Sat 2010-04-24 08:59 EDT

Rent-A-Front: New Group Wages Stealth Battle Against Wall Street Reform | TPMMuckraker

TPM Media

...every indication is that Stop Too Big To Fail is an astroturf operation funded by corporate interests to give the appearance of grassroots opposition to reform..."These guys made the KGB look like amateurs, and I used to work in Russia quite a lot," says Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF, now at MIT, who is a prominent advocate of breaking up the big banks...the group pays lip service to the idea of breaking up the big banks while at the same time adopting "bailout fund" rhetoric used by Republicans, all the while devoting its resources to trying to kill financial reform altogether...Stop Too Big To Fail co-founder Bob Johnson...is president of Consumers for Competitive Choice (C4CC), which runs Stop Too Big To Fail...Before C4CC was Consumers for Competitive Choice it was Consumers for Cable Choice. That group was funded by big telecoms like Verizon and fought to deregulate the cable industry...the man who reached out to economist Simon Johnson about joining the Stop Too Big To Fail call was Oliver Wolf, a director with the DCI Group. DCI is the Washington public affairs firm that specializes in astroturf efforts and has worked for everyone from the Burmese junta to the tobacco industry.

front; New Group Wages Stealth Battle; renting; TPMmuckraker; Wall Street reforms.

Jesse's Café Américain Tue 2010-03-09 17:51 EST

Russia Continues to Build Its Gold Reserves Ahead of the SDR Discussions

Jesse

Thanks to friend Dave at Golden Truth for this updated chart.As you know, Russia, India, China and some of the BRIC-like countries will continue to push hard for a gold and silver content in the new formulation of the SDR this year. The US and UK are vehemently opposed...One cannot have a common currency with uncommon fiscal policies and laws. While there is some room for discretion, it is sorely tried in changing economic conditions and social attitudes...This is why a one world currency, except for international trade only and at the discretion of trading partners, is so dangerous. One cannot maintain their sovereign freedom when someone else controls the supply of their money: either you cheat or you submit. All serious economists understand this; too few of the voting public do...This is the fallacy of the US dollar as the reserve currency for the world. It 'worked' as even Mr. Greenspan noted, as long as the US dollar was able to demonstrate the objective stability of an external gold standard relative to other currencies. That lasted for a few years, and the rest is foreign policy and currency wars. The time for its replacement is long past. The BRIC's understand this, and are playing their hands accordingly...

building; gold reserves; Jesse's Café Américain; Russia continues; SDR Discussions.

zero hedge Wed 2010-02-03 16:00 EST

Russia Urged China To Dump Its Fannie, Freddie Holdings Before GSE Bailout

This is how the cold war will look like in the post-Lehman era (when all the debt risk is held on the public balance sheet): one country urging another to sell a third's bonds. According to Hank Paulson's soon to be released memoir, Russia had urged China to sell its GSE holdings in August 2008 "in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies." China refused... That time. Of course, what has transpired since is that China, through the Fed custodial account, has rotated a vast majority of its GSE holdings into Treasuries, in essence doing just what Pimco's Bill Gross has been doing since the beginning of 2009: offloading hundreds of billions of Fannie and Freddie bonds straight to the Federal Reserve.

Dump; Fannie; Freddie Holdings; GSE bailout; Russia Urged China; Zero Hedge.

Tue 2009-10-06 21:12 EDT

The demise of the dollar

Robert Fisk

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning -- along with China, Russia, Japan and France -- to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar...Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."...

demise; Dollar.

Wed 2009-06-10 00:00 EDT

Terms of Service

Russia, Brazil to Buy $20 Billion IMF Bonds, Diversify Reserves - Bloomberg.com; dollar losing reserve status

services; term.

Thu 2009-02-26 00:00 EST

Jesse's Café Américain: Russia and China Sign Oil Deal for the Next Twenty Years

Jesse's Café Américain: Russia and China Sign Oil Deal for the Next Twenty Years

China Sign Oil Deal; Jesse's Café Américain; Russia; years.

Mon 2008-12-15 00:00 EST

Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers: The End of the Washington Consensus

Counterpunch; ``Total private-sector markets (in practice, markets run by the banks and money managers) have shown themselves to be just as destructive, wasteful and corrupt and, indeed, centrally planned as those of totally statist governments from Stalin's Russia to Hitler's Germany.''

ending; Jeffrey Sommers; Michael Hudson; Washington Consensus.

Sun 2007-04-29 00:00 EDT

The Journal's Russia Scandal

by Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames (The Nation, 1999-10-04)

Journal's Russia Scandal.