Chertoff Says Change in Presidency Fuels Terror `Vulnerability'
By Jeff Bliss




Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the U.S. may be vulnerable to a terrorist attack during the next six months, with violent groups more likely to try to take advantage of a new president and administration.

``Any period of transition creates a greater vulnerability, meaning there's more likelihood of distraction,'' Chertoff said in an interview. ``You have to be concerned it will create an operational opportunity for terrorists.''

He said that would be true whether Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain is elected president on Nov. 4. That comment undercuts McCain's argument that the U.S. would be more in danger of an attack if Obama, 47, wins.

McCain, 72, has been citing remarks by Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden on Oct. 19 that ``it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,'' should Obama win the White House. :rolleyes

``We don't want a president who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars,'' McCain said today at a rally in Bensalem, Pennsylvania......

full story: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...p6cg&refer=home

.....diesen Biden versteh ich nicht - was will er denn damit erreichen :rolleyes man kann ja auch etwas herbei reden :mad

Tue 21 Oct 2008

The Unfreezing Of The Economy Is Nigh

Posted by alyx under markets



…or the meltdown, depending on how you want to look at it. From voices4democracy:

On October 29, 2008, the 79th anniversary of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression in 1929, artists Ligorano/Reese will meltdown the “Economy.”

In a new, time-based event, called Main Street Meltdown the artists will install the word “Economy,” carved in ice, in Foley Square, using the New York Supreme Court as a back drop.

The event begins on Wednesday, October 29th at 9 AM and will last 24 hours.

The artists chose Foley Square, close to the heart of Wall Street, as the site to focus on the timeliness of the financial crisis in the final week of the presidential campaign. The artists refer to Main Street Meltdown as a “temporary monument.”

I guess Foley Square is close to Wall Street the same way that only booking 10 billion dollars worth of writedowns is close to being a good quarter, but I digress. The artists go on to claim it “metaphorically captures the results of unregulated markets on the U.S. economy,” but I am a capitalist sellout, so I think Jamie Dimon and Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke and Vikram Pandit and, hell, even Nancy Pelosi should go to Foley Square, hold hands, sing KUMBAYA and celebrate this as if it heralds the unfreezing of our credit markets, and just go ahead and totally nationalize the symbolism because they are all kind of into, you know, nationalizing things.

:eek :gruebel.

PersonalLiberty.com, America’s #1 news site for independent minded individuals is conducting an urgent economic poll. We want to know if you think the $700 Billion Bailout will be good for America and help rescue our countries housing market, stock market and ailing financial system.

The results of the poll will be available to you after you submit your vote and we’ll also share the poll results with major media outlets across the country. Thousands will vote, so take a moment right now to stand up and be counted… your opinion matters!

1) Who is to blame for America’s current economic crisis? Democrats and US Congress
The Bush Administration
Wall Street
Banks and sub-prime lenders
Real estate and mortgage professionals
Investors
Home buyers 2) Do you agree a government bailout was the answer to America’s financial crisis? Yes
No
Undecided 3) Do you believe the American taxpayers should have to foot the bill for our financial systems mistakes? Yes, we have to or we’ll end up in a prolonged recession or worse a depression.
No, America is too far in debt already.
Absolutely not, the American people should never be responsible for bailing out the private sector.
Undecided 4) Do you believe the government bailout will ultimately rescue our countries financial system? Yes
No
Undecided 5) Which candidate is better suited to handle the countries future economic policy? John McCain
Barack Obama
Neither 6) Which candidate will you be voting for in November? John McCain (Republican)
Barack Obama (Democrat)
Bob Barr (Libertarian)
Ralph Nader (Independent)
Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party)
None of the Above

http://www.personalliberty.com/poll....php?SC=BLL1110 <---VOTE :cool hmmm :schwitz gilt wohl nur für Amis

Lehman default swaps still pending, DTCC says



By MarketWatch
Last update: 11:42 p.m. EDT Oct. 21, 2008
Comments: 118


This update corrects and clarifies that final settlement is still pending.


NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- An industry clearing organization said late Tuesday that it was still awaiting final results from the settlement of Lehman Brothers' credit-default swaps, a massive financial transfer that would add significant support to a recovery in the credit markets.....

full story: http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Sto...E434BFC983E}<b>

^N225
Nikkei 2258,674.69 3:00AM ET 631.56 (6.79%) :eek:rolleyes

.

johndoe
Registered User

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/play...nce&ch=1316259

It is too funny to listen especially when he says that there are a lot of executives who just got out of school recently and they still have college loans so not paying them millions in bonuses would put them in a hard way

Maybe it is just a dream and I am going to wake up because reality is overtaking fiction.

Tell me it is just a dream!

p.s: whoever who understand what's going on and go to VOTE for any of those clowns/gangsters on Nov. 4th and after is a MAJOR IDIOT.

Wed 22 Oct 2008

Sarkozy In Search Of SWFs

Posted by alyx under markets , sovereign wealth



Sovereign wealth funds, not single white females. Carla Bruni would probably cut him one. I found this on ContrarianProfits:

Addressing the European Parliament, President Sarkozy implored his European contemporaries to embrace the current period of economic upheaval as an opportunity to restructure the global financial system. According to the Daily Telegraph, he also articulated the concern of many Western authorities that sovereign wealth funds, located primarily in Asia and the Middle East, could use their massive cash reserves to scoop up key foreign assets at extraordinarily low valuations.

“Stock markets are at historic lows. I do not want European citizens to wake up a few months from now and discover that European companies belong to non-European capital which has bought at the lowest point of the stock exchange,” Sarkozy said. “I would ask that all of us consider how interesting it would be to set up sovereign funds in each of our countries – and maybe these national sovereign funds could now and again coordinate to give an industrial response to the crisis.”

Good article, very technical, but I’ll summarize it: Sarkozy wants European countries to do what China and Abu Dhabi have done, that is, take their substantial foreign exchange reserves and invest it in something, like banks, or ports, or croissant factories, because otherwise China is going to swoop in and buy all the croissant factories and who knows what will happen.

The problem, of course, is that China and Abu Dhabi have money in reserve, while most European countries kinda do not:

Critics of Sarkozy’s request point out that Europe lacks adequate funding to create its own SWFs. The funds that sprang from Asia and the Middle East in recent years have huge pools of foreign exchange reserves and petrodollars to draw from. European nations don’t have these stockpiles of cash.

“We simply don’t have the money,” Joerg Kraemer, chief economist at Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG (CRZBY) told Bloomberg.

So yeah, I have no idea how Sarkozy plans to fund the SWFs. Maybe he can take a metal detector with him when he’s out on the beach with Carla.

Wed 22 Oct 2008

McDonalds Is The American Economy’s Only Hope

Posted by alyx under markets



…and, looking at sales from across the globe, perhaps the only hope for the world. McDonalds (MCD) issued a hearty, artery-cloggin’ round of earnings this morning, beating estimates handily. From TheStreet:

The fast-food restaurant giant reported third-quarter net income of $1.19 billion, or $1.05 a share, rising from $1.07 billion, or 89 cents a share, in the same quarter a year earlier. Results handily beat analysts’ average forecast of 98 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Revenue rose 6% to $6.27 billion from $5.9 billion in the year-ago quarter, coming in ahead of Wall Street’s average target of $6.18 billion.

Despite a global economic downturn, McDonald’s said that every global market saw an increase in same-store sales. In the U.S., comparable sales rose 4.7%, while Europe saw an 8.2% increase in same-store sales. Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa’s segment saw strength in the third quarter fueled by a 7.8% comparable sales rise.

Their CEO Jim Skinner was happy to remind us that soon this will be our only source of sustenance:

“As we enter the final quarter of the year, October sales trends remain strong, and I am optimistic about McDonald’s outlook,” said CEO Jim Skinner in a statement.

A strong dollar will probably hit future earnings from the aforementioned foreign markets, but assuredly our desperation to find a hot meal for less than $3 will more than make up for it.

...hoffentlich müssen die auf die Knie für ein Glas Wasser und ein Stück Brot :gomad

DAILY REPORT (10/22/08)

The Secretary of the Treasury made a special guest appearance at the New York Stock Exchange and the markets responded by rallying from 235 points down to almost unchanged. It’s nice to be loved! Later on he’ll give an interview regarding China. Supposedly, he told banks to loan out government money earlier today, but if the banks don’t want to, and it appears they don’t, there is really nothing he can do to force them. Meanwhile, Bernanke announced the Money Market Funding Facility, whereby the Fed will buy CD’s and commercial paper from funds and US companies. The market was up slightly when the announcement was made, and then sold off more than 200 points, before Paulson’s visit turned things around. The Fed plan will require another US $500 billion of taxpayer money, as the bailout frenzy continues. On a separate note, Mr. Kerkorian apparently concluded that his investment in Ford Motor Co. is a lost cause, and will sell his stake in the company. I have been of the opinion that both Ford and GM will end up in bankruptcy court sooner or later, and I suspect Kerkorian’s exit may be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I do not know how long it will take for investors to wake up to the reality that things are now out of control. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that most calculators do not go up to the trillion mark, but most Americans are truly oblivious to what is going on around them. It seems as if they believe that some sort of divine intervention will fend off the inevitable. In three separate plans the Treasury is spending US $700 billion, while the Fed is spending US $1.4 trillion, and no one seems to question where this money is coming from. Just as a piece of general information, the Fed does not have US $1.4 trillion to spend, but why let a little detail like that hold you back. The entire US budget for 2008 was just one-third of this, and yet we all go to sleep firm in the belief that it will turn out just fine. In fact, the Fed should be applauded for getting inflation under control (sarcasm here).

What is lost on the American public is not lost on the Dow though, and even though it is not falling as fast as some of us would like (sounds terrible, I know), the Fed and Paulson are not getting any kind of return on their “investment”. I will even go so far



as to make a prediction and say that things will get a lot worse, before they get better. As you can see in the Dow’s daily chart above, price is being compressed into a triangle with the top being close to 9,222 and the bottom close to 8,613 and both are also Fibonacci numbers......
ebo@dtanalysis.com
Dow Theory Analysis SAC
October 19, 2008


full story: http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorial...dini102208.html

SevereUke
Registered User

Here's a good interview that will explain what is going on, start buying on the cheap.


Headline : October 21, 2008 : [10-21-08 6:40PM]

Light at the End of the Tunnel? BNN interviews Don Coxe, global portfolio strategist, BMO Financial Group.

http://watch.bnn.ca/headline/octobe...008/#clip104894

...ja dann hoffen wir wieder mal :schwitz

florida08 (17 posts) Wed Oct-22-08 03:20 PM
Response to Original message 75. I don't think the Dow should have ever been at 14K. I was a hollow rate based on bogus loans and credit default swaps. Had the market not been so manipulated the fall would not have been so steep. Still thinking it will go back to 7500 where it was after 9/11. At least I'm hoping it will stop there.

:rolleyes

October 22, 2008 Mid-Day Stock Indexes Review

....ach wäre ich doch ein Chartist :gruebel ;)

Lloyds chief tells staff: you'll still get bonuses

The chief executive of Lloyds TSB, one of the banks participating in the £37bn bank bail-out, has promised staff they will receive bonuses this year despite Gordon Brown's promise of a crackdown on bankers' pay following the investment by taxpayers. Eric Daniels has told employees that the historic government intervention will not change the behaviour of Lloyds, which is in the throes of the rescue takeover of HBOS brokered by the prime minister.

Arrest them all :supi

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

End The Fed Demonstrations November 22


10/22/2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis


The confiscations of systems and wealth generating locations is beginning. The US has opened yet another window into the awful nothingness of the Cave of Wealth and Death. The 'rescue' amounts are now well over $2 trillion and rising weekly. The 90% losses from Lehman's collapse in the CDO markets is still not being acknowledged nor examined realistically. Bush promises MORE 'free trade' as he and other rulers push yet again for more of the Doha Round process to finish its job of killing the US industrial base. All the taps are wide open and all of this future wealth is vanishing today. Hedge funds are failing fast due to not being hedges at all but scams. The global trade collapse is confusing many mainstream commentators who would love to think that all is basically well, this is just some sort of odd glitch. It is not.....

viel zu lesen ---> http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/

Wed 22 Oct 2008

Downer

Posted by alyx under markets
[6] Comments


The DOW closed down 514, S&P broke below nine hundo, sucks. Mr. Peanut (who belongs to my friend Tina over at Fashionism) was NOT impressed.

For the trading types, I noticed today that the general trend of “whatever the market is doing going into the last hour gets exacerbated hardcore by the end of the day” remained intact, but that we pulled out of the tailspin a little bit in the last 10-15 minutes instead of closing down, say, 700. Wonder who was buying.

Originally Posted by Cyclist
What we are seeing is a major deflationary push down in all asset categories.
To ask if I ever expected this to happen,yes and no.Yes ,the hedgefunds
as the banks used the money as a fractional reserve,pushing prices up in all
assets.Now they are bleeding and selling everything what they got,the central banks will have the power to add liquidity by buying what the banks and hedgefunds are selling.With the banks it is already occuring ,next will be the hedgefunds in order to stem the slide.In the process the marginal and non gold producers will get their heads cut off.The only ones now in the energy and gold space who are going to survive, are the ones that are debt free.Making the next run in the commodities an awesome run.Because the demand will not have lessened on a global scale,modern society can not do without energy.I doubt that people living in the city ,will go to an outhouse or get their drinking water from a communal waterfaucet.Government will make funds available ,i.e. printing presses again.Right now the USD index has made a similar run as per ratio at the start of 1991. I computed that 85.85
would be the top if the similarity would hold.Reason for purchasing gold bullion today,the Yen is a seperate matter ,it could derail all currencies,including the US dollar.The country going to benefit most of this melee will be China.It will be able to cash in the US treasuries causing the dollar to get whacked and the long bond interest rates to rise. :rolleyes
When that scenario would happen ,gold will be the only place to be in .

Governments Keep Making Mistakes: Rogers
"The world is unfolding. The American government keeps making mistake after mistake after mistake. Other governments do too. Unfortunately this is going to be a mess," Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings said Wednesday.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=899318909&play=1

.....it is a mess :mad er ist einfach :supi was er über die Verantwortlichen sagt :cool

PSYCHOLOGIE DER FINANZKRISE

Die verrückte Mär vom irren Markt

Chaos an Finanzmärkten bricht immer dann aus, wenn emotionale Psychologie statt rationaler Ökonomie regiert - sagen Ökonomen. Der Psychologe Fritz Strack hält das für eine bequeme Ausflucht: Als ob die menschliche Psyche keinen Regeln folgte! mehr...

...ich meine zwar er gehe etwas sanft mit den Akteuren um :gruebel das Machtgehabe einiger ist nicht zu entschuldigen :mad wobei ich in erster Linie die Exzesse bei den Amis meine, da sieht es schon sehr nach Berechnung aus ---> mal schaun wie weit sich die Welt über den Tisch ziehen lässt :rolleyes:mad

Goldman Sachs to cut 10%, or 3,250, of its jobs: Journal

By Robert Daniel
Last update: 2:55 a.m. EDT Oct. 23, 2008
Comments: 5

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., (GS:Goldman Sachs Group, Inc GS 115.45, -5.90, -4.9%) the New York investment bank, is readying a job cut of 10%, or 3,250 workers, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. The paper reported that the move reflects weakness in investment banking and trading, even as Goldman avoided the mistakes that ruined Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Last month, Goldman's chief financial officer, David Viniar, had said he expected the firm's work force to remain steady or rise through year's end, the paper wrote. But the credit crisis worsened and forced the cuts, the Journal reported.

...da ich ja zu den emotionalen Menschen gehöre (was verheerende Folgen für mein PF hat :rolleyes) sind einige Kommentare ganz in meinem Sinn :o

Die "Krise" folgt einem Fahrplan auch medial perfekt begleitet.

Und wenn die Krisen-Angst der Menschen groß genug ist, kommt durch die Kalte Küche der Vorschlag, dessen Existenz bislang nur Verschwörungsspinnern zugeschrieben wurde...dabei ist das Bestreben mindestens so alt wie das Große Siegel selbst.

Aber nun wird es hoffähig gemacht: Die Zeit von heute

Thu 23 Oct 2008

Greenspan Is Coming To The Hill

Posted by alyx under greenspan



More hearings on Capitol Hill!

Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve for 18 1/2 years, was to be the star witness Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

He faces questions about actions the government took or didn’t take that might have contributed to the boom in subprime mortgages and the subsequent housing market collapse that has led to the loss of billions of dollars in investments.

Meanwhile, Neel Kashkari, the interim head of the government’s $700 billion rescue effort, and other government officials were going before the Senate Banking Committee to lay out their plans for implementing the massive program.

Both hearings were expected to be contentious as lawmakers, already upset about having to vote for the biggest bailout in U.S. history, seek answers to what went wrong and try to determine why the government’s rescue effort, which just cleared Congress on Oct. 3, already has undergone a radical overhaul.

The Fed Chair Formerly Known As The Maestro will probably be called out for leaving interest rates at a near-negligible level and for not being a big fan of regulation. Still, one wonders if it will work out to be more like his FT editorial (”Chairin The Fed, Ur Doin It Rong“) where basically he said if you think you’re ever going to be able to control speculation, well, good luck with that, ok, and speculative bubbles will find a way to build and collapse on their own no matter your fiscal and monetary policy.

.....verwechselt er da nicht Spekulation mit Betrug :rolleyes denn das war nichts anderes mit diesen housing-bubble-CDS-AAArating :mad

und hier habe ich noch einen Artikel gefunden - nicht ganz neu aber leider immer noch brisant:

The Woman Greenspan, Rubin & Summers Silenced

posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 10/09/2008 @ 11:46pm

"Break the Glass" was the code-name high-level Treasury Department figures gave the $700 billion bailout; it was to be used only as a last- resort measure.

Now millions have been sprayed and damaged by broken glass.

But more than a decade ago, a woman you're likely never to have heard of, Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission-- a federal agency that regulates options and futures trading--was the oracle whose warnings about the dangerous boom in derivatives trading just might have averted the calamitous bust now engulfing the US and global markets. Instead she was met with scorn(Verachtung), condescension and outright anger by former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers. In fact, Greenspan, the man some affectionately called "The Oracle," spent his political capital cheerleading these disastrous financial instruments......

......What emerges is a story of reckless, willful and arrogant action and behaviour designed to undermine a wise woman's good judgment. The three marketeers' disdain for modest regulation of new and risky financial instruments reveals a faith-based fundamentalist approach to the management of markets and risk. If there is any accountability left in our system, Greenspan, Rubin and Summers should not be telling anyone how to run anything. Instead, Barack Obama might do well to bring back Brooksley Born and promote to his team economists who haven't contributed to the ugly mess we're in.

Comments (56) (sehr interessante Kommentare :cool)

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/370925/the_woman_greenspan_rubin_summers_silenced?rel=hpbox


@schloss - vielleicht braucht es gar keine Verschwörungstheorien - die Borniertheit - Machtsucht - Arroganz - Geldgier - Überheblichkeit der FinanzMafia tut schon alles, damit wir den Bach runter gehen :gomad

Kuwait Traders Protest Market Slide :eek

By Reuters | 23 Oct 2008 | 10:38 AM ET

More than 100 traders and investors demonstrated outside Kuwait's stock exchange on Thursday, demanding the government halt trading and help them cope with losses after another market slide.

"Halt the trading," several brokers shouted, flashing dinar banknotes to highlight what they have lost as they gathered in front of second-largest Arab bourse.

Other angry brokers showed medicines they planned to take to cope with rising stress levels as a result of a slide in the wake of the global financial crisis.

The Kuwait stock market has fallen 33 percent since the start of July, while the Dow Jones shed 26 percent in the same period. Kuwait shares were down 3 percent on Thursday.

"The management of the bourse must do its job and monitor the fall, and government must pump money into the stock market," said dealer Waleed al-Zaabi, one of the protestors.....

http://www.cnbc.com/id/27338203

@lunar

die Borniertheit - Machtsucht - Arroganz - Geldgier - Überheblichkeit

sind doch ideale Voraussetzung für die Schaffung realer Verschwörungen.

zu Opa Greenspan - wie schon lange prophezeit: Er ist der "undertaker" und er hat seine "Aufgabe" perfekt gelöst, er hat ein riesiges Loch geschaufelt, in welches nun das gesamte Finanzsystem beerdigt werden kann.

http://www.thepracticalinvestor.com...ticalinvestor1/

...da habe ich wieder einmal rein gehört - es ist etwas mühsam (vom Ton her) und auch länger und auch nicht eben market positive, leider auch nicht für Gold :( (Interview ist vom 17. Oktober) ....I hope it doesn't go below 700 S+P :rolleyes:schwitzit's going to take years to fix.....we haven't flushed that excess out yet......in 1929 the dumm people lost their money - from 1930 to 32 the smart people lost their money.....

na ja - wieder mal muss jeder selber wissen :gruebel

Thu 23 Oct 2008

In Treasury Securities, Historic Levels Of Fail

Posted by alyx under fail , markets



Allen Short sends me this link to InvestmentNews, for an article that probably includes the word FAIL more times than your average post on LOLFed:

The credit crisis is causing a growing number of delivery failures with Treasury securities.

The latest data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed that cumulative failures hit a record $2.29 trillion as of Oct. 1. The federal settlement period is T+1 (trade date plus one day).

The outstanding U.S. public debt is $10.3 trillion.

“Current [fail] levels are at historic levels,” said Rob Toomey, managing director of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s funding and government and agency securities divisions. “There’s been significant flight to quality” with the market turmoil, he said.

With the strong demand for Treasury securities, “some of the entities that bought Treasuries are not making them available in the [repurchase] market, which is the traditional way to get them,” Mr. Toomey said.

Emphasis mine. Historic levels of fail. EPIC levels of fail.

The important thing to know here is that failure to deliver can make a market illiquid, and the market in US treasuries is NOT a market we want to be illiquid right about now, what with it being how the federal government bankrolls all of our everything.

Furthermore, PATRICK BYRNE ALERT. Naked shorts in the pool:

[S]ome delivery failures are intentional.

As with naked shorting of stocks, naked shorting of Treasuries “allows you to avoid the borrowing costs,” Ms. Trimbath said.

“There can be circumstances in a low-rate environment where it’s cheaper to fail” than deliver, Mr. Toomey said. Such an environment also reduces incentives to act as a lender of securities, he said.

Some of the fail in this article is over the editor’s head, but even I can grasp that a failure-to-deliver rate over 20% is pretty epic. I also have never physically seen a T-bill, if they even exist in physical form and are not merely mystical, like unicorns, and that is why Treasury’s logo is on the boat.

.....wird ja immer schlimmer :rolleyes:schwitz

:rolleyes:(

QQQQ… bearish falling wedge halfway pattern!!!

-> Posted by Rambus @ 14:19 pm on October 23, 2008
The QQQQ is showing a bearish falling wedge that should workout as a halfway pattern if it breaks through the bottom rail. This would coincide with all the other major stock market indexes also breaking down, simultaneously, in one more repeat performance of the last 3 weeks or so. I know it seems unimaginable for another leg down equal to what we just went thru but that is what the charts are saying “IF” we break down through the bottom rail. As soee would say, protect yourself with some puts or something that will help you ride out this historical event we have been witnessing over the last month or so and if your so inclined you can take advantage of the situation by buying an ETF that is short the stock market.
All the best…Rambus


...leider lag dieser Rambus seit langem richtig :(

GLG's Roman, NYU's Roubini Predict Hedge Fund Failures, Panic
By Tom Cahill and Alexis Xydias

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Hedge funds closures will eliminate about 30 percent of the industry, and policy makers may need to shut markets for a week or more to stem panic, according to presentations at an investor conference today in London.

``In a fairly Darwinian manner, many hedge funds will simply disappear,'' Emmanuel Roman, co-chief executive officer at GLG Partners Inc., told the Hedge 2008 conference in London. U.S. regulators will ``find a way to force regulation,'' said Roman, 45, who runs New York-based GLG with Noam Gottesman, 47. The firm was founded 13 years ago as a unit of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and now manages about $24 billion in assets.

Nouriel Roubini, the New York University Professor who spoke at the same conference, said hundreds of hedge funds will fail as the crisis forces investors to dump assets. ``We've reached a situation of sheer panic,'' said Roubini, who predicted the financial crisis in 2006. ``Don't be surprised if policy makers need to close down markets for a week or two in coming days.'' :eek

Many hedge funds have resisted oversight by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, even as policy makers coordinated global interest-rate cuts and bailed out banks this month to try and stem the crisis. The hedge fund industry is stumbling through its worst year in two decades and posted its biggest monthly drop for a decade in September.

``There needs to be some scapegoats, and they are going to go hunt people,'' said Roman, who didn't indicate when new U.S. regulation may take effect. Regulation is ``long overdue,'' he said. In the U.S., ``someone can graduate from college on a Friday and start a hedge fund on a Monday.' :rolleyes.........
full story: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...aOSc&refer=home

Bloomberg (October 23, 2008): Roubini Says `Panic' May Force Market Shutdown

PrintShare Delicious Digg Facebook reddit Technorati

Nouriel Roubini | Oct 23, 2008
Bloomberg October 23, 2008: Roubini Sees Crisis Worsening, Hurting Emerging Markets (click for video)

@Hoka - der Dow innert weniger Minuten 300 rauf - runter - rauf :kopf
mir wäre lieber endlich ein richtiger wash out anstatt dieses fürchterliche Gehampel, mit den "Kleinen2 bleibt man da immer auf der Strecke :grrrr

Zu behaupten, eine solche Marktbewegung sei unüblich, wäre doch stark übertrieben. Wird wohl nicht nachhaltig sein. :rolleyes

Oder ist es Bens neues Fluggerät? :eek

...Bernanke, 54, has already thrown the central bank's balance sheet into action in unprecedented ways. Working with the New York Fed, the Board of Governors has rolled out 11 new programs aimed at absorbing risk or making dollars available when banks don't want to loan....




http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...Sm68&refer=home




Scary_Monsters

Das grosse Abheben beginnt

Nervöse Bankkunden eröffnen Schliessfächer, um ihr Erspartes zu bunkern. Und sie bringen ihr Geld in Bündeln mit, wenn sie ein neues Konto eröffnen.

An die langen Schlangen vor den Goldschaltern haben sich die Banken schon gewöhnt. Neu für sie ist der Andrang im Tresorraum. Zum Beispiel bei der UBS: Sie verzeichnet seit einigen Wochen «auffällige Zuwachsraten» bei der Vermietung von Schliessfächern. So beobachtet das Bankpersonal erstaunt, wie Leute erst ihr Konto plündern und dann bündelweise Hunderter- und Tausendernoten in ihr Schliessfach legen. Vermehren wird sich das Geld dort nicht. Dafür können die Besitzer ruhiger schlafen. Denn was sie im Schliessfach deponieren, sehen sie auch wieder, wenn die Bank plötzlich Pleite gehen sollte.

«Irrational» nennt UBS-Sprecher Andreas Kern dieses Verhalten. «Die gleichen Ängste führen dazu, dass sich die Leute trotz der hohen Preise in Gold flüchten.»:p Den gebeutelten Geldinstituten tun die Kunden keinen Gefallen damit, wenn sie ihr Vermögen einschliessen oder vergolden. Im Gegenteil: Das verschärft nur den Liquiditätsengpass der Banken.

...

Zustände wie in Deutschland herrschten aber noch nicht, versichert Fischer. Dort legt das Geldtransportgewerbe inzwischen Sonderschichten ein, um die Banken mit genügend Barem einzudecken. In Grossstädten muss es Bankomaten, die sonst nur einmal pro Tag nachzufüllen sind, zwei- bis dreimal täglich füttern.
...

http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich.../story/21673955

«Irrational» nennt UBS-Sprecher Andreas Kern dieses Verhalten :dumm
:mad Depp - hätte sich nur die Bank und ihr Management nicht jahrelang so irrrational verhalten :mad


....und der da unten auch :bad
the trick is to make them stay up

-> Posted by puptent @ 23:22 pm on October 23, 2008


who would have guessed greenie was a dog trainer

Putin Warns Against Dollar Buying

23 October 2008Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned against buying dollars Wednesday as the ruble fell to its lowest level in two years against the currency.

The ruble slid for a sixth day against the dollar as oil declined almost 2 percent to $69.46 a barrel.

"It's a dubious business. It's not clear what will happen to the dollar," Putin said, Interfax reported.

The ruble slid as much as 1 percent to 26.98 per dollar, the weakest since Oct. 16, 2006. "There is an overwhelming demand for dollars that the banks are just not able to meet," said Elina Rybakova, chief economist at Citigroup.

The ruble, however, was little changed on Wednesday, as the Central Bank sold about $4.5 billion from its reserves to support the currency. It was at 30.393 against the euro-dollar basket to which it is pegged, from 30.387 on Tuesday.

(Bloomberg, Reuters) - http://www.themoscowtimes.com/artic...9/42/371872.htm

:rolleyes ob's was nützt :confused

Thu 23 Oct 2008

Hey, Bernanke, Was That An Obama Endorsement?

Posted by alyx under bernanke , breaking news

WSJ just came out and said as much:

Ben Bernanke apparently wants four more years as Federal Reserve Chairman :schreck At least that’s a reasonable conclusion after Mr. Bernanke all but submitted his job application to Barack Obama yesterday by endorsing the Democratic version of fiscal “stimulus.”

While the Fed chief said any stimulus should be “well targeted,” even a general endorsement amounts to a political green light. Mr. Bernanke certainly knows that Mr. Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill are talking about some $300 billion in new “stimulus” spending, while President Bush and Republicans are resisting. And by saying any help should “limit longer-term effects” on the federal deficit, he had to know he was reinforcing Democratic opposition to permanent tax cuts.

Maybe he’s worried about job security? Erik Skiles emailed me this LOL on the subject (thanks!):



Federal Reserve political neutrality - fail. I guess the quality of his resume is up to debate, but “Accomplishments: Overshooting Neutral” probably doesn’t sound all that hot.

He who sells what isn't his'n
Must buy it back or go to Prison.

Daniel Drew

schön wär's :bang

Paradeplatz: Hunderte fordern Rückgabe der Boni
Aktualisiert am 23.10.2008

Auf dem Zürcher Paradeplatz haben Hunderte Personen an einer von SP, Grünen und Unia organisierten Kundgebung gegen «die Milliarden-Abzockerei der Banken» demonstriert.....

Video ---> http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich.../story/25131408

Hunderte Demonstranten auf dem Zürcher Paradeplatz (Video Simon Eppenberger, Tagesanzeiger.ch/Newsnetz).


......Gegenleistungen fordern auch die 3200 Personen, die bis am Abend eine am Donnerstag lancierte Internet-Petition der SP und der Jungsozialisten unterschrieben haben. Unter dem Titel «UBS- Petition: Kein Geld ohne Gegenleistung» wird unter anderem verlangt, dass die Banker zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden.Viele Unterzeichnende äussern in Kommentaren ihre Empörung über den teuren, staatlichen Rettungsanker und das Verhalten der Banker. «Das sind die wahren Sozialbetrüger», schreibt ein Teilnehmer. Ein anderer bemängelt, dass man «die grossen Schelme laufenlässt»......


23.10.2008

ZÜRICH

Demonstranten blockieren Eingang von UBS-Gebäude

Wut über üppige Extra-Zahlungen: In Zürich haben mehrere hundert Menschen gegen "die Milliarden-Abzockerei der Banken" protestiert. Für etwa eine Stunde versperrten sie den Zugang zum Gebäude der Schweizer Großbank UBS......

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,586165,00.html

Denninger this morning

-> Posted by floridagold @ 7:53 am on October 24, 2008
Absent something extraordinary, we are going to crash this morning in the stock market.

For real.

No, what you saw earlier this month wasn’t a crash.

This is a crash.

I expect some sort of intervention will be attempted. It won’t work for long, if at all.

I need a drink, and its 5:30 in the morning.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/