Sunday, October 12, 2008

New Open Forum

Certainly a wild, unprecedented week - the last forum filled up quickly. Please use this one for any new comments, links, discussion, etc.

Additionally, feel free to comment on the great cartoon below


37 comments:

Justin_n_IL said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Justin_n_IL said...

IMF to the resuce
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/09/globaleconomy.creditcrunch

wink

Anonymous said...

Wonder where the bottom will be in the markets? Wonder what happens next?

I am filled with dread and that feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

LL

Justin_n_IL said...

Another good illustration on creation of money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dpJL6ANnV0

Justin_n_IL said...

It will be interesting to see what kind of chaos unfolds after the Leaman CDS auction. I'm shocked that they put it off an extra day and opted for Friday instead...hmmmm

Randy said...

ASIAN STOCKS PLUNGE!

Nikkei currently down 10% in Asian Trading

Straits times and Seoul down 7%

Additionally, DOW futures for tomorrow's open looking pretty bleak - currently down 175 points -tomorrow could be ANOTHER BRUTAL DAY!

Randy said...

Nikkei now down 11%

DOW futures now down 238 for tomorrow's open.

Justin_n_IL said...

Here's what Roubini said today.

http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253973/the_world_is_at_severe_risk_of_a_global_systemic_financial_meltdown_and_a_severe_global_depression

Anonymous said...

I just watched the Glenn Beck video. Peter Schiff was talking about the US printing money, but aren't they printing T-Bills(debt obligations) and selling them to Asia and OPEC for dollars? The $700 billion bailout was not the result of printing money, but the govt going into more debt. Am I correct?

Anonymous said...

WOW--As the Grateful Dead had sung, "What a long, strange trip its been!"

This was the week that was, and it still ain't over yet.

Many of us had called this collapse, and what the DOW would look like sometime this year, back in February. And it finally arrived at the benchmark of 8500. It is not going to look good for tomorrow, either.

There is way too much debt here, and more debt is not the answer to consumer confidence. Especially debt being hidden from the public's eye.

The big shot foreign bankers headin' over the White House OK Corral Saloon for a good talkin' to to the Dufus from Texas, should be interesting. They uh goin' to be drawin' their side arms to make their point nice and clear. Unfortunately, that there sheriff in the White House ain't too bright, and just gonna follow their rules, otherwise there might be a few feathers uh ruffled. He gonna be sayin' a lot of "yessirs" tomorrow. Mr. Bush Crime Family youngin ain't gonna mess with the world's big time crime bosses.

All we can do is to hunker down with a bunch of cash and things, and hope we can get it all uh floatin' to a safe landing spot.

Randy said...

Late links from our previous forum - for those who haven't yet had a chance to read:


Jim Willie - Bataan Death March Tickertape

Our Coming Depression

Greenspan

Randy

Justin_n_IL said...

Turns out Gordon Brown is using anti-terrorism laws to freeze Iceland accounts in the U.K.

All of those "in the name of safety" anti-terrorism laws(like the Patriot Act over here) are going to come in real handy for Governments.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKLA25168220081010

Anonymous said...

Zeitgeist Addendum is the best thing ever! I have hope for the future generations.

Anonymous said...

The stock markets have had an interesting morning so far - down 700 points at one point, then briefly into positive territory, and now down close to 300 points.

President Bush's speech didn't make me feel one bit better or more confident, I am sorry to say, but perhaps others will be more positively affected by the speech.

LL

Anonymous said...

....the man doesn't inspire much confidence anymore. He kinda reminds me of listenin' to Grampa - usually everyone else on the porch already knows Grampa...you just kinda be polite and wait till he goes to bed - otherwise, you get him all stirred up and he'll stay up a lot longer.....

Anonymous said...

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Friday that world leaders might consider suspending stock markets in response to the financial meltdown.

Berlusconi told a press conference in Naples that EU leaders may hold a summit on the crisis Sunday in Paris. He also said leaders from the Group of Eight also were considering a summit in the coming days.

The solutions to the crisis will have to be "global and innovative," Berlusconi said. "There is talk of suspending the markets" while international financial rules are "rewritten."

http://halturnershow.blogspot.com/2008/10/flash-traffic-extremely-urgent-govt.html


I know Hal Turner may not be a reliable source but I also heard it on Bloomberg this morning.

Anonymous said...

hey you guys, been reading this blog for awhile now and i see this fall of the financial system as a god given gift to the rest of the "masses", the rich will lose their power and money and thus open the market for new people to create wealth, and now they want to close the markets and rewrite the rules?!?!? I'm so tired of the corruption the aristocracy keeps waving in our face. You know what i dont like paying taxes either so i think i'm just going to stop paying them. Or howabout my team is losing this football game, lets rewrite the rules at half time so everytime the other team scores i get the points. We really should start to consider something other than just sitting here and discussing this, and actually do something people, any takers?

Justin_n_IL said...

A new video with Jim Rogers from this morning.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=884476331

Anonymous said...

Can anyone please tell me what was up with the stock markets today? they were down almost 600 points, then in the last hour there was a huge rally. Went almost to 300 positive. Then ended down slightly at -126. Now the futures show -414. Don't know if that figure is right or not.

All of this within an hour or two - huge, tremendous, wild swings that really don't make much sense to me.

What on earth is up? And what is likely to happen next?

LL

Justin_n_IL said...

This is an excellent video on the JFK assassination for inquiring minds.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7818497765381916701

Anonymous said...

Glen Beck says world leaders call for a global currency and New World Order will come out of this crisis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEHg97dtW5s

Anonymous said...

Randy,
Ok, I have gold, silver, food, family, friends and my passport (just in case...) Jim Rogers recommends hold fiat money in Japanese Yen &/or Swiss Frank. I don't have those yet. How do I go about getting some yen and swiss frank? Do I just go to my local bank and ask them to exchange my US$ for the other currencies? Would they have the physical money there in the bank? Please let me know.

By the way, I don't like this G7 meeting this weekends with the banks closed on Monday for Columbus Day. I know they're up to no good.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous--you asked what's up with the roller coaster action with the market. There are traders trying to make money. They are buying and sell all within minutes, is my guess. It does not seem that the Fed is manipulating the price. It seems all about the money makers. But what do I know.

I believe other than casting a vote on election day, the big groups should plan a protest on the streets of Washington DC like they did against the war. I have been to the anti-war rallies, but I have not seen anything planned in regards to the theft against the taxpayers. That would be very cool!

Justin_n_IL said...

Good Whitney article.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6710.html

Justin_n_IL said...

Another must read by Engdahl. Here's a small portion.

"They had help. In recent testimony under oath by Mr Lynn Turner, Chief Accountant of the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) testified that the SEC Office of Risk Management which had oversight responsibility for the Credit Default Swap market, an exotic market worth nominally $62 trillions, was cut in Administration ‘budget cuts’ from a staff of one hundred people down to one person. Yes that was not a typo. One as in 'uno.'
Vermont Democratic Congressman Peter Welsh queried Turner, ‘... was there a systematic depopulating of the regulatory force so that it was impossible actually for regulation to occur if you have one person in that office? ...and then I understand that 146 people were cut from the enforcement division of the SEC, is that what you also testified to?’ Mr. Turner, in Congressional testimony replied, ‘Yes…I think there has been a systematic gutting, or whatever you want to call it, of the agency and it's capability through cutting back of staff.’

Was that just ideological budget cutting fervor, or was it deliberate? Was former Goldman Sachs man, the man who convinced the President to hire Paulson, Bush's former Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Joshua Bolten, now the President's Chief of Staff, responsible for insuring there was no effective government oversight on the exploding securitization of mortgage assets?

These are perhaps some questions which the good Congressmen ought to be asking people like Henry Paulson and Josh Bolten, and not such red herring questions as how large Richard Fuld's bonus pay at Lehman was. Are Mr Bolten's fingerprints on the corpse here? And why is no one questioning the role of Paulson as CEO of Goldman Sachs, then the most aggressive promoter of exotic and other Asset Backed Securitization products on Wall Street?

It now would appear that the Paulson strategy was to use a crisis-a crisis that was pre-programmed and predictable as far back as 2003 when Josh Bolten became head of OMB-when it exploded, to panic the more conservative European Union governments into rushing to the rescue of US toxic waste assets."

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Financial_Tsunami/Warfare_Behind_Panic/warfare_behind_panic.html

Justin_n_IL said...

I like to keep tabs on what the rest of the world is thinking and concerning in regards to America. This is a good snapshot.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47841&s1=h1

Anonymous said...

Justin, you asked a great question. Was the the ideological budget cutting deliberate? I am just one person following the Bush administration since 2001, and it is my opinion that this administration's goal was to reduce oversight from every department. To allow unfettered and unregulated business to go forward by those who were connected with the administration and the Republican Party hardliners.

Time and time again, government employees were eliminated in favor of those who came from the private Republican Party sectors to run the operations, offices, departments and management. It didn't matter if it was HLS, Justice, defense, FEMA, etc. All down the line, the hacks following the party line of allowing the Treasury to be opened up, either through no-bid contracts, or even through the bidding process, to those who were "in partnership" with the administration and the Republican Party.

The Revolving Door, whereby those connected on the "outside" were asked to "come inside" to write bills, to push agendas, design plans and strategies in order for those big contributing players to make as much money off the government as possible.

I really am not telling anyone reading this anything they don't already know.

We saw this with the Justice department firings to favor those lawyers who could push the agenda. We saw it with Brownie, and Katrina. We saw it with the defense contractors. We saw it with Homeland Security grants going to Wyoming and other favored Republican strongholds instead of going where the money was needed, such as shoring up the container shipment systems.

We saw even more dismantling of our nation's economic system by allowing the Shadow Banking System to be legalized. Outsourcing for the purpose of "freebasing" foreign labor, unregulated nation state worker and labor rights, the moving of world headquarters off-shore to avoid taxes and rules, the push to keep foreign currencies pegged close to or lower than the US dollar in order to create a gluttonous consumer lured by lower and lower prices, and, of course, Bush's "home ownership society".

Bush wanted this to happen in order to create a fully flowing spigot of consumer debt magically transformed into fields of leveraged debt instruments harvested into more and more wealth for those connected to the Bush Syndicate.

This was all planned. As you recall, Bush said in his biography that if he were to become president he would not waste the political capital that his father pissed away. He would use it to create a successful presidency for himself. His political capital was to make those who boarded the Bush Crime Family Cruise Liner very, very rich no matter how it was done.

And to protect himself, he wrote into place Signing Statements that furthered his own agenda in spite of what was good for the country. And, had his Congressional cronies write bills that would create a neo-fascist government, if it was necessary to implement. It began with building concentration camps for US dissenters, creating legal rules that brought about torture, black sites, defining how a dissenter could be considered a terrorist or enemy non-combatant, and finally, basically deputizing favored corporate cronies to protect their "infrastructure" if there was a "National security risk either here or anywhere else in the world"--shoot to kill without the threat of prosecution."

So, to answer your question from my viewpoint, the conclusion is YES!

Justin_n_IL said...

A humorous video. It's relative to the Republicrats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqpFm7zAK90

Justin_n_IL said...

Excellent article.

"The larger point is that the world is drunk on fiats: currencies, derivatives, stocks, bonds."

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?p=53598#post53598

Anonymous said...

Yes, the world is drunk, but more so on greed, and abusive speculation of currencies, stocks, bonds, and derivatives. To own such financial instruments is not bad in its own right as instruments, but when trading is allowed to go on without adequate control, rules, regulation, transparency, and such, then abuse kicks in and greed takes over. And when, the department officials and oversight managers are pointmen and foot soldiers for those in charge of the game, then the entire thing is rigged to further their greed.

Anonymous said...

Twisted tunes: The DOW IS DOWN, DOWN, DOWN

The DOW Is DOWN, DOWN, DOWN

Anonymous said...

Here somthing to cheer you up! Works for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETF8JNyu2GE

Justin_n_IL said...

Guarantees Creep Up

Notice how the length and scope of the guarantees is creeping up. It started with 1-2 years, went to 3 years, and now the EU is proposing guarantees for up to 5 years and that "no financial institution of systemic importance" can be allowed to fail.

Hells bells, why pussyfoot around with this stuff? Let's just have every country guarantee everything forever. And if it comes to that (which it rapidly seems to be doing), one must stop and think about the value of those guarantees.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Justin_n_IL said...

Democrats also are lining up behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plan to bring lawmakers back to Capitol Hill after the Nov. 4 election to work on a second economic relief plan. The idea is "give the middle class and the average citizen the same kind of relief that we try to give the financial sector," said Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

"give the middle class and the average citizen the same kind of relief that we try to give the financial sector,"

LOL, WHAT? WHAT?

Justin_n_IL said...

This is from 1998. Michael Rivero, the guy who from What Really Happened.

But Nixon had to collateralize that debt somehow, and he hit upon the plan of quietly setting aside huge tracts of American land with their mineral rights in reserve to cover the outstanding debts. But since the American people were already angered over the war in Vietnam, Nixon couldn't very well admit that he was apportioning off chunks of the United States to the holders of foreign debt. So, Nixon invented the Environmental Protection Agency and passed draconian environmental laws which served to grab land with vast natural resources away from the owners and lock it away, and even more, prove to the holders of the foreign debt that US citizens were not drilling. mining, or otherwise developing those resources. From that day to this, as the government sinks deeper into debt, the government grabs more and more land, declares it a wilderness or "roadless area" or "heritage river" or "wetlands" or any one of over a dozen other such obfuscated labels, but in the end the result is the same. We The People may not use the land, in many cases are not even allowed to enter the land.

This is not about conservation, it is about collateral. YOUR land is being stolen by the government and used to secure loans the government really had no business taking out in the first place. Given that the government cannot get out of debt, and is collateralizing more and more land to avoid foreclosure, the day is not long off when the people of the United States will one day wake up and discover they are no longer citizens, but tenants.

The following map shows the current extent of all lands grabbed by the government under the guise of environmentalism.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ARTICLE2/doodoo.html

Justin_n_IL said...

More proof of blatant intentional recklessness from back in 2003.

"Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Tom Miller of Iowa headed a committee of state officials concerned about new forms of "predatory" lending. They urged Hawke to give states more latitude to limit exorbitant interest rates and fine-print fees. "People out there are struggling with oppressive loans," Cooper recalls saying.

Hawke, a veteran banking industry lawyer appointed to head the OCC by President Bill Clinton in 1998, wouldn't budge. He said he would reinforce federal policies that hindered states from reining in lenders. The AGs left the tense hour-long meeting realizing that Washington had become a foe in the nascent fight against reckless real estate finance. The OCC "took 50 sheriffs off the job during the time the mortgage lending industry was becoming the Wild West," Cooper says."

"This was but one of many instances of state posses sounding early alarms about the irresponsible lending at the heart of the current financial crisis. Federal officials brushed aside their concerns. The OCC and its sister agency, the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), instead sided with lenders. The beneficiaries ranged from now-defunct subprime factories, such as First Franklin Financial, to a savings and loan owned by Lehman Brothers, the collapsed investment bank.

Some states, including North Carolina and Georgia, passed laws aimed at deterring rash loans only to have federal authorities undercut them. In Iowa and other states, mortgage mills arranged to be acquired by nationally regulated banks and in the process fended off more-assertive state supervision. In Ohio the story took a different twist: State lawmakers acting at the behest of lenders squelched an attempt by the Cleveland City Council to slow the subprime frenzy."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27121535

Justin_n_IL said...

An article from Peter Schiff.

Just stop paying your mortgage!
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081010/news_lz1e10schiff.html