Fri 2010-02-12 21:31 EST

The Cash Committee: How Wall Street Wins On The Hill

Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney

...In the fall of 2008, Democrats took the White House and expanded their congressional majorities as America struggled through a financial collapse wrought by years of deregulation. The public was furious. It seemed as if the banks and institutions that dragged the economy to the brink of disaster -- and were subsequently rescued by taxpayer funds -- would finally be forced to change their ways. But it's not happening. Financial regulation's long slog through Congress has left it riddled with loopholes, carved out at the request of the same industries that caused the mess in the first place. An outraged American public is proving no match for the mix of corporate money and influence that has been marshaled on behalf of the financial sector...

Cash Committee; Hill; Wall Street wins.

Jesse's Café Américain Wed 2010-02-03 20:13 EST

Italy Seizes Bank of America Assets In Derivatives Fraud Probe

Jesse

"more than 519 municipalities that face 990 million euros in derivatives losses"...Globalization is used as a rationale for stripping nations of their sovereign rights, and the people from their ability to rule and protect themselves in accord with their own beliefs and preferences...The US is a relative safe haven for multinational corporations that engage in various forms of fraud and market manipulation around the world, like modern day privateers. It appears unable to regulate them because of widespread political corruption and the self interest of its monied elite.

America assets; Derivatives Fraud Probe; Italy Seizes Bank; Jesse's Café Américain.

Tue 2010-01-12 23:32 EST

Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr. on the Failure of the Public Sector, the Coming Military Crackdown and What Can Be Done to Stop It

...The foremost problem-because it is the source of, or contributes significantly to, almost every economic difficulty now plaguing this country-is the inherent and ineradicable instability of the present monetary and banking systems centered around the Federal Reserve System. The second problem derives from the first. It is the ever-accelerating development of a first-class para-militarized police-state apparatus centered around the United States Department of Homeland Security, with its tentacles reaching down into every police force throughout the States and localities. Fundamentally, this apparatus is not, and never was, designed to deal with international "terrorism". If that were its goal, its first task would be absolutely to secure the southern border of the United States, which it has never seriously attempted to do. Rather, it is being set up to deal with what the political-cum-financial Establishment anticipates (and I believe rightly so) will be massive social and political unrest bordering on chaos throughout America when the monetary and banking systems finally implode in the not-so-distant future-surely in hyperinflation, and probably in hyperinflation coupled with a gut-wrenching depression. Of these two problems, the second is actually the more dangerous...

Coming Military Crackdown; Dr. Edwin Vieira; failure; Jr; public sector; stop.

Tue 2010-01-12 23:31 EST

Here Comes the Screw Job

Garrett Johnson

...Like America, Argentina sold off its public enterprises for pennies on the dollar in privatization schemes. Like America, Argentina had an artificially inflated currency which crushed its industrial base and led to an over-sized trade deficit. Like America, Argentina tried to disguise these problems by borrowing from foreign creditors. In the end, the Argentine government seized the retirements savings of their own citizens in order to continue to function after foreign creditors abandoned them. They shoved that savings into treasury-like bonds and then massively devalued their currency. In so doing, 70% of the retirement savings of the Argentinian people was wiped out overnight...

comes; screw job.

Sat 2010-01-09 13:15 EST

A real ``loaves to fishes'' miracle, taking place every day in America <<; Fabius Maximus

...buying a Congressman provides the highest return on investment available today in America. No wonder capital investment and R&D lag our peers, when bribery pays off so well.

America; day; Fabius Maximus; FISHING; Loaves; Miracle; Real; take place.

Taibblog Thu 2010-01-07 18:20 EST

Fannie, Freddie, and the New Red and Blue

Matt Taibbi

...what we've learned in the last few years as one scandal after another spilled onto the front pages is that the bubble economies of the last two decades were not merely monstrous Ponzi schemes that destroyed trillions in wealth while making a small handful of people rich. They were also a profound expression of the fundamentally criminal nature of our political system, in which state power/largess and the private pursuit of (mostly short-term) profit were brilliantly fused in a kind of ongoing theft scheme that sought to instant-cannibalize all the wealth America had stored up during its postwar glory, in the process keeping politicians in office and bankers in beach homes while continually moving the increasingly inevitable disaster to the future.

blue; Fannie; Freddie; New red; Taibblog.

naked capitalism Sun 2010-01-03 15:28 EST

Guest Post: Military Spending is INCREASING Unemployment and REDUCING GDP

George Washington

PhD economist Dean Baker pointed out yesterday that America's massive military spending on unnecessary and unpopular wars actually lowers economic growth and increases unemployment...

Guest Post; increasing unemployment; military spending; naked capitalism; reduce GDP.

zero hedge Thu 2009-12-31 11:52 EST

Shadowstats' John Williams: Prepare For The Hyperinflationary Great Depression

John Williams, who runs the popular counter government data manipulation site Shadowstats, has thrown down the gauntlet to deflationists, and in an extensive report concludes that the probability of a hyperinflationary episode in America over the next year has reached critical levels. While the debate between deflationists and (hyper)inflationists has been a long and painful one, numerous events set off in motion by the Bernanke Fed (as a direct legacy of the Greenspan multi-decade period of cheap and boundless credit) may have well cast America as the unwilling protagonist in the sequel of the failed monetary policy economic experiment better known as Zimbabwe.

Hyperinflationary Great Depression; John Williams; prepared; ShadowStats; Zero Hedge.

Jesse's Café Américain Mon 2009-12-28 16:22 EST

What Will the World Reserve Currency System Become? The Stakes Are Enormous

Jesse

The deterioration of the dollar reserve currency regime is obvious.If we have forecasted correctly, the world will look to some variation of the IMF's Special Drawing Rights as an eventual replacement for the US dollar. Therefore, the recomposition of the SDR next year will become a lightning rod for the global stresses created by an increasingly unstable and impractical system of global trade...A new global currency should replace the US dollar as the international reserve currency, as the long-term deterioration of America's economy and the greenback is fuelling a "currency-regime crisis," says Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator of the Financial Times.

Enormous; Jesse's Café Américain; stake; World Reserve Currency System Become.

zero hedge Mon 2009-12-28 15:12 EST

Quantitative Easing Has Been A Monetary Failure; Persistent Deflation Means More Fed Intervention Coming Soon

As more and more pundits discuss the spectre of inflation, with gold flying to all time highs which many explain as an inflation hedge, not to mention stock price performance which is extrapolating virtual hyperinflation, the market "truth" as determined by Fed Fund futures and options is, and continues to be, diametrically opposite...Bernanke is very likely about to unleash Quantitative Easing 2: If the $1.7 trillion already thrown at the problem has not fixed it, you can bet that the Chairman will not stop here. Furthermore, as the Fed has the best perspective on the economy, which is certainly far worse than is represented, the Fed has to act fast before things escalate even more out of control. Which is why Zero Hedge is willing to wager that not only will the agency/MBS program not expire in March as it is supposed to, but that a parallel QE process will likely begin very shortly. The end result of all these actions, of course, is that the value of the dollar is about to plummet: when Bernanke announces that not only will he not end QE but that he will launch another version of the program, expect the dollar to take off on its one way path to $2 = €1. And when that happens, look for global trade to cease completely. In its quest to continue bailing out the banking system and rolling the trillions of toxic loans it refuses to accept are worthless (for if it did, equity values in the banking system would go, to zero immediately), the Fed will promptly resume destroying not only the US middle class, but the entire system of global trade built through many years of globalization. Look for America to end up in an insulated liquidity bubble in a few short years, trading exclusively with its vassal master: the People's Republic of China.

Fed Intervention Coming; Monetary Failure; Persistent Deflation Means; Quantitative Easing; Zero Hedge.

Mon 2009-12-21 19:22 EST

china study group >> Blog Archive >> America's Head Servant? The PRC's Dilemma in the Global Crisis

New Left Review has just published an article by Ho-fung Hung that: * sketches a history of the trade dependence of China on the US; * compares China to other industrializing East Asian countries and finds China an outlier, largely based on what Hung calls the urban bias of the Chinese state... Discuss!

America's Head Servant; blogs Archive; china study group; Global Crisis; PRC's Dilemma.

Mon 2009-12-21 19:18 EST

America's Head Servant? The PRC's Dilemma in the Global Crisis

Ho-fung Hung

...Despite all the talk of China's capacity to destroy the dollar's reserve-currency status and construct a new global financial order, the prc and its neighbours have few choices in the short term other than to sustain American economic dominance by extending more credit...the historical and social origins of the deepening dependence of China and East Asia on the consumer markets of the global North as the source of their growth, and on us financial vehicles as the store of value for their savings. I then assess the longer-term possibilities for ending this dependence, arguing that, to create a more autonomous economic order in Asia, China would have to transform an export-oriented growth model--which has mostly benefited, and been perpetuated by, vested interests in the coastal export sectors--into one driven by domestic consumption, through a large-scale redistribution of income to the rural-agricultural sector. This will not be possible, however, without breaking the coastal urban elite's grip on power.

America's Head Servant; Global Crisis; PRC's Dilemma.

Wed 2009-12-16 12:39 EST

'Sometimes I think, was it real?' The American bailout nightmare - Times Online

The architect of America's banking bailout has revealed for the first time the chaos behind the scenes at the US Treasury during the creation of the controversial $700 billion (>>425 billion) Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp).

American bailout nightmare; Real; Think; time online.

zero hedge Wed 2009-11-25 12:13 EST

Two Opposing Amendments Emerge That Seek To Either Perpetuate The Fed's Secrecy, Or Overturn It

As the time to make or break the Fiat Money Overlords (no, not Chrysler), aka the Successor to the Second Bank of The United States which President Andrew Jackson managed to disassemble in 1832, yet which came back with a vengeance in 1913 under the guise of the Federal Reserve, approaches, two independent amendments emerged today: one drafted by Fed transparency proponents Ron Paul and Alan Grayson (found here) and one by Bank of America and Citigroup's favorite Congressman, North Carolina democrat Mel Watt (found here). As a reminder, here is a list of the Congressman's top contributors and sources of money in 2007-2008, which may explain some of his motivations: #1 Bank of America;#2 Wachovia Corp;#3 American Express;#4 American Bankers Assn.

Fed's Secrecy; Opposing Amendments Emerge; overturn; perpetual; seek; Zero Hedge.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis Wed 2009-11-25 12:05 EST

What Is Inflation and How Does One Measure It?

Michael Shedlock

...Inflation is a net expansion of money supply and credit, where credit is marked to market. Deflation is the opposite: a net contraction of money supply and credit, where credit is marked to market...Credit (and credit problems) dwarf monetary concerns at the present...I still expect the US to slip in and out of deflation and recession for years to come just as happened in Japan...banks aren't lending, consumer credit is contracting, credit writeoffs are likely to exceed monetary printing, and symptoms like treasury yields are in generally in agreement...To bail out the banks' poor bets on Dot-Com companies and Latin America in 2001-2002, Greenspan purposely ignited a credit bubble that led to the mother of all housing crashes. In response to the housing bust, the Fed refused to let failed banks go out of business and is attempting to force another credit bubble...However, this is the end of the line. Housing was the bubble of last resort, nothing can come close to the number of jobs created by the global housing bubble. Further attempts to reflate will do nothing but create a currency crisis, crash the economy, and add to future liabilities that cannot be paid back.

Inflation; measured; Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis.

Ambrose EvansPritchard Finance and business comments Thu 2009-11-19 10:33 EST

It is Japan we should be worrying about not America

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Japan is drifting helplessly towards a dramatic fiscal crisis. For 20 years the world's secondlargest economy has been able to borrow cheaply from a captive bond market feeding its addiction to Keynesian deficit spending - and allowing it to push public debt beyond the point of no return.

Ambrose EvansPritchard Finance; America; Business Comment; Japan; Worries.