Stiglitz Says Banking Problems Are Now Bigger Than Pre-Lehman
By Mark Deen and David Tweed
Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) — Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize- winning economist, said the U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system after the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
“In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,” Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris. “The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.” Read the rest of this entry »
Sept. 3, 2009, 6:22 a.m.
Hong Kong recalls gold reserves, touts high-security vault
In a challenge to London, Asian states invited to store bullion closer to home
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Hong Kong is pulling all its physical gold holdings from depositories in London, transferring them to a high-security depository newly built at the city’s airport, in a move that won praise from local traders Thursday.
The facility, industry professionals said, would support Hong Kong’s emergence as a Swiss-style trading hub for bullion and would lessen London’s status as a key settlement-and-storage center.
“Having a central government-sponsored vault would create a situation where you could conceivably look at Hong Kong as being a hub, where metal could be traded for the region,” said Sunil Kashyap, managing director at Scotia Capital in Hong Kong, adding that the facility was the first with official government backing in the region. Read the rest of this entry »
The incorrigible “liberal media” has been practically marinating in its own saliva as it obsessively tracks the decline of Obama’s popularity. The declarations from corporate desk jockeys, who appear to get a sexual thrill from declaring Obama’s “wax wings” have melted and the President is currently plummeting toward earth, are probably premature. A little over half of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance, according to Rasmussen. That represents a one point improvement since his Wednesday night speech and is the President’s best rating in three weeks.
The Wall Street gang is at it again! It’s been one year since Wall Street’s collapse and bailout took trillions from taxpayers and the sinking economy. The speculative instruments that pulled down the economy were those super-risky sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps, collaterized debt obligations-you know-Las Vegas East, using other peoples’ savings. Read the rest of this entry »
London’s retailers will today create shockwaves by posting their worst monthly sales for four years, ahead of results this week from some of the UK’s biggest store groups that will provide a health check for the high street leading up to the critical Christmas trading period. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing my friend?
It has withstood the blows of a million years,
And will do so to the end.
It was born when time did not exist,
And it grew up out of life,
It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
Like a slashing searing knife.
It lit fires when fires were not,
And burnt the mind of man,
Tempering leandened hearts to steel,
From the time that time began.
It wept by the waters of Babylon,
And when all men were a loss,
It screeched in writhing agony,
And it hung bleeding from the Cross.
It died in Rome by lion and sword,
And in defiant cruel array,
When the deathly word was ‘Spartacus’
Along the Appian Way.
It marched with Wat the Tyler’s poor,
And frightened lord and king,
And it was emblazoned in their deathly stare,
As e’er a living thing.
It smiled in holy innocence,
Before conquistadors of old,
So meek and tame and unaware,
Of the deathly power of gold.
It burst forth through pitiful Paris streets,
And stormed the old Bastille,
And marched upon the serpent’s head,
And crushed it ‘neath its heel.
It died in blood on Buffalo Plains,
And starved by moons of rain,
Its heart was buried at Wounded Knee,
But it will come to rise again.
It screamed aloud by Kerry lakes,
As it was knelt upon the ground,
And it died in great defiance,
As they coldly shot it down.
It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race.
It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
It has reached the peak of mountains high,
It comes searing ‘cross the skies.
It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
The thought that says ‘I’m right!’
Vaccines which have been approved by the responsible government authorities for vaccination against the alleged H1N1 Influenza A Swine Flu have been found to contain nano particles. Vaccine makers have been experimenting with nanoparticles as a way to “turbo charge” vaccines for several years. Now it has come out that the vaccines approved for use in Germany and other European countries contain nanoparticles in a form that reportedly attacks healthy cells and can be deadly. Read the rest of this entry »
“There must be some kind of way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
Theres too much confusion
I can’t get no relief”
Bob Dylan “All Along the Watch Tower”
If anything expresses the zeitgeist or world spirit, it is our apparent lack of direction.
The collapse of the Soviet Union which signaled the triumph of US imperialism and what Fukuyama called ” The End of History”, accelerated the relentless forward march of neoliberalism and privatizations which was a large victory against erstwhile socialist aspirations born from rebellion against poverty throughout the world. Beforehand, the road to freedom was relatively clear. Workers of the world united, smashed the state machine, and brought about a worker controlled planned economy with the proviso that it was democratic and scorned all Stalinist or counter revolutionary practices. This was the paradigm that informed left debate since Marx.
Somehow, as Hegel explained as a theory of development of knowledge: that human knowledge does not evolve in a straight line but more like a spiral sometimes moving backward towards barbarism.
The leftist paradigm has largely revealed itself to be inadequate. Read the rest of this entry »
There is a widespread supposition that Obama, being black and a member of an oppressed race, will imbue US foreign policy with a higher morality than the world experienced from Bush and Clinton. This is a delusion.
In These New Times 