15th June, 2012
A drop in sales of chemicals and cars left Britain’s goods trade gap wider than expected in April, cementing concerns that exporters face a tough year ahead.
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.
UK exporters face tough year as trade gap widens to £10.1bn
Posted by seumasach on June 15, 2012
Posted in UK economy | Tagged: bankrupt Britain | Leave a Comment »
George Osborne unveils £140bn scheme to kick-start stagnant British economy
Posted by seumasach on June 15, 2012
Effectively, another bail-out of the banks. Instead of facing the reality of the bankruptcy of the banks, their dodgy assets are to serve as “security’ for further funding from the Bank of England. Thjs will eventually lead to run on pound and hyperinflation.
15th June, 2012
GEORGE Osborne unveiled a £140bn (€173bn) emergency scheme to try to avoid a second credit crunch caused by the ongoing chaos in the eurozone.
Posted in UK economy | Leave a Comment »
UK manufacturing performance much poorer than it first appears
Posted by seumasach on June 13, 2012
Most disturbing of all are the long-term trends highlighted by Tuesday’s ONS report. Manufacturing is 8% below its pre-recession peak and shows no sign whatsoever of being the engine for economic rebalancing sought by ministers. In the recoveries of the 1980s and 1990s, a big fall in the value of sterling led to a strong, if temporary, rebound in manufacturing output. Despite a 25% reduction in the value of the pound since 2007, that has not happened this time. This suggests that the UK’s problems are deeply structural: there is insufficient manufacturing capacity, ageing plant and machinery and a tendency for cash-strapped firms to use a cheaper currency to increase margins on their existing export sales rather than as a way of breaking into new markets.
Larry Elliot
13th June, 2012
A combination of the crisis in the eurozone and weak domestic demand is putting the skids under the UK’s manufacturing sector once again.
Posted in UK economy | Leave a Comment »
Black hole in final salary pensions hits all time high
Posted by seumasach on June 13, 2012
The black hole in British companies’ final salary pension schemes has grown to a record £312 billion as stock market turmoil and the Bank of England’s policy of printing money have massively increased pension deficits.
13th June, 2012
In the last month alone, the collective deficit of the country’s 6,430 remaining private sector final salary funds has grown by almost 50 per cent or £95 billion, according to official figures from the Pension Protection Fund (PPF)
Posted in UK economy | Tagged: pension funds go broke | Leave a Comment »
The economy comes unglued
Posted by seumasach on June 7, 2012
Paul Craig Roberts
6th June, 2012
Ever since the beginning of the financial crisis and Quantitative Easing, the question has been before us: How can the Federal Reserve maintain zero interest rates for banks and negative real interest rates for savers and bond holders when the US government is adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt every year via its budget deficits? Not long ago the Fed announced that it was going to continue this policy for another 2 or 3 years. Indeed, the Fed is locked into the policy. Without the artificially low interest rates, the debt service on the national debt would be so large that it would raise questions about the US Treasury’s credit rating and the viability of the dollar, and the trillions of dollars in Interest Rate Swaps and other derivatives would come unglued.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: dollar collapse, End of empire | Leave a Comment »
UK banks sitting on £40bn of undeclared losses
Posted by seumasach on June 7, 2012
5th June, 2012
PIRC, the shareholder advisory group, has analysed the 2011 accounts of the UK’s top five banks to calculate how much they expect to write off as bad debt in the coming years but have yet to take against profits.
Posted in UK economy | Tagged: bankrupt Britain | Leave a Comment »
Financial Wealth Evaporating
Posted by seumasach on June 4, 2012
The left in US/UK think these are basically rich societies and that therefore everything can be resolved by redistribution. But our wealth is paper wealth alone and is dissolving with alarming speed. Redistribution is fine but the crux of the matter is reconstruction of the real economy.
See also: No second bailout! Stand and fight!
John Rubino
3rd June, 2012
Live by the sword, die by the sword. The 1% have spent the past couple of decades accumulating an ever-bigger share of the world’s fiat-currency-inflated financial assets. Now, with the air going out of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) economy, the super-rich are discovering that their stocks and bonds, like the paper money on which they’re based, are to a large extent illusory:
Posted in Financial crisis | Leave a Comment »
Facebook – equities’ death knell
Posted by seumasach on June 4, 2012
In Britain, the lack of equity investment was caused by the mass of government bonds available for investment after the Napoleonic Wars. The merchant banking system did not get around to carrying out share issues until the Guinness share issue by Barings in 1886. Instead it made its money by issuing bonds, diversifying into foreign government bonds initially and then reluctantly into railroad bonds.
See also: It came in with the bond markets and it will go out with the bond market
Martin Hutchinson
31st May, 2012
The Facebook initial public offering, with its combination of management arrogance, private equity greed and Nasdaq ineptitude, has certainly changed the atmosphere in the United States and global stock markets. The question is whether, like the ill-fated AOL-Time Warner merger of 2000, it has merely marked the peak of a temporary bubble or the final end of the equity investing cult among the ordinary public.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: facebook ipo | Leave a Comment »
Germans fret about their foreign gold reserves
Posted by seumasach on May 19, 2012
15th May, 2012
Germany has gold reserves of just under 3,400 tons, the second-largest reserves in the world after the United States. Much of that is in the safekeeping of central banks outside Germany, especially in the US Federal Reserve in New York. One would think that with such a valuable stash, worth around €133 billion ($170 billion), the German government would want to keep a close eye on its whereabouts. But now a bizarre dispute has broken out between different German institutions over how closely the reserves should be checked.
Posted in Battle for Europe, Financial crisis | Tagged: german gold reserves | Leave a Comment »
Second half of 2012 – Convergence of four explosive factors: Banks-Stock Exchanges-Pensions-Debts
Posted by seumasach on May 18, 2012
GEAB N°65 is available! Global systemic crisis / Second half of 2012 – Convergence of four explosive factors: Banks-Stock Exchanges-Pensions-Debts
16th May, 2012
Whilst waiting for Euroland to equip itself, by the end of 2012, with a medium to long term common political, economic and social project, especially following the election of the new French president François Hollande, anticipated many months ago by LEAP/E2020, players will remain prisoners of the short-term reflexes related to the sudden Greek political tremors, the uncertainties over Euroland governance and to the risks in public debts.
Posted in Battle for Europe, Financial crisis | Leave a Comment »
Time Is running out for treasury market rally: Pimco’s Gross
Posted by seumasach on May 16, 2012
15th May, 2012
The time where investors are no longer willing to accept negative yields on U.S. Treasurys is near, warned Bill Gross, manager of Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: dollar collapse, End of empire, US treasuries bubble | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 