Posted by smeddum on October 21, 2010
U.S. urged to have its own house “clean-up” first
October 21, 2010
Peoples Daily
“The dollar is ours but the problem is yours,” said the former US Treasury Secretary John Connelly in the 70s of the 20th century, which became a popular dictum spreading far and wide. To date, not only Europe and many countries on earth have in fact felt the pain of the plunging dollar. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis, New Cold War | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 21, 2010
Why “if”?- the cuts will lead to a slump as surely as night follows day. And quantitative easing will go ahead leading to further capital outflows and ultimately to an inflationary tsunami as the pound sinks and commodity prices are driven up. Altogether, blindly to the abyss!
21st October, 2010
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) — Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne signaled that he’s counting on Bank of England Governor Mervyn King to temper any economic slump that might be triggered by the government’s deficit-reduction effort.
Posted in Financial crisis, UK economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 20, 2010
19th October, 2010
South Korea is preparing further measures to counter capital inflows triggered by low interest rates overseas as emerging market nations intensify the fight to restrain their currencies.
Posted in Financial crisis, Multipolar world | Tagged: capital controls | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 19, 2010
Michael Hudson
11th October, 2010
What is to stop U.S. banks and their customers from creating $1 trillion, $10 trillion or even $50 trillion on their computer keyboards to buy up all the bonds and stocks in the world, along with all the land and other assets for sale in the hope of making capital gains and pocketing the arbitrage spreads by debt leveraging at less than 1 per cent interest cost? This is the game that is being played today.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: End dollar hegemony! | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on October 18, 2010
Monday October 18 2010
‘WE were on the brink of bankruptcy,” said the UK chancellor George Osborne yesterday as he tried to defend his draconian package of spending cuts and tax rises which will be revealed in detail on Wednesday. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Drive to Global War, Financial crisis, UK economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 17, 2010
Good analysis except that where their are debtors there are creditors and so the idea of a conference “to multilaterally default on debt” lacks sense. In fact, the debtor nations have to renegotiate their debt with their creditors: they can’t pay their debt so they have to offer something else, a change in policy which essentially ends America, the empire, and begins America, the sovereign nation state
Bob Chapman
17th October, 2010
Today’s great debate basically between the US and Europe is – should the Fed go full bore by implementing a second quantitative easing? In part it is a moot point, because they have been doing just that in the repo market for four months without letting anyone know what they were up too. Their mandate is to reduce inflation and create full employment. Real inflation is 7% and unemployment is 22-3/4%. The Fed for three years has concentrated on bailing out Wall Street, banking, insurance and transnational conglomerates. Little has been done to fulfill their mandated mission. The main recipients of their largess, of course, are the firms that actually own the privately owned Fed.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on October 17, 2010
Damned if we cut, damned if we don’t. There is no alternative: Britian needs to fundamentally change its relationship with the rest of the world, especially our creditors, if we are to begin to emerge from this crisis.
London : British trade unions are making a last minute appeal against the scale of public spending cuts due to be announced by the government next week by calling on MPs to speak out about the damage they will cause to the country. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis, UK economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on October 17, 2010
Posted in Financial crisis | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on October 17, 2010
David Walker, the former Comptroller of the United States from 1998 until 2008, has been warning politicians, the media, and the American public for over a decade that we are off course and headed for disaster. In August 2007, before the financial system meltdown of 2008, Mr. Walker declared:
The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon. There are striking similarities between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government. The fiscal imbalance meant the US was on a path toward an explosion of debt. With the looming retirement of baby boomers, spiraling healthcare costs, plummeting savings rates and increasing reliance on foreign lenders, we face unprecedented fiscal risks. Current US policy on education, energy, the environment, immigration and Iraq also was on an unsustainable path. Our very prosperity is placing greater demands on our physical infrastructure. Billions of dollars will be needed to modernize everything from highways and airports to water and sewage systems.
Three years have passed since Mr. Walker sounded the alarm and issued his dire warning. The National Debt in August 2007 was $8.9 trillion. Today it stands at $13.6 trillion, a 53% increase in just over 3 years. It took 205 years as a country to accumulate $4.7 trillion of debt. We’ve added $4.7 trillion in the last 38 months. It doesn’t appear that anyone in government heeded Mr. Walker’s warnings. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: Burning platform, Cash for Clunkers, Catastrophe, Consumer debt, David Walker, debt, home prices, Middle East, peak oil, Savings rate, Stimulus, TARP, war | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on October 17, 2010
Posted in Financial crisis | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on October 16, 2010
Ellen Brown
15th October, 2010
Looming losses from the mortgage scandal dubbed “foreclosuregate” may qualify as the sort of systemic risk that, under the new financial reform bill, warrants the breakup of the too-big-to-fail banks. The Kanjorski amendment allows federal regulators to pre-emptively break up large financial institutions that—for any reason—pose a threat to U.S. financial or economic stability.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: fight foreclosures | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 