First ……. Cause you didn’t say it!

First they have to keep the patient from dying, then figure out how to bring him back to health.First, we have to accept that things will not go back to the way they were in 2005, at least in our lifetime. Regulations are going to be passed, and too much wealth (or percieved wealth) has been destroyed.I think that baby boomers that can retire will, and that will keep downward pressure on housing and stocks for the next few decades. Also, risk is only now being priced into securities, and was not accounted for in the past. The securities were never as good or valuable as they were rated. So banks are insolvent, not illiquid. The only thing now keeping oil prices low is demand falling faster than decreasing supply. Any boost in economic activity will boost oil demand, which will make it outstrip supply and have a price shock, putting a lid on recovery.Getting the US and world economy back to where it was is going to be like lighting a fire with dry tinder. We may have fallen to a lower economic equilibrium.No, sns, I will not bet you.

Eventually China has a large enough consumer base to take over the losses in U.S. consumption. But one thing China is not likely to do is to encamp in the US-UK-style uber-relaxation of lending standards to kick start consumption. This is because so far China has been far more responsible with their behaviour than the Anglo-American World Power.A recent report in US media claimed that China was increasing military spending considerably. Ridiculous but typical that such issues are reported in USA, a country that keeps spending far more than many other countries in its own military.

from the above article and NR’s comments in the videoThe agreement reached last week at the G20 meeting of global leaders in London had also boosted investor confidence, while the additional funding provided to the International Monetary Fund would support vulnerable emerging market economies.From today’s NY Times (of all sources)

WASHINGTON — It is an extraordinary number for extraordinary times: $1.1 trillion in aid, to be pumped into the world’s financial bloodstream. For the leaders gathered in London last week, it was tangible evidence that their economic summit meeting had yielded impressive results.Yet on closer inspection, the $1 trillion figure looks as wishful as the soaring words in the communiqué issued by the Group of 20. Some of the money has yet to be pledged, some is double-counted and some would be counted in a “synthetic currency” that is not actually real money….

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world/07summit.html

To a greater or lesser extent you are right. All markets are rigged, or at least can suffer from unwarranted forces of intervention. However, I’m not sure they can really rig any market as much as they believe, incl. even the precious metals. The long-term primary trends are more likely to be set by fundamental economic forces, esp. the simple factors of supply and demand. The central banks may shuck and jive, but the unreasonably low interest rates that many of them are setting will have powerful effects on the global economy. Likewise, the fact that the Fed, BoE, and BoJ are all committed to Quantitative Easing speaks to the enormous financial distress of the “western banking system” (Japan included in this grouping). There will come a time when gold is no longer in a long-term bull market, but I don’t think we’re near that point yet. Good luck to you!PeteCA

People tend to overestimate their ability to affect a bad situation when it comes to remedy, but underestimate their ability to make things worse.

fragment….John Hanncock was an American patroit he wanted freedom from Britan and encouraged others to join the fight for freedom. Samuel Adams was a brewer and a patriot as well. He was a political speaker and rallyed for freedom as well. John Hanncock was the first singer of the Declaration of Independance. Sam Adam was a signer too. Hancock was brave so was Adams…Sam Adams lead the Boston tea party. many people see them as some of the founding fathers of America. “bootleggers and brewers. don’t count em’ out.

BOMBSHELLIt took a systems analyst to do it, but here it is in a bombshell—why Ben Bernanke is frantically pulling out all financial stops to prime the U.S. credit pump in order to rejuvenate profligate spending. It’s to recycle and sustain the powerful profits of transnational corporations made from goods produced by cheap foreign labor and unloaded to sell without hindrance in the U.S.—a nation deliberately stripped of its manufacturing base and now the major dumping ground of the global economy.Here’s the full story, by John Lilburne (pen name): “Free Trade 25 Years Later: A $6.6 Trillion Deficit.”The ruling elite brought about a structural change in capitalism which undermines freedom. They call it a global economy but it resembles a global plantation. In 1984 the cumulative trade deficit of the U.S. was near zero. Today, 25 years later, it has reached $6.6 trillion. Thus 1984 marked a critical turning point for both the U.S. and the world. In order to explain the new situation some new terminology must be introduced.The period after 1984 will be referred to as the Madoff corruption phase of Keynesian capitalism for want of a better description. From his Wall Street headquarters, Bernie Madoff fully represented the new rules and morality of the global economy and he proceeded to exploit its possibilities.The U.S. is the major dumping ground of the global economy which is far more complex that Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Madoff capitalism is a degenerate form of capitalism but has become the most profitable form ever devised. Not restrained by unions, laws, conventions or morality, it is supported by a vast network of well-paid propagandists and handlers.The Keynesian approach relies on deficit spending to sustain profitable corporate operations from one business cycle to another. The transnational corporations since 1984 have been sustained by a new, more powerful profit engine than deficit spending. The first precondition for the new engine was the dismantling of a large part of the U.S. manufacturing base so that production could be outsourced to China, India, NAFTA etc. where very cheap labor was readily available. The second precondition was permission to dump the foreign produced goods in the U.S. without hindrance. The third precondition was compliance by the banking system to recycle the huge profits as new loans.The U.S. government and banking system have a revolving door to the transnational corporations and all work as a team. Key personnel receive a share of the profits as bonuses, bribes, donations or huge salaries. In any crisis they play a blame game.In 2007 the trade deficit was $815 billion while the budget deficit was only $163 billion. How was it possible for such a large amount of foreign-produced goods to be sold in the U.S.? Obviously credit had to be extended to consumers by the bankers in order that the transnational capitalists could receive dollars. Dumping goods into the U.S. increases supply but the goods cannot be sold without deflation unless demand is also increased by credit expansion. Supply and demand must be equal.The shortage of credit-worthy borrowers required lower lending standards in order to lend out the large amounts of money. Citizens borrowed, in effect, from the transnational depositors whereas in the deficit spending case the government borrows from the citizens. In one case citizens are debtors paying interest, in the other case citizens are creditors earning interest. Generally rich citizens are creditors while failing capitalists are debtors.Supposedly endless spending of the transnational profits can be called Madoff spending.Deficit spending is a way to extend endless credit to the government which pledges never to default whereas Madoff spending extends credit to citizens who are perfectly free to default. If citizens were not free it would be a form of indentured servitude or possibly slavery.Houses were produced and sold on credit to the public. The resulting mortgages were bundled as bonds and then sold worldwide to trusting investors. Thus the transnational capitalists were able to avoid carrying all of the credit extended in the U.S. financial arena.The flaw in this credit expansion scheme was finally exposed by the financial collapse in 2008.The expansion of credit required an expansion of principal and interest repayments. The public could not carry the growing burden. Torrential defaults and foreclosures were inevitable. The holders of the mortgage paper were left in the lurch. A swamp of toxic mortgages estimated at $2 trillion but only worth 22 cents on the dollar was the early result. Wall Street firms went bankrupt when they were caught holding the bag. Only the U.S. government could attempt to come to their rescue.The 2009 stimulus plan provides $850 billion in federal deficit spending in an attempt to recycle the slightly diminished annual transnational profits from dumping. There is no way such profits can be loaned out for mortgages or consumer loans in the depression-like economy. The federal government will become the borrower of last resort and the profits from dumping will finance the federal deficit. This unholy marriage of deficit spending and Madoff spending will only compound the economic malaise since it does not remove the undiminished root cause. Furthermore, interest rates paid on treasury securities will have to approach zero in order to forestall the growth of federal debt.The Federal Reserve says it will expand unconventional efforts to lower interest rates and stimulate the economy by increasing purchases of mortgage-related securities by $750 billion and buying $300 billion of long-term Treasury bonds.This depression is unlike the Roosevelt depression and only propaganda can refer to that history while ignoring what is new. A full national solution is simple: discontinue offshore production and apply the stimulus plan to fully restore national manufacturing. Of course, the huge transnational profits and power will not be given up without a fight even in the face of a protracted depression. (published in the American Free Press by John Lilburne, a systems analyst formerly employed on government engineering programs)

You asked, Methinks, on the last thread: “Do you know what Socialism is? How can you call this bailout of the financial sector, Socialism? It is a giveaway and a wealth transfer from the producers to a parasitical class of financiers.”And then you said, “You demonstrate quite clearly that you don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to read a few more books before you run your mouth.”If I may reply to that? In his April 5 column, “How Freedom Was Lost,” Paul Craig Roberts points out that “the Tax Foundation has calculated that tax freedom day arrives on May 29 this year if the federal government’s budget deficit is included, as it should be, in the tax burden.”Says Roberts, “That means that Americans work 42 percent of the year for the government, a higher tax rate than was endured by medieval serfs and one approaching that of a nineteenth century slave…”This is socialism; this is serfdom for America’s middle classes who must pay for socialism: and the Obama Administration already is calling for higher taxes on professionals earning as little as $250,000, most of them living in high cost areas such as New York City and San Francisco.Envy, says Roberts, is one of the seven deadly sins and is not unknown to Americans. He notes “the absurdity of Obama lumping the upper middle class in with the rich…lost on those Americans who regard anyone slightly better off than themselves as ‘rich.’ A slightly bigger house in a better neighborhood, a BMW instead of a Toyota, and the ability to go on vacation without going into debt is all it takes to be rich in the minds of those whose eyes are green with envy.”Says Roberts: “This observation led me to the realization that freedom has been lost to envy.“Americans no longer know what freedom is. Historically, the definition of a free person is one who owns his own labor. Serfs and slaves were not free, because they did not own all of their own labor.“Understanding that an income tax was serfdom, our Founding Fathers wrote the US Constitution in a way that prevented an income tax. This was altered in 1913 with a constitutional amendment that some claim was not properly carried out.”Says Roberts, “This is even more the case when government fails in its regulatory responsibilities and allows banksters to join in the plunder of the hard-pressed citizens.”Socialism always works well for those in power. And leaders who cry out loudest for equality, particularly via the socialist, collectivist route, are the bloodiest of all dictators. Trotsky and his friends had a world-wide graft that stretched their net to the most out-of-way spots in the world.Methinks if you want to keep increasing taxes beyond the fifty percent level that is hitting most of the middle class at the moment, if you want government to get considerably larger after it has become the largest entity of its kind in the world, if you want to have government provide almost every service for the people regardless of waste and inefficiency for healthcare, retirement, transportation, childcare, meals, utilities, mortgage assistance, public housing, education, old age assistance…, if you want to impound private property, savings accounts and free enterprise, and if you want to provide all this to the growing segment of nonproducers and government power brokers, then of all the isms, communism, fascism, capitalism, etc., you want socialism.And I contend that those who want socialism are the beneficiaries of socialism—it’s a matter of human nature.You will not find a middle-class—that stuff from which a great people is made– in a socialist country on its way to serfdom.

Prof. Roubini, are you concerned about the rigor of the stress test? You indicate that the stress test will expose the insolvency of the major banks but the test assumes a positive GDP by Q4, while you predict that GDP will be firmly in the red. Do you believe the stress tests will be more rigorous, or do you think major banks will fail even if the scenarios are exceptionally optimistic? Please comment on this…

A very important and poignant point regarding those to whom Americans owe their freedom. War and trial make new heroes. World War II promoted men from the ranks up to company commanders because many from the military schools couldn’t make the grade when it came to real battle. Your fragment of history brings to mind the military commissions, the promotions right off the battle field. The history of the Civil War is wrought with like examples, the heroes in the making, the men and women from various walks of life who rose to the call.An excellent reminder not to pre-judge a man; the most unlikely may be the one to whom you will owe your life…or freedom.

Pete,Don’t you think our economy at this point is just a parasite-host relationship? There are so many parasites out there feeding on what is left of a dying carcass. I’ve tried to suggest in the past that we need a new school of economics called the “cui bono” school. Perhaps the underlying theory for this school should incorporate a parasite-host dynamic. Keynesianism would then integrated into that model as a mechanism for sustaining the parasites as the host dies off. The whole theory could be mathematicized (ie, legitimized) with equations from mathematical biology that deal with parasite-host relationships. Any takers? You have to admit that the parasite-host idea best represents our economy!

Some days I wish I hadn’t taken the red pill.

I think, if you research recent history, that you will find that the US and Europe were complicit in the export of jobs to China. THere is equal responsibility on both sides.

Apologies;The link to the above:http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L6566682.htm

Naw.. Just a realist

And people think we are not in trouble? there are so mnay holes in the boat that no one can grasp them all, let alone plug them… very little talk on this blog the past few months about State and Federal reciepts…States are broke, thier tax bases are taking a mssive hit, revenues down, services down, schools down, on and on… Same with Fed Gov’t… I predicted a 2 trillion Deficit 4 months ago on this blog and we are right on target for that… next year will be 3 trillion… So Where does the market go on that type of news????http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/04/us-deficit-reaches-1-trillion-for-first.htmlMonday, April 6, 2009US Deficit Reaches $1 Trillion For First Half Of 2009Posted by Tyler Durden at 10:33 PMThe Congressional Budget Office has released preliminary deficit numbers, which indicate that for the first half of 2009 the deficit has already hit $1 trillion, $640 billion more than the comparable 2008 period, when the deficit was $313 billion.While the outlays can be explained by the massive TARP spending and other stimulus programs, the scariest piece of information is that receipts for March were $125 billion, $54 billion lower than the previous March. Additionally, receipts for H1 2009 were $986 billion, $160 billion lower than $1,146 billion in H1 2008.

and here is one path where we are headed, albeit not the only path to doom…Simon Jones at Baseline Scenarios (via Abnormal Returns) nailed in a recent post, explaining:Excessive inflation is a typical outcome in oligarchic situations when a weak (or pliant) government is unable to force the most powerful to take their losses – high inflation is, in many ways, an inefficient and regressive tax but it’s also often a transfer from poor to rich.This is us.The government has demonstrated that it has no desire to make the powerful take its lumps, and so its printing up money, taxing savers and everyone else who doesn’t have an account at the Fed in order to prop up the powerful. Our strategy with respect to the bailout is a sign of a capture government.This is why we’ve been so skeptical about deflation fears. The government and the media push so hard the idea that deflation is the mother of all devils, you have to wonder what the propaganda campaign is all about.Economist Jörg Guido Hülsmann said the only people who have to fear deflation are the nation’s “false elites”. Let’s see… bankers, home builders, excessive borrowers, government officials. Yep, that sounds about right

Creating jobs doesn’t put money into the hands of the financial oligarchs. The FED’s purpose is to create economic prosperity through the issuance of debt(trickle down) an obvious oxymoron. This is the oxymoron that Roubini and the administration all believe can still work these people in charge have dedicated their lives to believing in this. They don’t yet realize that the entire system is beyond repair ans was doomed to fail from the onset.

Good article:’Bailout psychology’ destroying the economyPresident Obama must stop the bailouts and start the prosecutions. It’s time to focus on anti-poverty programs to protect the growing unemployed from hunger and homelessness. Stealth payments to billionaire bondholders must cease immediately.http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/04/INR316Q4F5.DTL&ref=patrick.net

It’s an unfortunate analogy. But it could be true. In some way the ratings agencies have failed us here (big surprise). They should have downgraded the credit status of Uncle Sam by now, forcing long-term interest rates upwards. Although that would put a negative force on the economy, it would counteract the trend you’re talking about. Parasites only thrive if they can extract fresh blood from the host. Higher interest rates would have squeezed that out.PeteCA

Obama’s Big, Bold BetNew York TimesBy THOMAS L. FRIEDMANPublished: April 4, 2009While campaigning for the presidency in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt gave a commencement address on May 22 at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta that probably describes President Obama’s strategy today — and the big bet he has made — as well as anything could.“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation,” said Roosevelt. “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” …http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/opinion/05friedman.html?_r=1

new terminology for new times — “bailout is a sign of a capture government”

Here is a thought experiment:The IMF is going to lend through Special Drawing Rights to all the developing countries except forseveral Asian countries. The money will be used by these countries to pay the interest on their present debts to the banks. The developing countries would not have incurred this debt without the commodities bubble that was engineered by the propietary trading desks of the usual perp investment banks. The money goes back to the international banks immediately. The IMF will return to its usual role as credit collector for the banks with their Austerity measures and conditionalities as soon as the inflation generated controls the deflationary spiralthat we are presently in. The international banks have now cemented their power by having everybody in debt. Anybody who moves to regulate them will havea financing problem. This is real power! You cannot have real power unless there is a huge crisis that forces all sovereignties into a perpetual debt format. Is this sustainable? No. Will it be done?Yes. Why? It is like the scorpion and the frog fable.It is just my nature. We are the frog!!!!Happy Croaking!

“What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the LAWLESS POWER OF REBELLIOUS kings and princes.”If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” SAMUEL ADAMS: 1776

Hey … I better cancel those US Airways tickets and run down to Rite Aid to pick up my precription. You never know what could be gone by close-of-business today PeteCA

g,well said.

I sat next to a guy on a plane ride back from Kauai that worked for a company that is dependent on Rite-Aid. When the info about Rite-Aid became public, he said *his* company’s stock took a 20% hit in one day. Both he and his wife work for this company, and they don’t know what’s going to happen from day to day. Yikes.

well “shopping” seems like very much a pastime here in Chinese-dominated Singapore. I do not know how it is in China, though…

I agree, things could get worse and as California goes, so goes the rest of the country… Yet no one really talks about jsut how bad the 8th leargest economy in the world is…

Pecos BankerBy the way, I’m assuming from your name that you do (or did) work in the banking industry. Perhaps you are even one of those mythical “good bankers” that still exist somewhere in America?If so, I just wanted to let you know about a potential job opportunity. Rumor has it that the current members of the Fed do have an “emergency escape plan”. Apparently if you look in their parking lot – they always keep a car with the engine running. And supposedly they’ve got their suitcases packed at all times. I mean, you just can’t be too careful when you’re a central banker for a major ailing economy these days.So … just in case a bunch of funny-lookin’ guys (and women) in gray suits go bolting out of Washington DC at high speed – are you prepared???Ben Bernanke could be keeping that seat warm just for you, you know!PeteCA

The French are some of the most ignorant, lazy people alive. Who other than liberals would put any stock in what the French think or say? They are not who we as Americans would want to imitate. How many times do you here how strong and prosperous the French people are? The Japanese are hard and honest people, they make the French look like pathetic lazy losers.

….to the old Congressional Nuclear Bomb shelter in the W. Virginia mountains perhaps?

Why is it wrong to spend 80 or 90 hours a week in order to make $250,000 a year (I’m not talking government “salaries”)? Does the labor of those extra hours and the risk involved belong to you? Do you socialists want it all? Every penny? Will you be happy when the people who pay the taxes finally collapse and you have a broken nation?By the way, I notice that you use “middle class” like Obama does–namely, the people who aren’t paying the taxes.

An ignorant American who makes sweeping generalizalitions about a country he has most probably never ever visited and only has a Fox-News-knowledge of…Why am I not surprised ?

A household making $200K pays more in taxes a year than your friends entire salary. Throw in living in California and all of the other taxes and fees, and when it’s said and done, the household that you don’t even consider “middle class” is the equivalent of a middle class household in the southeast (which gets to keep the majority of their pay). Except the one in CA can’t even buy a house.

1. You would do well to check what the word “socialism” means.If by your definition the US Govt is now a socialist government, then let me know which of the G20 countries doesn’t have a socialist government ? France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain, China, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, Canada, India,etc… They must all be socialist in your book.The world socialist confederation !As a matter of fact, of all G20 countries, the USA is still probably the least socialist country of all, and that’s still even under Obama.2. Where do you get the info that most of the US middle class is being hit by more than fifty percent taxes ? And that Americans work 42 percent of the year for government ? Even with a 3.5 trillion budget, out of a 14.5 trillion GDP, that’s 25%.3. And as several commenters have noted, the two biggest spending post by the government are the defense budget (Americans seem to require 50% of the world’s defense budget with only 5% of the population, wonder why an average American requires TEN times more spending to defend himself than an average human being ?), and the interest on the deficits (of which more than 80% have been accumulated under republican administrations, Reagan, Bush 1, & 2, not exactly known for their “socialism”). These 2 represent about 50% of the total expenditure, and have absolutely nothing to do with socialism.Many right wing Americans do seem to really have a major problem with the word “socialism”. Wonder why ?

and how many of those $40K a year people live in one shitty 600 sq ft apartment? How many have kids to raise?

Another BLOCKBUSTER from the man who exposed the fraud behind Hank Paulson in “MORTGAGE MELTDOWN: Interest rate ‘freeze’ – the real story is fraud”:”‘BAILOUT PSYCHOLOGY’ DESTROYING THE ECONOMY – It’s a phony crisis–sever the lifelines” by Sean Olender | San Francisco Chronicle 4/5/09President Obama must stop the bailouts and start the prosecutions. It’s time to focus on anti-poverty programs to protect the growing unemployed from hunger and homelessness Stealth payments to billionaire bondholders must cease immediately.Since the mid-1970s, average Americans’ wages have stayed flat when adjusted for inflation. Productivity rose, profits rose, but not wages. To compensate for stagnant wages and the desire to consume more each year, Americans worked more, retired later, spouses went to work, and many burned savings. Then they started borrowing. Debt became America’s growth industry.The scheme collapsed because Americans’ wages weren’t sufficient to pay the interest on existing debts. The only way out of this is to tighten our belts and pay down debt, the opposite of what our bank-owned government is advising.The administration and the banks keep talking about a credit crisis, but there isn’t one. Banks are lending. If you want a mortgage and can afford to pay it back, you can borrow at low rates today. You can finance a car at low rates for seven years. But most Americans don’t want more debt because it is a debilitating path to poverty. The average American family already pays 14 percent of annual income in interest to banks.To fix this fake crisis, there are fake discussions about what the government must do. The endlessly recycled plan to buy “troubled” assets isn’t to get banks lending again, because they haven’t stopped lending. The plan seeks for taxpayers to buy worthless assets at high prices to absorb rich investors’ losses. That’s it. It keeps coming back as a different plan, but with that same goal. There is no goal beyond that one goal: keep rich people from taking losses.Obama and his economic gurus all chant, “Credit is the lifeblood of the economy,” but they don’t mean credit. They mean debt. Imagine the president saying, “Debt is the lifeblood of our economy. We desperately need to get more American families deeper in debt.” That’s what he means, and that’s what these bailouts hope to do.In a Sept. 14 article in this newspaper, I noted that banks push senators, with the blessing of the administration, to introduce bills that are bailouts, but disguised to appear not to be bailouts. The goal is to accomplish the desired result without risking your bought-and-paid-for representative.Imagine you bet $500,000 on a stock and it dropped to $20,000. If you owned Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, he’d get on TV and explain that if the government didn’t buy your shares for $500,000, the economy would suffer because you couldn’t invest anymore. He’d say the “free market” isn’t pricing the stock “right,” and we have to “help” the market with taxpayer money to make sure you get the “right” price.Bailout psychology is destroying the economy. Banks hold off on foreclosures in the hope of refinancing borrowers into government-backed loans that will almost certainly default – at taxpayer expense. I’ve talked to ordinary people delinquent on credit cards who put off bankruptcy because they “heard” the president was unhappy with unfair bank practices and “help was coming soon.” Millions of homeowners desperate to sell are keeping empty houses off the market waiting for a “rebound,” flushing a stream of income down the toilet.Worsening economic figures are being used to confirm that more bailouts are needed rather than that previous ones might be failing. The logic is much like medieval blood letting: The patient died because we didn’t drain enough of his blood.The promise of more bailouts also keeps everyone from doing what’s necessary. Millions of houses sit empty, open to vandalism and destruction, while millions of Americans live in cars or on the street. Our tax money is given to banks and speculators to hold houses empty.On March 20, 2007, I wrote here that a mortgage bailout was coming and would cost at least $1 trillion, yet not bail out homeowners. As it turned out, the bailout did nothing to stop foreclosures from going through the roof. On Feb. 8, 2008, I wrote here that Fannie and Freddie would be taken into receivership within a year – an event that occurred Sept. 7. I argued here on Sept. 18 that most loan modifications were a fraud and “I optimistically predict that within 12 months half of these refinanced loans will result in default.” On Dec. 8, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced that 53 percent of modified loans were in default.To “fix” all these problems, the George W. Bush administration, and now the Obama administration, have chosen people (or their accomplices) who stole from the public. That’s why no one has been prosecuted. Would former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chief Henry Paulson have pressured for an investigation of Goldman Sachs? Right.As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, current Treasury Secretary Geithner had a front-row seat during the run-up to the crisis and watched for years while pushing a “no regulation” policy. Why? At that time his friends were winning their bets and making a lot of money.Why didn’t Bush or Obama pick Brooksley Born (the Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair who tried to regulate credit default swaps) or Harry Markopolos (the whistle-blower in the Madoff scandal) to serve as treasury secretary or chairman of the SEC? Because Born and Markopolos are technically competent and possess integrity. Banks would tolerate neither quality in an administration official.We have a crisis of confidence, because fraud permeates most of our banks and financial institutions. The solution is law enforcement, not handouts. On Jan. 31, 2009, Santa Barbara police held a 53-year-old homeless man on $20,000 bail for shoplifting $7.69 worth of soup and bread. Yet Bush did not move to prosecute a single executive at any of these banks, and Obama likewise doesn’t want to be “vengeful” by investigating the crimes of investment bankers.If the government feels lenient, can’t it let alone families camping in a vacant lot in Sacramento, or homeless people stealing bread?We can stop this by closing our accounts at any bank that took government money. A list is on the Treasury’s Web site. Close your accounts and move them. If we do, those banks will suffer receivership or bankruptcy within a few months, and then there will be no need for bailouts. Our healthy community banks will thrive, while billionaire bondholders will have to downsize their G-5 fleets and take a haircut.If you buy an American car, buy a Ford. Do not buy GM or Chrysler. GM and Chrysler took bailout money. If everyone who would buy a GM or Chrysler bought a Ford, GM and Chrysler would quickly go bankrupt, the government would be forced to stop giving them tycoon welfare, and Ford would probably have enough customers to get through this. If Ford takes bailout money, don’t buy a Ford, either. You don’t need to buy anything. Save your money until the government stops the bailouts. Your children will thank you for the peace and security.Sean Olender is a writer and attorney based in San Jose.Link from MM CA above:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/04/INR316Q4F5.DTL&ref=patrick.net12/09/07 article: http://hw71.blogspot.com/2007/12/usa-rettungsversuch-fr-notleidende.html

Roubini’s estimate was $3.6 trillion. That’s close enough, “only” 400 billion less.Anything under a trillion doesn’t count anymore…

More from the Daily Kos article (that I posted a link to above):Here’s another way to look at the problem the financial system has become. In the 1960s, all the trading of all the stocks, bonds, futures, foreign exchange, and other financial instruments amounted to about one and one half times the U.S. annual gross domestic product. Today, the trading of all the stocks, bonds, futures, foreign exchange, and other financial instruments amounts to over fifty times U.S. GDP, or around three trillion dollars a day in the U.S.How much does it cost our economy to move around this much financial paper each and every day? Let us assume that the fees, commissions, and so on paid to the financial system for all this frenetic activity amount to one percent. (An October 2003 study conducted by John P. Hussman, President of Hussman Investment Trust, found that the costs to the funds he manages actually amounted to approximately 1.87%; scroll down to the bottom.)So, one percent of three trillion a day is $30 billion in commissions / fees / bonuses, etc., paid to the financial system for all that paper being shoved around. That’s the amount that is going to all those people like the guys in the Chicago futures pits standing behind CNBC’s Rick Santelli you saw last month.$30 billion a day is the equivalent of 600,000 (six hundred thousand) jobs paying $50,000 a year.That is, the cost to the economy of allowing the financial system to operate as it has been, trading $3 trillion a day, is equivalent to 600,000 good, middle class jobs. Each and every day. This is how the financial system sucks the life blood out of the economy. This is why the present financial system must be destroyed.Blood suckers feeding the elite!Mark

That’s mighty kind of you to think of me PeteCA. But shucks, I don’t imagine them high-falutin folks is gonna want to consort with the likes of a little banker from Pecos.

Hang ‘em high: they’ve hung us out to dry. Our brethren the French are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?“The field of politics always presents the same struggle. There are the Right and the Left, and in the middle is the Swamp. The Swamp is made up of know-nothings, of them who are without ideas, of them who are always with the majority.” August Bebel: Address, Social-Democratic Party, 1903.Add to that the do-nothings and I think Bebel is on to something.

NIXON: I am not a crook. METHINKS: I am not a socialist.

Ok, let’s see if the actual numbers support your idea, which you just pulled out of thin air.I suggest going to this site and trying their cost of living analyzer:http://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculatorIt looks like the overall difference in cost of living is only 35%, meaning that the $250k in LA is equivalent to $163k in Atlanta, GA. Well, $163k is still quite a bit more than the average household income of the US (which is about $46k). Someone earning nearly four times the average household income is obviously in an entirely different economic class.I hope you have better luck with your next hypothesis.Results:You are currently earning $250,000 in Los Angeles, California as a Attorney / Lawyer.You need to earn $163,182 to maintain the same standard of living in Atlanta, Georgia.

Rose to what call? Continued exploitation of native indigenous and black peoples?Sure, these men were wise, but they were certainly not angels/gods.Mark

Here’s a link to a list of institutions that have taken TARP money:http://www.propublica.org/special/show-me-the-tarp-moneyYou can sort the list by institution name or by state by clicking on the column heading.

Yeah, it’s quite a cross to bear… But some days I get to use that cross to smack people upside the head (and say “I told you so!”) Mark

“The chief cause of problems is solutions.”- Eric SevareidMark

I hate to agree with someone who types in all-capital letters… but, surprisingly, this person is right.

Okay, you’re point is we all need to share. I’ll pay more taxes if you’ll do more work

Ouch. Now they send out the nasty-grams What happened to all those handshakes and mugs of beer ???PeteCA

Exactly. I am single, self-employed, work long weeks (sometimes 7 days a week), managed to make $200,000 in taxable income this year. My taxes to the U.S. Treasury, including Social Security and Medicare, are just over $62,000; my taxes to the state of California just under $16,000. This totals to just over $78,000. The property taxes on my house, 83 years old and 1231 square feet with a bad foundation, are $9000; my unpaid mortgage $400,000. I tithe at my church and am responsible for my own health insurance, etc.I am forty years old, and over the years I have been able to save $165,000 in a retirement account, plus about $50,000 in savings: I have no company pension. I own no other major property other than my home. I have not had a vacation in three years.

Your fear is my fear: that they will live to cheat again. And that if they do, there won’t be another chance given to stop them. In the meantime, it’s war. It’s time to shoot and push for victory whatever the odds. IMHO, the cost will be high but we will win the war.But as Peter Cooper warns: The Dealers in money have always, since the days of Moses, been the dangerous class.

result is out, they are all solvent. let the dupe taxpayer PPIP begin.

Pool Hall Politics:You Americans are being hustled!Economic activity is a recursive, A recursive is a game; a game that hopefully (to the hustlers) never ends. In politics, the idea is to keep the game going, but in a qualitative way; well, some countries.Consider the game of pool. Pot a red ball then a colour – keep the red and return the colour to play taking your profit, and so it goes on until all all the reds are pocketed and then the colours are pocketed and the game ends; rack the balls, a new game commences..Now, policy (important) is the constraints laid onto society that optimizes the recursive plays du jour. You can call it the Law.But, in Law; Laws have regulations as do games.That which Messrs. Benanke and Geithner (and Hank) have attempted to do, is, without having Policy changed, is to change the regulations (rules) so that the current recursive (game) can continue ad nauseum.But, for this, we need an endless supply of red balls. As the secondary (economy) grows from the fertile soils of the real economy, the red balls are herein supplied by and are drawn from the real economy, a priori, those necessary resources, ie. red balls or values of labor, present, past and future – are transferred to the Pool Hall for the hustlers to continue their games unabetted.So, this leads us to some interesting alternative events that could arise but first, it is important to note:Policy has not changed – where the O team found themselves, Policy then, remains in place (in reality)!Only the regulations (rules) have changed so as to keep the scam that is, the recursive play -alive!It is not the President running the USA but the Pool Hall Hustlers – and that is clear (to me).What comes next?1. Politically, O is done as the hustlers run the scam,2. The public get bored and burn the pool hall down,3. The scam is about the hustlers hustling the hustlers (utilizing other peoples money), so in the end, the game and its contents lose all value.4. Players (and spectators)find a new game in some other part of town and move over there; that is, new Policy is established, new Laws, new regulations and a bright spanking new venue; or, new interests arise that leave this series of the political recursive ie, Policy, to itself.Pool Hall Politics.Ho hum

IMO, this is one of the top articles of the past two years. It sees through the banker obfuscation of the ongoing financial meltdown involving the biggest heist and coverup in world history. It appears to be the who dunnit of US/Fed financial entanglements, corruption and corporate banksterism. Complete with solution.

very interesting analogy-so how many balls are left on the table and how soon will we hear “eight ball in the corner pocket; game over!?

Gloomy – I followed the link that you posted, but I fail to understand, from the content of this article, what leads you to envision that the Euro might be the winner in all this.Looking forward to finding out what I have missed / misunderstood.

Many of us find it astounding that while we have been told for years that we never seem to have enough money for education, infrastructure, health care, social programs and social security, all of a sudden, the big banks seem to leap frog over all of these vitally important programs and receive essentially unlimited money because they are deemed TBTF by a few men completely overriding the democratic process. It clearly appears that the super wealthy are above the rules and laws of the American system and that the USA has become the USH or United States of Hypocrisy!

Hypocrisy is the greatest luxuryRaise the double standard

via NCHarvard, Princeton Economists Say No Fire Sale Prices, Premise of Public-Private Partnership Wrong”We have been saying for some time that the policy premise of the Fed and Treasury has been that the financial crisis is that it is a liquidity crisis, not a solvency crisis. If you are of that school, the fallen prices of various assets is due to a combination of scarcity of funding plus irrational panic. Find ways to provide liquidity and give investors that magic elixir, confidence, and voila, crisis over.Having watched the credit markets closely before the implosion, we’ll agree there was plenty of irrationality. But it was in the gross underpricing of risk. The snapback…”http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/04/harvard-princeton-economists-say-no.html

g,rental rates for crystal ball?the clueless will pay for such things.clueless? i thought i told you?i’m f..g blind! get it? as in,i don’t “see” anything. no visible “light” hasany impact on my central nervoussystem, the current state of affairsfor most of man kind as it relates tohis / her socio-economic being. ( by design )yea, i know, you knew that.and yes… it can be “good” to be cluelessif you have the required security. but ..as in all things , everything is o.k. untilyou’re dead. and that goes for all.so i’ll wait for further instruction as you willno doubt offer the plan to fix IT.waiting patiently…yes, i am clueless, why else would i be talking to you?

Sounds like the ECB isn’t all that pleased about quantitative easing (cash creation) in contrast to the US. If they refuse to debase their currency, it will get stronger.

I meant, uh huh Guest 19:18. Sorry 13:52.

Guess what? Police routinely get permission to draw a blood samples from uncooperative suspects; and the lab results are more definitive than a breathalyser.

And your contributions to arguing the points/facts are what exactly?I’m no political dupe. And I’m also not going to stop a discussion using meaningless stabs.Mark

It’ll definitely make things interesting. Who can hold out the longest, the US flooding the world with cheap/worthless dollars (which become increasingly less desirable), or the ECB and a stronger Euro (which strains exports)?It’s a big game of chicken, but I feel that the more honest position will ultimately prevail: the meek shall inherit the earth.Mark

Peter .. YES we are. This may be the greatest game of pool hall hustling ever devised.PeteCA

Deflation equals lower house prices = more foreclosures= more middle class loss = more poverty creation.

Bank of America Should Keep Lewis After ‘Mistake,’ Whitney SaysWhitney after just a month ago stating that the banks are not investible said yesterday that banks would likely turn a small profit this quarter. She also said M2M was not a factor back on March 17 only to say it was a factor in an interview yesterday along with naming some banks that would be good investments.Interesting the change in tone since she has gone out on her own.

Lewis is the antidote to entropy?Mark

Rite Aid…Wrong Town. This ugly storefront was booted out of PortTownsend WA. where towns people refused to have their local-run pharmacies destroyed by some faceless franchise. Good riddance.

Anyone looking for the morning when we wake up to a global economy as it previously was? even if cheap money floods in, as it will the gate keepers have raised their hand and made it so. We will suffer high inflation that will be felt by everyone especially the people on a fixed income, people like the elderly, disabled, and many with jobs are basically classified as fixed income people these days, these poor folks will be creamed, power chairs for the disabled and elderly will be $20,000.00 used. Employers will not be able to give pay increases fast enough to offset the rise in the cost of living. Raises will be just an elusion.Which is worse deflation or inflation, I guess it depends on who you are. The deceleration rate of the world may slow… but the damage that has been caused is tremendous. A-men. The recovery will also cause tremendous damage on the way back up as well, whoever was left holding onto a few dollars will have that money along with the arm holding it snatched off during the recovery.Lets see… would I rather hit the concrete wall in a go cart at 1,500 miles per hour or 1,499 miles per hour…Lets see, how about dodging the wall instead of aiming for it, or even a glancing blow would mean you might regain the ability to walk and talk at some point in the future. The professor has been doing a good job forecasting this down turn and he has to sift thru the extra nuts and bolts left out of the economic rebuild to see if the mechanics left them out on purpose or just had no idea where they came from. My question is when they get thru tinkering with it will it run.?

Budget Expands Government as Economy Contractsby Ron PaulApril 7 — Last week the House passed another budget that increases federal power, raises taxes, and increases the national debt…Despite the deterioration of our economy, this is the largest budget ever passed, at $3.6 trillion. Gross domestic product and tax receipts are shrinking. The government has less money to spend this year, and so it spends more – $1.5 trillion more – than it has. When the economy expands, the government expands. Worse, when the economy contracts, the government expands more. Even more troubling is that even though the size of the budget boggles the mind, it is never the final word on federal spending. No allowance has been made for future bailouts and stimulus plans that are highly likely. There are always supplemental bills passed later in the year. War spending is one of those. Spending on Afghanistan is only partially included in budget, with a supplemental request expected in the future… I predict spending will top $4 trillion this year, raising the national debt by over $2 trillion when all is said and done.Some may notice that the neo-conservatives who masterminded the policy of global interventions are not complaining about the level of military and foreign spending. This is because rather than drawing down our costly interventions, Obama is largely staying the course on these issues. In fact, this week a group of leading neoconservatives met to discuss how best to support the President on foreign policy!…Obviously we can’t continue down this road indefinitely. Certainly, no country has ever prospered when their public sector spent half or all of the nation’s GDP. Yet we are saddled with leadership that seems unwaveringly convinced that the key to prosperity is public spending. This will be exposed for the lie that it is when our creditors wake up and call in our debt. The temptation at that time will be for the government to simply print up dollars in the amount needed. This type of debt repudiation could signal the end of the dollar as its value sinks to zero…Tragically, it is those who save their dollars, the most prudent and responsible among us, that will be hurt most by this irresponsibility in Washington.

Famous bear economist Nouriel Roubini calls CNBC’s Cramer a buffoon for predicting bull market | 8:46 PM CDT, April 7, 2009TORONTO (AP) — CNBC’s Jim Cramer has another feud on his hands.Just weeks after “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart took Cramer to task for trying to turn finance reporting into a “game,” famous bear economist Nouriel Roubini criticized Cramer on Tuesday for predicting bull markets.”Cramer is a buffoon,” said Roubini, a New York University economics professor often called Dr. Doom. “He was one of those who called six times in a row for this bear market rally to be a bull market rally and he got it wrong. And after all this mess and Jon Stewart he should just shut up because he has no shame.”Cramer recently wrote in a blog that Roubini is “intoxicated” with his own “prescience and vision” and said Roubini should realize that things are better since the stock market bottom in March. Stocks have rallied 26 percent since.Roubini said in 2006 that the worst recession in four decades was on its way. He has attracted attention for his gloomy — and accurate — predictions of the U.S. financial market meltdown.Roubini said the latest surge is just another bear market rally and said Cramer should keep quiet.”He’s not a credible analyst. Every time it was a bear market rally he said it was the beginning of a bull and he got it wrong,” Roubini said in an interview with The Associated Press.Cramer has conceded he made some wrong calls, like most people watching the market. But he went on “Today” last October telling people that if they needed money in the next five years, take it out of the stock market. Anyone who heeded that advice saved money, he said.Roubini said he supports Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s plan to remove toxic assets from the banks. Cramer recently wrote that Roubini and Nobel laureate New York Times columnist Paul Krugman are both on “the nationalization jihad.”"He keeps insulting me personally and saying a bunch of lies,” Roubini said. “He doesn’t even know I was supporting it so he says lies.”Roubini made the comments before appearing with bank analyst Meredith Whitney and Canadian bears Ian Gordon and Eric Sprott at a Toronto event titled “A Night with the Bears.” They all correctly predicted the current financial meltdown…http://www.fox2now.com/business/sns-ap-canada-roubini-cramer,0,2463085.story

This from The Daily Capitalist (with Roubini on Goldman Sachs, Cramer’s alma mater as a stock broker in Sachs’ Sales & Trading department):AIG Must FailAIG is looking like the corpse in “Weekend at Bernie’s”March 3, 2009 –AIG came back for their fourth bailout and got a pledge of another $30 billion which brings the total up to $173.3 billion. Bernanke told Congress, “If there’s a single episode in this entire 18 months that has made me more angry, I can’t think of one.” Wow, is this guy angry.Mr. Bernanke said the Fed “really had no choice” but to stabilize the company in September because the failure of a major financial firm in a crisis “can be disastrous for the economy.” With millions of policyholders and thousands of derivatives and credit-insurance counterparties, Mr. Bernanke said AIG’s downfall would have been “devastating to the stability of the world financial system.”We shouldn’t be too upset, after all we have a valid investment; we own 78% of AIG and I’m sure we’ll get that back. Wait, you say the AIG’s market cap is $1.2 billion? Well, at least we know what they’re doing with the money. Wait, you say they won’t divulge who the counterparties are that will “suffer” if AIG goes b/k? But, I thought we were bailing out AIG not Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Deutsche Bank and other foreign counterparties.Is Bernanke correct? Do we have a choice? Will the entire economy go down if AIG fails?The insurer’s portfolio of credit default swaps was still notionally worth $ 302.2 billion at the end of 2008. Nouriel Roubini says without bailing them out, Goldman and just about every banker in the US and Europe who is a creditor of AIG would suffer huge losses and go down. He says they and the banks should be taken over by the Feds and liquidated in an orderly fashion. Which seems to me to be a good argument for bankruptcy without the need for taxpayer funds.Here’s the dirty little secret, Nouriel, all the companies that did business with AIG have already written down the value of their counterparty benefits. Goldman has said that its exposure to AIG isn’t material and “is offset by collateral and hedges.” I am sure their other creditors have done the same thing.Jim Rogers, famous investor, former partner of George Soros, and who has been quite right about the economy lately, says:Suppose AIG goes bankrupt, it is better that AIG goes bankrupt and we have a horrible two or three years than that the whole US goes bankrupt. … AIG has trillions of dollars of obligations, let them fail, let the courts sort it out and start over. Otherwise we’ll never start over. … I think it’s astonishing, they’re ruining the US economy, they’re ruining the US government, they’re ruining the US central bank and they’re ruining the US dollar. … [Y]ou have too much debt, too much borrowing and too much consumption and you’re going to solve that problem with more debt, more consumption and more borrowing? These people are nuts.He’s right. He’s worried about us catching the Japanese disease.It seems that AIG’s competitors, the ones who didn’t write all those bad credit default swaps, are waiting for them to fail so they can pick up the pieces. Business will get done without AIG. According to the Wall Street Journal:Competitors who have been overshadowed for years by AIG’s dominance in key commercial insurance markets now see AIG’s problems as an opportunity. But there is growing frustration that the government keeps stepping in to thwart what could be business prospects for them, said Andrew Barile, an insurance consultant in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.Moreover, it’s daunting having the government as a big investor in a competitor. “The challenge is that we have a regulator who also is an investor,” said Mike Foley, chief executive officer of Zurich Financial Services Group’s (ZFSVY) North American commercial segment. “From a competitive dynamic, it creates some confusion if your competitor is also your regulator.”This is how it is supposed to work with capitalism. Bad companies go broke and good companies come along and fill in the gaps, quickly. It prevents something economists call “moral hazard”: rewarding bad economic behavior.What Jim Rogers is saying is that the government is thwarting a valid and necessary economic recovery process. It is important to let AIG fail in order to achieve recovery. The impact to the world economy will not be pretty, but it will be far less than ‘Shock Jock’ Ben Bernanke thinks. It will result in a quicker turnaround of the economy. Ben simply hasn’t thought through the issue sufficiently and is afraid of the political fallout if he does “nothing.”Ben is angry because nothing he or his partners at the Treasury have done has worked so far and he doesn’t have a clue why.http://dailycapitalist.com/2009/03/03/aig-must-fail/

Marc,I understand and I am coming from perhaps an ideological point of view (mine) so let it be as a personal struggle within me.thank you for your comments.

Nouriel Roubini, Eric Sprott, Meredith Whitney, and Ian Gordon discussion from a beark perspective:http://www.cliffkule.com/2009/04/4-bears-growl.html

You are correct – I’m getting a mite long of tooth >Ho hum

It was an easy mistake to make.

seems like these institutions are insolvent, otherwise, they will have already return the TARP money. stress test will be a sham that allow all of them to pass to participate dupe taxpayer PPIP.

alright.this is the way this link came my way….”le boss, he rich, yes?”http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5362ME20090407PARIS (Reuters) – Almost half of French people believe it isacceptable for workers facing layoffs to lock up their bosses,according to an opinion poll published on Tuesday.Staff at French plants run by Sony, 3M and Caterpillar have heldmanagers inside the factories overnight, in three separateincidents, to demand better layoff terms — a new form of laboraction dubbed “bossnapping” by the media.A poll by the CSA institute for Le Parisien newspaper found 50percent of French people surveyed disapproved of such acts, but 45percent thought they were acceptable.”They are not in the majority … but 45 percent is an enormouspercentage and it demonstrates the extent of exasperation among thepublic at this time of economic crisis,” Le Parisien said.On March 31, billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault was trapped in ataxi in Paris for an hour by staff from his PPR luxury and retailgroup who were angry about layoffs. Riot police intervened to freehim.Le Parisien found that 56 percent of blue-collar workers polledapproved of bossnappings while 41 percent disapproved. Among white-collar workers, 59 percent were against the practice while 40percent thought it was acceptable.”These hostage takings, we know how it starts but no one knows howfar it can go,” said Xavier Bertrand, a former labor minister nowsecretary-general of the ruling UMP party.”Our country must avoid entering a spiral of violence,” he said inreaction to the opinion poll, adding that bossnappings “cannot betolerated.”(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Farah Master).what the architects of globalization need heed isthis…from wiki.* Zeroth law of thermodynamics, about thermal equilibrium:If two thermodynamic systems are separately in thermal equilibrium with a third, they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other.If we grant that all systems are (trivially) in thermal equilibrium with themselves, the Zeroth law implies that thermal equilibrium is an equivalence relation on the set of thermodynamic systems. This law is tacitly assumed in every measurement of temperature. Thus, if we want to know if two bodies are at the same temperature, it is not necessary to bring them into contact and to watch whether their observable properties change with time..and so on..

Good Old Boys Newtwork- when will Obama get a clue… His approval ratings will be at Bush levels by the end of the year…Summers is jst another mouth for his cronies- see below…http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2009/04/03/this-stinks/?ref=patrick.net

For all the nonsense euphemisms sub-prime globalization etc. at least the French get it, it’s a war between oligarchs and poor people. The wealthy are pretty good at distracting but not nearly good enough when things get this bad. Hopefully soon the U.S. starts to get extreme after their government has betrayed them.

Obama is an ignorant fool and I voted for him, but what can you expect from an attorney, he probably thinks attorneys bring value into the world.

Some Whitney comments below… Note the futhur 30% decline in housing values… in California that means another 60K or so drop from current median… California housing is in a DEPRESSION already as is its ecenonomy…Whitney, a former analyst at Oppenheimer who has her own firm, is renowned for calling out the problems with banks’ toxic assets before the issue became widespread.Whitney said the banks should be seeing some benefits from the revised mark-to market rules in the first quarter.She also said she expected home prices to fall another 30 percent, contrary to some predictions that housing may have bottomed.”Home prices cannot bottom while liquidity is still contracting from the economy,” she said. She did say that large banks should benefit from low mortgage rates and refinancing.Asked about comments from another well-known bank analyst, Michael Mayo, who said earlier Monday that banks’ debt problems are far from over, Whitney said: “I think that’s out there. There’s nothing out there that would cause anyone to believe they’d be different … but tangible ratios could be better.”

Mortgage delinquencies soar in the U.S.Tue Apr 7, 2009 3:55pm EDT http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSTRE5363EV20090407NEW YORK (Reuters) – More U.S. consumers are falling behind on their mortgages, an indication that the housing market has yet to hit bottom, a top credit bureau executive told Reuters.Dann Adams, president of U.S. Information

agree-Oblah di Obla da’s judgement must be seriously questioned as he is being led down the Goldman road to Zimbabwe instead of using common sense: the solution to record debt is not creating more record debt for present and future generations!

I also had one or two sleepless nights when I understood the basic of the monetary system we all depend upon.As well as the powerstructure behind it!Now, I am intellectually prepared and I can handle the incoming media news much better. Thanks to RGE and everyone contributing to this blog.

Sadly, I believe he is doing their bidding and is begging them. He is not the one in control, people. Once we realize that we can get to the truth of the matter. The US is not a republic, democracy or any such thing. It is an oligarchy. Obama is the fool playing to the court. It saddens me to say this as I voted for him. I cannot help to call it as I see it.

By the way … it would be really great if the folks at PrudentBear.com could give us a newer version for the chart on US consumer debt, reflecting the trends updated to Q1 2009. That would be very instructive, because this is one of the key charts that’s driving the US economy right now.PeteCA

SEC hearings on reinstatement of the uptick rule (to discourage short selling of fragile stocks)cut and paste link below (windows media)mms://a1340.l2362426592.c23624.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/1340/23624/v0001/reflector:26592?auth=daEbna7dpandJa0bbbLaqbUa8bycuaPbrdP-bj3lsz-bWG-OWTO&aifp=abc

Market bear Roubini sticks to dour forecastsApril 7http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Market-bear-Roubini-sticks-to-rb-14876221.html

Another feud for ‘Mad Money’ host: Economist Nouriel Roubini calls CNBC’s Jim Cramer a ‘buffoon’http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/04/08/2009-04-08_another_feud_for_mad_money_host_economis.html

I voted for this relatively unknown on the chance that his ongoing sermons of real change were real: McCain was a known quantity of more of the same. Needless to say, I was not surprised, but nonetheless in angry despair, that I’d been duped again. The American political system, operating behind a controlled media that hears no evil, sees no evil and speaks no evil that would divulge its masters’ criminality, has turned into a catch-22 – an entrapment that within itself denies solution.It is time for another Declaration of Independence, this time from a wealth-destroying, all-consuming plutocracy of banker-fed billionaires.

via NCThe green shoots are weeds growing through the rubble in the ruins of the global economyApril 8, 2009 3:20amFinancial Times”The Great Contraction will last a while longerThis financial crisis will end. The Great Contraction of the Noughties also will come to an end. But neither the financial crisis nor the contraction of the global real economy are over yet. As regards the financial sector, we are not too far – probably less than a year – from the beginning of the end. The impact of the collapse of real economic activity and of the associated dramatic increase in defaults and insolvencies by non-financial enterprises and households on the loan book of what is left of the banking sector will begin to show…”http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/04/the-green-shoots-are-weeds-growing-through-the-rubble-in-the-ruins-of-the-global-economy/

rich man’s warjohn trudell.hay ah iy ya hey iy ah hey…….rich mans war, industrial strengthsclass lines money talks,turning language into paper piecesrich man’s war free man’s society.raging violent insecuritynuclear man, nuclear woman unclear how to act.rich man’s war pershings cruising europe.america russia governmental nuclear viewsindustrial allies cutting the worldas though they cannot see blood flow.rich man’s war central america bleedingwounds same as palestine and harlemthree mile island ‘n el salvadore pine ridgeand belfastrich man’s war the poor, starving for foodstarving for land, starving for peace,starving for real.rich man’s war attacking human, attacking beingattacking wits attacking tomorowrich man’s war thinking of always warthinking of always war.. with..chains for ancestors new unborn generationschemical umbilical chords are only wiringin your electrical progresshuman eyes burnt offerings to the god greedwith lies for ancestorsthere is no truth in some futuresyours and minds feeding next generation soulsto the control machine.sacrifice ritual with a proper technologywith isolation for ancestorsthere is only a present bought by the creditmaterial users forging chains binding youto destruction compliments of your deitiesthe industrial priest..hay ah iy ya hey iy ah hey…….no more than neon flash trying hiding in neon maskthat face who we really are and at some pointwe had no choice.distant star distant light.in real world we are human beingin shadow of real world we arebeing human..neon mask for neon flash.distant thunder distant cloudpassions reign drenched in possessionwhat we take is hard to dowhat we do is hard to takeits so crazy maybe we take turnstrained by some kind of life we say”it could have been different”.but it wasn’t because we weren’tno matter what it turns out the samealot of things we said weren’t trueindustrial stories in an electrical instantneon mask neon flash neon flash..thing is nihilistic desirescivilized gone insanedidn’t imagine it turning like thissomethings start good and go badsomethings get bad and stay bad.when caught in between living a lie ornot living at alleliminated choices lost in dreams we let gomemories we never got to havesomething else to think about…waking up in industrial societysurrounded by angry days , going through motionsof not really.wanting the best but not expecting it.surviving paid for in dreamsfeeling like a world alone serving godwith the devil to pay.feeling like something in one placewhat goes on in hell anyway?.thing is, it has to do with heart.we have to understand what hearts are forbefore we can get back to heaven or paradiseor OUR MIND..hay ah iy a hey e ya hay……..

And to top it off, we’re not better off, just deeper in debt for the same perks that once were affordable. The old two-bedroom house I bought in 2001 for $670,000 had in the three year’s previous sold for $365,000. In the early 90s it probably would have fetched about $100,000.So what’s different? Instead of for ourselves, we work for the government and the bankers under a slave’s debt load many of us will carry to the grave. That’s where the financial sector’s 40% profits are coming from, after we’ve worked off the government’s tax take of 50% of GDP.We don’t have any more than we had: they’ve got it.

USA TodayCOMMUNITIES PRINT THEIR OWN CURRENCY TO KEEP CASH FLOWINGApril 7, 2009 — A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts…“We wanted to make new options available,” says Jackie Smith of South Bend, Ind., who is working to launch a local currency. “It reinforces the message that having more control of the economy in local hands can help you cushion yourself from the blows of the marketplace.”About a dozen communities have local currencies, says Susan Witt, founder of BerkShares in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. She expects more to do it.Under the BerkShares system, a buyer goes to one of 12 banks and pays $95 for $100 worth of BerkShares, which can be spent in 370 local businesses. Since its start in 2006, the system, the largest of its kind in the country, has circulated $2.3 million worth of BerkShares. In Detroit, three business owners are printing $4,500 worth of Detroit Cheers, which they are handing out to customers to spend in one of 12 shops.During the Depression, local governments, businesses and individuals issued currency, known as scrip, to keep commerce flowing when bank closings led to a cash shortage.By law, local money may not resemble federal bills or be promoted as legal tender of the United States, says Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”We print the real thing,” she says.The IRS gets its share. When someone pays for goods or services with local money, the income to the business is taxable, says Tom Ochsenschlager of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “It’s not a way to avoid income taxes, or we’d all be paying in Detroit dollars,” he says.Pittsboro, N.C., is reviving the Plenty, a defunct local currency created in 2002. It is being printed in denominations of $1, $5, $20 and $50. A local bank will exchange $9 for $10 worth of Plenty.”We’re a wiped-out small town in America,” says Lyle Estill, president of Piedmont Biofuels, which accepts the Plenty. “This will strengthen the local economy. … The nice thing about the Plenty is that it can’t leave here.”http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-04-05-scrip_N.htm?csp=34

Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing — “We print the real thing.” That’s the lie of the century! We print the fake thing.

That’s nothing: my salary’s $39K a year and I work 86 hours a week!

Does your cost of living calculator have a subtraction key, Guest? That guy says his taxes are $89,000. That leaves $111,000. If he pays sales taxes of .0925% in California and tithes at the least $20,000, that leaves even less. And his remaining salary bothers you? Do you want to make his house payments?

Okay, Sir Isaac Newton, here’s “Life or Something Like It On City’s Median Income” |September 2, 2008In 2007, the median household income in New York City was $48,631… Herewith are three fictional scenarios!First, the recent college graduate, fresh to New York and eager to start his or her successful career in business or media or law or medicine. Opportunities abound and the future looks bright! …the average monthly rent for a Manhattan studio apartment in a doorman building is $2,594. The total annual rent is $31,128, roughly 64 percent of the city’s median household income, leaving only $17,503 left over to pay taxes, buy food, pay bills, and save money.So what about buying, then? The average sales price for a Manhattan studio condo was $634,336 in the second quarter of 2008, and the average sales price for Brooklyn condos wasn’t much lower at $601,280… The cost of a 10 percent down payment would exceed $60,000 in both cases…One of the easiest ways to save money is to share living space… two full-time working adults would double the median household income from $48,631 to $97,262. In August, the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a doorman building was $3,772. Annual rent would be just above $45,000… average Manhattan sales prices for one-bedroom condos at $949,513 in the second quarter… the Brooklyn co-op market…average prices were only $332,250…The climb from a one-bedroom to a two-bedroom apartment is steep. The average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in a doorman building in Manhattan is $5,750; average annual rent is $69,000.Suppose you find a decent and relatively cheap place to live. Where do you send your child to school? New York City public schools are inconsistent, and almost entirely dependent on the neighborhood… Tuition at a prestigious all-girls school like Brearly starts at $32,550 annually and goes up after the fourth grade; intellectual rent at all-boys St. Bernard’s is $31,760.http://www.observer.com/2008/real-estate/life-or-something-it-city-s-median-incomeAnd you would deny the guy earning $200,000 with $111,000 income left after taxes…? Obviously, you’re a recent graduate educated by TPTB. I rest my case. Let the economy be the judge.

@Mark on 2009-04-07 15:01:14″ “The chief cause of problems is solutions.”- Eric Sevareid”This is not a statement because it implies that the best solution is not to have a solution (which is also a solution). I believe it should have been stated as:The chief cause of problems is bad solutions.

I guess this means more of the same. The same analysts will, unfortunately, continue to see the world through the same flawed glasses. Why can’t our government think outside the box? Oh right, our government is run by the oligarchs. The oligarchs have trained these analysts, now things can continue as before, or at least the pigs can continue feeding at the trough.How sad in our own US of A

What’s TPTB?Anyway, I agree with you that it’s not easy to live on an average paycheck in NYC, especially if you’re going to specify living only in a “doorman building” in Manhattan.For a middle class family who wants to send their kids to a decent school, it’s not even feasible to do this, because, on average, they only make somewhere in the range of $40k-$70k. Obviously they can’t afford to send their kids to a private school. That stinks.I’m not going to debate whether or not it’s a good idea to tax the rich. My point was simply that a $250k household is not a middle class household, even if they live in NYC, California, or wherever else you want to put them. And the statistical data clearly supports my position. Can we at least agree on that?

dailykos is actually an extreme/hard core left wing political blog

Seems like Mr. Market was too busy partying back in March to notice that the economy is still in a precarious position:Press ReleaseFederal Reserve Press ReleaseRelease Date: April 8, 2009For release at 2:00 p.m. EDThttp://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/fomcminutes20090318.pdf

We are going from “too big to fail” to “too big to fix”.And we are also going from “economy and financial system disaster” to “planet revenge against humankind even with an economic depression, while most economists ignore this compelling threat…”

I happened to be reading the following article about hawks in the ECB who are having heart attacks over the recent G20 agreement. The article is here:ECB Hawks Having Heart Attacks About IMF LiquidityBy the way, I like to re-title these news articles with more realistic headlines. Anyway, I noticed the following paragraph buried at the end of the piece which is even more interesting …”Berkeley professor Barry Eichengreen, an expert on the Great Depression, said global industrial output had been declining more steeply in the past nine months than in the early 1930s. World trade had also fallen faster. “It’s a depression all right,” he said. “So there’s an unbiased viewpoint from a professor who studies economic depressions. Don’t you think that opinion is worth a lot more than the endless shuck-and-jive we get from Wall Street and Washington DC?PeteCA

http://www.salon.com/news/special/coming_home/2009/04/08/tape/index.html.“I am under a lot of pressure to not diagnose PTSD”.Editor’s note: Last June, during a medical appointment, a patient named “Sgt. X” recorded an Army psychologist at Fort Carson, Colo., saying that he was under pressure not to diagnose combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Listen to a segment of the tape here.By Michael de Yoanna and Mark Benjamin.A secret recording reveals the Army may be pushing its medical staff not to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder. The Army and Senate have ignored the implications..McNinch added that he also received pressure not to properly diagnose traumatic brain injury, Sgt. X’s other medical problem. “When I got there I was told I was overdiagnosing brain injuries and now everybody is finding out that, yes, there are brain injuries,” he recalled. McNinch said he argued, “‘What are we going to do about treatment?’ And they said, ‘Oh, we are just counting people. We don’t plan on treating them.’” McNinch replied, “‘You are bringing a generation of brain-damaged individuals back here. You have got to get a game plan together for this public health crisis.’”………”On the tape and in his interview with Salon, McNinch seemed to admit what countless soldiers not just at Fort Carson but across the Army have long suspected: At least in some cases, the Army tries to avoid diagnoses of PTSD. But McNinch did not directly address why the Army discourages these diagnoses, in either the interview with Salon or the tape-recorded encounter with Sgt. X.The answer probably has to do with money. David Rudd, the chairman of Texas Tech’s department of psychology and a former Army psychologist, explained that every dollar the Army spends on a soldier’s benefits is a dollar lost for bullets, bombs or the soldier’s incoming replacement. “Each diagnosis is an acknowledgment that psychiatric casualties are a huge price tag of this war,” said Rudd. “It is easiest to dismiss these casualties because you can’t see the wounds. If they change the diagnosis they can dismiss you at a substantially decreased rate.”.or this…”Kill yourself. Save us the paperwork”Pfc. Ryan Alderman, now deceased, sought medical help from the Army. He got a fistful of powerful drugs instead.

Taleb’s “Principles” comes with a five star rating by iTulip readers! What a read. What a writer. What an analyst.Can Taleb tell it like it is, or not? Children with dynamite, school bus drivers crashing their buses because they’re blindfolded, managers of nuclear plants who get incentive bonuses whey they cut corners on safety. Our dear leaders… These are the startling metaphors Nassim Nicolas Taleb leads us to in his “we’re here; we need to be there” blockbuster.Shut down the “Nobel” in economics, claw back the bonuses of those who got us here, rebuild the rotten hull of this boat with new, stronger materials. Teach people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.“Make an omelette with the broken eggs.”Would the present crew of this sinking ship please step out of the way and let the rest of us get to work to do what it takes to ship salvage and refloat this grounded economy?

It’s a beautiful country with a beautiful language.

Aye,Become a hero; we all love the herosing the chorusTake that enemy position, Yeah! Hurray the herosing the chorusDie a hero; Hurray, the country loves the herosing the chorusThe true hero stays dead; Hurray, the country loves the hero (dead).Ho hum

US unemployment appears to have gone exponential = grimFrom Mish: Close Look at the Accelerating Rate of Unemploymenthttp://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/From Shadowstats: 20% and rising. Are all these talking heads blind or just mentally challenged?http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_dataHo hum

Speaking of the “essence”, the vital core, the prime characteristic of reason and indeed, accord, of a sustainable global economic, fiscal, financial, monetary system that is to say, the expression of the mercantile nature of man:”A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.”@ Guest on 2009-04-08 13:07:45Bankers do not take risks a priori, they are merely parasites and “counter-jumpers”; they pretend but in reality, they are naught but clerks.http://verbewarp.blogspot.com/2005_12_04_archive.htmlAnd, this position is so simple to explain, so simple to understand and yet, so vital to our state of being as we move onward into uncharted territories.Goddamn it – it is the ‘entrepreneur’ that is that man with the function of mercantile expression; he is this man that naturally lives and breathes risk and he that uses his/her own money (per se).What is so difficult about this?Most of these CEO idiots and morons are just schoolboy buddies with the influential and the regulators and know absolutely nothing of running commerce, etc., etc., etc.Did I mention “incompetence and stupidity”?Ho hum

pjb,@ But there is nothing there?.do you mean in reference to me, personally or tous, nationally collective or we globally; or all of the above?though, one answer might fit all conditions?power and plenty has perverted our consciousness,just look at the t.v. or the news paper. the arroganceis so stunning as to be in need of digital reduction, butwe can’t get enough or make it big / or small enough tosatisfy. life goes on..ps. really enjoyed the “pool hall politics”. you shouldsubmit something here …http://consiliencejournal.readux.org/.imho.peas.pss. second thought i see what you mean in “it’s allabout heart.” while the heart is a systemic pump, variablyinformed and correspondingly dynamic, and present in themoment, it does need to be understood and appreciated forwhat it is on the way back to our mind. ( a true mind informedby all our senses and our environments felt through the heart.) the universe isnot letting anyone take any shortcuts with this bit ofevolution.so, i think all the urgency will have to subside. 12 bough ish.also, i notice that everyday at least one important choice is madewhich is irreversible, leading to a life ( grave ) determiningpath. i think it is important to at least recognize thatmoment when it occurs. consciously….another link…http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/2009/04/07/no-argument-here/.“hay ah iy a hey e ya hayhay ah iy a hey e ya hayhay ah iy a hey e ya hayhay ah iy a hey ” …

I hate to encourage your rants PeterJB, but you are spot on. A friend of mine spent a few years selling efficiency analysis to banks where their take was a percentage of the savings brought to the banks. He referred to the typical bank CEO as a nimrod, (foolish and easily confused).

Thank you >rants: but context, mon cher, er, is vital to the processes of the heart.Ho hum

One big problem with making our military smaller is the number of people who will be dumped into the labor force.We already have a huge unemployment problem. What are we going to do with an additional half million men and women looking for work?

And… people tend to solve problems before they are clearly understood (and may very well not be problems).Mark

BINGO…$700B is the US imported oil bill per year. The first world has only one real energy option…nuclear power…nuke power is the only energy source that can provide adequate energy to displace oil. Plug in hybreds are a necessary step to convert short trips from oil consumption to nuclear energy consumption. Ethonal (love it or hate it) provides 10% of US transporation fuel and is scheduled to go to 20% by 2020. All other green power (not against it) is too small to provide an impact on total energy supplied. Shift a large portion of oil imports for first world nations to domestic production and the US and first world economies revive. Till then, the world will experience near zero growth because first world consumers and their nations are bankrupt trying to pay an energy bill they can no longer afford.