Posted by smeddum on September 25, 2008
London Turns Against Hedge Funds in Hunt for Culprit (Update1)
By Caroline Binham and Elisa Martinuzzi
Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) — London is turning against the $450 billion hedge-fund industry that helped make the city a contender for the title of world financial capital. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: financial collapse, hedge funds, short-selling | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 24, 2008
“Here’s why the government giveaway logic is fallacious: It’s a giveaway, not a bailout. A bailout is designed to keep the boat afloat. But the existing Wall Street boat crafted by the investment bankers seeking to unload their junk must sink. The question as it sinks is simply who will be able to grab the lifeboats, and who drowns.”
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Michael Hudson 24th September, 2008 We have reached the point where it may finally be able to break through the membrane of cognitive dissonance that has been blinded people. The very first course in economics –starting in high school, followed up in college and then refined in graduate school – should explain to students why it is false to believe the advertisement that Wall Street has been trying to sell for the past half century: The deceptive promise that an economy can get rich off the mathematical “magic of compound interest.” |
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: financial collapse, the bailout | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 24, 2008
20th September, 2008
Press TV interviewed Paris-based financial analyst Max Keiser on the US financial meltdown on September 20. What follows are his free-wheeling comments on the US government bailout of Wall Street and the potential consequences for America.
“We have a treasury secretary in America – Hank Paulson. I’m afraid he’s gone insane. He’s become like the Colonel Kurtz of Treasury Secretaries. He’s gone native. He’s co-opted trillions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money and he’s playing hedge fund like a rogue trader. We have got a rogue trader in the Treasury Secretary’s office. He’s being aided and abetted by Ben Bernanke who’s been discredited as the entire Federal Reserve Bank has been utterly discredited. We’re looking at a possible inflationary depression in America and the worse is yet to come, much worse is yet to come.”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: financial collapse, Paulson | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on September 23, 2008
U.S. Stocks Fall in Market’s Worst Two-Day Drop Since 2002
By Elizabeth Stanton
Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell in the market’s worst two-day slump in six years on concern Congress will hold up a $700 billion bank bailout that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said is critical to preventing a recession.
General Motors Corp., Dillard’s Inc. and Regions Financial Corp. tumbled more than 7 percent after members of the Senate Banking Committee expressed skepticism about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan. General Electric Co., the world’s third- biggest company, retreated 4.6 percent as Merrill Lynch & Co. downgraded the stock on “growing fundamental pressures.” ConocoPhillips and Newmont Mining Co. lost more than 3 percent as oil retreated following a record advance and gold and copper prices decreased. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 23, 2008
What was perhaps even more worrying for investors was an item in the small print of Hank Paulson’s rescue plan. It said that, separate to the $700bn markets rescue package, the US Treasury would plunder the Exchange Stabilisation Fund – the US currency reserves, established in the 1930s – in order to pay for an insurance scheme for the money markets.
“The Treasury has committed the nation’s FX reserves to supporting the money market industry,” said Chris Turner, head of foreign exchange strategy at ING. “That suggests to us that the dollar has fallen down the list of the administration’s priorities – a worrying development for foreign investors in the US.”
Edmund Conway
22nd September, 2008
Whether or not tomorrow’s accounts of today’s turmoil prove David Owen of Dresdner Kleinwort right; whether or not this is the beginning of the end of the dollar’s pre-eminence in the world’s central banks and foreign exchanges, the economic landscape has undoubtedly changed forever.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: exchange stabilisation fund, financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 23, 2008
Bail pout the American People, Not Wall Street!
An Economic Recovery Strategy for Protectionists, Dirigists, Mercantilists and Populists.
Webster G. Tarpley
WASHINGTON DC — The grand theft bailout now being rammed through Congress by Treasury Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and other officials of the Bush regime with the help of accomplices Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid, and other parliamentarians is a monstrosity for the ages, combining every hideous feature of monetarism, elitism, oligarchism, and sheer feckless incompetence. It is to all intents and purposes a national suicide note of the United States of America, a contract with the devil that absolutely guarantees irrevocable national decline. For any person of goodwill there can be only one impulse at the present moment, and that is to stop this bailout — to block it, to sabotage it, to bottle it up, to load it with killer amendments, and to do everything legally possible to stop this insane design from
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: financial collapse | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 22, 2008
Brown’s latest big idea has lasted less than 24 hours.
David Lawder and James Mackenzie
22nd September
WASHINGTON/PARIS (Reuters) – Group of Seven nations welcomed the $700 billion U.S. markets bailout plan on Monday and said they were prepared to step up international cooperation to protect the world’s financial and banking system.
But a day after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he was “aggressively” encouraging other countries to put in place bailout packages of their own, there was little sign other G7 governments were prepared to follow Washington’s lead.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: financial collapse | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on September 22, 2008
Mushroom Cloud over Wall Street
By Mike Whitney
“One bank to rule them all;
One bank to bind them…”
21/090/08 “ICH ” — – These are dark times. While you were sleeping the cockroaches were busy about their work, rummaging through the US Constitution, and putting the finishing touches on a scheme to assert absolute power over the nation’s financial markets and the country’s economic future. Industry representative Henry Paulson has submitted legislation to congress that will finally end the pretense that Bush controls anything more than reading the lines from a 4′ by 6′ teleprompter situated just inches from his lifeless pupils. Paulson is in charge now, and the coronation is set for sometime early next week. He rose to power in a stealthily-executed Bankster’s Coup in which he, and his coterie of dodgy friends, declared martial law on the US economy while elevating himself to supreme leader.
“All Hail Caesar!” The days of the republic are over. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: bail out, capitalism, democracy, dictatorship, failing banks, financial collapse, Paulson, rescue plan | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on September 22, 2008
Goldman, Morgan Stanley Bring Down Curtain on Wall Street Era
By Christine Harper and Craig Torres
Get your hankies ready and have a good bubble. I can’t believe I said bubble how insensitive. Alas the old days are over, the big bonuses are gone. Somehow I find it hard to believe that Fed regulation will fix things here. What is the Fed? A decentralized central bank, inside the government and independent from it.
Who regulates the regulators?
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — The Wall Street that shaped the financial world for two decades ended last night, when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley concluded there is no future in remaining investment banks now that investors have determined the model is broken. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, financial collapse, wall street | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 22, 2008
Brown plans to turn the crisis into a global crusade on behalf of Atlanticist financial interests fronted by the IMF. But he is swimming against the tide: new power centres are emerging which are no longer vassals of London and Washington. Brown’s hegemonic agenda will falter in the face of the new, multipolar reality. More specifically, does he really expect the rest of the world to go buying up our junk bonds?
Patrick Wintour and Larry Elliot
22nd September, 2008
Gordon Brown yesterday pinned hopes of reviving his premiership on a package of measures designed to tackle the economic crisis, including a drive for tighter international controls of the global money markets and a crackdown on the culture of irresponsible City bonuses.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: financial collapse, IMF | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on September 21, 2008
21st September, 2008
A growing chorus of German politicians questioned over the weekend whether the unprecedented US rescue package meant to inject liquidity into the financial system would help to stem the crisis which has sent world markets into a tailspin.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: failing banks, financial collapse | 1 Comment »
In These New Times 