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 January 21, 2009
Lightning, Earthquakes & Hurricanes
Jim Willie CB
Jim Willie CB is the editor of the “Hat Trick Letter”
Jan 20, 2009
Goldenjackass
The earth itself provides many valuable analogies for massive dislocation in the relief of grand energy differentials. In the air, vast differentials between cloud structures in their electrical charge result in sudden lightning bursts as the release. In the air also, vast differentials between high cool masses and low rising warm masses result in powerful ongoing storms in hurricanes. In the ground, more accurately the earth plates, vast pressure builds from the movement of such plates, often with one plate flowing underneath another, leading to massive earthquakes and tremors. We had yet another earthquake in Costa Rica last week, enough to register a 6.2 at epicenter and sufficient to cause my ceiling light fixtures to swing several inches to and fro. In the ground, subsidence from natural gravitation forces or mine activity or water aquifer flow can produce a vacuum of pressure, leading to vast sinkholes like often seen in Florida. Tsunamis are extremely powerful waves that deliver sudden floods, but they are just earthquakes with much of the vast energy transferred into ocean waves. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by seumasach on January 20, 2009
var articleheadline = “‘This is like giving the kiss of life to a corpse'”;
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
Independent
20th January, 2009
The Government does not know whether the second bank rescue package it launched yesterday will work, senior ministers admitted last night.
“The truth is that we can’t be sure whether it will be effective,” one told The Independent. “We have to look calm to try to instil some confidence in the system. But we don’t know what will happen next. No one can be sure that this is the end of it.”
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Posted by seumasach on January 20, 2009
Guardian
20th January, 2009
After hitting Royal Bank of Scotland hard yesterday, the market has now picked a new target in Lloyds Banking Group.
It shares have slumped 30.5p to 34.5p – a 47% decline – as investors bailed out amid concerns that Lloyds could be another bank that ends up being nationalised by the UK government. Mark McCutcheon, head of broking at IAF Securities said: “There is genuine selling here, mixed with some shorting.”
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Posted by seumasach on January 20, 2009
This article explains why the current nationalization fad is no answer in itself, merely transfering bankruptcy from company to national level. A national credit system would only make sense as part of a comprehensive programme of rebuilding of a real economy, focused on manufacturing and agriculture, combined with a conprehensive retreat from empire and militarism. There will, of course, be a run on the pound.
FT
20th January, 2009
Britain came off the gold standard in 1931 and sterling devalued by 28 per cent. The economic crisis that followed marked the end of the UK as a global power. It also led to an effective default on almost half the national debt, which was restructured into bonds still outstanding. Parallels with today are eerie. Since the middle of 2007, the trade-weighted pound has fallen by 27 per cent. Furthermore, as the government shoulders contingent liabilities for ever greater amounts of delinquent bank debt, worries are growing about the state’s finances.
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Posted by alfied on January 20, 2009
Our readers abroad must imagine that Britain must be in a state of near panic. Nothing could be further from the truth: there is nothing, not so much as a whimper as we go silently to our doom. In our heart of hearts we know the simple truth that our time has been and gone.
By Paul Gordon and Candice Zachariahs
Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) — The pound dropped to a record low versus the yen and the weakest level since 2002 against the dollar on concern the government will have to rescue more banks as the economy slips into its worst recession since World War II. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by seumasach on January 14, 2009
The popular lie that the falling pound is increasing UK exports is now exposed before anyone who might actually have believed it.
The UK trade deficit unexpectedly widened to a record in November as the global economic slump hurt demand for British products abroad.
Telegraph
13th January, 2009
The goods-trade gap was £8.3bn, compared with £7.6bn in October, the Office for National Statistics said today. Economists predicted £7.5bn, according to a Bloomberg News survey.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bankrupt Britain, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 12, 2009
Peter Schiff
Asia Times
13th January, 2009
A few weeks ago when the US Federal Reserve announced a strategy designed to bring down long-term interest and home mortgage rates
through unlimited Treasury bond purchases, government debt staged a spectacular rally.
To the unschooled market observer, the spike may be difficult to understand. After all, why would the value of Treasury bonds rise while their underlying credit quality is deteriorating faster than Bernie Madoff’s social schedule? The move is actually a perfect illustration of the tried and true Wall Street strategy of “buy the rumor and sell the fact”.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bond bubble, dollar collapse, financial collapse | 1 Comment »
Posted by smeddum on January 12, 2009
The Bank of England will be able to print extra money without having legally to declare it under new plans which will heighten fears that the Government will secretly pump extra cash into the economy.
By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor
Telegraph 10 Jan 2009
The Government is set to throw out the 165-year old law that obliges the Bank to publish a weekly account of its balance sheet – a move that will allow it theoretically to embark covertly on so-called quantitative easing. The Banking Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament, abolishes a key section of the law laid down by Robert Peel’s Government in 1844 which originally granted the Bank the sole right to print UK money. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by smeddum on January 10, 2009
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Posted by seumasach on January 9, 2009
Here is a striking contrats to Brown’s much- vaunted “part-nationalisations”: the German government has taken a 25% stake and representation on the board with the right of veto.
The German government has agreed to take a 25-percent share in Commerzbank. The move signals the first time the government has taken a stake in a major private bank and comes as Commerzbank is set to buy Dresdner Bank.
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Posted by seumasach on January 8, 2009
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
8th January, 2009
“Great Britain does not meet the entry criteria for the euro,” said Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, the ECB’s board member in charge of international affairs.
“The public deficit will rise to around 6pc (of GDP) in 2009 and even higher in 2010. Sterling’s exchange rate is not yet sufficiently stable,” he told Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: euro, join the euro! | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 