Full story here. I love the power of simplicity. The below narrative should be read to children in school so that they may see these dolts for the social parasites that they are.
“Imagine a large building full of about 50 people in a remote area, not accessible to other human beings.
Each person would need to have his basic needs - food, clothing, shelter and so forth, met. In doing so, each person would have to develop skills to go about earning his livelihood to support his needs. But it would be nonsensical for every person to develop each skill that is needed to survive. What would happen in reality is that each person would develop a few key skills and use these as his source of living; for example one person may specialize in growing crops and rearing animals, whist another may specialize in plumbing and carpentry. Read the rest of this entry »
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The grinch has really stolen Christmas this year. The October retail sales report could not have been worse, -2.8% overall, with automobiles at -5.5%. October is the last retail report before Christmas, and this is not a good start. This is the 4th straight month that U.S. retail sales have plunged. “Consumer spending will almost certainly decline in the coming quarters and could be a harbinger of real trouble this holiday season,” said Anika Khan, who is an economist for Wachovia. The last time retail sales fell 4 months was 1974. Read the rest of this entry »
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America’s de facto Finance Czar, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has reached for the panic button and made a dramatic 180-degree reversal of his financial bailout plan passed only days before. On September 23 in testimony before the US Congress, Paulson, former CEO of the politically influential Wall Street investment firm, Goldman Sachs, declared his adamant opposition to the idea of the US Government taking equity stakes in troubled major banks in order to provide them capital and stabilize the frozen interbank trading market. On October 13, that opposition to ‘nationalization’ collapsed. What happened to cause that sudden reverse is what interests us here. It shows the utter lack of coherency in the US financial elites over how to deal with their home-grown securitization of risk fiasco.Read the rest of this entry »
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Full story here. It’s probably closer to $5 trillion total. Roubini says it might be $7 trillion by the time it’s done.
“Purge your mind for a moment about everything you’ve heard and read in the last decade about investing on Wall Street and think about the following business model:
You take your hard earned retirement savings to a Wall Street firm and they tell you that as long as you “stay invested for the long haul” you can expect double digit annual returns. You never really know what your money is invested in because it’s pooled with other investors and comes with incomprehensible but legal looking prospectuses. The heads of these Wall Street firms have been taking massive payouts for themselves, ranging from $160 million to $1 billion per CEO over a number of years. As long as new money keeps flooding in from newfangled accounts called 401(k)s, Roth IRAs, 529 plans for education savings, and hedge funds (each carrying ever greater restrictions for withdrawing your money and ever greater opacity) everything appears fine on the surface. And then, suddenly, you learn that many of these Wall Street firms don’t have any assets that anybody wants to buy. Because these firms are both managing your money as well as having their own shares constitute a large percentage of your pooled investments, your funds begin to plummet as confidence drains from the scheme. Read the rest of this entry »
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“DR readers might have been alarmed to read Dan Amoss’ warning in yesterday’s edition that, “Some in Congress are floating a proposal to steal your 401(k), sell the proceeds, and invest in ‘government-guaranteed’ retirement accounts.” Alarming especially to folks reading about it for the first time. So let’s go into a little more depth. Read the rest of this entry »
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“Here is a great blog entry by Chuck from Rebel Traders:
(emphasis mine)It is getting very difficult to find new words to describe what has been unfolding in our nations economy over the past year. Each day brings more news about declining corporate earnings, economic conditions deteriorating, and a falling consumer confidence of record levels.Read the rest of this entry »
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Full story here. Man, if you thought you had a bad day…
“GM is worthless according to Deutsche Bank analyst Rod Lache, who has just slashed his target price on what is still the world’s biggest car maker to $0 and advised clients to get out.
He thinks GM will not be able to fund its operations beyond the end of next month and the inevitable government bailout will leave shareholders with nothing. Read the rest of this entry »
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“The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. Read the rest of this entry »
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Full story here. Wow, we all played “spin the bottle” with loose money and now we’re all coming down with something.
“The global financial crisis is far from over, and now a global economic crisis seems to be unfolding. Recent economic data suggests that the global economy is decelerating rapidly. Even though the US Congress reluctantly passed the USD 700 billion Wall Street rescue plan, stock markets are already focusing on the economic downside. Many investors are bearish enough to talk about a “nuclear winter” for the global economy. How bad could it be? Read the rest of this entry »
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From FT Alphaville. Yech. Hardly stuff to read during Sunday breakfast, but since I’ve gotten this far, you might as well see it too.
“Or perhaps better, the entire banking system is broken.
For it appears that the US Federal Reserve has given up on the idea of easing stress on interbank and wholesale lending and is resigned to being the central bank-come-market-maker of last, first and every resort.
For some time now there’s been a debate about the direction of the Fed’s policy. Would we see target rates come down further? Quantitative easing? Massive T-Bill issuance in the open market? Read the rest of this entry »
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