America Out of Economic Ammunition
Jean-Marc Vittori



Faced with an increasingly uncertain economy, America has ever-fewer means to take action. At the exact moment when the two White House candidates are honing their programs and their teams, this weakness is becoming obvious. The great economic policy levers have already been totally activated, or nearly so, and without really succeeding in stimulating the machine.



That is the case for monetary policy first of all. The Federal Reserve should announce today that it will not move its interest rates. The United States' central bank is stuck between two symmetrical risks. On the one hand, economic activity is not strong; consumers are depressed; unemployment is rising. So, the Fed should decrease its interest rates. However - on the other hand - interest rates are already low, barely two percent for the Fed's reference rate. And prices are increasing ever-more rapidly. One of the measures of this inflation published yesterday, the Personal Consumption Index, increased 0.8 percent in June, the strongest rise since 1981. Another measure, the classic Consumer Price Index, grew five percent in a year. Such a gap between prices and interest rates has not been observed on the other side of the Atlantic since the first oil shock. It would be perilous to increase it.



Budget policy is in the same situation. The reductions in taxes the Bush administration granted this spring will have barely offset the erosion in income skyrocketing oil prices have exerted. The deficit will exceed $400 billion in 2008 and could approach $500 billion next year, if one believes the forecasts published last week by the White House. Of course, that's barely more than three percent of the enormous American GNP. But it is difficult under these conditions to set a vast plan in motion to support the economy while preserving the trust of investors likely to buy the bonds necessary for its financing.



The United States is also not succeeding any better in using the trade weapon that would have allowed it to open new markets for its exporters. The recent injunctions directed at Beijing that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has just formulated look like a confession of impotence. America is left with barely any means to pressure China, Russia or the Emirates. All the more so as those countries' capital is indispensable to America's financial equilibrium.



The last time an American president took the reins of an economy as stalled as this one was in 1981. But Ronald Reagan changed the rules of the game and created what we in France would call a "break" with the past. For example, he increased military spending by 40 percent in five years. It's difficult to imagine John McCain - and even less so Barack Obama - following that route. All the more so as problems of colossal budgetary impact loom on the horizon, such as financing health care and retirement costs. In reality, the next president of the United States will have no major economic weapon available. If growth resumes, that's not very serious. In the opposite event, the whole world will suffer as a result of this American impotence.

Gold Vs Dollar - The value of the dollar is dropping like a rock and this video is to show how this is affecting the prices of everything from gas to milk, This is the first of several videos to show what is really happening to the ecomy of the United States and why this country is in a lot of trouble financially

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6NfXk7Bvc8

Death of the dollar - part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54MUm2P1jOU

Death of the dollar - part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdrNbhdl7uU

well nu har dollarn klättrat 11% lite snabbt mot kronan.

Quote:

Ja dom har hittat banditerna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbK25J2at60

USA FINANCE: Almost GAME OVER


US Banks borrow $20 Billion per day, Wall Street firms borrow $38 Billion per day, but NAMES WITHHELD.....???


BANKS BORROW MORE FROM FED: WALL STREET TAKES PASS

By JEANNINE AVERSA


WASHINGTON (AP) -Banks borrowed more over the past week from the Federal Reserve's emergency lending program, while Wall Street firms took a pass for the fifth week in a row.


A Fed report released Thurs More..day said commercial banks averaged $18.98 billion in daily borrowing over the past week. That compared with a daily average of $18.47 billion in the previous week.


For the week ending Sept. 3, Wall Street firms didn't take out any loans, the fifth straight period of no action. Their borrowing, however, averaged as high as $38.1 billion a day over the course of a week in early April.


Investment houses in March were given similar loan privileges as commercial banks after a run on Bear Stearns pushed what was the nation's fifth-largest investment bank to the brink of bankruptcy. The situation raised fears that other Wall Street firms might be in jeopardy.


Bear Stearns was eventually taken over by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a deal that involved the Fed's financial backing.

*******************************************
The identities of commercial banks and investment houses that borrow are not released. Commercial banks and investment companies now pay 2.25 percent in interest for the loans.

********************************************
In the broadest use of the central bank's lending power since the 1930s, the Fed in March scrambled to avert a market meltdown by giving investment houses a place to go for emergency overnight loans. The Fed has since extended those loan privileges into next year. Originally they were supposed to last through mid-September.


More recently, the Fed has said troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could draw emergency loans from the central bank if they needed. There was no indication in the weekly report that they had done so.


Separately, as part of efforts to relieve credit strains, the Fed auctioned nearly $25 billion in Treasury securities to investment companies Thursday. The Fed received requests for $45 billion worth of the securities.


In exchange for the 28-day loans of Treasury securities, bidding companies can put up as collateral more risky investments. These include certain mortgage-backed securities and bonds secured by federally guaranteed student loans.


The auction program, which began March 27, is intended to make investment companies more inclined to lend to each other. A second goal is providing relief to the distressed market for mortgage-linked securities and for student loans.


On the Net:

Federal Reserve: http://www.federalreserve.gov
............................................................................................
Det kommer mera.....


Now Detroit Wants a Bailout

Detroit's Blackmail Attempt Is Beyond Shameless
By PAUL INGRASSIA WSJ


September 8, 2008
It was only a matter of time, unfortunately. And now that Michigan is an election-year swing state and Detroit's auto makers are posting sales declines topping 20% each month, the time has arrived. The issue of a government bailout for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler is moving to center stage.

Barac More..k Obama has said yes to this proposal early on, and last week John McCain climbed on board. So much for change and fighting pork-barrel spending. We're moving beyond moral hazard here, folks, and into a moral quagmire. At least the Chrysler bailout of 1980 was structured so that taxpayers could reap a reward for taking a financial risk on the company's future. That's not what's happening now.

Late last year, in its energy bill, Congress authorized $25 billion of low-interest loans to high-risk borrowers -- a strategy perfected by home-mortgage lenders in recent years. In this case the high-risk borrowers are the loss-plagued Detroit car companies. The loans are supposed to help them develop new, fuel-efficient cars, and retool their factories to produce them. Detroit, not being satisfied with this taxpayer largess, wants $50 billion.

This is bad public policy for reasons of philosophy, practicality and precedent. And by the way, this is a dumb idea for the car companies too, simply in terms of their own self-interest.

Philosophically, if the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae debacles teach us any lesson, it is that subsidizing private profits with public risk is a terrible idea. Implicit government backing has led the managements of these two companies to make reckless investments that have backfired badly. Now government backing has become explicit, and under the plan announced by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yesterday, taxpayers likely will pay billions to keep Fannie and Freddie solvent -- with the exact amount uncertain.

The Detroit Three got into their current quandary by making decades of bad decisions, with some help from the United Auto Workers union. Yet despite the current crisis, General Motors is still paying dividends to shareholders, the car companies are paying bonuses to executives, and the private-equity billionaires at Cerberus who bought Chrysler are trying to reap enormous rewards from their risky investment. Meanwhile the UAW's Jobs Bank -- which pays laid-off workers for doing nothing -- remains in place.

Of course, we can all hope that shareholders do well, that executives reap handsome rewards for work well done, that the Cerberus billionaires make more billions on Chrysler, and that workers get paid on whatever terms the car companies agree. But we taxpayers shouldn't subsidize any of this.

The only reason we should bail out any private company is the risk that its demise would wreak havoc on the entire economy. Bear Stearns conceivably passed the test; its collapse could have threatened the U.S. financial system, and the government didn't make the mistake of bailing out shareholders or management.

But just what calamity are we trying to avoid by subsidizing loans to Detroit? That we'll all be sentenced to the indignities of driving Hondas, Mazdas or BMWs? Toyota and Honda, the current leaders in hybrids and alternative-fuel technology, did their research and development on their own dimes.

Even if Ford, GM and Chrysler were to go out of business -- and it's highly unlikely that all three will simply cease to exist -- there will be plenty of good cars for Americans to buy. And many will be made in America, even if they carry foreign nameplates. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai and other foreign car companies have expanded greatly their U.S. manufacturing operations in recent years. They're doing so because Americans are buying their cars.

As a practical matter, Americans could choose to buy more Detroit cars. Frankly, they should -- considering such outstanding products as the Ford Focus, a fuel-efficient and comfortable compact, and the Chevrolet Malibu, a terrific new mid-sized sedan. But they're not. Americans are voting with their dollars, which is their right.

And what about the precedent the government would set? If we bail out Detroit, where do we stop? The newspaper industry is in financial trouble because more readers and advertisers are turning to the Internet. Newspapers are good for democracy -- Thomas Jefferson said he would choose newspapers over government, after all -- so shouldn't they get low-interest government loans to help them adjust to the Internet? Of course not, and ditto for Detroit.

If Detroit's auto makers would apply more than knee-jerk analysis to what's being proposed, they would reject it quickly. No matter what their spin, including the patently absurd claim that government-guaranteed, below-market loans aren't a bailout, loan subsidies will paint them in the public mind as corporate welfare recipients that can't compete on their own. That can't be good for sales.

More fundamentally, the last thing these companies need just now is more debt. They are leveraged to the hilt, and risk climbing into a financial hole from which they'll never recover. Better to raise money by selling more assets (e.g., Ford's recent sale of Jaguar and Land Rover) or raising more equity -- even if new investors would require management changes or other measures.

All this said, if Detroit's short-sightedness and political expediency make a bailout inevitable, let's make sure taxpayers stand to get rewarded for their risk. In 1980, the government didn't lend any money directly to Chrysler, instead guaranteeing loans to the company made by private lenders, mostly banks, in the amount of $1.2 billion (bailouts, like everything else, were cheaper back then). But in return, the government got warrants to buy Chrysler stock at a very low price. When Chrysler staged its spectacular recovery and paid off the bank loans seven years early, the warrants soared in value and the government earned some $400 million.

Then CEO Lee Iacocca tried to get the government to forego its profits -- he even got into a telephone shouting match with Treasury Secretary Donald Regan. But Regan, backed by President Reagan, stuck to his guns.

One other stipulation: any low-interest loans to develop fuel-efficient cars should be made available to all car companies, not just the Detroit Three. The law passed by Congress last year is framed to make this highly unlikely. But if developing fuel-efficient and alternative-energy cars is deemed worthy of taxpayer subsidies for public-policy purposes, it's just common sense not to put all our eggs in Detroit's basket.

Mr. Ingrassia, a former Detroit bureau chief for this newspaper, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his automotive coverage. He writes on automotive issues for The Journal, Condé Nast Portfolio and other publications

Record corporate bailout reveals the bankruptcy of American capitalism


""The collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a paradigm of the US economy as a whole. Over the past three decades, the decay of American capitalism has taken the form of a vast growth of financial parasitism. At its heart, this involves the separation of wealth creation from the creation of real value in the production process. The American ruling elite has largely dismantled the productive base of the US economy, ruthlessly downsizing manufacturing at the cost of millions of jobs and the destruction of working class living standards, in order to reap higher profits from increasingly reckless forms of financial speculation.""

Tog mej friheten att plocka loss detta i texten, då jag tycker det är kärnan.


By Barry Grey

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/fafr-s10.shtml

The US government takeover of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has dealt a shattering blow to the ideology of market capitalism, which has been used for decades to justify a relentless assault on the working class and a vast transfer of wealth to the American ruling elite.


The endless invocations of the virtues of private enterprise, individual entrepreneurship and self-reliance, used to demonize socialism and defend a system that exploits the vast majority for the benefit of a financial elite, have been exposed as frauds. When it comes to big capital, losses are socialized. Only profits remain private.


The same forces who year after year have inveighed against “big government” in order to justify the removal of all legal impediments to the accumulation of corporate profits and private fortunes, and carry out the destruction of social safeguards for the working class, have engineered a massive expansion of government power to safeguard the interests of the financial elite.


The bailout has as well exposed the real relations of political power and influence behind the façade of American democracy. The largest government bailout of private companies in world history—whose ultimate cost to taxpayers is likely to reach hundreds of billions—was sanctioned in advance by the Democratic Congress and given instant approval by the leadership of both parties and both of their presidential candidates.


There have been no investigations into the greatest financial scandal in world history. Neither party has any interest in bringing to light the swindling and skullduggery of the Wall Street moguls, because they are both bound hand and foot to those responsible for the financial debacle.


What has been revealed is the existence in the United States, behind the increasingly tattered veneer of democratic institutions, of a plutocracy—the political rule of the rich. When it comes to the basic interests of the financial aristocracy, both parties and all of the official institutions of society snap to attention and do the bidding of their Wall Street masters.


The bailout of the two mortgage giants—which account for 80 percent of new home mortgages in the US—is a demonstration of the historic failure of American capitalism and the profit system on a global scale. It was precipitated by the deepest economic crisis since the Depression of the 1930s, whose epicenter is the United States. The Bush administration moved to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under conditions of a rapid erosion of international confidence in the solvency of not only these two companies, but of the United States government itself.


Over the past several months, global investors, including central banks and government investment funds, primarily in Asia and Russia, have been dumping their vast holdings in mortgage-backed securities issued by the US government-sponsored firms. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a combined liability of $5.3 trillion in mortgage-backed securities which they own or guarantee. The run on their assets has not only intensified the crisis of the two companies, which are massively leveraged and have suffered billions of dollars in losses as a result of the collapse of the US housing market, it has thrown into question the status of all US government debt, including US Treasury bonds.


The US, by far the world’s largest debtor nation, with a current account deficit of nearly $800 billion, is sustained by the inflow of hundreds of billions of dollars from abroad. It currently imports $1 trillion in foreign capital every year, or over $4 billion every working day.


But the assumption by the US government of the debts of the two mortgage companies, while averting an immediate financial meltdown, only compounds the crisis of American capitalism.
As Martin Wolf, the financial correspondent of the Financial Times wrote on Tuesday, “As a result, US housing finance has been brought under direct government control and, in the process, the gross liabilities of the US government, properly measured, have increased by $5,400 billion, a sum equal to the entire publicly held debt and 40 percent of gross domestic product.
”

At a stroke, US sovereign debt has doubled and is now roughly equal to America’s gross domestic product.
On July 14, one day after US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called for legislation to give him unilateral and unlimited powers to use public funds to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Wall Street Journal editorialized on the implications of a government bailout of the two companies.
It wrote: “But with financial woes mounting, some investors are betting they may profit from weighing the unthinkable question: Could the US government default?”

This immense increase in US government indebtedness can only further undermine international confidence in the credit-worthiness of US Treasury bonds, resulting in a further decline in the dollar and a sharp increase in the interest paid by the US to borrow from its international creditors.


The claims made by the Bush administration, echoed by the US media, that the bailout of the two mortgage finance companies will consume at most $200 billion in public funds—itself a massive amount that eclipses previous corporate bailouts, including the $160 billion bailout of the savings and loans industry less than two decades ago—are not credible. An indication of the sums envisioned by US policy makers is the fact that the legislation passed last July giving Paulson the power to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac raised the US debt limit by $800 billion, increasing the cushion between the debt limit and current government indebtedness to $1.1 trillion.


Some sense of the social priorities of the US ruling elite and its two parties can be gleaned from a comparison between the sums being extended to bail out just these two companies and those allocated by the federal government in 2008 for education ($67.5 billion), unemployment benefits ($37.3 billion), highways and mass transit ($53.1 billion) and housing ($7.4 billion).


Moreover, the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is only the prelude to a far broader use of public funds to bolster the balance sheets of major corporations. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his Republican opponent John McCain are both supporting a $50 billion bailout of the US auto companies, which will inevitably entail further cuts in jobs and wages. And the plunge of the Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers toward bankruptcy—the firm’s stock fell by 45 percent on Tuesday—poses another rescue operation similar to the $29 billion bailout of Bear Stearns last March.


It is already being widely broached that the government establish a permanent mechanism for using taxpayer funds to buy billions of dollars in failing assets from major banks and financial companies.
The Wall Street Journal wrote on Tuesday, “Creating a government-backed entity to buy up these assets could jump-start the market for home loans and relieve banks and other financial institutions, which are taking big hits to their balance sheets as they fall in value.
”

The Financial Times sounded the same theme, declaring, “The US government might end up having to support the recapitalization of a much wider range of financial institutions in order to curb the credit crunch.
”

These statements give the lie to the attempt to portray Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as aberrations, which in their reckless speculation and pursuit of super profits departed from the norm. On the contrary, they typify the financial parasitism and outright criminality that have become pervasive characteristics of the workings of American capitalism and the social physiognomy of the US corporate elite.


The operations of the two government-sponsored firms are entirely in line with the unbridled speculation, based on an immense expansion of debt, that has become the hallmark of American capitalism. Their role in the housing and credit boom that has now come crashing down was of a piece with the creation of the vast edifice of paper values, engineered through the so-called “securitization” of debt, which sustained the super profits and immense salaries raked in by Wall Street.


In the wake of the bailout, press reports have noted the bloated salaries of the companies’ CEOs. Before they were sacked as part of the government takeover, Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac chief Richard Syron took in between them $29.5 million over the several years they headed their respective corporations. And they stand to receive another $29 million as part of their exit packages.


But these sums are by no means exceptional.
The Financial Times reported last week that compensation for major executives of the seven biggest US banks totaled $95 billion between 2005 and 2007.


The collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a paradigm of the US economy as a whole. Over the past three decades, the decay of American capitalism has taken the form of a vast growth of financial parasitism. At its heart, this involves the separation of wealth creation from the creation of real value in the production process. The American ruling elite has largely dismantled the productive base of the US economy, ruthlessly downsizing manufacturing at the cost of millions of jobs and the destruction of working class living standards, in order to reap higher profits from increasingly reckless forms of financial speculation.


The indices of the growth of financial speculation in the US economy are staggering: In 1982, the profits of US financial companies accounted for 5 percent of total after-tax corporate profits. In 2007, they made up 41 percent of corporate profits.


This process has generated ever greater levels of social inequality, the most telling symptom of the degenerate state of the US profit system. A report by the Congressional Research Service, updated July 31, provides a measure of the ever growing chasm between the ruling elite and the broad mass of the American people. It states that the share of national income accounted for by the top 1 percent of earners (as reported on tax returns) reached 21.8 percent in 2005—a level not seen since 1928. The report further noted that in 2006, corporate profits totaled 12.4 percent of national income, a level not reached in 50 years.


The cost of the ever-expanding bailout of American big business will be borne squarely by the working class. Even in the midst of growing unemployment and poverty and a flood of home foreclosures, there is much talk in the media about the American people “living beyond their means.
”

That the next administration, whether headed by McCain or Obama, will sharply intensify the assault on working class living standards was spelled out by the New York Times, which editorialized Tuesday: “Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have both voiced support for the bailout, which shows good judgment. But what the next president will need to worry about, and both candidates need to talk about, is the depth of the country’s economic problems. It will take discipline and sacrifice to address them.
”

The only alternative to a rapid lowering of working class living standards and the only rational and progressive solution to the financial crisis is a socialist program of nationalization of the entire financial system under the democratic control of the working people, with provisions to secure the investments of small depositors and share-holders. The wealth and resources of the country must be developed and allocated to meet the social needs of the population, not the money-mad strivings of financial speculators.

Bailouts Will Push USA Into Depression

Bailouts Will Push U.
S Into Depression
09-12-2008
CNBC

source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/26656750

The end result of the global economic slowdown may be the U.S.
announcing national bankruptcy as the government cannot afford the bailouts that it promised and the market will not bail out the government, Martin Hennecke, senior manager of private clients at Tyche, told CNBC on Thursday

"We expect a depression in the United States.
We expect a depression, very possibly, also in Europe," Hennecke said on "Worldwide Exchange"

The estimated $300 billion cost of the Fannie/Freddie bailout will probably be considered as a loss that the government will have to take, therefore passing it on to taxpayers, he explained

"We already have $3 trillion of debt, as far as the U.S. government is concerned. These debt figures across the U.S.
economy are rising very sharply"

When the government can no longer pass the United States' "immense debt" on to taxpayers, it will turn to the holders of U.S.
dollars, leading to the eventual downfall of the currency, Hennecke said

"Definitely, it (the dollar) is not a safe place to be invested in, as real inflation is closer to 10 or 11 percent than the actual inflation numbers given by the U.S.
government," Hennecke said on "Worldwide Exchange"

Investors should avoid exposure to debt and stay away from leveraging on any investment or asset, including property, Hennecke advised, adding that "banks have been too highly leveraged in the past, private households, everybody"

Hennecke's stock allocations are mainly Asian-based, especially in the Chinese market as the country's government has a large amount of cash and the macroeconomics are fundamentally strong

He also suggested investing in gold, despite the recent fall in price

© 2008 CNBC. com

Americans Should REALLY WORRY About Bank Deposits


Nothing to worry about... still a few major banks left standing right?

Americans Should Worry About Bank Deposits if Congress Doesn't Act

With the "financial storm of the century" hitting financial institutions, many Americans are worried about the safety of their bank deposits,While the FDIC insures individual accounts up to $100,000, the reaction to IndyMac's failure this summer -- lines outside retail branches -- shows Americans have limited faith in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, which guarantees individual accounts up to $100,000 Such concerns are justified, says Nouriel Roubini, of NYU's Stern School and RGE Monitor, who notes there is already a "slow-motion run on retail banks" occurring nationwide That "run" could accelerate as people realize the FDIC fund has about $50 billion to "insure" about $1 trillion in assets at the nation's financial institutions, says Roubini.
"They're going to run out of money" unless Congress acts soon to recapitalize the FDIC

http://www.allamericangold.com/

Patriot Radio News Hour_9/15/08"BLACK MONDAY

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcwGlN_V1fA

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7MyJdYOt8U

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yyX2ORygys

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9J-BQRlQk

All is going to plan, the Elite's plan-

Perhaps its time to start planning for what WILL probably happen in the next 2 - 4 years yes? ; )

What do you think Mr(s) Gaston?

Problem Reaction Solution.....

Ah, the Elite have most of us DEPENDANT on their MONEY, and now they are playing with it, to enslave us further....

So, Gaston, what will be the next step?

Perhaps ECONOMIC crisis so Lord God Bush can declare Martial Law and shut down election, while people debate that both O-BOMB-A and Cracker-Boy McPAIN are not even qualified for president anyways due to where they were born?

Oh who knows? To sit at a bilderberg meeting and get half of the idea would be sweet...

Oh..

www.bilderberg.org

Quote:

Nästa steg blir att försäkringsbolagen och pensionsfonderna blir "rånade", en trolig följd när bankerna är tömda...Här är mitt stalltips på nästa haveri....

http://www.aigeurope.se/aigweb/aiginfo/1,2270,13:10,00.html


Finanskrisens andra våg

Försäkringsjätte
hotas av kollaps
Med Lehman Brothers i konkurs och Merrill Lynch sålt riktas nu fokus mot försäkringsjätten AIG. Bolagets kurs rasade igår med 60 procent.

Kolla AIG:s börsras! ANALYS Wall Street blir sig inte likt efter stålbadet Svenska banker hotas av miljardsmäll Lehman mot konkurs

AIGs formkurva....
http://iserver2.solutions.six.se/iser ... onGroupX.intervalPeriod/5*year&p=n24source.tickercode/US0268741073&p=direktsource.tickercode/US0268741073

Run On The Bank? Americans Could Lose Their Deposits

You know things are bad when Yahoo.com, the most trafficked website in the world and usually a purveyor of mindless celebrity gossip, cooking tips and dating advice, features a top story about how Americans could lose their bank deposits following the collapse of Lehman Brothers.


http://www.prisonplanet.com/run-on-th ... -lose-their-deposits.html

“There is going to be a new financial world order that will be born of this”

September 16th, 2008

Via: Bloomberg:



In the biggest reshaping of the financial industry since the Great Depression, two of Wall Street’s most storied firms, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., headed toward extinction.




New York-based Lehman, founded 158 years ago, said early today that it filed for bankruptcy protection after failing to find a buyer. Merrill Lynch, 94 years old and also based in New York, agreed to sell itself to Bank of America Corp. for $50 billion in an emergency deal hashed out yesterday.




“The tectonic plates beneath the world financial system are shifting, and there is going to be a new financial world order that will be born of this,” said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital Group Inc., the Jersey City, New Jersey-based brokerage that handles about $1 trillion worth of stock transactions a quarter. “It’s an ugly and painful process.
”



The engines that powered record growth in the financial industry over the past decade — cheap credit and surging property values — have been thrust into reverse. Companies that once thrived on making real estate loans and holding assets bought with borrowed money are now under siege, giving the upper hand to those less reliant on leverage and holding the fewest assets tied to property.


http://cryptogon.com/?p=4120


THE FINAL GLOBALIZATION OF THE U.S. BANKING SYSTEM

http://www.newswithviews.com/Veon/joan54.htm

Federal Reserve to bail out AIG


Now where do you think this money is coming from?


$85B gov't bailout of AIG imminent



NEW YORK – The government is expected to announce an $85 billion bailout of the huge insurer AIG, people with knowledge of the situation said Tuesday, in a bid to avoid further market upheaval. An announcement from the government about the plan was expected by 9:30 p.m. EDT, the people said.


If AIG had failed, it could have triggered a wave of problems for banks around the world and opened the ugliest chapter yet of the financial meltdown that has slashed billion of dollars from global stock markets.


The people, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the negotiations, said bankers and federal officials had decided a government bailout of American International Group Inc. was the best solution to save it from collapsing.


The people said the Federal Reserve would receive warrants that could be exchanged for an ownership stake in the company in return for its $85 billion loan. The ownership stake could total close to 80 percent of the New York-based insurance company, one of the world's largest.


Earlier, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met with Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio, to brief them on the government's option.


Bernanke and Paulson left the meeting without commenting.


"At the administration's request, I met this evening with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. They expressed the administration's views on the deepening economic turmoil and shared with us their latest proposals regarding AIG," Reid told reporters. "The Treasury and the Fed have promised to provide more details in the near future, which I believe must address the broader, underlying structural issues in the financial markets.
"

On Tuesday, shares of the insurance company swung violently as rumors of potential deals involving the government or private parties emerged and were dashed. By late Tuesday, its shares had closed down 20 percent — and another 45 percent after hours. Still, no deal emerged.


The problems at AIG stemmed from its insurance of mortgage-backed securities and other risky debt against default. If AIG couldn't make good on its promise to pay back soured debt, investors feared the consequences would pose a greater threat to the U.S. financial system than this week's collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers.


The worries were triggered after Moody's Investor Service and Standard and Poor's lowered AIG's credit ratings, forcing AIG to seek more money for collateral against its insurance contracts. Without that money, AIG would have defaulted on its obligations and the buyers of its insurance — such as banks and other financial companies — would have found themselves without protection against losses on the debt they hold.


"It might not just bring down other financial institutions in the U.S. It could bring down overseas financial institutions," said Timothy Canova, a professor of international economic law at Chapman University School of Law. "If Lehman Brother's failure could help trigger AIG's going down, who knows who AIG's failure could trigger next.
"

New York-based AIG operates an insurance and financial services businesses ranging from property, casualty, auto and life insurance to annuity and investment services. Those traditional insurance operations are considered healthy and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners said "they are solvent and have the capability to pay claims.
"

http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/ap_on_bi_ge/aig

.............................................................................................
I filmen Who Killed John O'Neill? så verkar AIG ha en framträdande roll i viss finansiering........kolla in mindmappen på väggen.....

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

Prize Winning Economist: Crisis As Bad As Great Depression

Two time Nobel-prize winner and former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz has warned that the current financial crisis will continue for at least another eighteen months and in many ways represents a worse situation than the one faced by Americans during the great depression of the 1930s.

http://infowars.net/articles/September2008/170908Stiglitz.htm

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den_stora_depressionen

Den stora depressionen
Från Wikipedia


Den stora depressionen var en lågkonjunktur som började med den stora Wall Street-kraschen i New York i USA den 29 oktober 1929. Från USA spred den sig snabbt till Europa och de andra delarna av världen, med förödande effekter i både I-länder och U-länder. Den internationella handeln sjönk kraftigt, likaså personlig inkomst, skatteinkomster, priser och vinster. Städer över hela världen fick genom detta ett stort bakslag, inte minst de som förlitade sig på tung industri. Byggandet avstannade mer eller mindre i flera länder, och bondgårdar och andra jordbruksområden drabbades då priset för deras skördar sjönk med mellan 40 och 60 procent.[1] Gruvarbetare och skogsarbetare fick det hårdaste slaget då efterfrågan sjönk kraftigt och det fanns få andra anställningsalternativ. Den stora depressionen slutade vid olika tidpunkter i olika länder; majoriteten av länderna som drabbades satte upp olika biståndsprogram för att klara krisen. De flesta länderna gick igenom någon form av politisk kris under depressionen, vilken förde politiken mer till vänster eller höger. Demokratin blev svagare, vilket gav diktatorer som Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin och Benito Mussolini en fördel, och som också hjälpte till att bygga upp förutsättningarna för andra världskriget.

FINANCIAL CONTROLLED DEMOLITION---LIKE 9/11.........WATCH!!!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev4nt3RRivk

IT'S A SETUP FOLKS..THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBZne09Gf5A

Diskuteras nu på http://www.gcnlive.com/Listen_Live.html

Quote:Citerar mig själv här men detta radioprogram är viktigt om man vill förstå vad som är på G just nu.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSPEK16693720080925

China banks told to halt lending to US banks-SCMP

Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.


The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.


"The decree appears to be Beijing's first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland's major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis," the SCMP said.

GET OUT OF THE DOLLAR FAST!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY3vebTvkrs

George Green September 23 Warning - Take Notes!!
Brödtext: Eddie NWO Censored

In this 42 minute of Project Camelot's follow-up call with George Green, George talks in detail about the collapse of the US economy, its consequences for US citizens, and the serious, imminent risks and consequences of war...SO LISTEN UP!

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9OIuM6eM6Q

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kp7H013wVY

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSC9ay-co2o

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFZBral8EIM

5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmF6aUm2tiE

Billionaire investor Jim Rogers speaks truth on Bloomberg

$700 Billion Dollar Bailout is "Welfare for the Rich"...watch and laugh, especially at the end when he says that Obama and McCain "are turkeys".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AtxSDMc87I

Billionären Jim Rogers on America Financial Crisis Bailout

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef1x3NNOnS8

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/pol ... ebt_topped_10_trilli.html

There were no fireworks so a lot of people probably missed it. We even forgot to mention it here on The Swamp when it happened though we saw the reports.
Anyway, on the last day of September, the national debt hit $10 trillion plus

President Bush signed legislation in July that raised the debt ceiling to $10.615 trillion. Meanwhile, the financial bailout legislation passed by the Senate last night would raise the debt ceiling further to $11.
315 trillion

Here's something else worth knowing. The gross national debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product has, under the Bush Administration, hit a 50-year high.

M CRAMER ON TODAY - TAKE YOUR MONEY OUT NOW! October 6

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