now are mere loan intermediaries that assume no long-term risk on the risky loans they make, which are sold as securitized debt of unbundled levels of risk to institutional investors with varying risk appetite commensurate with their varying need for higher returns. But who are institutional investors? They are mostly pension funds that manage the money the US working public depends on for retirement. In other words, the aggregate retirement assets of the working public are exposed to the risk of the same working public defaulting on their house mortgages.
When a homeowner loses his or her home through default of its mortgage, the homeowner will also lose his or her retirement nest egg invested in the securitized mortgage pool, while the banks stay technically solvent. That is the hidden network of linked financial landmines in a housing bubble financed by mortgage-backed securitization to which no one is paying attention. The bursting of the housing bubble will act as a detonator for a massive pension crisis
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 31, 2008
October 31, 2008 (LPAC)–The London-based Brutish imperial financial cartel has renewed a revolt in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, as part of its overall strategy to eliminate nation-states in Africa. Goma, a provincial capital in eastern Congo, has been surrounded by anti-government rebels, who have announced that their goal is to sabotage a large cooperative Congo-China agreement, which will greatly benefit Congo, unless the deal is sabotaged. In the last few days alone, thousands of civilians fled Goma, after seeing UN peacekeepers moving out their civilian personnel as the rebels advanced. Congo rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s troops are well-trained and well-armed. They employ hit-and-run tactics, and use the population as a shield. Nkunda has long been receiving support via Rwanda, according to reports.
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Posted in Drive to Global War | Tagged: China Africa cooperation, congo | Leave a Comment »
