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 seumasach on June 18, 2009
The dangerous consequences of New Labour’s massive bailout of the banks is causing some disquiet. As we have already noted King appears intent on protecting the pound, for whose value the Government seems to have a cavalier disregard. As UK PLC goes down we can expect more sparks to fly as the elite agenda starts to fragment.
18th June, 2009
Government policy on City regulation was last night thrown into deeper confusion by sharply contrasting speeches by Mervyn King and Alistair Darling.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bankrupt Britain, failing banks, Financial crisis, King v. Darling, stop the bailout | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on June 17, 2009
By Chris Hedges
This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: end of US empire | 1 Comment »
Posted by smeddum on June 14, 2009
by Prof. Michael Hudson
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Global Research, June 13, 2009
The city of Yakaterinburg, Russia’s largest east of the Urals, may become known not only as the death place of the tsars but of American hegemony too – and not only where US U-2 pilot Gary Powers was shot down in 1960, but where the US-centered international financial order was brought to ground.
Challenging America will be the prime focus of extended meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk) today and tomorrow (June 15-16) for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance is comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. It will be joined on Tuesday by Brazil for trade discussions among the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis, Iran, Multipolar world, New Cold War | Tagged: BRIC, end of imperial epoch, NATO v. SCO, SCO | 1 Comment »
Posted by smeddum on June 13, 2009
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Posted by smeddum on June 13, 2009
By Tom Leonard in Flint, Michigan
12 Jun 2009
Telegraph
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Posted by smeddum on June 12, 2009
By Associate Editor David Stevenson Jun 12, 2009
Have you been watching the Baltic Dry Index lately?
It may sound a bit dull. But it’s a key barometer of global freight activity – in other words, it measures the cost of ferrying raw materials around the planet.
The message it’s starting to send is very clear: shipping rates and commodity prices are set to tumble. And that means the share prices of many cyclical stocks – which have led the recent rally – will be heading south, too… Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: Baltic Dry Index, shipping crisis | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on June 12, 2009
As we predicted at the time, the return of Mandelson has reopened the question of joining the Euro. Recent events tend to confirm that Mandelson has influential backing within the British elite: his coming out on the euro seems to indicate, therefore, a deep division within them. We could posit that Mandelson represents a “realist” element, who recognise the game is up for the pound. It will be interesting to look for the reaction to this statement.
12th June, 2009
Lord Mandelson has reopened the divisive issue of joining the single currency.
The Business Secretary described it as an “important objective” for Britain during a trip to Berlin, hailing the euro as “a great success”.
Posted in Battle for Europe, Financial crisis | Tagged: End of empire, euro, Financial crisis, join the euro! | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on June 12, 2009
Inside investment: Quantitative easing – Kill or cure?
Monday, June 08, 2009
Andrew Capon
Euromoney
Quantitative easing is being hailed as a policy panacea. The problem is that it sounds a lot like a prescription that causes the very problems it is designed to treat.
When the world was a happier place, before economists annexed the lexicon of forensic pathologists, there was much talk about global imbalances. In the final quarter of 2005 the US current account deficit peaked at 6.4% of GDP. Some thought this was a bad thing, although few pinned down exactly why. Others thought it was a “stable disequilibrium”. Export-driven economies, principally in Asia, could in effect provide vendor financing to the US via their high savings rates, foreign exchange reserves and sovereign wealth funds.
We now know that this stable disequilibrium did not beget stability. Instead, it inflated bubbles everywhere. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke presciently called the rise in current account surpluses in Asia and oil-exporting economies a “global savings glut”. By contrast the US household savings rate as a share of disposable income gradually declined from 10% in the early 1980s and tipped into negative territory in 2003. The reason US savings went negative was that people were using their houses as ATMs. As house prices soared so did equity withdrawal.
Ultimately, like a Ponzi scheme, debt-fuelled demand will collapse under its own weight. Many point to Bernanke’s predecessor at the Fed, Alan Greenspan, as bubble-blower-in-chief. It is now received wisdom that after the TMT bust Greenspan kept interest rates too low for too long. However, Greenspan could only keep rates so low with the complicity of foreign investors, many of them other central banks and official institutions, which were needed to plug the gap in US savings and fund the current account deficit. By 2007 the US absorbed 65% of global capital imports. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: quantitative easing | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on June 12, 2009
The risk in China’s brisk car market
This goes some way to explaining oil price increases
16:46, June 10, 2009
People’s Daily
If someone asks what kind of commodity market is most brisk in China this year, the ready answer would definitely be car market.
Against a backdrop of slump car markets worldwide from January to May this year, car market in China is the first to warm up, and car sales have grown for five months in a row. So, the country has overtaken the United States as the world’s No. 1 car market. If nothing goes wrong in the year, China’s auto sales will breach the 10 million target. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis, Multipolar world | Tagged: China, Oil, US car industry | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on June 12, 2009
Blogs  Bob O’Brien’s Sanity Check Blog |
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| 6/11/2009 | |
| It’s ugly, folks. About as ugly as one could imagine.
For starters, the entire global meltdown looks like it was engineered by the large mercantilist influences on Wall Street. That’s correct. The whole thing, engineered, as in deliberate. Read the rest of this entry » |
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Posted by smeddum on June 12, 2009
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: coming hyperinflation | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 