Title: Federal Debt Held by Foreign & International Investors
Series ID: FDHBFIN
Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Management Service
Release: Treasury Bulletin
Seasonal Adjustment: Not Seasonally Adjusted
Frequency: Mar Jun Sep Dec, End of Month
Units: Billions of Dollars
Date Range: 1970-03-31 to 2008-03-31
Last Updated: 2008-07-22 10:16 AM CDT
Notes: Monthly data reported for March, June, September and December.

DATE VALUE
1970-03-31 12.4
1970-06-30 14.0
1970-09-30 16.6
.
.
.
2007-09-30 2244.1
2007-12-31 2355.3
2008-03-31 2438.6

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/FDHBFIN.txt

OBAMA spricht jetzt live in Berlin - zB ---> n-tv

(...hoffentlich nicht scary ;))

Posted On: Thursday, July 24, 2008, 1:06:00 PM EST

Chart Painting 101

Author: Dan Norcini

Dear Friends;

The following is a series of headline alerts and a stories that came down my wire this AM. The reason I have included them is to reinforce what we have been saying about “CHART PAINTING”. You would be a bit surprised to learn that I receive emails from people out there who categorically deny such a thing is possible or that it even occurs in the US markets. They condescendingly assert that our claims about the tactics of the short sellers, both in the Comex gold arena and in the stocks, is merely a case of sour grapes from a frustrated bull. That is naïve at best and just plain ignorant at worst.

While this story deals with the oil market, the tactics employed are identical and reasons behind them are the same in all cases. Why is that? Because today’s markets are dominated by technicians who pride themselves on having no fundamental view whenever they approach a market but claim that all that is necessary to make money is a knowledge of technical analysis. Some of them actually go so far as to boast about their ignorance of the markets that they trade and revel in the fact that they could care less!

We have maintained that those who have no fundamental view are rudderless ships on the ocean of the trading floors. They can be easily blown about by every wind of price behavior. When prices move lower during a price retracement in a bull market, they become morosely bearish. When prices move higher, they are wildly bullish buying blindly into upside strength. Price action alone dictates what they believe! Since this is now the vast majority of traders/investors, it takes little imagination to understand why chart painting on the close is so important to market manipulation schemes.

It is a fact that the closing price is the most important price in any commodity or stock for that day’ session as nearly every single technical price indicator or oscillator uses the closing price in its calculations. Move that strongly in one direction or another, push it as far as possible off the session highs if you are attempting to force price downwards, and all of the technical analysis programs that millions of investors are using will register your efforts. The result is that those software programs then do your work for you as they HERD the INVESTING PUBLIC in the direction you wish them to go.

Manipulation such as is charged above, “banging the closing period”, has ONE PURPOSE in mind – to move the closing price in the direction that the perpetrators desire so as to AFFECT THE MAXIMUM technical damage or effect to a market and to psychologically devastate those on the other sides of the trade.

Now do you see why it is necessary when trading gold to understand the tactics of our trading enemies and to also get a grip on your emotions when trading as well as having a firm fundamental view? Once you understand how the game is played you can also spot the tipoffs that alert you to their activities and protect yourselves accordingly. You can also profit accordingly by using the inevitable lemming like response to your advantage.

Dan



REUTERS U.S. CFTC CHARGES OPTIVER HOLDING BV WITH NYMEX OIL MARKET MANIPULATION DURING MARCH 2007

REUTERS U.S. CFTC CHARGES DEFENDANTS WITH 'BANGING THE CLOSING PERIOD' OF OIL MARKET TRADE

REUTERS U.S. CFTC CHARGES 2 OPTIVER SUBSIDIARIES, 3 EMPLOYEES IN OIL MARKET MANIPULATION CASE

REUTERS U.S. CFTC ALLEGES DEFENDANTS MADE ABOUT $1 MLN FROM OIL MARKET MANIPULATION

REUTERS U.S. CFTC SAYS STILL HAS 'DOZENS AND DOZENS' OF ENERGY CASES UNDER INVESTIGATION



REUTERS UPDATE 1-CFTC charges Optiver with oil-market manipulation
By Timothy Gardner and Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday charged global trading fund Optiver Holding BV with manipulating the NYMEX oil market in March 2007.

The complaint charged that three employees of the Netherlands-based fund made about $1 million through manipulation of crude oil, gasoline and heating oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NMX.N)

The agency's enforcement action came a day before the Senate was scheduled to have a major vote on legislation to rein in excessive energy speculation and impose new regulations on traders that the CFTC would have to enforce.

The CFTC's acting enforcement director, Stephen Obie, denied that the announcement of the case was timed to influence the vote on the bill. "This was not a politically motivated case," he said.

More…

http://www.jsmineset.com/

http://www.cftc.gov/__________________

falls von Interesse ... Obama in Berlin
 

@Silverbay - sein Bad in der Menge ist :supi wenn man an die Sicherheitsvorkehrungen für einen Bush denkt :mad

Vergleich
 

quote lunar

@Silverbay - sein Bad in der Menge ist :supi wenn man an die Sicherheitsvorkehrungen für einen Bush denkt :mad


... allerdings, der Johanna hat es auch den Atem genommen,
Montag wieder back to the real ( 10xxx ) ?

Morning Bell: What’s the Worst Part of This Bill?

Posted June 24th, 2008 at 8.46am in Ongoing PrioritiesToday the Senate is scheduled to vote on the housing bailout bill that has been circulating on Capitol Hill for so long its title today is simply “a bill to provide needed housing reform and for other purposes.” When a bill’s title includes the phrase “and for other purposes,” you know the American taxpayer is about to get a raw deal. This bill is such terrible public policy in so many different ways that it’s hard to pick which one is the worst. But we’ll try.

• Bails out the banks most responsible for the current crisis. The most important thing to remember about this “housing reform” bill is that checks for the mortgage bailout go directly to the banks that irresponsibly lent money to risky borrowers. That’s why Countrywide Financial and Bank of America have pushed so hard for this program. And since it is a voluntary program, the banks get to choose which loans they’ll pawn off on the taxpayer. As a result, banks will keep the loans that have the best chance of being paid back, while the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) is forced to guarantee the riskiest borrowers.

• Increases the risk of an even bigger taxpayer-funded bailout. Between 2000 and 2007, the FHA increased its portfolio of no-down-payment loans from 2 percent to 37 percent. These loans default at almost three times the rate of other loans. As we explained above, all of the $300 billion in loans the bill intends the FHA to take on will be preselected by banks as those with even higher default rates. The FHA posted losses of $4.6 billion last year. FHA’s losses, paid for by taxpayers, will skyrocket if this bailout passes.
  
  
  
• Creates a special-interest slush fund. Partisan leftist groups such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) have pushed for a federally funded National Housing Trust Fund for almost a decade now. During the brief economic downturn in 2001, ACORN advocated the fund as an economic stimulus. From 2003 through 2006 it promoted the fund as a solution to housing prices that were too high. Now ACORN argues it’s needed because housing prices are too low. A National Housing Trust Fund will make it easier for the left to funnel millions in taxpayer dollars down the drain of ACORN’s well-established history of fraud, deceit and intimidation.

• Creates a national fingerprint registry. In the name of combating mortgage fraud, the bill sets up licensing and oversight standards for residential mortgage originators. One standard, John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute says, may “require thousands of individuals working even tangentially in the mortgage and real estate industries — and not suspected of anything — to send their prints to the feds.”

• Does nothing to actually help the economy. When House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) launched his FHA scheme, he told The Hill newspaper it was “irrelevant” how many homeowners would be helped. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the latest version of the bill would aid only 500,000 households over the next four years. Another CBO study, of the Dodd plan, concluded “the plan would not be sweeping enough to restore the housing market or ailing economy.”

The bill does have one saving grace: It does contain much needed reform for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The near-monopoly power these government-sponsored entities have in the mortgage industry was a key cause of the housing bubble. But conservatives shouldn’t let Freddie and Fannie’s needed reform of be held hostage. They deserve their own standalone bill.

Bank Gave Counterfeit Bills, Couple Says

Different Customer Given Refund After Fake Money Claim, Report Says

POSTED: 11:33 pm EDT July 22, 2008
UPDATED: 11:27 pm EDT July 23, 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A couple has contacted the Secret Service claiming a Central Florida bank gave them 10 counterfeit bills during a transaction.

IMAGES: Fake $100 Bills Surface Ulises Garcia said he was withdrawing cash from a Wachovia Bank and depositing it into a Bank of America so he could pay his bills online.

However, the Bank of America teller noticed something funny about 10 of the 36 $100 bills Garcia said he received from Wachovia Bank -- they were counterfeit, Local 6's Tony Pipitone reported.However, the bank has not given Garcia or his fiancé, Joann Rodriguez, any money."We have big plans," Rodriguez said. "We were planning to get married in about two or three months.""And this money's pretty important?" Pipitone asked."Very important," Rodrguez said. "It's a big part of our wedding.""It is really frustrating for us," Garcia said. "The bank is not doing anything about it. (It's) just not giving us any solutions at all."A Wachovia representative said it will not refund any money because it can't verify the $1,000 in counterfeit notes were the same bills Garcia was handed by their teller.But weeks later, Wachovia did refund $40 to another customer with a similar story, Local 6 has learned.Garcia said Wachovia is ripping him off and has alerted the sheriff's office, the Secret Service and the media."Ten (bills) in one transaction to come from one bank, that is definitely unusual," U.S. Secret Service representative Jim Glendinning said."But is it possible?" Pipitone asked."Remotely, yes it is," Glendinning said.Glendinning said he was not surprised the Bank of America caught the counterfeits but wondered how a Wachovia could pass the bills unless a bank employee was in on it, Pipitone reported.The United States Secret Service Web site shows people how to detect counterfeit money.Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

:licht aha - neuer Weg zur Sanierung der Banken :rolleyes :ironie

von DU
 

.

Gold Ambush Tactics & Potpourri

Jim Willie CB
Jim Willie CB is the editor of the "Hat Trick Letter"
Jul 25, 2008

......For the second time in the last several weeks, the gold market has been on the receiving end of ambushes. Leading up to their July 3rd announced rate hike, the Euro Central Bank strong hints prompted the last ambush. The gold futures contracts bear this out easily, as the big cartel players sold down the gold price with heavy paper supply simultaneously. They had to do so. When physical is in reduced supply, resort to trusty paper. After stabilizing in the 920 to 925 range, gold promptly rose to exceed 980, only to be ambushed yet again. The ambush consists of an unexplainable sudden $20 decline in midday, cheered by the majority but without any analysis of where the decline originated. The motive for the early July ambush was simple. The EuroCB revealed their intention to hike rates by 25 basis points, thus exposing the USDollar to even more risk of decay, degradation, and depreciation. Without more corrupt interference in its market, the gold price would have surely vaulted past 1000 in July. So enter JPMorgan and their vile henchmen comrades. Who ever said the only noisy communists resided in Moscow and Beijing and Pyongyang? Central planning and market control have migrated as tools from communists to those conmen posing as capitalists and defender of freedom! Let's call the US Federal Reserve and its partners in collusion what they really are: better dressed and younger Politburo members equipped with better sales pitches. These guys resemble the Gosbank goons, whose three featured henchmen should have substituted Bernanke, Paulson, and Cox. So they whacked gold immediately before the EuroCB decision to hike rates three weeks ago, since the news was to be so very harmful to the USDollar.

The next ambush came late last week and this week. What was the risk posed to the USDollar? This time the dire bank situation had turned desperate in its bloody atmosphere, laden with many ugly features and developments. First, the corrupt block of legitimate shorting of bank stocks coupled with selective enforcement of naked shorting of bank stocks coupled with improper blame of bank stock woes assigned to those nasty short speculators. So they engineered a short cover rally in the bank stocks that truly defies any claim as absurd that the US stock markets are fair, open, and driven by equilibrium, or free from scum. Speaking of scum, consider that the new SCUM = Sacred Cow Untouchable Mountains of banking manure. See the Sacred Cow SCUM list of banks forbidden from shorting, led by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman. Do you think their bank executives loaded up on option calls before the news, all tipped off? Sure!

Lost somewhere along the way was the legitimacy of shorting a stock when the company behind the stock was insolvent and fending off bankruptcy. The protected few sacred cows have one thing in common, being all related to the London Bullion Market Assn (LBMA). Thanks to Seeking Alpha for that jewel of information, details in next month's newsletter issue. So those very banks most closely associated with corruption of the precious metals market are the sacred cows most protected by totally obscene selective regulatory enforcement. By the way, few have thought this through. By limiting legit short procedures, the regulators have interfered with legitimate option trading activity, as managed by dealers. They typically short a stock after taking the opposite position to a legitimate option put short position. So look for the options market to be all mangled as well. Free market? Not a chance!

Second, the US Federal Reserve announced on Tuesday that their lending facilities would be made available to selective large hedge funds. Again, the keyword is selective. This opens many new questions. Certainly some hedge funds are working in concert with many entitled Wall Street firms as they busily wreck the national financial structure by supporting the unsupportable USTreasurys and by trying to destroy the indestructible gold & silver market. If not for acting as USGovt agents in price control, the system would give them up for carved dinners on the bankruptcy table. Give credit where due. These conmen wizard control freaks have wielded leverage and corruption for longer than the 31-year record for previous fiat currency survival. Alright, so hedge funds will be given access to bond swaps by the USFed benefactor. Will some hedge funds be slaughtered much like Bear Stearns, for the same motive? The Bear Stearns book contained too much short USDollar positions and too many long gold positions. When they appealed to the USFed for help, the USFed killed them instead. Now hedge funds will be in the same predicament. A big hedge fund might be intentionally targeted by privileged Wall Street syndicated bank operators for a kill, with the fund's unwanted positions liquidated, but its desired positions in need of protection seized by JPMorgan. A hedge fund that is loaded with almost all unfriendly positions will just be killed outright, a typical tactic being a cutoff of credit by the Wall Street firm itself. The USFed will come to lend a helping hand, assuming some of the necessary load. This is American financial capitalism at its most desperate, most scummy, most bound by elite welfare, and most despicable. This is the Fascist Business Model on display, showing yet another new facet of corruption. Few realize that USFed bond swaps are temporary, and cannot alleviate bank woes unless the USFed makes the swaps permanent. THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN, since the USFed is not a charitable organization willing to kill itself for the public good. The public remains clueless, bewildered, and too confused even to respond or to object. It understand little of inflation, and less of banking procedures.

Amidst the latest situation with a bank system reeling, their stocks in need of a corrupt engineered bounce, and announcement of a broader rescue from USFed swaps to hedge funds, the news was so bad that gold had to be ambushed yet again. The BKX bank stock index bounced very close to my stated 57 target, for which the bear triangle deserves the credit. Give the banks another couple weeks, and the gravity force will push its rancid juices to the bottom line again. This sector amazingly enjoys the benefit of accounting quiet darkness in the middle months of quarters, precisely when lies and false spin can be promulgated safely, with more willingness by sheeple to gobble it up as valid research, when it is pure deceptive promotional propaganda. THE BANKS WILL BE DILUTED INTO OBLIVION, AIDED ONLY BY RESTRICTIONS TO TRADES, that is my ongoing mantra. Within a couple weeks, gold will rise again unfettered by the illicit assault on real money. The basic underlying problem has not gone away. The housing prices continue down. The formal collateral for bank-held mortgage bonds continues to fall in value. When the USEconomy was heretically built atop a housing bubble by Greenspan policies and US corporation coopted acquiescence, a systemic breakdown was assured. England shares in this destruction outcome being assured. In the Untied States, expect a housing bear market of double strength, since the first one in year 2001 was interfered with. It was not eliminated, only delayed....

......SOME IMPORTANT POTPOURRI
The new housing & mortgage rescue plan has some missing pieces. The Federal Housing Administration had asked specifically for some risk price protection. They were denied. So the FHA risk is open-ended. For those who are unaware, the FHA controls the under-water mortgage bailout mechanism. The official package, which took eleven months to prepare, when it should have taken no more than three or four months, is entirely inadequate out of the gate. It is 5% of what will ultimately be needed. The US Congress is very likely to fall for the bait of a quasi unlimited bailout tab for its quasi-govt guarantees for the Fannie Mae enterprise, which in no way is quasi-honest. It is the quintessential colossus of corrupt US mortgage finance, the blackest of black eyes ever to grace the US financial landscape in its modern history. For the Congress to offer any substantial backstop will guarantee not its survival, but instead the zoom of the gold price well past the $2000 price level, as in two thousand dollars per ounce. We are witnessing the gradual process of granting a blank check to Fannie Mae for losses that in my estimation will amount to over $1 trillion. Even Bill Gross of PIMCO just yesterday raised his estimate to a cool $1 trillion in mortgage losses for banks as a group. He said, "Nearly one trillion dollars of cumulative losses will finally mark the gravestones of this housing bubble."

The Three Stooges of Bernanke, Paulson, and Cox appeared before the US Congress in order to gather in near total power to control the system they succeeded in destroying, and to force the USGovt to bail out the conmen who remain unprosecuted for bond fraud. They appear before the nearly equally compromised august body of legislators in order to appeal for extending the regulatory powers, especially the SEC, without any new formal legal approval. Rarely do they appear as duos, yet alone threesomes, a testament to their utter desperation. Notice that the Congressional members still lick their boots, even though they are more responsible for the bank destruction than almost anybody. Their reward will be total power, bestowed by the sleepy servants, or at least their acquiescence. Those responsible for the bank breakdown want total authority in a queer audacious maneuver. Today Cox from the SEC was all alone in the congame before Congress. Imagine corrupt conmen making a major appeal before compromised legislators who are mainly beholden to special interest lobbies. Cox disrupted the bank rally by advising regulatory differences to continue for commercial banks versus investment banks. Or was it the horrendous housing news that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Index down over 200 points? Perhaps it was realization that the bank sector short cover episode has ended almost as suddenly as it began? The opportunities for graft and fraud will be huge and ripe. Look to the FHA to become the focus of that corruption, which writes the bailout check given to the original loan underwriter, since all it requires is paperwork from an appraisal for a hefty check written to the originator. Research the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, if you wish to observe corruption. One dollar in three is stolen are tainted by corruption.......

.....A new chapter to the mythology treatise has been written. The slow motion collapse of the US financial system proceeds on schedule. The claim nowadays is made, that the USEconomy will remain protected from the bank system woes. What a crock! No, the planned destruction all started with Greenspan's acquiescence to irrational exuberance in 1994. He decided to amplify the US$ money supply out of step (faster) than economic growth, so long as the (rigged) Consumer Price Index remained calm. The export of inflation helped to keep it down for a decade, but now that policy has backfired. The destruction required a key push by the 1999 grant of Most Favored Nation status to China. That enabled removal of a large chunk of the US industrial base. The resulting poverty kept down the power of the proletariat laborer, a key opponent to Politburo central bankers. Doesn't anyone realize central bankers are more communist in nature than capitalist? Sadly, Americans learned little in school, surely not how communists identified, and not how fascists are identified. The absence of viable income from added value enterprise gave birth to the Asset Based Economy, wherein the Untied States took the deadly pill. This was not a red pill versus blue pill, but a hemlock pill. It built the economic foundation atop a housing bubble, and laced the entire banking system with an unstable temporary mortgage latticework. The risk price model formed the glue, and that too has begun to dissolve.

THE UGLIEST PART OF THE ENTIRE FINANCIAL PATHOGENESIS IS THAT MOMENTUM IN THE BREAKDOWN IS FIERCE, AND FEEDBACK LOOPS ARE UNSTOPPABLE, AS THEY FORCE DE-LEVERAGING AND POWERFUL CONTINUATION OF THE PRICE DECLINE FOR ALL ASSOCIATED ASSETS. In its wake lie gold & silver, which benefit from the retreat from a burning collapsing building built of paper girders and paper walls, held by faulty risk price model glue.

THE HAT TRICK LETTER PROFITS IN THE CURRENT CRISIS.

full story: http://www.321gold.com/editorials/w...llie072508.html

GOSBANK ---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosbank
(zum Glück gibt's Wikipedia ;))

...eigentlich kann man immer wieder lesen - wie unfähig die die Leute an den Schalthebeln sind :mad

25 July 2008

Stiglitz on Fannie and Freddie, Free Lunches and Moral Hazard

Fannie’s and Freddie’s free lunch
By Joseph Stiglitz
July 24 2008 18:25
The Financial Times

Much has been made in recent years of private/public partnerships. The US government is about to embark on another example of such a partnership, in which the private sector takes the profits and the public sector bears the risk. The proposed bail-out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entails the socialisation of risk – with all the long-term adverse implications for moral hazard – from an administration supposedly committed to free-market principles.

Defenders of the bail-out argue that these institutions are too big to be allowed to fail. If that is the case, the government had a responsibility to regulate them so that they would not fail. No insurance company would provide fire insurance without demanding adequate sprinklers; none would leave it to “self-regulation”. But that is what we have done with the financial system.

Even if they are too big to fail, they are not too big to be reorganised. In effect, the administration is indeed proposing a form of financial reorganisation, but one that does not meet the basic tenets of what should constitute such a publicly sponsored scheme.

First, it should be fully transparent, with taxpayers knowing the risks they have assumed and how much has been given to the shareholders and bondholders being bailed out.

Second, there should be full accountability. Those who are responsible for the mistakes – management, shareholders and bondholders – should all bear the consequences. Taxpayers should not be asked to pony up a penny while shareholders are being protected.

Finally, taxpayers should be com*pensated for the risks they face. The greater the risks, the greater the compensation.

All of these principles were violated in the Bear Stearns bail-out. Shareholders walked away with more than $1bn (€635m, £500m), while taxpayers still do not know the size of the risks they bear. From what can be seen, taxpayers are not receiving a cent for all this risk-bearing. Hidden in the Federal Reserve-collateralised loans to *JPMorgan that enabled it to take over Bear Stearns were almost surely interest rate and credit options worth billions of dollars. It would have been easy to design a restructuring that was more transparent and protected taxpayers’ interests better, giving some compensation for their risk-bearing.

But the proposed bail-out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac makes that of Bear Stearns look like a model of good governance. It sets an example for other countries of what not to do. The same administration that failed to regulate, then seemed enthusiastic about the Bear Stearns bail-out, is now asking the American people to write a blank cheque. They say: “Trust us.” Yes, we can trust the administration – to give the taxpayers another raw deal.

Something has to be done; on that everyone is agreed. We should begin with the core of the problem, the fact that millions of Americans were made loans beyond their ability to pay. We need to help them stay in their homes, including by converting the home mortgage deduction into a cashable tax credit and creating a homeowners’ Chapter 11, an expedited way to restructure their liabilities. This will bring clarity to the capital markets – reducing uncertainty about the size of the hole in Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s balance sheets.

The government should set a limit to the size of the bail-out, at the same time making it clear that, while it will not allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to fail, neither will it be extending a blank cheque. There may need to be a drastic reorganisation. There should be a charge for the “credit line” (any private firm would do as much) and, given the risk, it should be at a higher than normal rate.

The private sector knows how to protect its interests; the government should do no less. As long as the credit line is extended, no dividends should be paid. To ensure that the government is not simply bailing out creditors who failed in due diligence, at least, say, 25 per cent of any notes, loans or bonds coming due that are not lent again should be set aside in an escrow account, to be paid only after it is established that taxpayers are not at risk. Any government loans should be cumulative preferred debt: the taxpayers get paid before any other creditors receive a dime. To discourage moral hazard the interest rate should be at a penalty rate and, reflecting the rising risk, increase with the amount borrowed. Finally, the government should participate in the upside potential as well as the downside risk: for instance, by taking shares (which it might later sell) or, as it did in the Chrysler bail-out, warrants.

We should not be worried about shareholders losing their investments. In earlier years, they were amply rewarded. The management remuneration packages that they approved were designed to encourage excessive risk-taking. They got what they asked for. Nor should we be worried about creditors losing their money. Their lack of supervision fuelled the housing bubble and we are now all paying the price. We should worry about whether there is a supply of liquidity to the housing market, so that those who wish to buy a home can get a loan. This proposal provides the necessary liquidity.

A basic law of economics holds that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Those in the financial market have had a sumptuous feast and the administration is now asking the taxpayer to pick up a part of the tab. We should simply say No.

The writer, 2001 recipient of the Nobel Prize for economics, is university professor at Columbia University. He is co-author with Linda Bilmes of The Three Trillion *Dollar War: the True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
Posted by Jesse at 12:52 AM
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

Housing Rescue WILL NOT Work At All

July 25, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis


We finally open the latest Santa Claus Congress package. It is full of the usual useless stuff. It is really an attempt at turning back the clock. Oh, we so very much want the Free Funny Money™ to continue! Toyota has finally become the world's biggest auto manufacturer. Even if some of these are made by American workers at lower wages than in Detroit, this is not a sign that is good for Americans. Also, the suppression of the commodities markets continues. This is the only way they know that can hide inflation. Desperately, everyone in the US power structure wants to resume asset inflation. This is impossible. Until Americans figure out that cheap lending means economic destruction, we will continue to flap around the flame of cheap loans like a moth looking for sex with candles.


Inflation Outlook Makes a `Bond Bubble' Unlikely, Goldman Says

(Bloomberg) -- Yields on U.S. government debt won't increase as much as some analysts expect because inflation expectations are ``well-contained,'' according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Those who call for a ``dramatic'' rise in yields often point to an increase in so-called headline inflation and household expectations, Goldman analysts led by Francesco Garzarelli wrote in a note to clients today.

Expectations for inflation a decade from now are still below the average since 1997 and aren't statistically different from expectations in the past nine years, said the analysts, drawing on data from London-based Consensus Economics. That undermines the idea of a bond bubble in which prices are too high and yields are too low, Goldman said.

Several things here: Goldman is, like many gnomes, a lying bastard. He can't help this. Note the last sentence here: he is very careful to say that future inflation won't be greater than the average since 1977. I never want to just assert things, I use charts and graphs a great deal and whenever we talk about anything like this, we must rush off to these charts and graphs to see what the truth is and the truth here is obvious: this gnome is comparing a time frame that includes one of the greatest inflationary surges in US history since 1820. This is not a minor matter!


Here is a Federal Reserve graph I heavily amended:



I am looking for several things here. One is the comparison of 30 year mortgage rates to CD values and 6 month Treasury bills. CDs and Treasuries usually track very close together. Significantly, they also diverge. The spread widens at specific historic events. What I was curious about was the harmonic echo of this divergence when the spread between CDs and 30 year mortgages were at their greatest.....

......Trouble comes when the rate of inflation is far ahead of all these rates! In the case of the last 20 years, the inflation rate has been well above the cost of a 30 year mortgage as well as Treasuries and CD which is why the savings rate has utterly collapsed and debts have grown like weeds in a warm summer rain. Note how twice, the mortgage rates were less than other interest rate instruments: in 1975 and the ruinous 1978-1982 period......

......The thing to remember here is pretty simple: banks make a lot of money when the spread is the greatest. The periods with the green bars show us when the Federal Reserve politically manipulates the value of the Treasuries by artificially lowering the rates below the rate of inflation. Notice clearly how the Fed panicked in 1975 and in the late 1970's. The rate jerks upwards wildly then they tried to bring it below 10% and then were forced to raise it back up to 18% again. Even after suppressing it below 8%, this failed immediately and it had to be raised yet again to over 12% just one year later! Instead of stability, we see this time frame from 1970 to today as one of greatest instability. And of course, the greatest two spreads are in 1992 and 2003, both period coming right after a recession that the Fed 'fixed' by dropping interest rates very, very low.....

.......Back to Goldman Sachs: that guy is insane or a liar. Nothing shows us that inflation is going away in the future. Everything including the news about the latest futile bail out bill in Congress, shows us future inflation taking off like a rocket. Unless we collapse into a massive deflationary spiral which is quite possible. Money can and has, vanished.....

http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/

Traders manipulated oil prices

(CNNMoney.com) -- The government charged an oil trading firm Thursday with manipulating oil prices in the first complaint to be announced since the regulators began a new investigation into wrongdoings in the energy markets. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused Optiver Holding, two of its subsidiaries and three employees with manipulation and attempted manipulation of crude oil, heating oil and gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"Optiver traders amassed large trading positions, then conducted trades in such a way to bully and hammer the markets," CFTC Acting Chairman Walt Lukken said at a press conference. "These charges go to the heart of the CFTC's core mission of detecting and rooting out illegal manipulation of the markets."

First there was no naked short selling. Then it was forbidden. Then there was no oil market manipulation. Now it too, is being forbidden. The gnomes need to inflate SOMETHING, anything. This is what a Bare Bear market looks like: naked, screaming gnomes running wild. Alas, this won't make a good video that can be sold after spring break.

http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/

Dixie Chicks - Travelin' Soldier

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nLBgmbXBOb8

:verbeug

...bisschen viel Lesestoff über diese leidige bailout Geschichten - aber vielleicht später interessant zu wissen wer so in etwa richtig lag :schwitz oder ob "nur" der Teufel an die Wand gemalt wurde :gruebel

Congress Taps Paulson’s Helmet

By: Peter Schiff, Euro Pacific Capital, Inc.

-- Posted Friday, 25 July 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com


With President Bush no longer threatening a veto, the subprime mortgage and Fannie and Freddie “bailout” bill is now sailing through Congress. In anticipation of its enactment, Congress had the foresight to raise the national debt limit to $10.6 trillion. Who says that politicians don’t plan ahead?

Once signed into law, the budget busting legislation will hand the Administration a blank check to prop up the ailing home lenders. The ultimate cost is anybody’s guess. I believe that the price tag will be higher than just about anyone imagines. Paulson’s Bazooka will be locked and loaded with enough fire power to blow what’s left of our economy into the dustbin of history. Though the government and Wall Street assure us that these bold moves will save the housing market, and the economy as a whole, from collapse, the reality is that the solution is far worse than the problem. As painful as the failure of Freddie and Fannie would have been, bailing them out will hurt even more. In other words, it’s not the disease that will kill us but the cure.

Ironically, while government is rightly criticizing mortgage lenders for ditching lending standards during the boom (well after the horses had left the barn) the new law will actually encourage lenders to be even more reckless then before. By taking all of the risks out of mortgage lending (provided of course that the loans are conforming), the government is telling lenders not to worry about the loans they make, because if borrowers do not repay, the government will.

Since this bailout eliminates all market based deterrents to reckless lending for conforming loans, the only checks remaining will be those imposed by Freddie and Fannie themselves through the criteria they set for those loans. And although they have taken some steps over the past few months to tighten their minimal “standards”, the political agenda behind the bailout will cause this nascent effort to lose steam. In essence, the government’s main goal is to prop up home prices. Since American homes are still overvalued given the fundamentals, their prices can only be pushed up with reckless lending and inflation.

As a result of this bailout bill, the share of mortgages owned or insured by Freddie and Fannie will likely swell from near 50% today to over 80% within a year or two, turning a $5 trillion problem into a $10 trillion fiasco. If the government succeeds in keeping real estate prices propped up, it will only do so at the cost of sending all other prices through the roof. More likely, real estate prices will continue to decline despite government efforts to levitate them, compounding the problems and the losses.

The grim reality is that trillions of dollars were borrowed and spent that will never be repaid. No government program can alter that fact. Someone is going to have to pay the piper for all those granite counter tops and plasma TVs. The price tag is staggering and for all the bailouts and stimulus packages, all the government can do is exacerbate the losses and shift the burden through inflation. Nor can the government resurrect bubble home prices and the fantasy of real estate riches that went along with them. One way or another, rational home prices will be restored and the myths of our asset-based, consumption-dependent economy will be finally discredited.

CNBC once nicknamed me “Dr. Doom”, but compared to what I see coming now, they should have then called me “Dr. Sun Shine”. Take a look at a presentation I made back in November 2006, at the Western Regional Mortgage Bankers Conference. There are eight clips in total, and though the entire presentation is worth watching, most of the real estate comments begin with the 4th clip. Click here to watch the video on YouTube. Every real estate prediction I made at that conference, which was considered outrageous at the time by those in attendance, has already come true. As confident as I was then about this impending crises, I am even more confident now that the government has just thrown gasoline onto the fire.

For a more in depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar denominated investments, read my new book “Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse.” Click here to order a copy today.



More importantly, don’t wait for reality to set in. Protect your wealth and preserve your purchasing power before it’s too late. Discover the best way to buy gold at www.goldyoucanfold.com . Dowload my free Research Report, "The Powerful Case for Investing in " Foreign Securities " at www.researchreportone.com . Subscribe to my free, on-line investment newsletter at http://www.europac.net/newsletter/newsletter.asp.


-- Posted Friday, 25 July 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com - Peter Schiff
http://news.goldseek.com/EuroCapital/1217004550.php

:rolleyes;)

The Triumphant Return of the Friday Funnies

"Barack Obama is behaving very presidentially now. He's in the Middle East, and he met today with the leaders of Israel and Jordan. And not to be outdone, earlier today, John McCain was in the park playing checkers with Ed Koch." --David Letterman
"After a quick meet-and-greet with King Abdullah, Obama was off to Israel, where he made a quick stop at the manger in Bethlehem where he was born." --Jon Stewart, on Barack Obama's Middle East trip
"Barack Obama is very popular in the Middle East. I guess a lot of people over there saw the cover of the New Yorker." --Jay Leno
"John McCain was talking about this, and he said that the problem is that the border between Iraq and Afghanistan -- they share a common border, that's what he was saying. Mistakenly said that Iraq and Afghanistan have a common border, and I thought, well, no wonder we can't find Osama Bin Laden -- we've been searching an imaginary border." --David Letterman
"Let me ask you a more serious question. When you woke up this morning, did you feel a little colder, the country was a little sadder, a little lonelier, a little less hopeful? There's a reason for that [on screen: CNN telling viewers that Obama has left the country]. Don't take our hope away. We miss you. Barack Obama, the living embodiment of goodness and light, the future of human evolution." --Jon Stewart
"Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to President Bush's time in office as 'a total failure.' Yeah, Bush defended himself saying, 'Oh, come on, I've hardly spent any time in my office.'" --Conan O'Brien

PUTTING THE “FEDERAL”
BACK IN THE FEDERAL RESERVE

In a July 19 Wall Street Journal article titled “Why No Outrage?”, James Grant quoted Mary Lease, a 19th century Populist who urged farmers to “raise less corn and more hell.” Grant notes that financial behavior that would have been met with outrage in the 19th century is now met with near-silence from a too-tolerant populace. For decades after the Civil War, monetary reform was a chief political issue, one around which whole political parties formed. Why is it hardly mentioned today? Grant suggests that the lack of outrage may be because the old 19th century Populists actually won:

“This is their financial system. They had demanded paper money, federally insured bank deposits and a heavy governmental hand in the distribution of credit, and now they have them. The Populist Party might have lost the elections in the hard times of the 1890s. But it won the future. . . . They got their government-controlled money (the Federal Reserve opened for business in 1914), and their government-directed credit [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]. In 1971, they got their pure paper dollar. So today, the Fed can print all the dollars it deems expedient and the unwell federal mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combine [to] dominate the business of mortgage origination . . . .”

Mr. Grant may have answered his own question, in another way than he intended. Most people, evidently including Mr. Grant, actually think that the Federal Reserve is a federal agency; and that paper dollars are issued by the government; and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are federal mortgage giants. The American people are silent because they have been duped into believing they have gotten what they wanted. In fact, what the people got was not at all what the Populists fought for, or what their leader William Jennings Bryan thought he was approving when he voted for the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. In the stirring speech that won him the Democratic nomination for President in 1896, Bryan expressed the Populist position like this:

“We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. . . . Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson . . . and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business. . . . [W]hen we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and . . . until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.”

Bryan lost in 1896 and again in 1900, but he went on to lead the opposition in Congress. A major bank panic in 1907 led to a bill called the Aldrich Plan, which would have delivered control of the banking system to the Wall Street bankers. However, the alert opposition, led by Bryan, saw through it and soundly defeated it. Bryan said he would not support any bill that resulted in private money being issued by private banks. Federal Reserve Notes must be Treasury currency, issued and guaranteed by the government; and the governing body must be appointed by the President and approved by the Senate.

To get their bill past the opposition in Congress, the Wall Street faction changed its name to the Federal Reserve Act and brought it three days before Christmas, when Congress was preoccupied with departure for the holidays. The bill was so obscurely worded that no one really understood its provisions. Its backers knew it would not pass without Bryan’s support, so in a spirit of apparent compromise, they made a show of acquiescing to his demands. Bryan said happily, “The right of the government to issue money is not surrendered to the banks; the control over the money so issued is not relinquished by the government . . . .”

That was what he thought; but while the national money supply would be printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, it would be issued as an obligation or debt of the government to a private central bank. The Federal Reserve is wholly owned by a consortium of private banks; it is controlled by bankers; and it protects their interests. It issues Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) for the cost of printing them (or, more often, for the cost of entering numbers on a computer screen). This privately-issued money is then lent to the government, and it is owed back to the private Federal Reserve with interest. The interest is eventually refunded to the government, but only after the Fed deducts its operating expenses and a 6 percent guaranteed return for its bank shareholders.

Congress and the President have some input in appointing the Federal Reserve Board, but the Board works behind closed doors with the regional bankers, without Congressional oversight or control. Bank CEOs actually sit on the boards of the Fed’s twelve branches. As just one recent example of the private control of public monies, in March of this year the New York Federal Reserve agreed in private weekend negotiations to advance $55 billion of the people’s money so that JPMorgan Chase could buy Bear Stearns at the bargain basement price of $2 a share, down from a high of $156 a share. It was a hostile takeover, not approved by the Bear Stearns shareholders or the American voters. JPMorgan Chase is the bank founded by John Pierpont Morgan, who sponsored the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Jamie Dimon, the current CEO of JPMorgan Chase, sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which dominates the twelve Federal Reserve Banks; and he has huge stock holdings in JPMorgan Chase. His participation in the decision to give his bank $55 billion in Federal Reserve loans is the sort of conflict of interest that federal statute makes a criminal offense; but there is no one to prosecute the statute, because the banking lobby is too powerful to be denied. The banking lobby is powerful because private bankers, not the government, create our money and control who gets it. (See Ellen Brown, “The Secret Bailout of JPMorgan,” May 13, 2008, www.webofdebt.com/articles; and “What’s the Difference Between Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns?”, June 14, 2008, ibid.)

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was a major coup for the international bankers. They had battled for more than a century to establish a private central bank in the United States with the exclusive right to “monetize” the government’s debt; that is, to print their own money and exchange it for government securities or I.O.U.s. The Federal Reserve Act authorized a private central bank to create money out of nothing, lend it to the government at interest, and control the national money supply, expanding or contracting it at will. Representative Charles Lindbergh Sr. called the Act “the worst legislative crime of the ages.” He warned prophetically:

“[The Federal Reserve Board] can cause the pendulum of a rising and falling market to swing gently back and forth by slight changes in the discount rate, or cause violent fluctuations by greater rate variation, and in either case it will possess inside information as to financial conditions and advance knowledge of the coming change, either up or down.

“This is the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands of a special privilege class by any Government that ever existed. . . . The financial system has been turned over to . . . a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people’s money.

“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man’s throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislatures; there are those who maintain International propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us into granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.

“These twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this Country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions.”

Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.

Home

eigentlich alles bekannt :cool ....aber so wie jetzt wieder alles abläuft scheinen alle den Kopf in den Sand zu stecken - irgedwann erstickt man eben :rolleyes

...sollen sich nur gegenseitig :haue

Former hedge fund head files against Citigroup: report

Sat Jul 26, 2008 2:52pm EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A former manager of a Citigroup Inc (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) hedge fund has filed a complaint with a British tribunal accusing the bank of causing his fund's demise, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter.

In a sealed complaint filed last month with a state-run employment tribunal, John Pickett, who ran a hedge fund known as CSO Partners that specialized in corporate debt, accuses the bank of pressuring CSO to buy billions of dollars in troubled loans, the newspaper reported.

Pickett said the loans undermined CSO and led to his resignation. Citigroup called the complaint "without merit," the Journal said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bond...625656620080726

....hmmmm :schwitzalso wirklich ganz richtig versteh ich das nicht mehr :rolleyes

SIVs In Australia Eradicated

July 28, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis


The Australians decided, without warning, to zero out their SIV losses totally. This daring move had to be done just like throwing excess weight overboard when a plane is in trouble. Lending via the normal channels is falling to zero, also. But in my next article today, we will discuss the resumption of the Japanese carry trade, a subject of greatest fury here. The US people are seeing public services die rapidly now. Even as we spend record amounts trying to control the entire planet. Which is, incidentally, undergoing a huge rash of bombings by 'terrorists'. Hedge fund hell hounds are howling because of the SEC's restrictions on short sales and of course, their attempt at capitalization via bidding up oil futures is now failing, too. Citigroup's other chairman leaves with over $40 million in severance pay. Tax the rich!


US Markets to Get 'NABBED' - Straight to Hell

NAB, National Australia Bank, was just forced to write down over ninety percent of its exposure to US mortgages via so-called SIV’s or conduits last Friday, to the order of $830 million dollars. This was by no means a matter of choice for NAB. The bank had just issued and sold $850 million worth of new debt paper. Buyers of that debt are now screaming bloody murder. They are asking why this information, which surely must have been known to the bank at the time of the debt sale, was not disclosed to the market beforehand. They are now demanding their money back or some other way to back out of the deal.

Yet, what happened to this single Australian bank is nothing compared to what will happen to US equity and bond markets when they wake up on Monday morning, July 28, 2008. Robert Gottliebsen of The Business Spectator, an Australian financial news and analysis portal, wrote a commentary pointing to the possible consequences of NAB’s write-down.

This storm began last July. I warned about the consequences of the shift in the value of the yen from 127 to the dollar to the yen rising to around 96 to the dollar. This caused a massive global train wreck. To this day, the participants in this mess have been steadfast in refusing to connect the end of the carry trade from the Bank of Japan with the resulting banking collapse in the G7 nations. More about that later. Right now, the big issue is how this stupid Japan carry trade working in tandem with the Federal Reserve dropping interest rates to Japanese levels: both of these forces fueled one of the biggest joint corporate/housing bubbles in history. All over the planet, not just in the US, suddenly housing 'values' shot to the moon.

In Europe, England, the US, northern Africa, Asia, South America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, everywhere on earth saw this exact same housing bubble. Now, it is popping. This is due to two factors: people's incomes fell far behind the cost of housing to the point, the principal could no longer rise no matter how low the lending costs. The other factor is the end of the Japanese carry trade. Which, incidentally, has resumed this week. Not roaring ahead like in 2004 but it has revived somewhat. The yen is still too strong for it to be a done deal.

Australia's attempt at simply shoveling this mess off the cliff is predicated on the possibility of the Japan carry trade refueling the lending markets. This is how I see it: once all these crummy SIVs are dumped into the Pacific, the banks no longer have them on the books and can now restart lending! Isn't that cute? And the hit isn't direct since they can now all go to the Bank of Japan for easy loans that will refill the tanks at home with more red ink that can happily continue flowing over Australia. For everyone on earth is addicted to easy credit! If the Japanese credit was realistic, there would be no carry trade.

Japan has inflation! They can't have zero interest rates!

http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/

Government tries to stop short selling:

Wall Street executives expect the Securities and Exchange Commission to extend the temporary limits it has placed on short-selling and expand them to cover additional stocks beyond the 19 financial companies it targeted two weeks ago. The limits are set to expire Tuesday, and executives, lobbyists and hedge-fund representatives of the Managed Funds Association, the biggest hedge-fund industry group, have been talking throughout the weekend, trying to come up with possible approaches to asking the SEC to reconsider expanding the rules, according to people familiar with the talks. A call with regulators on Friday gave the funds group "a fair degree of certainty" that the SEC intends to seek an extension of the emergency period, these people said. Regulators said an extension could be for as short as 60 days and could involve insurance, housing-industry and a broader range of financial stocks, according to these people. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox indicated last week the rules might be extended to all stocks. :eek :eek :eek (all stocks - wer's glaubt :rolleyes)

And here is confirmation that the SEC is finally getting enough support to impose controls on short trades. Short trades should not exist. They are a problem, not a solution. Insane amounts of fake wealth was created via this hole in the system. This money is very volatile. It also contributes directly to inflation. The profits are not 'capital' or printed dollars, it is pure made-up bookkeeping numbers. No value-added labor or production is involved. It is pure money creation which is why the gnomes adore this. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are now in danger from this system they love. They, themselves, are now shark bait! So they have run off to the government for protections which they denied their own victims in the past. (...die werden's sicherlich wieder zu ihren Gunsten zu richten wissen :bad)

Note that they wanted this protection to be LIMITED. Not legal rule for all time. The SEC is doing this to them and they hate it but they can't stop the SEC or they will be eaten up by short traders. They want a temporary fix that vanishes when they resume short selling others. This is VERY lucrative! Very. So they are torn in two, hoping to resume the status quo after suspending it selectively to protect their own asses.

http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/


....da kann man ja gespannt sein wie dieses ganze Schlamassel enden wird :schwitz

...irgendwann muss doch dieser Irrsinn einmal aufhören :mad


Citi paying departing Klein $42.6 million

(Reuters) - Citigroup Inc agreed to pay departing executive Michael Klein about $42.6 million, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday. Klein, a former investment banking head, is receiving roughly as much as the bank awarded Charles Prince, the Citi chairman and chief executive, who retired in November as the bank prepared to post billions of dollars of write-downs.

But Klein's payout comes at a cost: under the agreement, he cannot work for, advise, or solicit clients for 12 major commercial and investment banks through October 4, 2009. He also cannot solicit or hire Citi employees during that period.

This is all the result of those stupid tax cuts. The gnome community loved these cuts and have exploited this historic opportunity to renege on paying for the government that feeds them. Yes, it feeds them! They benefit from deficit spending, hugely benefit. Not only do they not pay taxes, this spending is for THEM. They get government contracts and government hand outs. The 'privatization' scam they pushed is enriching them and making everyone else poorer...IN THE FUTURE. This is significant! Being gnomes, they don't care if this destroys everything in the future. Their motto is, 'Eat, drink and rip off everyone!' So they are happy so long as this process benefits them. If it grinds them down, they halt the system and fix it until they can resume their negative actions that grind down everyone else.

This is why I call them traitors. Since most of our budget deficit is, by definition, caused by 'defense' spending that doesn't protect Americans, this is an overhead that does NOT benefit us at all! It benefits them. They are 'internationalists' in that they don't care about America, they care about themselves. They certainly don't love European or Asian workers! They despise Africans and South American peasants! This is for THEM, not any of us. So we have the tragic situation where the US taxpayers get to foot the future bills for all this and the rich get rewarded with multi-million dollar golden parachutes after they wreck everything they ran. Citibank is bankrupt. It limps along because the Saudis don't want it to sink. But it is dead in the water. Giving this huge handout to a ridiculous man who screwed everything up is pure insanity. He should be taxed at the old 90% rate. All executives should be taxed at this rate. Then they might stop this nonstop looting.

http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/

IMF sees no end in sight to credit crisis

By Krishna Guha in Washington

Published: July 28 2008 15:45 | Last updated: July 28 2008 15:45

Global financial markets are “fragile” and indicators of systemic risk remain “elevated” almost a year into the credit crisis, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.

The fund warned credit growth in the US could fall further as a result of ongoing financial system stress and warned that emerging markets would be tested as global financing conditions tighten and policymakers grapple with rising inflation.

The IMF also noted that house prices had softened in a number of European economies including the UK, raising the possibility of further problems in those markets.

The assessment came in the July update to the Global Financial Stability Report, led by former Bank of Spain governor Jaime Caruana.

The IMF said that while likely losses on US subprime mortgages have “largely been acknowledged” in the form of writedowns, financial institutions faced a second wave of losses on other loans.

Credit quality “across many loan classes has begun to deteriorate with declining house prices and slowing economic growth.”

The Fund said bank balance sheets were under “renewed stress” and that the decline in bank share prices had made it more difficult for them to raise new capital.

This “increased the likelihood of a negative interaction between banking system adjustment and the real economy.”

With mounting inflationary pressure, the Fund added: “Policy trade-offs between inflation, growth and financial stability are becoming increasingly important.”.....

full story: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a3deb7da-...?nclick_check=1

...langsam kann einem wirklich Angst und Bange werden :schwitz

Depression Survival 101

-- Posted Monday, 28 July 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com


By James West
www.MidasLetter.com
Monday, July 28, 2008


.....Never mind recession...this is the road to full-scale depression.

At some point, hyperinflation a la 1923 Germany is a very likely possibility. During this period at its worst, one U.S. dollar was equal to 80 billion Mark. Germans used bundles of the notes for firewood because they burned longer than an equivalent amount of firewood that could be purchased with them.

In the spirit of disaster planning, as individuals its beyond time to hope for best and plan for the worst. That said, these are the measures as I see them that will best preserve what equity you may have:


1. If you own any U.S. dollar denominated assets, sell them and put them into gold and silver. As the dollar plummets, these metal prices, expressed in U.S. dollars, will rise, thereby preserving value.

2. If you own your house, sit tight. Don’t sell it and whatever you do, don’t mortgage it. One of the direst outcomes of hyperinflationary or stagflationary periods is high interest rates. Remember the 80’s when interest rates suddenly soared to 20% and beyond. In December of 1980, interest rates averaged 21.50 percent on mortgage loans.


3. If the bank owns your house, you might consider mailing them the keys, and walking away – especially if the mortgage you’re carrying is more than your house is valued at. If you think it’s a struggle now trying to make ends meet, just wait til food and energy prices continue their upward trajectory, and the U.S. dollar purchasing power continues its downward trajectory. Besides, having a bad credit rating rating for seven years might just be the discipline you need so that “no” becomes part of your vocabulary again. No matter that you’re being told no instead of saying no yourself. Consider it “rehabilitation”.

4. If you own anything that consumes lots of gasoline or diesel, sell it. I’m riding around on a scooter these days that costs me about $40 a month in fuel. Takes some getting used to, especially on rainy days, but it’s the best hedge against high gas prices yet.

One important thing to bear in mind.

Right now, it may not look like things are so bad. Sure we’re in a spot of trouble, but it will be no more than dealing with a hangover after a particularly exuberant party that goes on for too long. That would be a normally optimistic approach.....

full story: http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1217259929.php

Now this has to be scary ...
 

wir sind gespannt auf die Worte

4dabopper :verbeug
Midas Member



The White House on Monday predicted a record deficit of $490 billion for the 2009 budget year, a senior government official told CNN.


The White House blames a faltering economy and the stimulus package for the increased budget deficit.

The deficit would amount to roughly 3.5 percent of the nation's $14 trillion economy.

The official pointed to a faltering economy and the bipartisan $170 billion stimulus package that passed earlier this year for the record deficit.

The fiscal year begins October 1, 2008.

The federal deficit is the difference between what the government spends and what it takes in from taxes and other revenue sources. The government must borrow money to make up the difference.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak publicly ahead of an official briefing later Monday by Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle.

President Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion when he took office in 2001 but has since posted a budget deficit every year.

The Bush administration has spent heavily on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and faces a large budget shortfall in tax revenue because of Bush's tax cuts and a souring economy.

But the senior administration official says the budgetary problems stem from what is believed to be inadequate defense, intelligence and homeland security resources that were handed down from President Bill Clinton.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in March projected the deficit for the 2008 fiscal year, which ends September 30, would be $396 billion. It predicted the 2009 deficit to be $342 billion, if the president's proposals were adopted


It would cost at least $140 billion to repair all the nation's bridges if work began immediately, a nationwide safety organization said in a comprehensive report Monday. The report was released days before the first anniversary of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The price tag will rise if the repairs are delayed, the group said.
"States simply cannot keep up with bridge maintenance," the report warns, adding that 73 percent of U.S. road traffic -- and 90 percent of truck traffic -- travels over state-owned bridges.
Nearly one in four bridges needs repairs, and the average age of America's bridges is 43 years -- seven years shy of the maximum age for which most are designed, according to the report, titled "Bridging the Gap."
One in five U.S. bridges is more than 50 years old, the report says.
"Almost one in four bridges, while safe to travel, is either structurally deficient, in need of repair, or ... too narrow for today's traffic volumes," the report from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials said.
It was released days before the first anniversary of the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which killed 13 people and injured 144.
The report identifies five main problems facing the nation's 590,000 bridges: age, congestion, soaring construction costs, lack of funds for maintenance and "the staggering costs of new bridges."
Rising oil prices have contributed to an increase of at least 50 percent in the price of steel, asphalt, concrete and earthwork over the past 2½ years, the report says, forcing repair delays.
"Thirty months of unprecedented construction inflation are forcing state officials to delay important bridge replacement projects," the report stated. "Nearly every state faces funding shortages," it says, preventing them from doing work to "keep their bridges sound indefinitely."

:rolleyes 3. Welt lässt grüssen :rolleyes

vom YahooBoard

Drill , drill , drill ..... 28-Jul-08 01:24 pm and blame , blame , blame. Why didn't Bushy start an energy independence initiative the day after 9-11? He showed real leadership!!! Then he started a self serving war for him and his fellow oil men. Now Mccain is blaming Obama for gas prices and leading the charge to drill some more. We deserve what we have and what awaits us in the future if we put these right wing idiots back in office.

REDEN ist SILBER ...
 

... wir sind gespannt auf die Worte

source: Dave Hensley

When Paulson speaks, it's like a serial child abductor
and murderer telling an auditorium full of parents
what they should do to keep their kids safe.

This guy has no business being our Treasury Secretary.
He still works for Goldman Sachs. Now he wants to just
walk away from the mess that Goldman and others made,
leave it lying there for someone else to clean up, and
start this new scam. With gangsters like Paulson in
leadership positions, America is surely screwed.

:mad

Record deficit expected in 2009

It's yore money! The Bush ecomnitude:

The White House has increased its estimate for next year's deficit to nearly $490 billion -- half a trillion dollars -- as the economic outlook darkens, a record figure that will saddle the ... would be the highest number ever recorded.

Fucked fact: it doesn't include the costs of the war(s). http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/budget_deficit

In a related story, McCain's kid is cutting-and-running from his positions on two Nevada bank boards, just ahead of the investigations ---> McCain's son resigns from two Boards of DirectorsPublished: Sunday July 27, 2008
http://rawstory.com//news/2008/McCa...oards_0727.html

Yin-Yang
 

quote lunar


die Verflechtungen sind nicht zu leugnen,

even ...

" I welcome ... Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase
and Wells Fargo, that they intend to establish covered bond
programs ... with these new practices.

We applaud these banks ... for recognizing ..." :zz


http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/hp1101.htm

I THINK WALL STREET MIGHT HAVE A PROBLEM



......and this is next….

:rolleyes

Merrill says Lehman faces Q3 loss, $2.5 bln writeoff UpInArms Jul-28-08 09:47 AM #31
Merrill pointing the finger at Lehman. What a joke. Joanne98 Jul-28-08 10:37 AM #39

After the Bell: Merrill to take $5.7 billion mortgage asset write-down UpInArms Jul-28-08 07:11 PM #78

...die FED wird wohl bald noch mehr ins Schleudern kommen - wenn sich die Wallstreeter gegenseitig in die Pfanne hauen :o

George Orwell as Ghost Writer for Henry Paulson [video]



-- Posted Tuesday, 29 July 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com

COUGH: LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

....ob man ein Nachtsichtgerät brauchen wird :rolleyes

******************************



Die Doping-Last der Vergangenheit

Rekorde annullieren: Wie und weshalb Ines Geipel eigene Welt- oder deutsche Rekorde aus den Büchern tilgen will. »mehr
Doping-Beispiele: Es begann lange vor Ben Johnson – die prominentesten Dopingfälle an Olympischen Spielen. »mehr

«Das grosse Drama
kommt erst noch»

Ines Geipel könnte sich als Literaturprofessorin ein gemütliches Leben einrichten, stattdessen kämpft die ehemalige DDR-Weltklasse-Sprinterin an vorderster Front gegen Doping. «Peking ist der Fluchtpunkt von Kommerz und Betrug», ist die 48-jährige Berlinerin überzeugt.....

....Ines Geipel, am 8. August beginnen in China die Olympischen Spiele. Wie viele Dopingtests werden positiv ausfallen? Natürlich werden es die saubersten Olympischen Spiele, die die Welt je gesehen hat.

Sie sind eine Zynikerin.
Was wollen Sie denn hören? 99 Prozent der weltweit umgesetzten Steroide (mit männlichen Geschlechtshormonen vergleichbar, Anmerkung der Redaktion) stammen aus China. Die Welt-Anti-Doping-Agentur (Wada) schätzt, dass China 70 bis 80 Prozent des Schwarzmarkts für Wachstumshormone bestreitet. Und nirgends lässt sich das Dopingmittel Epo, das die Produktion von roten Blutkörperchen anregt, billiger herstellen als in China. Seit Neustem wissen wir auch, dass in chinesischen Krankenhäusern Gendoping praktiziert wird......

ganzer Artikel: http://www.migrosmagazin.ch/index.cfm?id=28902

Finnfan (1000+ posts) Tue Jul-29-08 07:18 AM
Response to Reply #5 13. "The Big Picture" blog raises some important questions about Merrill The Merrill announcement raises a lot of questions. Investors should be asking questions. If the SEC wasn't so busy chasing rumors, squeezing shorts, and otherwise wasting taxpayer money -- but not protecting shareholders -- they might consider some of the following questions also:

1. Why did Merrill fail to disclose this write-down to shareholders when they reported on July 17th? The stock was $30.73 then; everyone who bought since then just got totally sandbagged.

2. The Financials -- especially Merrill -- traded today as if many people knew this was coming. How much non-public information leaked in advance of this announcement? (Isn't non-public material inside information something the SEC used to care about?)

3. Who really thinks the worst of the write-downs, share issuance, and dilution is behind us? Anyone? Bueller? (These CDOs were vintage 2005. That means we have 06 and 07 yet to go).

4. Anyone think Financials are cheap? You cannot trust the "E," and the "P" is obviously subject to change. Think they might get cheaper?

5. Who really thinks the Financials have put in a bottom?

There is no doubt as to who foisted these losses on Merrill: Rumor-mongers, Short-sellers, and al-Qaeda. Management obviously had nothing to do with this. Hence, the SEC should be spending most of its budget, manpower, and time investigating those issues.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/07/merrills...

....es wird doch nicht irgendwo win Leck sein :gruebel :ironie

...hilft vielleicht ein wenig in diesem Dschungel :rolleyes hoffentlich :schwitz

Posted On: Monday, July 28, 2008, 6:07:00 PM EST

In The News Today

Author: Jim Sinclair


Jim Sinclair’s Commentary

The definition of a covered bond in Europe is a vehicle akin to a SIV which is primarily securitization again of conglomerated mortgage income flows as OTC derivatives.

Covered bonds are debt securities backed by cash flows from mortgages or public sector loans. They are similar in many ways to asset-backed securities created in securitization, but covered bond assets remain on the issuer’s balance sheet.

Essentially, a covered bond is a corporate bond with recourse to a pool of assets that, in a perfect world where trust between lenders was high, secures or "covers" the bond if the originator (usually a financial institution or the property owner) becomes insolvent.

These have been common in Germany for many years where they are known as Pfandbrief, known recently as SIVs.

Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
Statement on Covered Bond Best Practices

Washington - Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming today. Joining me on stage are FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh, OCC Comptroller John Dugan and OTS Director John Reich. We also welcome representatives from Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. I will make a few remarks, my colleagues will also address you and then Jeff Brown with Bank of America will speak.

As we are all aware, the availability of affordable mortgage financing is essential to turning the corner on the current housing correction. And so we have been looking broadly for ways to increase the availability and lower the cost of mortgage financing to accelerate the return of normal home buying and refinancing activity.

The housing government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, and the Federal Housing Administration are funding more than 70 percent of residential mortgages during these months of market stress. They must continue to be active here.

At the same time, private-label securitization, another important source of mortgage finance, has become severely strained and credit conditions have tightened. In addition to securitization done by housing GSEs, private mortgage-backed securitization benefits the American consumer and our markets. The private-label market will evolve in response to current challenges, and I expect it to return with greater risk-awareness and investor discipline. We also believe it is useful to explore additional mortgage financing options to complement more traditional funding models.

More…

Pfandbrief ---> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfandbrief