statism watch

That’s a pretty direct request. And to have it turned down is a slap, isn’t it? Geithner’s been over there trying to sell bonds and now we have this speech. It’s hard not to take it as a sign of monetary desperation on the part of the administration – how much American debt does China hold, again? But it’s just emerged that China is likely in debt up to its eyeballs as well, at up to 100% of its GDP. That’s not good.

Flashback: Soros: China Will Lead New World Order | Fisk: Nations to hasten demise of dollar in new world order | US dollar set to be eclipsed, World Bank president predicts | Bilderberg Wants Global Currency Now | Dollar to fall under scrutiny at G20 summit | IMF approves $13bn gold sale to boost lending fund | UN wants new global currency to replace dollar | G20 agrees to continue economic stimulus measures; Geithner shops international reserve accord | China Set to Buy $50 Billion in IMF Notes | Timothy Geithner: travelling bond salesman | Medvedev Unveils “World Currency” Coin At G8 | China calls anew for super-sovereign currency | No one talking about dumping dollar: China minister | China explores buying $50bn in IMF bonds | Chinese economists deem huge holding of US bonds “risky” as Geithner visits | A Bigger, Bolder Role Is Imagined For the IMF | UK PM reveals G20 plan to boost IMF by $1 trillion, hails new world order (again) | UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship | US backing for world currency stuns markets | U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar | IMF poised to print billions of dollars in ‘global quantitative easing’ | Gordon Brown seeks sweeping reforms to give IMF global ’surveillance role’ | IMF may need to “print money”, act as “world’s central bank” as crisis spreads | Globalists Exploit Financial Meltdown In Move Towards One World Currency | World needs new Bretton Woods, says Brown | IMF prescribes state regulation of ‘global financial order’ | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report

BBC News
March 11, 2010

China has hit back at comments by US President Barack Obama that Beijing should change its currency strategy.

On Thursday, he urged China to adopt a “market-oriented” exchange rate policy, increasing the pressure on Beijing to allow the yuan to appreciate.

But Su Ning, vice governor of the People’s Bank of China, accused Mr Obama of “politicising” the yuan issue.

According to news reports from Beijing, Mr Ning said that Mr Obama wants China to solve America’s problems.

“We don’t agree with politicising the renminbi [yuan] exchange rate issue,” Mr Su said on the sidelines of China’s annual session of parliament.

“We also don’t agree with a country taking its own problems and having another country solve them,” he said. China has always regarded currency issues as an internal matter.

Mr Obama had urged China to change its currency strategy to help re-balance the global economy.

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See also StatismWatch’s research threads on Greece, The USA, Canada, Iceland, and Zimbabwe, to get an idea of how this thing works in the real world (as opposed to some Keynesian macroeconomics text.)

Flashback: Stimulating our way into debt crises | Record surge in UK inflation | UK: Interest rates and quantitative easing on hold | Bank of England extends quantitative easing to £200b | UK banks receive more bailouts, restructuring | Bank of England to pump another £50bn into economy | Economist Warns Fed Will Bring About Zimbabwe Style Hyperinflation | UK Central Bank begins using ‘new’ money | UK government takes control over Lloyd’s bank | New UK bank bailout | Bank of England cloaks books, fears of monetary manipulation arise | Maybe we should look at Zimbabwe before trying to print our way out of a money crisis | UK banking shares plunge as crisis deepens

Landon Thomas Jr., The New York Times
March 3, 2010

‘If you really want a fiscal problem, look at the U.K.’

As Greece’s debt troubles batter the euro, Britain has done its utmost to stay above the fray.

Until now, that is. Suddenly, investors are asking if Britain may soon face its own sovereign debt crisis if the government fails to slash its growing budget deficits quickly enough to escape the contagious fears of financial markets.

The pound fell Tuesday to its lowest level against the dollar in nearly 10 months. The yield on 10-year government bonds, known as gilts, slid as investors fretted that Parliament would be too fragmented after a crucial election in May to whip Britain’s messy finances back into shape.

The slide in the pound followed a sharper decline Monday after polls released over the weekend indicated that the opposition Conservatives had lost their clear lead in the election race.

Without a strong political majority to tackle Britain’s lumbering fiscal problems, investors could start to make it greatly more expensive for the government to raise funds, setting the stage for a potential double-dip recession, if not worse.

“If you really want a fiscal problem, look at the U.K.,” said Mark Schofield, a fixed-income strategist at Citigroup. “In Europe, the average deficit is about 6 per cent of GDP and in the U.K. it’s 12 per cent. It is only just beginning.”

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Flashback: Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, ‘at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro’ | Goldman role in Greek crisis probed | Greek workers stage general strike | How EU Countries Cooked Books Using Derivatives | Goldman Sachs Helped Greece Obscure Debt Through Currency Swaps | Collapse of the euro is ‘inevitable’: Bailing out the Greek economy futile, says French banking chief | Euro currency union shows strains | Stimulating our way into debt crises | EU leaders reach secret Greek bailout deal | Will Greece set off ‘global debt bomb’? | EU cautions Greece about its deficit | Could Greece drag down Europe? | ‘Significant chance’ of second financial crisis, warns World Economic Forum | A world awash in debt

Doug Saunders, the Globe and Mail
February 28, 2010

EU officials push Greece for further cuts amid reports of possible bailout

Deep fault lines are running through Europe’s currency union.

The euro, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned last night, is facing its most serious crisis since its launch a decade ago. And financier George Soros warned that the 16-nation union “may not survive.”

Their comments came as European Union officials prepared to visit Athens today amid reports of an EU bailout whose effects could lead to further debt crises in the continent’s troubled south.

Greece has been at the centre of a storm that has rattled currency and stock markets fearing a sovereign default because of its massive debts. While Greece has been the focus, other countries such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy are also causing concern.

The European Union’s top finance official, Olli Rehn, will be in Athens today in a final effort to persuade Greece to force further cuts in public spending and services, increases in retirement ages, tax hikes and black-market crackdowns, after last week’s austerity announcements failed to reassure bond markets. The harsh measures, which have already spurred unrest among the Greek public, may also be a precondition for a bailout package, in order to reassure EU taxpayers that Greeks are bearing a share of the burden.

Economy Minister Louka Katseli said that extra measures likely “will be announced soon.”

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Which is precisely what the G20 will attempt to implement once the dollar and Euro have been knocked down to something closer to parity status.

Flashback: Sarkozy says world currency disorder unacceptable | Current And Former IMF Heads Call For New Global Currency | U.S. urges China to strengthen currency | George Soros Calls for World Currency and “New World Architecture” | U.S. dollar sags on global financial leaders’ omission | G20 Meet To Finalize Dumping Of Dollar This Weekend? | Dollar Reaches Breaking Point as Central Banks Shift Reserves | Fisk: Nations to hasten demise of dollar in new world order | US dollar set to be eclipsed, World Bank president predicts | Bilderberg Wants Global Currency Now | Dollar to fall under scrutiny at G20 summit | UN wants new global currency to replace dollar | G20 agrees to continue economic stimulus measures; Geithner shops international reserve accord | China Set to Buy $50 Billion in IMF Notes | Medvedev Unveils “World Currency” Coin At G8 | China calls anew for super-sovereign currency | China explores buying $50bn in IMF bonds | Chinese economists deem huge holding of US bonds “risky” as Geithner visits | A Bigger, Bolder Role Is Imagined For the IMF | UK PM reveals G20 plan to boost IMF by $1 trillion, hails new world order (again) | UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship | U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar | IMF poised to print billions of dollars in ‘global quantitative easing’ | Gordon Brown seeks sweeping reforms to give IMF global ’surveillance role’ | IMF may need to “print money”, act as “world’s central bank” as crisis spreads | Globalists Exploit Financial Meltdown In Move Towards One World Currency | World needs new Bretton Woods, says Brown | IMF prescribes state regulation of ‘global financial order’ | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report

UPI
February 26, 2010

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said Friday a new reserve currency should be explored as an alternative to the U.S. dollar.

Strauss-Kahn, answering questions after a speech at IMF headquarters in Washington, said a new reserve currency would be “intellectually healthy to explore,” The New York Times reported.

The IMF chief declared the need for a “renewed vision” of the world monetary body, which was formed in the aftermath of the 1994 Bretton Woods Agreements in New Hampshire, saying the organization must find better ways to uncover financial crises before risks metastasize throughout the global financial system.

“As long as the United States maintains sound macroeconomic policies and deep, liquid, and open financial markets, the dollar will continue to be the major reserve currency,” the Treasury Department said in an October 2009 report.

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Along with other unamed Wall Street insiders Soros, one of the most high-profile advocates of a global currency, is shorting the Euro. Now, one may dispute the causation here, but how could this announcement not this cuurency – helping drive it to parity with the dollar? If that isn’t smoking gun proof of market manipulation for political ends, then what is?

Flashback: Goldman role in Greek crisis probed | How EU Countries Cooked Books Using Derivatives | Goldman Sachs Helped Greece Obscure Debt Through Currency Swaps | Collapse of the euro is ‘inevitable’: Bailing out the Greek economy futile, says French banking chief | Euro currency union shows strains | Stimulating our way into debt crises | EU leaders reach secret Greek bailout deal | Will Greece set off ‘global debt bomb’? | Davos 2010: George Soros warns gold is now the ‘ultimate bubble’, calls for IMF to handle climate fund | George Soros Calls for World Currency and “New World Architecture” | Soros: China Will Lead New World Order | Globalists Exploit Financial Meltdown In Move Towards One World Currency | Soros points out regulated markets fail to operate on market fundamentals, calls for more regulation

Karl West, Daily Mail
February 26, 2010

A secretive group of Wall Street hedge fund bosses are said to be behind a plot to cash in on the decline of the euro.

Representatives of George Soros’s investment business were among an all-star line up of Wall Street investors at an ‘ideas dinner’ at a private townhouse in Manhattan, according to reports.

A spokesman for Soros Fund Management said the legendary investor did not attend the dinner on February 8, but did not deny that his firm was represented.

At the dinner, the speculators are said to have argued that the euro is likely to plunge in value to parity with the dollar.

The single currency has been under enormous pressure because of Greece’s debt crisis, plus financial worries in Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland.

But, it has also struggled because hedge funds have been placing huge bets on the currency’s decline, which could make the speculators hundreds of millions of pounds.

The euro traded at $1.51 in December, but has since fallen to $1.34. Details of the secretive dinner emerged days after Mr Soros, chairman of Soros

Fund Management, warned in a newspaper article that the euro could ‘fall apart’ even if the European Union can agree a deal to shore up support for stricken Greece.

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Flashback: 702 U.S. banks in danger: FDIC | Global Bank Insurance Levy Wins Support over Transaction Tax at Davos | More US Bank Failures and The Coming Deposit Insurance Bailout | 10 U.S. banks fail stress test, but regulators confident | Barclays, Lloyd’s, RBS join Goldman-Sachs in the black | Goldman-Sachs to repay TARP loan, resume private operations, bonuses, at “earliest time” possible | Which Banks Will Rule? | Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout | Analyst: One Third Of Banks Could Collapse or Merge In 2009 | Morgan Chase Exec Brags Bailout Is for Takeovers, Restructuring, Not Lending | Behind the panic: Financial warfare over the future of global bank power

Paul Joseph Watson, PrisonPlanet.com
February 25, 2010

7 day restriction on bank withdrawals could mean the difference between preserving or destroying your life savings if the U.S. dollar collapses

The recent controversy surrounding Citibank’s advisory to its customers reserving the right to impose a 7 day restriction on withdrawals from their accounts is a stark reminder of the vulnerability of the fractional reserve banking system and the FDIC’s shaky guarantee that it can insure deposits in the event of a bank run.

As we reported last week, Citibank’s notice informing its customers of the right to request 7 days notice before funds can be withdrawn from all checking, savings and money market accounts was necessary to ensure compliance with Federal Reserve regulations.

Fox News Business reported on the “little known regulation” yesterday in a piece by Darryl R. Isherwood.

“The requirement is part of Regulation D of the Securities Act of 1933. It applies to all accounts classified as Negotiable Order of Withdrawal [NOW] accounts – basically interest-bearing checking and savings accounts held by individuals and non-profits. Banks are not required to hold reserves in place to cover NOW accounts, so the rule prevents a run on withdrawals for which there are no reserves,” states the report.

For those still unaware of the fact, it may come as a shock that your bank has no reserves with which to cover withdrawals if there was a sudden loss of confidence and a good old run on the bank as has happened on several occasions over the last two years in both the UK and the U.S.

“According to a spokeswoman, the bank changed the status of the bulk of its consumer checking accounts last year to take advantage of an FDIC policy to provide unlimited account protection to certain types of accounts. When Citi transferred the accounts back to their original status, it triggered the notification of the seven-day requirement,” states the report.

Although the FDIC claims it guarantees insurance to the tune of $250,000 per depositor per bank, the rising number of bank failures and those placed on the “problem list” has stoked fears that the tank is running dry.

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Flashback: Goldman Sachs Helped Greece Obscure Debt Through Currency Swaps | America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels | How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash | Goldman Sachs breaks record with $16.7bn bonus pot | More US Bank Failures and The Coming Deposit Insurance Bailout | Arrest Over Software Illuminates Wall St. Secret | The Lords of Time: Goldman Sachs and low-latency trading | Record quarterly profits and bonuses: Goldman Sachs makes out like a bandit on taxpayer’s dime | Goldman-Sachs: Pilfered trading code could be used to ‘manipulate markets’ | Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs | Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine | 10 U.S. banks to repay U.S. bailout money | Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress | Barclays, Lloyd’s, RBS join Goldman-Sachs in the black | Goldman-Sachs to repay TARP loan, resume private operations, bonuses, at “earliest time” possible | Which Banks Will Rule? | Wall Street’s Big Takeover | Behind the panic: Financial warfare over the future of global bank power | Goldman-Sachs Alumni Hold Reins of Financial System | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda

Joanna Slater, The Globe and Mail
February 22, 2010

Goldman Sachs defends moves that masked the size of loan, but investors wonder whether there are other problems hidden

A growing furor about financial stratagems that prettied up government balance sheets in Europe is rattling Wall Street and unnerving investors.

At the heart of the controversy are transactions arranged by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for Greece back in 2001, all entirely legal, that masked the full extent of its borrowing.

Hidden in plain sight, the deals were well known to a small group of traders but have burst onto the public stage as Greece struggles to stave off a full-blown debt crisis and counter skepticism about its bookkeeping.

Faced with mounting criticism, Goldman took the unusual step of posting a statement on its website late Sunday, where it described the deals, which involved derivatives known as swaps. The transactions were consistent with European principles at the time, Goldman said, and had a “minimal” effect on the country’s overall fiscal health.

A senior Goldman executive went further Monday in a hearing before a British parliamentary committee. While there was nothing inappropriate about the transactions, Goldman’s Gerald Corrigan said “the standards of transparency could have been and probably should have been higher.”

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Yes, another country successfully set on its way to implosion by the international banking elite through swaps and securities rating fraud.

Flashback: America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels | How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash | Goldman Sachs breaks record with $16.7bn bonus pot | More US Bank Failures and The Coming Deposit Insurance Bailout | Arrest Over Software Illuminates Wall St. Secret | The Lords of Time: Goldman Sachs and low-latency trading | Record quarterly profits and bonuses: Goldman Sachs makes out like a bandit on taxpayer’s dime | Goldman-Sachs: Pilfered trading code could be used to ‘manipulate markets’ | Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs | Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine | 10 U.S. banks to repay U.S. bailout money | Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress | Barclays, Lloyd’s, RBS join Goldman-Sachs in the black | Goldman-Sachs to repay TARP loan, resume private operations, bonuses, at “earliest time” possible | Which Banks Will Rule? | Wall Street’s Big Takeover | Behind the panic: Financial warfare over the future of global bank power | Goldman-Sachs Alumni Hold Reins of Financial System | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda

Elisa Martinuzzi, Bloomberg News
February 17, 2010

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managed $15 billion of bond sales for Greece after arranging a currency swap that allowed the government to hide the extent of its deficit.

No mention was made of the swap in sales documents for the securities in at least six of the 10 sales the bank arranged for Greece since the transaction, according to a review of the prospectuses by Bloomberg. The New York-based firm helped Greece raise $1 billion of off-balance-sheet funding in 2002 through the swap, which European Union regulators said they knew nothing about until recent days.

Failing to disclose the swap may have allowed Goldman, a co-lead manager on many of the sales, other underwriters and Greece to get a better price for the securities, said Bill Blain, co-head of fixed income at Matrix Corporate Capital LLP, a London-based broker and fund manager.

“The price of bonds should reflect the reality of Greece’s finances,” Blain said. “If a bank was selling them to investors on the basis of publicly available information, and they were aware that information was incorrect, then investors have been fooled.”

Michael DuVally, a spokesman at Goldman Sachs in New York, declined to comment.

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Flashback: Stimulating our way into debt crises | Consumer debt loads are the new concern | ‘Significant chance’ of second financial crisis, warns World Economic Forum | Idle job market hurting recovery, Flaherty warns | No new stimulus, economy ’stabilized’: Harper | America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels | U.S. jobless claims drop again | US Bankers Get $4 Trillion Gift From Barney Frank | Taibbi: Obama’s sellout to Wall Street creates ‘permanent bailout’ | Economic picture still not very bright, and more layoffs are in store, manufacturers say | How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash | Goldman Sachs breaks record with $16.7bn bonus pot | U.S. unemployment claims spike | Credit card debt balloons | Unemployed to reach postwar high: OECD | Canada’s $1-trillion debt baby | More US Bank Failures and The Coming Deposit Insurance Bailout | Credit delinquencies up 24% in June | Bank of Canada declares recession over | Record quarterly profits and bonuses: Goldman Sachs makes out like a bandit on taxpayer’s dime | Budget officer ‘can’t tell’ if stimulus plan working | Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs | Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine | More Canadians in arrears on credit payments | Canadian households $1.3-trillion in debt | Credit card changes benefit families, Flaherty says | Credit companies seek to avoid regulation, create global debit system | Canadian credit card delinquencies rising | All maxed out? Budget measures would improve credit access | Now the consumer crunch: falling credit limits, rising interest rates | Bank of Canada adds $8B to credit markets | $25B credit backstop for banks ‘not a bailout’: Harper

Jon Spears, Toronto Star
February 16, 2010

Average household debt soared to a new Canadian record in 2009, rising 5.7% to more than $91,000, according to a study released Monday.

The numbers show that most families haven’t felt much relief from the recovery that is technically underway in the economy, says the report from the Vanier Institute of the Family.

“No one should conclude that recession worries are over in the homes across Canada,” says the report, written for the institute by Roger Sauve of People Patterns Consulting.

“From a household perspective, there will continue to be high unemployment for sometime, income growth will remain weak, and there is an urgent underlying need for many families to repair and/or strengthen their household balance sheets,” it says.

“For far too many, there is too little income, too much spending, too little saving and too much debt.”

The report notes that the number of Canadians working peaked in October 2008. From then until the economy hit bottom last July, 410,000 jobs disappeared – and few of those jobs have been recovered.

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It should be interesting, at least, to see how the Keynesian hacks spin this one.

Flashback: Euro currency union shows strains | EU leaders reach secret Greek bailout deal | Will Greece set off ‘global debt bomb’? | The US budget: Barack Obama’s $3.8 trillion red ink blueprint | EU cautions Greece about its deficit | Consumer debt loads are the new concern | No solution in dispute over Iceland deposits | IMF warns against retreat from stimulus spending | Why Did the ‘Stimulus’ Fail to Help the US Economy? | Could Greece drag down Europe? | Record surge in UK inflation | Iceland sets date for Icesave vote | ‘Significant chance’ of second financial crisis, warns World Economic Forum | Iceland says IMF aid likely delayed | Iceland blocks central bank debt repayment deal | Canadians struggling to dig out of debt | Can’t say if federal stimulus is working: watchdog | UAE markets dive on Dubai debt woes | Dubai’s ‘big pyramid scheme’ grounded by debt load | A world awash in debt | U.S. banking troubles far from over | Ottawa on track for largest-ever deficit | U.S. markets fall on Dubai crisis | 1 in 10 Americans delinquent in paying mortgage | Personal bankruptcies still soaring | Credit card debt balloons | US credit shrinks at Great Depression rate prompting fears of double-dip recession | Canada’s $1-trillion debt baby | Credit delinquencies up 24% in June | Bank of Canada declares recession over | Budget officer ‘can’t tell’ if stimulus plan working | More Canadians in arrears on credit payments | Canadian households $1.3-trillion in debt | Credit companies seek to avoid regulation, create global debit system | Canadian credit card delinquencies rising | Iceland’s government collapses | Iceland inflation soars to 17.1% | 5 injured during protest in Iceland over economic meltdown | Now the consumer crunch: falling credit limits, rising interest rates

Sam Fleming, Tim Shipman, The Daily Mail
February 13, 2010

The European single currency is facing an ‘inevitable break-up’ a leading French bank claimed yesterday.

Strategists at Paris-based Société Générale said that any bailout of the stricken Greek economy would only provide ’sticking plasters’ to cover the deep- seated flaws in the eurozone bloc.

The stark warning came as the euro slipped further on the currency markets and dire growth figures raised the prospect of a ‘double-dip’ recession in the embattled zone.

Claims that the euro could be headed for total collapse are particularly striking when they come from one of the oldest and largest banks in France – a core founder-member.

In a note to investors, SocGen strategist Albert Edwards said: ‘My own view is that there is little “help” that can be offered by the other eurozone nations other than temporary, confidence-giving “sticking plasters” before the ultimate denouement: the break-up of the eurozone.’

He added: ‘Any “help” given to Greece merely delays the inevitable break-up of the eurozone.’

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