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Blunderov
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #30 on: 2008-09-17 18:01:18 »
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[Blunderov] AIG got bailed out. Lehman Bros didn't. Suck it up Lehman Bros! Suck it up taxpayers!

"How much should we suck , oh Lord?"

Good question. I've never been particularly gifted at arithmetic. Logic furrows my brow more than somewhat. But even I can tell that here, right before our starting eyes, there is a most strange and lozenge-shaped affair. Consider.

AIG is about to go belly up. Government steps in and provides great quantities of hapless taxpayer fundage to the said profligate AIG in order that it might live to continue its (some might say nefarious) operations. In return for which; the American public receives an 18% interest in a concern which would have been 100% dead were it not for that investment. By my arithmetic somebody is scoring the other 82% at taxpayer expense. Who are these people?

I think we should be told. 
« Last Edit: 2008-09-17 18:07:04 by Blunderov » Report to moderator   Logged
Walter Watts
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #31 on: 2008-09-17 23:52:42 »
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Quote from: Blunderov on 2008-09-17 18:01:18   

[Blunderov] AIG got bailed out. Lehman Bros didn't. Suck it up Lehman Bros! Suck it up taxpayers!

"How much should we suck , oh Lord?"

Good question. I've never been particularly gifted at arithmetic. Logic furrows my brow more than somewhat. But even I can tell that here, right before our starting eyes, there is a most strange and lozenge-shaped affair. Consider.

AIG is about to go belly up. Government steps in and provides great quantities of hapless taxpayer fundage to the said profligate AIG in order that it might live to continue its (some might say nefarious) operations. In return for which; the American public receives an 18% interest in a concern which would have been 100% dead were it not for that investment. By my arithmetic somebody is scoring the other 82% at taxpayer expense. Who are these people?

I think we should be told. 



I see the problem here Blunderov!

You're using plain old arithmetic, which they don't teach in America anymore.

Now they just let the kids watch MTV Cribs and call it "No Child Left Behind".

On the other hand, Wall Street uses a completely different kind of Martian Calculus, which for some odd reason is not offered ANYWHERE.

Walter
<sucks to be a U.S. taxpayer>

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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #32 on: 2008-09-18 00:59:27 »
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Could the math involve a single digit placed, for the taxpayers convince, where the sun don't shine ?

How long can the government keep printing money before this all tanks ?

Even Japan is propping up its stock exchange.

Sigh

Fritz

PS: like a train wreck I can't look away .....
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #33 on: 2008-09-18 01:15:55 »
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Quote from: letheomaniac on 2008-09-17 08:28:51   
The dismal science becomes gloomier.
<snip>
Economics as the “dismal science” was greatly emphasized in a recent Scientific American article concerned about the  “unscientific assumptions in economic theory…undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.”[1] Economists are great at using wonderful looking graphs, making analysis from obscure esoteric mathematical formulas, finding correlations and calling them cause and effect, and generally trying to convince everyone else that they know what they are doing.
</snip>

[Blunderov] More grist for this mill. Not that there is a shortage of grist; a fact which will, I suppose, drive the price down. The Law of Supply and Demand dictates it shall be so. Not even physicists speak of "Laws" of nature anymore though; they speak instead nowadays of theories. But still in the "science" of Economics we have the "Law" of supply and demand? . Hmm.

http://www.executedtoday.com/2008/09/17/1938-nikolai-kondratiev-purged-economist/

1560: Arnaud du Tilh, alias Martin Guerre
1938: Nikolai Kondratiev, purged economist
September 17th, 2008 Headsman

On this date in 1938, Stalin’s purges claimed Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev.

Not the most recognizable name in the Soviet Union’s 1930’s bloodletting, Kondratiev — also transliterated Kondratieff — was a pre-Keynesian economist of some note, who had a prominent hand in the fledgling USSR’s early agricultural direction.

Thus far goes the portfolio of many a forgotten academic or bureaucrat shot by Stalin.

But Kondratiev made a contribution still much remembered — and one that might just be due to re-emerge from its occult hibernation.

In a series of 1920’s papers, Kondratiev worked out the theory that capitalism had 50-to-60-year economic supercycles. Though not strictly the first to so hypothesize, he put the idea on the map; the (alleged) pattern still bears the name “Kondratiev wave” or “Kondratiev cycle”.

His belief that the intermittent major crises punctuating capitalism were not building towards systemic implosion but clearing the economic debris of bygone ages and allowing new growth were not the least of what got him into hot water with Stalin.

“Creative destruction,” as Joseph Schumpeter would call it, adapting the idea.

Though sidelined from mainline economics for much of the 20th century, Kondratiev waves have never gone entirely out of fashion. Congenial to any number of collateral theoretical hobbyhorses — technological innovation, entrepreneurship, generational psychology, statecraft, and the eternal bracing for end times right around the corner — Kondratiev waves are a niche player in economic theory both conventional and otherwise.

Here’s a site that lovingly describes them.

Its problem, even if you happen to buy into the concept, is its near uselessness as a predictive tool: half-century cycles don’t just arrive like clockwork, and the timing and very existence of particular cyclical epochs is highly dependent on the interpreter’s choice of data. The margins of error run out to decades. You never know at any given moment what you’re looking at — so you can find the supercycle crashing in 1998, or beginning its springtime of growth in this decade.

That very uncertainty accounts for Kondratiev’s intermittent mainstream resuscitation during economic crisis: when worried about Where Things Are Headed, some version of a Long Wave theory is almost sure to have a story to tell.

According to the New York Times‘ database of past articles, the word “Kondratieff” (its preferred transliteration; “Kondratiev” yields stories about New York Rangers prospect Maxim Kondratiev) went essentially unmentioned in the post-World War II paper before appearing in 20 articles from 1973 through 1984 — the period when the capitalist core was buffeted by energy crisis, stagflation, and the punishing Paul Volcker recession of the early Eighties.

And then Kondratiev/Kondratieff faded from the Grey Lady; after a few appearances during Wall Street’s woes in the late 80’s, it doesn’t seem to have appeared in print there since an offhanded reference in a 1992 William Safire column.

Have you seen the news lately? It’s mighty Kondratiev-friendly. His cycle of exclusion has probably just about run its course, and if you’re the wagering type, I’ll take Thomas Friedman against the field.

Behind the theorems, of course, there was the flesh-and-blood man; it so happens that not many dismal scientists went as poignantly as our principal.

Initially imprisoned in 1930, Kondratiev served eight years before he was re-sentenced and executed; he ached for the separation with his family. Kondratiev’s daughter, Elena — Alyona or Alyonushka in the Russian diminutive — preserved his correspondence to her, the only remnants of her father in her life.

The last letter — as it turned out; plainly the writer had no inkling of it — was dated August 31, 1938.

My sweet darling Alyonushka.

Probably your holidays are over now and you are back at school. How did you spend the summer? Did you get stronger, put on weight, get tanned? I very much want to know. And I would like very, very much to see you and kiss you many, many times. I still do not feel well, I am still ill. My sweet Alyonushka, I want you not to get sick this winter. I also want you to study hard, as you did before. Read good books. Be a clever and a good little girl. Listen to your mother and never disappoint her. I would also be happy if you managed not to forget about me, your papa, altogether. Well, be healthy! Be happy! I kiss you without end.

Your papa.

(From Orlando Figes’ The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia.)



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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #34 on: 2008-09-19 08:20:32 »
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[letheomaniac] Now here is something that I didn't think could happen in the United States - squatter camps. Or 'informal sttlements' as the SA government political-correctness machine calls them.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26776283/
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #35 on: 2008-09-22 00:00:14 »
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[Fritz]interesting rambling to warm you up for yet another week of the economic adventures ...

Source :Bloombery
Date: 2008.09.21
Author: Alison Fitzgerald and John Brinsley

Treasury Seeks Asset-Buying Power Unchecked by Courts (Update2)

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration sought unchecked power from Congress to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets.

Through his plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson aims to avert a credit freeze that would bring the financial system and the world's largest economy to a standstill. The bill would prevent courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority.

``He's asking for a huge amount of power,'' said Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University. ``He's saying, `Trust me, I'm going to do it right if you give me absolute control.' This is not a monarchy.''

As congressional aides and officials scrutinized the proposal, the Treasury late yesterday clarified the types of assets it would purchase. Paulson would have authority to buy home loans, mortgage-backed securities, commercial mortgage- related assets and, after consultation with the Federal Reserve chairman, ``other assets, as deemed necessary to effectively stabilize financial markets,'' the Treasury said in a statement.

The Treasury would also have discretion, after discussions with the Fed, to make non-U.S. financial institutions eligible under the program.

The plan would raise the ceiling on the national debt and spend as much as the combined annual budgets of the Departments of Defense, Education and Health and Human Services. Paulson is asking for the power to hire asset managers and award contracts to private companies. Most provisions of the proposal expire after two years from the date of enactment.

Markets `Fragile'

Paulson spent the morning today appearing on the Sunday television talk shows to build public support for his plan. He urged quick approval by Congress, saying financial markets are ``fragile.'' While the plan should have ``mortgage relief components,'' he suggested legislative changes should be kept to a minimum.

``We want this to be clean, we want this to be quick,'' Paulson said on Fox News Sunday.

Speaking on NBC's ``Meet the Press, he said: ``This is not a position where I like to see the taxpayer, but it is far better than the alternative.'' He added that assets bought by the Treasury would later be sold, recovering some money for the government.

A failure by the government to support the U.S. financial system could lead to ``a depression,'' Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat told reporters yesterday. ``To do nothing is to risk the kind of economic downturn this country hasn't seen in 60 years.''

Buyer of Last Resort

The Treasury is seeking authority to step in as buyer of last resort for mortgage-linked assets that few other financial institutions in the world want to buy, following government takeovers of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and insurer American International Group Inc.

``Democrats will work with the administration to ensure that our response to events in the financial markets is swift,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

The majority party will seek to reduce mortgage foreclosures and create ``fast-track authority'' for an overhaul of financial regulation, Pelosi said. Democrats will ensure ``the government is accountable to the taxpayers in any future actions under this broad grant of authority, implementing strong oversight mechanisms.''

The proposal will include curbs on executive pay for the companies whose assets the government will be buying, Steve Adamske, a spokesman for Representative Barney Frank, said yesterday in an interview.

Preventing Foreclosures

Democrats also will include a plan to stem foreclosures, which may involve tapping the loan-modification abilities of the Federal Housing Administration, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Adamske said. Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that while he has misgivings about the rescue plan, ``the consequences of inaction could be catastrophic.''

``While the Bush proposal raises some serious issues, we need to resolve them quickly,'' he said yesterday in a statement. ``I am confident that, working together, we will.''

House minority leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said yesterday he is reviewing the proposal but didn't say whether he was inclined to support it.

``The American people are furious that we're in this situation, and so am I,'' Boehner said in a statement. ``We need to do everything possible to protect the taxpayers from the consequences of a broken Washington.''

Protection for Taxpayers

Congress, which may pass legislation as soon as Sept. 26, needs to ``make sure there are protections built in for taxpayers,'' said Schumer, a New York Democrat on the banking committee. Lawmakers should ensure ``taxpayers who gave the money will be put ahead of the stockholders, bondholders and others.''

Yesterday on Capitol Hill, legislative aides wearing polo shirts and jeans instead of their usual business suits filed into the House Financial Services Committee hearing room to question Treasury officials including David Nason, assistant secretary for financial institutions, and Neel Kashkari, a senior adviser to Paulson and former investment banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where the Treasury secretary was previously chief executive officer.

Paulson is seeking an expansion of federal influence over markets that hasn't been seen since the Great Depression, said Charles Geisst, author of ``100 Years of Wall Street'' and a finance professor at Manhattan College in New York.

Depression Era Agency

Geisst likened the plan to the Reconstruction Finance Corp., which was chartered by Herbert Hoover in 1932 with the goal of boosting economic activity by lending money after credit markets seized up.

President George W. Bush said he called leaders in both houses of Congress and ``found a common understanding of how severe the problem is and how necessary it is to get something done quickly.''

``This is going to be a big package because it's a big problem,'' Bush said following a meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at the White House. ``We need to get this done quickly, and the cleaner the better.''

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said in a radio address that he ``fully supports'' Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's efforts to stabilize the financial system. The plan, however, should benefit both main street and Wall Street, he said.

McCain Comments

Republican Presidential nominee John McCain ``looks forward'' to reviewing the proposal while focusing at least in part on ``minimizing the burden on the taxpayer,'' said Jill Hazelbaker, communications director for the McCain campaign.

The ban on legal challenges of actions by Treasury is ``distasteful, it's unfortunate and it's bad precedent, but this is an emergency and you have to act,'' said Jerry Markham, a law professor at Florida State University and author of ``A Financial History of the United States.''

``What you don't want happen is to have lawsuits that will slow things down and cause problems,'' he said.

The proposal would raise the nation's debt ceiling to $11.315 trillion from $10.615 trillion and require the Treasury secretary to report back to Congress three months after Treasury first uses its new powers, and then semiannually after that.

Paulson would gain discretion to act as he ``deems necessary'' to hire people, enter into contracts and issue regulations related to a revival of U.S. mortgage finance, according to a three-page proposal. The Treasury would ``take into consideration'' protecting taxpayers and promoting market stability.

Reverse Auctions

The Treasury may hire managers to purchase the assets through so-called reverse auctions, seeking the lowest prices, Treasury said yesterday. The document specifies that Treasury may buy only assets issued or originated on or before Sept. 17.

The House will pass legislation to implement the plan by the end of this week, and the Senate will act soon after, Frank said on Sept. 19 in an interview on Bloomberg Television's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt.''

Bush said yesterday he's unconcerned that the price tag on the package may seem high.

``I'm sure there are some of my friends out there that are saying, `I thought this guy was a market guy, what happened to him?''' the president said. ``My first instinct was to let the market work, until I realized, while being briefed by the experts, how significant this problem became.''

The Bush administration seeks ``dictatorial power unreviewable by the third branch of government, the courts, to try to resolve the crisis,'' said Frank Razzano, a former assistant chief trial attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission now at Pepper Hamilton LLP in Washington. ``We are taking a huge leap of faith.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Fitzgerald in Washingtont ; John Brinsley in Washington at jbrinsley@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: September 21, 2008 10:55 EDT
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #36 on: 2008-09-22 02:43:35 »
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[Blunderov] (Plenty of hyperlinks available on site.)

As I think I may have remarked before, the situation is akin to a privately owned casino in which the members, if they lose all their money, are legally permitted to go into the streets and rob the passers by at gunpoint until they have enough money to continue playing again. True, they do issue IOUs. Lots of luck with that little charade. Essentially the taxpayer has gone into massive debt in order to buy a massive debt- and this debt will have to be paid with taxpayer monies.

Hmm.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13489

September 22, 2008 

The American Empire:
Too Big to Fail?
Who gets bailed out – and who doesn't
by Justin Raimondo

In reading about the federal bailout of all those financial wheeler-dealer outfits that are supposedly "too big to fail," the layman may be forgiven for failing to comprehend the intricacies of the arcane financial instruments currently backfiring on their whiz-kid inventors. Such exotic creatures as "credit default swaps" may elude the understanding of the hoi polloi, but one thing the man in the street does know: he'll never be "too big to fail," of that he can be sure.

He's just not the Bear-Stearns type, and Congress would never shell out a penny before he loses his savings and his home, which – due to the propaganda of Panglossian economics, whereby houses stopped being homes and became investments – amount to pretty much the same thing. The paper-pushers of Wall Street made untold trillions out of a policy that was doomed to fail [.pdf] in advance, and whose critics have long predicted would end in precisely the manner our tale of economic woe is unfolding.

The policy of bank credit expansion, which enriches the already wealthy at the expense of the rest of us, has a fatal allure. It induces an initial euphoria, the false promise of permanent prosperity. This Panglossian view is the perfect economic system for an emerging empire, especially one with such inflated pretensions as ours. It is the economics of hubris – the same grandiosity that let us imagine we could implant "democracy" in the arid soil of Iraq and make the desert bloom.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. bestrode the earth like a colossus, America's stock was rising, and the pride that goeth before a fall imbued our leaders with the illusion that they couldn't fail. The American empire, they thought, is too big to fail. It's the end of history – and the rest will just be a mopping-up operation, that will be well worth the costs.

The failed policies that led to our current economic predicament – the whole system of central banking and fiat currency – are precisely those policies that benefited those who are now demanding to be bailed out. They may have bankrupted the country, but you can be damned sure they aren't going down with the rest of us, no sirree!

This outrageous rip-off is mirrored in the foreign policy realm, where the very same crowd that dragged us waist-deep into the Middle Eastern quicksand are lecturing us from every podium. The neocons who brought us the Iraq war are directing John McCain's campaign, hanging on to power for dear life, shamelessly touting their alleged "success" even as the $3 trillion bill comes in and the people ask "For what?' These are the real dead-enders, the ones who believe that George W. Bush never implemented his self-proclaimed "global democratic revolution," but they will.

The same foreign lobbyists who pushed for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by U.S. force of arms have now turned their sights on Iran. The same newspaper columnists and professional know-it-alls who imagined that we would have a quick victory in Iraq – that it would be a "cakewalk," as one of the more arrogant neocons once put it – are still dominating the official discourse with their calls to action on this front and that. Bill Kristol, the little Lenin of the neocons, who made the Iraq war his vocation, was awarded a coveted pulpit on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Other people are demoted for advocating failed policies, but members in good standing of the War Party are promoted. They, too, are too big to fail.

When the bill comes due, American taxpayers – and grieving parents and loved ones of the fallen – will have to pay, while the authors of our suicidal foreign policy get off scot-free.

The war profiteers aren't just the arms manufacturers, the Halliburtons, and the "private" international security firms who do the empire's dirty work. Key to the War Party are the intellectuals who gain prestige and real power over policymaking and public opinion on the strength of their reputations as paladins of interventionism. In some cases, these two types are embodied in the same people, Richard Perle being the exemplar.

In any event, what's becoming increasingly clear is that the bailout brothers are all members of the same clan: think of them as a Mafia family, with a strict hierarchy of authority and command, albeit an informal one. At the top is the Don, finance capital, which controls the engine and sits at the dashboard pressing buttons according to a pattern: first inflation, then deflation, boom then bust, peace and then war again. But the bailout boys always parachute to safety before disaster envelopes the rest of us. Which is why failure only emboldens them.

Our rulers really do believe their empire is too big to fail, but of all the would-be lords of creation, our own ruling elite may have the shortest reign – and the hardest fall. The engine that runs the machinery of imperialism is breaking down at key junctures, and the whole structure is teetering and creaking ominously, as if to presage the coming implosion.

For the truth of the matter is that the very bigness of the American Imperium, the sheer scope of its rulers' ambition, is precisely what is fated to bring about its downfall, and a very messy and painful descent it will surely be. As I relate in Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, during Rose Wilder Lane's eye-opening trip to the Soviet Union in the 1920s she met a Russian peasant who predicted, with perfect accuracy, the fate of the commissars some 70 years later:

"'It's too big,' he said. 'Too big. At the top, it is too small. It will not work. In Moscow, there are only men, and man is not God. A man has only a man's head, and one hundred heads together do not make one great head. No. Only God can know Russia.'"

The problem is that some men think they are gods. In the end, however, we will all pay the price for their hubris – the guilty as well as the innocent – as the American empire meets the fate of its Soviet predecessor, and for the same reason.

~ Justin Raimondo

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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #37 on: 2008-09-22 12:08:25 »
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Stop, Look, Think

For years the government of the USA has argued that healthcare in America cannot be paid for from the public purse, no matter the cost to individuals. That would be socialist and for some reason, this would never do.

For years the government of the USA has argued that pensions in America cannot be paid for from the public purse, no matter the cost to individuals. That would be socialist and for some reason, this would never do.

For years the government of the USA has argued that education in America cannot be paid for from the public purse, no matter the cost to individuals. That would be socialist and for some reason, this would never do.

For years the government of the USA has argued that housing in America cannot be paid for from the public purse, no matter the cost to individuals. That would be socialist and for some reason, this would never do.

So Americans work much harder, are not nearly as happy, pay far more to suffer more untreated diseases, have more homeless, are less educated and struggle financially in their shorter retirements, than the people of any other developed country. Even Cuba does much better than the USA in these areas, even though it is Socialist and even though it has suffered from an ongoing and horribly inequitable, brutally enforced embargo by the United States.

However, the government of the USA now tells us that Banking in America can be paid for by the public purse and that this is just fine. Americans, already up to their eyeballs in debt, now are to saddle the banking community's debts as well; after the management and shareholders have, for decades, absconded with the profits. This is the same government that has already robbed the Social Security system of billions, and proposed privatizing what was left of it. Had that already been achieved, that investment would have vanished too, and every American retiree dependent on Social Security would be more of a pauper than they already are.

Is there something wrong with this picture?

I have a better idea. Don't just let these institutions and the politicians supporting them fail, lead them to the wall. Let their creditors who didn't bother to evaluate the creditworthiness of their borrowers attempt to collect. Let the mortgages be resold and use the already socialized Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to buy them up for pennies on the dollar and sell them back to the homeowners at the new prices, so liquidating the debt that counts. This would go some way towards reestablishing individual taxpayer creditworthiness rather than maintaining a few randomly selected incompetent organizations afloat a little longer.

We can go further than this. Much further.

For years the government of the USA has been prepared to spend massive amounts of money on the most offensive "defense" systems on the planet; along with uncalled for and illegal aggression against other people, usually browner than the Americans deciding to do this. We are prepared to spend billions per month on military incursions, yet we seem reluctant to provide even millions per month in aid, to make the military incursions unnecessary! These policies have resulted in ever increasing anger and hatred against the USA, making us an ever more visible target to blame for many of the ills of the world. Now the USA is spending ever larger amounts of money in a vain attempt to defend itself against potential and indeed probable blowback from this failed policy. Blowback that becomes more likely the poorer the planet becomes. The end of cheap oil guarantees that the planet will become poorer. So the likelihood is that attacks will increase and the immense cost of defending the stingiest country in the world (measured as foreign aid dollars per capita per share of GDP) will become even more unbearable than it is already.

Then too, the government of the USA has sent billions of dollars to Israel where 4 million people live on our largess (with "Socialized" health, housing, education and pension systems!), while simultaneously converting less than 10% of the country into what Tony Blair's sister-in-law, Lauren Booth, has called "the largest concentration camp in the world today" for the massively oppressed other half of the population. Lauren Booth compares, like Bishop Tutu and President Carter, the results to the WWII holocaust of the Jews of Europe. Meanwhile, half of the Palestinian people subsist, as they and their parents have since they were ethnically cleansed out of Israel in 1948 and later, scattered throughout the Middle East in internment camps, unable to be assimilated due to the USA's historical insistence that they are not refugees but have a right to return, while Israel insists and the US acquiesces, that they cannot return because they would then outnumber the Jews in Israel. This consequences of the vast human tragedy we have helped to establish and continue to enable arguably generates more hatred of the USA than any other of our failed policies.

Eliminating our massive overspending on military technologies and war (well over half the planet's total, and much of the balance of the spending is driven by ours); while making any support for Israel conditional on their assimilating the Palestinian population and removing the massive inequities, far worse than apartheid at its worst (and apartheid was very bad), will go a long way to saving us money and reducing the risk of attacks. Which will save us even more money in the medium and long term.

All of the funds released by these actions can, and should, be used to establish a fund to assist individuals when needed. We can and should establish meaningful pension, education, housing and health systems with equal access for everyone, and we can and should regulate investment portfolios to protect individuals - as is done successfully in the rest of the world. We can and should use the money that the government proposes should go to the banking industry to reestablish manufacturing in the USA. We can and should use the money that the government proposes should go to the banking industry to rebuild the failed infrastructure of the USA. We can and should use the money that the government proposes should go to the banking industry to rebuild the country, taking into account the oncoming reality of the end of cheap energy and the impact of global climate change - and the immense structural adaptations necessitated by these changes to avoid or alleviate massive suffering on a heretofore unknown scale - in a rapidly dwindling time frame.

All this will not only save the money that the government proposes should go to the banking industry, it stands a chance of saving the country. Then perhaps there is some hope for a better future.

As we are going now, it is not impossible that in the near future the surviving Americans will look at the teeming Chinese populace and envy them their prosperity and freedom. But the Americans will have put themselves in that position by supporting a government which is arguably more authoritative, demonstrably as brutal and infinitely more larcenous as the worst of that other People's Republic.

Kind Regards

Hermit
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #38 on: 2008-09-22 13:01:49 »
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[Blunderov] A splendid piece from the Hermit. Socialize the losses. Privatise the profits. Non circle-jerk club members need not apply.

Stalin would be proud :

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney09222008.html

September 22, 2008

Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street
By MIKE WHITNEY

"One bank to rule them all;
One bank to bind them..."

These are dark times. While you were sleeping the cockroaches were busy about their work, rummaging through the US Constitution, and putting the finishing touches on a scheme to assert absolute power over the nation's financial markets and the country's economic future. Industry representative Henry Paulson has submitted legislation to Congress that will finally end the pretense that Bush controls anything more than reading the lines from a 4' by 6' teleprompter situated just inches from his lifeless pupils. Paulson is in charge now, and the coronation is set for sometime early next week. He rose to power in a stealthily-executed Banksters’ Coup in which he, and his coterie of dodgy friends, declared martial law on the US economy while elevating himself to supreme leader.

"All Hail Caesar!" The days of the republic are over.

Section 8 of the proposed legislation says it all:

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

Right; "non-reviewable" supremacy.

Congress, of course, is more than eager to abdicate whatever little authority they have left. They're infinitely grateful for their purely ceremonial role, the equivalent of Caligula's horse, albeit, with considerably less dignity. Has even one senator spoken out against this madness, which--according to informal internet polls--is resoundingly rejected by the voters? Maybe Shelby of Alabama, the only Republican to vote against the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999.  Does it concern the members of congress at all, that the present financial crisis was brought on by the proliferation and sale of trillions of dollars of mortgage-banked garbage which were fraudulently represented as Triple A rated bonds by the very same people who now claim to need unprecedented and dictatorial powers to fix the problem? Or are they more worried that the steady torrent of contributions which flows from Wall Street to congressional campaign coffers will be inconveniently disrupted if they fail to ratify this latest assault on democratic governance? The House of Representatives is one big steaming dungheap that should be leveled and turned into an amusement park instead of a taxpayer-funded knocking shop. What a pathetic collection of cowards and scumbags.

Bloomberg News:

"The Bush administration sought unchecked power from Congress to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets. Through his plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson aims to avert a credit freeze that would bring the financial system and the world's largest economy to a standstill. The bill would prevent courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority.

“‘He’s asking for a huge amount of power,’'' said Nouriel Roubini an economist at New York University. ``He's saying, ‘Trust me, I'm going to do it right if you give me absolute control.' This is not a monarchy." (Bloomberg)

The banksters own this country, always have; only now they've decided to strip away the curtain and reveal the ghoulish visage of the puppet-master. It ain't pretty.

Paulson decided that the financial markets needed an emergency trillion dollar face-lift just weeks before his former business partners at G-Sax were dragged off to the chopping block. Was that the reason? Everyone on Wall Street knew that the bulls-eye had already been ripped from Lehman's bloody back and was about to be fastened on Goldman's. Now, it looks like they will escape their day of reckoning due to Paulson's eleventh-hour reprieve. Nice touch, eh?

From the proposed legislation:

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS

"(3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them."

Market Ticker's Karl Denninger summed this up best:

"This is the de facto nationalization of the entire banking, insurance and related financial system..That's right - every bank and other financial institution in the United States has just become a de-facto organ of the United States Government, if Hank Paulson thinks they should be, and he may order them to do virtually anything that he claims is in furtherance of this act.....The bill gives Paulson the ability to nationalize unlimited amount of private debt and force you and your children to pay for it."

Denninger again:

"The claim is that this is intended to 'promote confidence and stability' in the financial markets. It will do no such thing. It will instead strike terror into the hearts of investors worldwide who hold any sort of paper, whether it be preferred stock, common stock or debt, in any financial entity that happens to be domiciled in the United States, never mind the potential impact on Treasury yields and the United States sovereign credit rating.

I predict that if this passes it will precipitate the mother and father of all financial panics." (Market Ticker)

Amen. The transformation from a free market to an economy run by men whose judgment and credibility is already greatly in doubt; does not auger well for the markets or the country. Anyone with a lick of sense would cash in their chips first thing Monday and look for capital's Elysium Fields overseas or as far as possible from the circus sideshow now run by G-Sax ringleader, Colonel Klink.

Let's hope the American people are made of sterner stuff than Congress and will reject this charade. The conversation should be shifted from conceding more authority to hucksters in pin-stripes to indictments for securities fraud. Even the most economically-challenged nation ought to be able to afford a few sets of leg-irons and a couple hundred jail cells. That's all it will take.

Paulson's plan to revive the banking system by buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of illiquid mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and other equally poisonous debt-instruments; ignores the fact these complex bonds have already been "marked to market" in the recent firesale by Merrill Lynch. Just weeks ago, Merrill sold $31 billion of these CDOs for roughly $.20 on the dollar and provided 75 percent of the financing, which means that the CDOs were really worth approximately $.06 on the dollar. If this is the settlement that Paulson has in mind, than the taxpayer will be well served. But this will not recapitalize the banks balance sheets or mop up the ocean of red ink which is flooding the financial system. No, Paulson intends to hand out lavish treats to his banker buddies, while interest rates soar, pension funds collapse, the housing market crashes, and the dollar does a last, looping swan-dive into a pool of molten lava. Thanks, Hank.

Economist and author Henry Liu summarized the current maneuvering like this: "The Fed is merely trying to inject money to keep prices not supported by fundamentals from falling. It is a prescription for hyperinflation. The only way to keep price of worthless assets high is to lower the value of money. And that appears to be the Fed unspoken strategy."

Indeed. The Fed and Treasury have decided to backstop the entire global financial system (foreign banks can access the Fed's facilities, too!) with paper money which is rapidly losing its value. Watch the greenback tumble tomorrow in currency trading.

Congress is getting steamrolled and the American people are getting snookered. Consumer confidence--already at historic lows--is headed for the wood-chipper feet-first. Something has got to give.

One minute everything is hunky-dory; the subprime meltdown is "contained" and "the fundamentals of our economy are strong".(Paulson) And, less than a week later, congress is forced to surrender their constitutionally-mandated right to oversee spending in order to forestall economic Armageddon. Which is it? Or is the real objective just to keep the country on an emotional teeter-totter long enough for all state-power to be subsumed by the Wall Street Politburo?

No one knows what will happen next. We are in uncharted waters. And no one knows what the political landscape will look like after the dust settles from this outrageous power grab. According to Paulson, things are so dire, the entire nation will be reduced to smoldering rubble and twisted iron. But can we trust him this time after his long litany of lies?

Isn't it about time to send the cockroaches scuttling back to their hideouts and bring in the cleaning crew to hose the whole place down?

Don't let the prospect of a national crisis trick you into giving up your liberty, America. The people behind this scam are the same landsharks and flim-flam men who polluted the global marketplace with their snake oil and toxic sludge. These are the fraudsters who manufactured the crisis to begin with. Be resolute. Don't budge. Our economic foundations may be crumbling, but or determination is not. This is our country, not Goldman Sach's. The people who destroyed America must be held to account. Their time is coming. Justice first.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state and can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #39 on: 2008-09-22 19:39:25 »
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Quote from: Hermit on 2008-09-22 12:08:25   
Stop, Look, Think

For years the government of the USA
<snip>



Outstanding Hermit!

Thanks.


Walter
« Last Edit: 2008-09-22 19:40:30 by Walter Watts » Report to moderator   Logged

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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #40 on: 2008-09-22 21:13:41 »
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Great posts guys; my 2 cents would be that even in socialist enclaves like Canada and Germany, the social safety net and health care is being eroded by private sector greed and bureaucratic incompetence, to the point were it is failing people and still we work till mid July to pay the tax burden before we can keep our pay cheque only to spend it on energy and transportation.

"Let them eat cake", seems to be a universal whoever is in charge, mantra.

Cheers

Fritz
PS: the Canada Election Polls show Bushsonian clones ahead in Canada, but the Greens are getting some traction



Source: Yahoo News
Author: Associated Press writers Louise Watt in London and Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.
Date: Mon Sep 22, 2:40 PM ET

NEW YORK - Oil prices spiked more than $25 a barrel Monday — the biggest one-day price jump ever — as anxiety over the government's $700 billion bailout plan battered the dollar and touched off frenzied buying of safe-haven investments including crude.

Light, sweet crude for October delivery jumped as much as $25.45 to $130 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before falling back somewhat to trade at $122.60,up $18.05. The contract was set to expire at the end of the day, adding to the volatility; the October price began accelerating sharply in the last hour of regular trading.

The November contract, scheduled to become the front-month contract at the end of Monday's session, was trading at $108.80, up $6.05.

Crude has gained about $40 in a dramatic four-day rally that has at least temporarily halted oil's steep two-month slide below $100. At this rate, crude is within striking distance of its all-time record of $147.27, reached in July.

"We're off to the races again in crude," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill. "There's a renewed scramble for commodities because of a general weakness in the dollar."

The Nymex temporarily halted electronic crude oil trading after prices breached the $10 daily trading limit. Trading resumed seconds later after the daily limit was increased. [Fritz]hell of a system

The huge rally was poised to shatter crude's previous one-day price jump of $10.75, set June 6.

Oil's sharp gains came as energy traders grappled with the implications of the government's proposed $700 billion initiative to stem the U.S. financial crisis by absorbing billions of dollars of banks' bad mortgage-related securities. Anxiety over the plan also sent stocks sharply lower Monday; the credit markets were calmer than they were last week, but still showing the effects of investors' nervousness.

"They're going to have to continue auctioning off a whole lot of Treasurys to finance these projects, so the dollar is going to suffer," said Matt Zeman, head trader at LaSalle Futures in Chicago. "Right now it's fear and anxiety driving people who want tangible assets.

The 115-nation euro rose to $1.4781 in afternoon trading, up from the $1.4470 on Friday. A weak greenback was a catalyst for the commodities boom of the past year, and analysts said large investment funds were expected to pour money back into the sector.

"That trade was very successful in past so if the dollar keeps weakening, a lot people are going to want to own hard assets like crude," said Andrew Lebow, senior vice president and broker at MF Global in New York.

But there is still much uncertainty about what impact the U.S. rescue plan will have on energy demand. Oil's run-up near $150 a barrel in July and a weak U.S. economy has forced Americans to cut back on their driving and led business to scale down operations. Though pump prices have eased from record levels above $4 a gallon, they remain expensive, and more softening in the economy would likely further curtail energy use in the world's thirstiest consumer.

"There are a lot of issues to be filled in. It's an extraordinarily complex situation," said David Moore, a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. "The market is digesting how the (rescue) package will work and the implications for the U.S. economy."

U.S. congressional leaders endorsed the plan's main thrust, saying passage might occur in a matter of days. But they also want independent oversight, protections for homeowners and constraints on excessive executive compensation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pushed lawmakers, who received the package on Saturday, to approve the proposal as soon as possible.

The Federal Reserve also announced late Sunday it granted a request by investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to change their status to bank holding companies, a move that will allow the two institutions to open commercial banking subsidiaries, greatly bolstering their resources.
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #41 on: 2008-09-23 09:35:54 »
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this article has been doing the rounds (apologies if it has already been mentioned)

luigi zingales, university of chicago: why paulson is wrong.

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/luigi.zingales/Why_Paulson_is_wrong.pdf

thought that this is significant too:

"It is enough to say that for 6 of the last 13 years, the Secretary of Treasury was a Goldman Sachs alumnus."

is this the ussr brand of capitalism?
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #42 on: 2008-09-24 03:47:00 »
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The insanity of paying for worthless paper assets with public money to the tune of $10,000 per US household strikes me as silly. There are so many proud Republicans in the USA. Nearly 50% of the population by some accounts. As their administration and its friends in banking and business both benefited from the rape of the markets and caused this economic crisis, it would be much more equitable if after the coming US elections the voters rolls were used to identify the Republicans and increase their taxes to cover the first small tranche of the $60 Trillion economic debt flood coming our way and which less than a trillion dollars - in the dying days of the financial rape of the USA by the Cheney-Bush administration and friends - is supposed to somehow avert. My deep suspicion is that this is a final bean feast before the opportunity is lost for a few years. After all, the tactic of handing over a scorched earth economy worked well against Carter, why ever shouldn't the Republican refugees from the 1970s repeat it - and why shouldn't it work again?

An even fairer distribution might be arranged if we were to use "Proud Republican" bumper stickers to identify those most responsible. In the light of which it is perhaps worthwhile hearkening back to a previous post which our pet troll took most personally at the time:

It goes well with my prewar Bush war predictions that this administration would gravely damage or destroy the US economy and that the cost of the invasion of Iraq would exceed $1.6 trillion. It gives me no pleasure to have my predictions fulfilled.

On a much more serious note, the entire "financial crises" (which is currently a crises because for some reason although the CoV has been predicting this for years and watching this slow motion train crash come to a head over the course of months the Fed didn't realize it was "a crises" until late last week) has had the effect of consolidating many small players who haven't had the money to utilize, never mind develop, their assets for at least the past 6 to 8 months and have recently been forced into selling their goods at firesale prices to large conglomerates. The big winners have been the cash flush mega farm corporations (Bananas anyone?) and our old friends, the cash flush oil companies.

While it might still be true that you can't take it with you, Cheney and Bush are proving that you can give it to your friends and I'm guessing that both are confident that their friends, including the Democrats in Congress, will take care of them in turn.

It will be interesting to see if "the great rescue plan" helps repair this massive inequity, whereby it is proposed that the less affluent pay the wealthy for the same things three times over (buying assets at inflated prices only to see their value collapse, selling assets at firesale swallowing the losses, paying the finance houses for the same assets with tax dollars). My guess is that it won't.

The remedy would be to simply purchase the assets out of the companies that have looted themselves into insolvency while they are in Chapter 11, for pennies on the dollar, and making them available to taxpayers for repurchase at the same price or a little more, while simultaneously introducing a steeply progressive tax on individual capital gain increases over the past 16 years. This would largely subtract inequitable gains from those to whom it migrated - without further disadvantaging US businesses - which already pay significantly more tax than Swedish companies. An exception should be made for Cheney's beloved oil and weapons companies that have seen their wealth and assets grow exponentially at the expense of everyone. Enforced disinvestment back to their core businesses at rates calculated to return their holdings to the same level as they were in 2000 would provide a pool of capital to repair some of the damage done by the Bush administration, level the playing fields and establish a path out of the way of the coming crash.

Instead, we have the personal and company bankruptcy changes established at the start of the Cheney-Bush maladministration's tenure perdure, with capital concentrated in the hands of a few, personal debt spread far wider than ever before and at all time high levels, and the insane cost of unaffordable and everlasting wars still to be paid by a country that no longer has a manufacturing base, is already not meeting its water sharing obligations and is rapidly losing its ability to feed itself.

The fact that Congress, Democrat and Republican alike, is not even considering alternatives to the bean feast for bankers proposed by the administration, but that both sides are instead merely grooming the ice formed on the slippery slopes, tells us that representing the public is the last thing on what passes for their minds. Of course, this has been blatant to anyone with a functioning forebrain for the past three decades (despite the best efforts of the media-idiocy to suppress all signs of intelligence).

Kind Regards

Hermit
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #43 on: 2008-09-24 11:56:24 »
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when sweden faced a similar crisis in '92, they asked for equity in return for tax payers money, but congress or the bush administration seems to be disinclined to do so for the 700 billion dollars. its still the political pandering by placing demands to 'place a cap' on ceo renumeration? so what...they get 30 million per annum instead of 35 million? who cares?

Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way.. http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/stopping-a-financial-crisis-the-swedish-way/

A banking system in crisis after the collapse of a housing bubble. An economy hemorrhaging jobs. A market-oriented government struggling to stem the panic. Sound familiar?

It does to Sweden. The country was so far in the hole in 1992 — after years of imprudent regulation, short-sighted economic policy and the end of its property boom — that its banking system was, for all practical purposes, insolvent.

But Sweden took a different course than the one now being proposed by the United States Treasury. And Swedish officials say there are lessons from their own nightmare that Washington may be missing, The New York Times’s Carter Dougherty reports.

Sweden did not just bail out its financial institutions by having the government take over the bad debts. It extracted pounds of flesh from bank shareholders before writing checks. Banks had to write down losses and issue warrants to the government.

That strategy held banks responsible and turned the government into an owner. When distressed assets were sold, the profits flowed to taxpayers, and the government was able to recoup more money later by selling its shares in the companies as well.

“If I go into a bank,” Bo Lundgren, who was Sweden’s finance minister at the time, told The Times, “I’d rather get equity so that there is some upside for the taxpayer.”

Sweden spent 4 percent of its gross domestic product, or 65 billion kronor, the equivalent of $11.7 billion at the time, or $18.3 billion in today’s dollars, to rescue ailing banks. That is slightly less, proportionate to the national economy, than the $700 billion, or roughly 5 percent of gross domestic product, that the Bush administration estimates its own move will cost in the United States.

But the final cost to Sweden ended up being less than 2 percent of its G.D.P. Some officials say they believe it was closer to zero, depending on how certain rates of return are calculated.

The tumultuous events of the last few weeks have produced a lot of tight-lipped nods in Stockholm. Mr. Lundgren even made the rounds in New York in early September, explaining what the country did in the early 1990s.

A few American commentators have proposed that the United States government extract equity from banks as a price for their rescue. But it does not seem to be under serious consideration yet in the Bush administration or Congress.

The reason is not quite clear. The government has already swapped its sovereign guarantee for equity in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance institutions, and the American International Group, the global insurance giant.

Putting taxpayers on the hook without anything in return could be a mistake, Urban Backstrom, a senior Swedish finance ministry official at the time, told The Times. “The public will not support a plan if you leave the former shareholders with anything,” he said.

The Swedish crisis had strikingly similar origins to the American one, and its neighbors, Norway and Finland, were hobbled to the point of needing a government bailout to escape the morass as well.

Financial deregulation in the 1980s fed a frenzy of real estate lending by Sweden’s banks, which did not worry enough about whether the value of their collateral might evaporate in tougher times.

Property prices imploded. The bubble deflated fast in 1991 and 1992. A vain effort to defend Sweden’s currency, the krona, caused overnight interest rates to spike at one point to 500 percent. The Swedish economy contracted for two consecutive years after a long expansion, and unemployment, at 3 percent in 1990, quadrupled in three years.

After a series of bank failures and ad hoc solutions, the moment of truth arrived in September 1992, when the government of Prime Minister Carl Bildt decided it was time to clear the decks.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the opposition center-left, Mr. Bildt’s conservative government announced that the Swedish state would guarantee all bank deposits and creditors of the nation’s 114 banks. Sweden formed a new agency to supervise institutions that needed recapitalization, and another that sold off the assets, mainly real estate, that the banks held as collateral.

Sweden told its banks to write down their losses promptly before coming to the state for recapitalization. Facing its own problem later in the decade, Japan made the mistake of dragging this process out, delaying a solution for years.

Then came the imperative to bleed shareholders first. Mr. Lundgren recalls a conversation with Peter Wallenberg, at the time chairman of SEB, Sweden’s largest bank. Mr. Wallenberg, the scion of the country’s most famous family and steward of large chunks of its economy, heard that there would be no sacred cows.

The Wallenbergs turned around and arranged a recapitalization on their own, obviating the need for a bailout. SEB turned a profit the following year, 1993.

“For every krona we put into the bank, we wanted the same influence,” Mr. Lundgren told The Times. “That ensured that we did not have to go into certain banks at all.”

By the end of the crisis, the Swedish government had seized a vast portion of the banking sector, and the agency had mostly fulfilled its hard-nosed mandate to drain share capital before injecting cash. When markets stabilized, the Swedish state then reaped the benefits by taking the banks public again.

More money may yet come into official coffers. The government still owns 19.9 percent of Nordea, a Stockholm bank that was fully nationalized and is now a highly regarded giant in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea region.

The politics of Sweden’s crisis management were similarly tough-minded, though much quieter.

Soon after the plan was announced, the Swedish government found that international confidence returned more quickly than expected, easing pressure on its currency and bringing money back into the country. The center-left opposition, while wary that the government might yet let the banks off the hook, made its points about penalizing shareholders privately.

“The only thing that held back an avalanche was the hope that the system was holding,” Leif Pagrotzky, a senior member of the opposition at the time, told The Times. “In public we stuck together 100 percent, but we fought behind the scenes.”
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Re:We're Fucked - The Coming Economic Crisis
« Reply #44 on: 2008-09-24 12:59:37 »
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Reply 42 has been extensively rewritten by the light of day.

It might be observed that while it may seem that "similar crises" have occurred in the past, so far only the tip of the current crises is visible. The BIS estimated $60 trillion of uncovered and unpayable forward positions in a $600 trillion market have yet to be resolved. This is "the other boot" which makes the $700 billion attempted bail-out a stop gap position at best.

Consider for a moment that the entire US GDP is $ 10 to $ 13 trillion (depending on how you calculate it), that "official" US debt has increased from $ 5 Trillion to $16 Trillion under Cheney-Bush, and that the Bush war costs which exceed $ 3 Trillion, and equipment replacement, also not yet budgeted, at least another $3 Trillion, are not yet a part of that. Once one includes all the paper once comprising what was the M3 index, it becomes visible that total US debt has soared to $50 to $60 Trillion in the course of this maladministration. This amount cannot ever be repaid, even were the economy not contracting, and never will be repaid.

As long as we can avoid global war, whether religious and ideological, triggered by Israel, or over resources, a collapse of the dollar now (to between EU 0.10 and EU 0.14 per dollar) will have the effect of massively decreasing debt loads throughout the world, will reduce fossil fuel use, and will allow us to restructure the global economy to deal with the end of cheap fuels before it is too late.

Speaking globally, trying to continue to maintain our position on an economic slack-wire, with no visible means of support, while loading our balancing pole with ever increasing debt, public and private, is a near guaranteed way to ensure that we do not survive the coming emergencies.

Thanks.

Hermit
« Last Edit: 2008-09-24 14:26:52 by Hermit » Report to moderator   Logged

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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