Henry C.K. Liu

Asia Times

31st October, 2008

More than three years before the current financial crisis, in a series Greenspan, the Wizard of Bubbleland that began on September 14, 2005, I warned:

Through mortgage-backed securitization, banks now are mere loan intermediaries that assume no long-term risk on the risky loans they make, which are sold as securitized debt of unbundled levels of risk to institutional investors with varying risk appetite commensurate with their varying need for higher returns. But who are institutional investors? They are mostly pension funds that manage the money the US working public depends on for retirement. In other words, the aggregate retirement assets of the working public are exposed to the risk of the same working public defaulting on their house mortgages.

When a homeowner loses his or her home through default of its mortgage, the homeowner will also lose his or her retirement nest egg invested in the securitized mortgage pool, while the banks stay technically solvent. That is the hidden network of linked financial landmines in a housing bubble financed by mortgage-backed securitization to which no one is paying attention. The bursting of the housing bubble will act as a detonator for a massive pension crisis

Read the rest of this entry »

Since it is generally recognised that the US/UK control the IMF, this is tantamount to asking for a free give from China. I would be very surprised and dismayed if they fell for this one.

ABC News

29th October, 2008

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on China and cashed-up Gulf oil producing states to give more money to the International Monetary Fund to help fight the global credit crisis.

Read the rest of this entry »