Archive for the ‘Financial crisis’ Category
The financial system established in England after 1688, based on usurious lending to the state by private bankers, is reaching its final blowout in the form of a series of devastating bubbles and a massive bailout of the financiers with public money. But the issuance of money doesn’t have to be in the hands of a private consortium: another credit system is possible.
Posted by smeddum on September 22, 2008
Mushroom Cloud over Wall Street
By Mike Whitney
“One bank to rule them all;
One bank to bind them…”
21/090/08 “ICH ” — – These are dark times. While you were sleeping the cockroaches were busy about their work, rummaging through the US Constitution, and putting the finishing touches on a scheme to assert absolute power over the nation’s financial markets and the country’s economic future. Industry representative Henry Paulson has submitted legislation to congress that will finally end the pretense that Bush controls anything more than reading the lines from a 4′ by 6′ teleprompter situated just inches from his lifeless pupils. Paulson is in charge now, and the coronation is set for sometime early next week. He rose to power in a stealthily-executed Bankster’s Coup in which he, and his coterie of dodgy friends, declared martial law on the US economy while elevating himself to supreme leader.
“All Hail Caesar!” The days of the republic are over. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bail out, capitalism, democracy, dictatorship, failing banks, financial collapse, Paulson, rescue plan | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on September 22, 2008
Goldman, Morgan Stanley Bring Down Curtain on Wall Street Era
By Christine Harper and Craig Torres
Get your hankies ready and have a good bubble. I can’t believe I said bubble how insensitive. Alas the old days are over, the big bonuses are gone. Somehow I find it hard to believe that Fed regulation will fix things here. What is the Fed? A decentralized central bank, inside the government and independent from it.
Who regulates the regulators?
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — The Wall Street that shaped the financial world for two decades ended last night, when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley concluded there is no future in remaining investment banks now that investors have determined the model is broken. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, financial collapse, wall street | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 22, 2008
Brown plans to turn the crisis into a global crusade on behalf of Atlanticist financial interests fronted by the IMF. But he is swimming against the tide: new power centres are emerging which are no longer vassals of London and Washington. Brown’s hegemonic agenda will falter in the face of the new, multipolar reality. More specifically, does he really expect the rest of the world to go buying up our junk bonds?
Patrick Wintour and Larry Elliot
Guardian
22nd September, 2008
Gordon Brown yesterday pinned hopes of reviving his premiership on a package of measures designed to tackle the economic crisis, including a drive for tighter international controls of the global money markets and a crackdown on the culture of irresponsible City bonuses.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: financial collapse, IMF | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 21, 2008
“The Americans can’t make Germany accountable for their failure and their arrogance,” Poss said. “A similar rescue package is neither planned nor needed in Germany,” he added.
Deutsche-Welle
21st September, 2008
German politicians are skeptical about a $700 billion US bailout of markets and of calls to take similar measures as Chancellor Merkel criticized Washington for failing to implement stringent market controls.
A growing chorus of German politicians questioned over the weekend whether the unprecedented US rescue package meant to inject liquidity into the financial system would help to stem the crisis which has sent world markets into a tailspin.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, financial collapse | 1 Comment »
Posted by smeddum on September 21, 2008
Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle
The Nation
by WILLIAM GREIDER
September 19, 2008
Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses–many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What’s not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bail out swindle, failing banks, financial fraud | 3 Comments »
Posted by smeddum on September 20, 2008
Financial Bailout: America’s Own Kleptocracy
The largest transformation of America’s Financial System since the Great Depression
by Michael Hudson
Global Research,
September 20, 2008
Nobody expected industrial capitalism to end up like this. Nobody even saw it evolving in this direction. I’m afraid this failing is not unusual among futurists: The natural tendency is to think about how economies can best grow and evolve, not how it can be untracked. But an unforeseen road always seems to appear, and there goes society goes off on a tangent. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 20, 2008
Global Research,
September 19, 2008
The Age
Be very, very careful. There are reports the US Federal Deposits Insurance Commission is running out of money. Chairman Sheila Blair has been forced to issue a statement. “US banks are overwhelmingly safe and sound and the Government fund used to cover insured deposits will be adequate to absorb any losses, even high losses,” she says.
But Brian Bethune, US economist at consulting company Global Insight, said: “Additional failures of large banks or savings and loans companies seem likely, and that could overwhelm the FDIC’s insurance fund.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: FDIC, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on September 20, 2008
The Point of No Return
By Mike Whitney
19/09/08 “ICH” — – Following another eratic day of trading on the stock market, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke convened an emergency meeting of the Senate Banking Committee and other congressional leaders to request fast-track authority for a sweeping plan to buy back illiquid assets and other complex securities from distressed and under-capitalized banks. The turbulence in the financial markets has intensified and there is every indication that the situation will get worse before it gets better. There are a number of signs that the financial system is at the brink of collapse and that Wall Street is headed for a 1929-type crash. Depositors have begun to withdrawal their savings from money market funds alarmed by the gyrations in the market and the daily deluge of bad economic news. According to the Washington Post, funds dropped “by at least $79 billion, or about 2.6 percent” on Wednesday alone. The withdrawals are the equivalent of a slow bank run just at the time when stressed commercial banks need access to cheap capital to finance daily operations and provide loans for a steadily weakening economy. There’s also been a surge of panic-buying of US Treasurys which is considered the safest of investments. According to the Wall Street Journal, during Wednesday’s market-rout, “investors were willing to pay more for one-month Treasurys than they could expect to get back when the bonds matured. Some investors, in essence, had decided that a small but known loss was better than the uncertainty connected to any other type of investment. That’s never happened before.” (Wall Street Journal) Also, the VIX, or “fear gauge”, has soared to levels not seen since the crisis began in August just over a year ago. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on September 19, 2008
L.A Times
Hey U.S., welcome to the Third World!
It’s been a quick slide from economic superpower to economic basket case.
Rosa Brooks
September 18, 2008
Dear United States, Welcome to the Third World!
It’s not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department’s request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisors willing to perform an emergency overhaul of your entire government.
As you know, some outside intervention in your economy is overdue. Last week — even before Wall Street’s latest collapse — 13 former finance ministers convened at the University of Virginia and agreed that you must fix your “broken financial system.” Australia’s Peter Costello noted that lately you’ve been “exporting instability” in world markets, and Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister of India, concluded, “The time has come. The U.S. should accept some monitoring by the IMF.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, IMF, wall street | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 19, 2008
Ellen Brown
Global Research
18th September, 2008
“I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.” – Sir Isaac Newton, after losing a fortune in the South Sea bubble
Something extraordinary is going on with these government bailouts. In March 2008, the Federal Reserve extended a $55 billion loan to JPMorgan to “rescue” investment bank Bear Stearns from bankruptcy, a highly controversial move that tested the limits of the Federal Reserve Act. On September 7, 2008, the U.S. government seized private mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and imposed a conservatorship, a form of bankruptcy; but rather than let the bankruptcy court sort out the assets among the claimants, the Treasury extended an unlimited credit line to the insolvent corporations and said it would exercise its authority to buy their stock, effectively nationalizing them. Now the Federal Reserve has announced that it is giving an $85 billion loan to American International Group (AIG), the world’s largest insurance company, in exchange for a nearly 80% stake in the insurer . . . .
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: derivatives, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on September 19, 2008
Hedge funds could be next victim Montreal Gazette
PETER HADEKEL
Freelance
Friday, September 19, 2008
One wag at a financial conference here yesterday likened the current chaos in the markets to a TV reality show.
Working title: Survivor Wall Street.
Investors are wondering who will survive the brutal shakeout now under way and who will be voted down in the market panic that has spread over the last two weeks. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, hedge funds | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 