Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2008
Can anyone think of another offshore financial speculator economy whose currency has become very vulnerable against the Euro?
Leigh Philips
6th October, 2008
Iceland’s trade unions want the country to join the European Union in return for help in an economic rescue plan, as the island state’s government holds emergency talks to shore up its teetering economy.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2008
Doug Noland
7h October
Click on link above for full article
I still owe readers a thorough analysis of the Q2 2008 flow of funds. For now, I’ll just point out some data relevant to the current state of acute fragility.
Looking back, Total Non-Financial Debt (NFD) expanded US$578 billion during 1994. By 1998, NFD growth for the year had surpassed $1.0 trillion. Non-Financial Credit increased $1.153 trillion in 2001, $1.415 trillion in 2002, and $1.676 trillion in 2003, before reaching the $2.0 trillion milestone in 2004. Incredible as it was, debt expansion then surged over the next fateful three years. Growth rose to $2.319 trillion in 2005, $2.428 trillion in 2006 andthen to last year’s record $2.561 trillion.
Importantly, this historic credit inflation inflated asset prices, incomes, corporate cashflows/earnings, government revenues, and various types of spending throughout the US and global economy. It was a self-sustaining bubble bolstered by ongoing credit excesses, asset inflation and resulting purchasing power gains. But NFD growth slowed sharply to an annualized $1.726 trillion during this year’s first quarter and then sank to $1.127 trillion annualized during the second quarter. Credit growth is now in the process of collapsing.
We are today witnessing the acute stage of bursting credit bubble dynamics. It’s an absolute debacle, and there’s little our well-intentioned policymakers can do about it other than try to slow the collapse. To be sure, there were momentous effects to both the economic and financial structures during the bubble period between 1994’s $578 billion non-financial debt growth and 2007’s $2.561 trillion. It is also worth noting that financial sector debt expanded $462 billion in 1994 compared with $1.753 trillion in 2007. Mortgage debt almost doubled in the six years 2002 through 2007 to $14.0 trillion, while financial sector borrowings rose 75% to $16.0 trillion.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: financial collapse | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2008
M.K. Bhadrakumar
8th October, 2008
With the reported intra-Afghan talks under the mediation of Saudi Arabia in Mecca on September 24-27, attention inevitably shifts to the hidden aspects of the “war on terror” in Afghanistan – the geopolitics of the war. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has committed to pulling out Canadian troops from Afghanistan in 2011, let the cat out of the bag last week when he said that some Western leaders wrongly believed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops could stay there forever.
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Posted in Drive to Global War, Multipolar world | Tagged: Afghan peace talks | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2008
A E4bn loan from Russia might make financial sense – although Russians might think otherwise given Moscow’s shaky finances. But it would create strategic ructions. Iceland is a NATO member, but Russia would want something in return for a loan equal to almost a third of the tiny state’s GDP. The US would fret this could eventually mean a Russian military presence in the North Atlantic.
These Telegraph fuddie-duddies, like the ensemble of British punditry, have yet to grasp that the game is up, that support is coming from the East and that it will come with a geopolitical price. Despite British and US pressure, Iceland rejected IMF “help”.
George Hay
7th October, 2008
It has pegged the krona to the euro at 131 – the rate had swooned towards 200 on Monday – and is searching for foreign reserves. That’s a good idea. Less good is the idea to pass the cap to Russia.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, financial collapse, Iceland Bankrupt, IMF | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2008
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Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2008
Ten months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved an updated version of the U.S. Army’s secret operational Continuity of Government (COG) plans.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: "War on Terror", controlled demolition of US constitution, northern command | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2008
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: financial collapse, Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 7, 2008
There’ll never be a day so sunny,
It could not happen twice.
Where is the man with all the money?
It’s cheap at half the price!From the Musical Oliver
Henry Paulson has turned into our very own Oliver now that he has gotten permission from the Congress to start peddling toxic mortgage securities and credit default swaps. Soon Old Hank is going to be out on the street corner with his bucket of goodies, glowing bright green with radioactivity. He’ll be looking for the man with all the money, willing to purchase something at half the price, or better.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: financial collapse, parallel banking universe | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 6, 2008
Japan, with interests rates next to zero, has played the role of piggy bank to the global economy in recent years. Now this “carry trade”, one of the pillars of the global financial system is unwinding.
Kosuke Takahashi
3rd October, 2008
TOKYO – Faced with a gloomy outlook for the faltering United States financial system and serious worries about a global slowdown, the Japanese yen is looking to be one of the winners in the turmoil as investors increasingly seek to reduce risk.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: financial collapse, yen caary trade | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 6, 2008
“The usual patriotic and highly independent Icelandic politicians and union leaders are now crying out for EU membership to save them from the impeding collapse, much as Ireland was able to expand its liabilities many fold through its declaration of a 100% guarantee to all depositors, whilst comfortably sitting under the EURO umbrella and therefore avoiding a currency collapse that would have occurred if Ireland had an independent currency as does Iceland. Still Iceland will be forced to go cap in hand to the European Union to help prevent a total loss of confidence in the Krona which has crashed by 30% against the US Dollar in less than a month.”
Nadeem Walayat
The focus of the financial storm now shifts to the small North Atlantic Island state of Iceland, a country with barely 330,000 inhabitants that saw its banks in recent years expand across Europe as they played and rolled the dice in the global derivatives market, financed on leverage from financial institutions across the globe that were eager to lend on the back of cheap low interest rate carry trade financing which delivered profits for nothing i.e. the difference between the rate borrowed and charged on the interbank market for a near limitless exponentially rising over the counter derivatives bubble that passed $500 trillions, that’s trillions NOT billions!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: financial collapse, Iceland Bankrupt | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 6, 2008
Bankrupt Britain can no longer fight wars: the disengagement has begun!
Richard Norton-Taylor
6th October, 2008
Britain is stepping up pressure for a political and diplomatic settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan, a move set in sharp relief yesterday by the commander of UK troops who warned that the war against the Taliban was not going to be won.
Posted in Drive to Global War | Tagged: British defeat in afghanistan | Leave a Comment »
