Posts Tagged ‘Credit Crisis’
Monday, July 12th, 2010
Obama’s debt commission warns of fiscal ‘cancer’
The co-chairmen of President Obama‘s debt and deficit commission offered an ominous assessment of the nation’s fiscal future here Sunday, calling current budgetary trends a cancer "that will destroy the country from within" unless checked by tough action in Washington.
Bank Profits Depend on Debt-Writedown ‘Abomination’
Bank of America Corp. and Wall Street firms that notched perfect trading records in the first quarter are now depending on an accounting benefit last used in the depths of the credit crisis to prop up their results.
American Credit Scores Crash To New Lows
Giant unmanned airships to patrol Afghanistan skies for up to three weeks at a time
Giant unmanned airships that can fly for up to three weeks at a time could soon be providing cover for British soldiers in Afghanistan.
Iran Dumps A Glut Of Oil Onto The Market
Iran just released 40% of oil it had been storing in idle tankers, according to ship tracking data from AISLive. Six vessels of oil are expected to be hit Europe, creating a potential short-term glut situation for traders.
Scores die in Uganda World Cup final bombings
In simultaneous bombings bearing the hallmarks of international terrorists, two explosions have ripped through crowds watching the World Cup final in two places in Uganda’s capital, killing 64 people, police said.
Boom Times for Millionaires
Wealth accumulation among the richest North Americans (excluding Mexico) grew in 2009, with millionaires in the U.S. and Canada enjoying a 15% increase in their total worth. Collectively, these millionaires possessed $4.6 trillion, according to a report from the Boston Consulting Group.
Pipe bomb detonates at Houston oil executive’s home
A seemingly anonymous gift left on the front porch of a Houston home owned by an oil company executive has the city’s affluent population of oil profiteers on edge this weekend, after that package exploded and seriously injured a 62-year-old woman.
World’s banks face wealth ‘crisis’
The sovereign debt crisis would seem to create worry enough for European banks, but there is another gathering threat that has not garnered as much notice: the trillions of dollars in short-term borrowing that institutions around the world must repay or roll over in the next two years.
Bank of International Settlements Lent 380 Tonnes of Physical Gold?
Secret gold swap has spooked the market
Sunday Times Reports Exxon And Chevron Receive Green Light From Obama To Plot Takeover
You know someone is losing (a lot of) money when the heavy artillery of the rumormill department goes into overdrive. According to the Sunday Times, the Obama administration has given its blessing to Exxon and Chevron to consider takeover bids of the troubled major unimpeded.
Toxicologist: Oil/Corexit mix caused heart trouble, organ damage, rectal bleeding
Artificial Sweetener Killing Americans
Aspartame: The Pentagon listed it as a biochemical warfare agent, and the FDA gave its approval as a sweetener used in over 6,000 foods. Its producers, Ajinomoto, have rebranded the artificial sweetener several times (most recently dubbed “AminoSweet”) in an effort to advertise it as a natural, harmless substance.
Global Governance and World Order Studies
There are those in academia and the elite news media who characterize anyone who raises the impending spectre of a coming “New World Order” as a “conspiracy theorist.”
Global Warming Indoctrination, ‘Tell your kids They are killing Santa Claus’!
“Here is a picture if you want of the polar ice caps melting, Santa Claus is about to drown. You should tell your children uh that uh these people in your state that oppose taking steps in your state on global warming, they are trying to kill Santa Claus. Once you have the kids you know another 14 years and they are going to vote.” Joel Rogers.
55 Percent of Likely Voters Find ‘Socialist’ an Accurate Label of Obama?
The latest poll by Democracy Corps, the firm of James Carville and Stan Greenberg, has Republicans leading on the generic ballot among likely voters, 48 percent to 42 percent.
The 24 Types of Authoritarians
Central banks start to abandon the U.S. dollar
There’s mounting evidence that central bankers have little faith in the greenback these days. Can we blame them?
Gen. Casey: America may be in Iraq and Afghanistan for another decade
Senate bill would make airport body scanners mandatory
A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate requiring all airports to use full-body scanners lacks sufficient privacy safeguards, says a prominent watchdog group.
Financial Con Of The Decade Explained So Simply Even A Congressman Will Get It
More and more Americans preparing for social unrest
Pipeline Geopolitics: The Russia German Nord Stream Strategic Gas Pipeline
The Drums of War? Pentagon Provokes New Crisis With China
Three news features appearing earlier this week highlight tensions between the United States and the People’s Republic of China that, at least in relation to the language used to describe them, would have seemed unimaginable even a few months ago and are evocative more of the Korean War era than of any time since the entente cordiale initiated by the Richard Nixon-Mao Zedong meeting in Beijing in 1972.
The EU Banking System Is In Big Trouble
Presently, 170 banks are having difficulty accessing the wholesale markets where they get their funding,. Financial institutions are wary of lending to each other because they’re not sure who is solvent or not. It’s a question of trust.
Ireland seeks to block Israel access to data on EU citizens
Irish government retaliates over use of forged Irish passports by alleged Mossad spies in Dubai assassination.
Hundreds of Federal Agents Fall Victim to Ponzi Scheme
FBI agents are supposed to unearth scams, not become victims of them. This time is different.
Evidence Indicates Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster Was Engineered And Prolonged By Desig
BP oil spill Corexit dispersants suspected in widespread crop damage
The Three Stooges Go To Israel
Does anyone remember the famous black-and-white skit, performed by the Three Stooges, where a psychotic Moe goes berserk and attacks an innocent bystander who unwittingly utters the trigger words “Niagara Falls!”?
Economic Hitmen Come for Their ‘Pound of Flesh’ in New Jersey
It was reported today that New Jersey’s Governor Christie is proposing privatization of many public services. This is the precise playbook of "Economic Hitmen" aka Banks.
How your Apple iPhone spies on you
Criminals using the Apple iPhone may be unwittingly providing police with a wealth of information that could be used against them, according to new research.
Sheriff revokes license of gun owner and son for writing letter to the editor critical of sheriff
U.S. District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett has ordered Osceola County Sheriff Douglas L. Weber to issue a gun permit to a resident and to complete a college-level course involving the First Amendment!!!
Doomsday: How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a ‘world-killing’ event
Is the IMF about Ready to Muscle U.S. Taxpayers?
It appears the elite appear to want to up the ante. It appears they are getting set to turn the guns inward and go after the hard earned money of Americans.
Biggest Defaulters on Mortgages Are the Rich
No need for tears, but the well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars.
Sculptor Watches Over Chicago With Giant ‘Eye’
That stare–from the 30-foot "EYE" sculpture–officially opens this morning in Chicago’s Loop. Tony Tasset, the artist behind the eyeball–adorned with a blue iris and blood vessels–modeled it after one of his own.
Ten Ways We Are Being Tracked, Traced, and Databased
Are technological advances infringing on our right to privacy?
Toxicologists: Corexit “Ruptures Red Blood Cells, Causes Internal Bleeding”, "Allows Crude Oil To Penetrate “Into The Cells” and “Every Organ System"
Engineered Global Depression Being Used To Help Bring In One World Currency
Monkeys trained as battlefield killers in Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents are training monkeys to use weapons to attack American troops, according to a recent report by a British-based media agency.
Mind Control? Scientists Have Discovered How To Use Nanoparticles To Remotely Control Behavior!
New BP Data Show 20% of Gulf Spill Responders Exposed to Chemical That Sickened Valdez Workers
New BP Data Show 20% of Gulf Spill Responders Exposed to Chemical That Sickened Valdez Workers
46 US Warships Plus 7,000 US Marines On Route To Costa Rica?
With this kind of nation destroying firepower, it gives real meaning to the expression "war on drugs", but if this a real six month "war on drugs" we should expect to see some fantastic results, right?
‘Liar Loans’ Make a Comeback
Forbes has learned that banks are quietly reestablishing the no-doc and low-doc mortgage market. In fact, low-doc loans accounted for 8% of newly originated loan pools as of this February, FirstAmerican Corelogic reports.
Europe Seeks to Ban Food From Clones
The European Parliament asked on Wednesday for a ban on the sale of foods from cloned animals and their offspring, the latest sign of deepening concern in the European Union about the safety and ethics of new food technologies.
Some private security firms, NGOs helping militants
Certain private security firms and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) working in Pakistan have been found involved in assisting the militants financially and providing them with the human resource as well.
EU gives US access to its citizens’ financial data
US anti-terrorism investigators have won the right to scrutinise the private bank details of British and other EU citizens after a crucial vote in the European parliament yesterday.
Google’s Street View ‘snoops’ on Congress members
Google’s popular Street View project may have collected personal information of members of Congress, including some involved in national security issues.
The New “Convenient” Way to Buy Wine in Pennsylvania: Swipe Driver’s License, Look Into Camera, Blow Into Breath Sensor
Banksters are Coming for Your Retirement Next
First, the banksters hoodwinked an angry public into bailing out their collateralized-debt obligations and derivative Ponzi scheme to the tune of what may turn out to be over $600 Trillion dollars.
New CENTCOM commander once called shooting Arab men ‘a hell of a lot of fun’
Mattis, whose appointment must be confirmed by the Senate, replaces General David Petraeus, who took over direct command of the faltering Afghan conflict after his predecessor was fired for giving a damaging magazine interview.
Greenspan Says Economy May Be Undergoing a `Pause’
Obama to submit three trade agreements to Congress
US President Barack Obama on Wednesday said that he would soon present three controversial trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Columbia to the Congress for consideration.
Costa Rican Govt Approves US Occupation
In another example of the growing militarization of the war on drugs, the Costa Rican government has given the US permission to launch an invasion of up to 7,000 Marines, ostensibly to “fight drugs.”
‘Perfect Citizen’ Program Places ‘Sensors’ Throughout Web
The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed “Perfect Citizen” to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.
EMU break-up risks global deflation shock that would dwarf Lehman collapse, warns ING
CNBC Guest Says Absent Plunge Protection Team Stepping In, Market Would Fall; Wien, Kernan Disgusted
Russian bomber incursions continue
Russia is continuing to fly strategic nuclear bombers near U.S. and Canadian airspace because the Russian military is seeking to maintain “the illusion of power,” the commander of the U.S. Northern Command says.
U.S. Missiles Deployed Near China Send a Message
If China’s satellites and spies were working properly, there was a flood of unsettling intelligence flowing into the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese Navy last week. A new class of U.S. super weapon had suddenly surfaced nearby.
1,500 oil cleanup workers sickened says BP’s lead doctor in Gulf
Ex-Congressman Accused of Ties to Terrorism Pleads Guilty to Obstruction
Obama bypasses Senate for new Medicare chief
President Barack Obama bypassed the Senate Wednesday and appointed Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor and patient care specialist, to run Medicare and Medicaid.
The Welfare-Warfare Crackup
For decades, libertarians have been warning Americans of the coming crack-up of the welfare-warfare state. Of course, we couldn’t predict when the crack-up would finally occur. All we could do is to say that the road to statism, both welfare and warfare, was a road to national bankruptcy.
National Guard Troops Invading Neighborhoods to “Fight Drugs”
It’s funny that the National Guard is in Afghanistan right now admittedly helping them grow the very opium that ends up on the streets of US cities. If the military wants to stop the mass distribution of opium in the US, the fight could be better served at the source we control and safeguard rather than our own neighborhoods.
Goldman Sachs Executive to Advise Head of Canada’s Central Bank
Who of course is a Former Goldman Sachs Executive
NSA building ‘massive’ spy system to monitor domestic infrastructure; Contractor building it calls it ‘Big Brother’
BlackListed News
Tags: affluent population, Bank Of America Corp, bank profits, Bill, blacklisted news, boom times, boston consulting group, Cells, control, Credit Crisis, disaster, evidence, hitmen, oil company executive, percent, pipe bomb, Sheriff, Stooges, use, wealth accumulation Posted in headlines | No Comments »
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Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
Apr 28 11:51
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Apr 28 11:12
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Fake antivirus–false pop-up warnings designed to scare money out of computer users–represents 15 percent of all malware that Google detects on Web sites, according to 13-month analysis the company conducted between January 2009 and February 2010.
Apr 28 11:12
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Hackers are hard at work trying to dupe iPad owners to install a malware-loaded iTunes update on their Windows PCs.
Apr 28 10:58
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There are those who have been talking about a single global regulator for years and as a result of the 2008 Credit Crisis, there have been calls to protect you and me from future banking crises through new financial reform. However, we had better consider its real impact. It is not about protecting you and me it is about changing the national regulatory laws of America to conform to a world governmental system and globalizing the last barrier separating individual nation-states. It is about a major power grab of America’s financial assets. As a result of the high stakes, we should ask if Republicans are being told they had better vote for financial reform so we don’t have another September/October, 2008?
Webmaster’s Commentary:
The foundation for global government rested on three pillars. The first was the global warming crisis (which was exposed as a hoax) to justify a global environmental authority, the second the global pandemic (also a hoax) to justify a global health authority, and finally the global economic crisis (looking just as faked) to bring about a global version of the Federal Reserve bank.
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Apr 28 10:46
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Increasingly, I have no fealty to the U.S. government. This has nothing to do with George Bush, bogeyman of the Left, the war in Iraq, or Halliburton, and everything to do with the reasonable assessment that the United States is too big for its own good. Too big in its 300 million people to be represented by 550 mostly millionaire men (not women) in a far-off swamp called Washington, D.C. I therefore have stopped calling myself a U.S. citizen.
Apr 28 10:44
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This could be a game changer. From the University of California, Irvine press release, a finding that suggests soil microbes have a negative feedback with temperature increase. This has broad implications for the amount of CO2 emitted estimated in climate models.
Apr 28 10:44
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Have you noticed that the Australian PM, Kevin Rudd has dumped his CTS until at least 2012. This was his key platform at the last election, when he described global warming as “the greatest moral imperative of our time”.
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Apr 28 10:43
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Sarah Palin was right! Of course, when she mentioned it liberals went nuts claiming that she was fear-mongering. Now, President Obama’s Budget Director is heralding the cost cutting measure.
Apr 28 10:31
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Webmaster’s Commentary:
Facts of life:
* Goldman has a multi-decade history of fraud going back to the 1920s
* Goldman was one of the ring leaders of the DotCom IPO scam of the 1990s
* By being willing to package and re-sell total garbage real estate loans, Goldman & other banks massively inflated real estate prices, defrauded investors all over the world, and brought the world financial system to the brink (and we’re not out of the woods yet.)
Criminals…and if they didn’t own the last three White Houses, some of them would be in jail.
Apr 28 09:58
By: disinter
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What will these commies think of next? U.S.-style regulation on toilet-tank size? U.S-style limits on using cash? U.S.-style bailouts of failing industries?
Apr 28 09:57
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There is a bill to make Puerto Rico a state. Again, they are trying to pull one over on us and on Puerto Ricans, who have consistently said they do not want to become a state.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
The US Government steals other peoples’ lands and makes them states without their permission. Here is just one example.
Apr 28 09:56
By: disinter
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The European Central Bank may soon have to invoke emergency powers to prevent the disintegration of southern European bond markets, with ominous signs of investor flight from Spain and Italy.
Apr 28 09:55
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The Israeli Civil Administration, which administers the occupied West Bank, claims the spillage was the result of an accidental power malfunction which caused excess settlement sewage to overflow onto Palestinian land.
“This was no mistake,” says a British activist who has been documenting life in the village for several months. “The pipe was deliberately unscrewed by hand so that the sewage would spill over into Beit Ummar. That has nothing to do with an electricity cut,” he told IPS.
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Apr 28 09:55
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Shimon Peres….. a man that has been politically active for the past 66 years…. a man that started out as a ‘leftwinger’ and wound up sitting next to his fellow war criminal, Ariel Sharon, as his new political partner….
A man that has sold out every ideal of human decency to get where he is today, his first elected position in all those years, the President of the State of Israel.
Apr 28 09:54
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A sign from Gaza: “Dear Europe, Sorry about that cloud of ash over your heads and that you can’t travel anywhere. We feel just the same. Sincerely, Gaza”
Apr 28 09:53
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Tuesday’s hearings of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations laid the groundwork for future criminal prosecutions of Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and his chief lieutenants whose reckless and self-serving actions helped to precipitate the financial crisis. Committee chairman Senator Carl Levin (a former prosecutor) adroitly managed the proceedings in a way that narrowed their scope and focused on four main areas of concern. Through persistent questioning, which bordered on hectoring, Levin was able to prove his central thesis:
1. That Goldman puts its own interests before those of its clients.
2. That Goldman knowingly misled it clients and sold them "crap" that it was betting against.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
And if Goldman (and Madoff) were doing it while the SEC watched porn, then they are all probably guilty of fraud to some extent.
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Apr 28 09:52
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U.S. meat prices may rise to records this summer after farmers reduced hog and cattle herds to the smallest sizes in decades, the result of surging feed costs linked to demands for more ethanol.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Another consequence of the not-well-thought-out idea of growing ethanol fuels for cars.
To recap…
Contrary to the sales pitch, ethanol is not carbon neutral because the processing of the plants into ethanol produces carbon effluents.
Because ethanol contains much lower energy than gasoline, one must buy and burn more of it to perform the same work as gasoline.
The fuel system on most cars was never designed to work with alcohol molecules. The fuel systems of cars using ethanol fuels are failing, requiring costly and carbon-producing repairs.
The diversion of finite farmlands from food to ethanol production has driven up the cost of food crops and now, meat and dairy products as well.
Apr 28 09:42
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Apr 28 09:40
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THE great fraud has been found out, and his country saved – for now – from the greatest of his follies.
Here’s the worst lie that Kevin Rudd, perhaps our most deceitful Prime Minister, once told about global warming and his Emissions Trading Scheme: "The biggest challenge the world faces in the decades ahead is climate change.
Apr 28 09:34
By: disinter
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The conspiracy-obsessed federal government is trying to keep in a cage the nine Michigan “militia” taxpayers its agents provocateur persuaded to say dumb things. At least that was the official story, as reported in the official media. The nine were going to overthrow the government using the government’s signature tactics of force and violence. Really. Truly. Nine working-class people vs. the greatest military empire in history and its millions of troops and cops and spies. Of course, the whole thing was a set up by the Obama police state, which may even be worse than the Bush police state. But now it looks as if the feds may have made everything up.
Apr 28 09:25
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Apr 28 09:19
By: malterwitty
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Persons working with aid organizations assisting the victims of the Darfur conflict have passed on the news that they have confirmed through their contacts in the so called “Save Darfur Coalition” that millions of dollars raised to help the Darfur refugees have ended up in Israeli bank accounts. These accounts help fund programs that include illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Apr 28 09:14
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Tax credits that lured investors into supporting high-tech businesses wouldn’t be paid out over the next three years under a bill approved by Hawaii lawmakers.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
[insert great profanity, some in a foreign language, here]
Apr 28 09:14
By: malterwitty
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GlaxoSmithKline profits increased 16pc in the first quarter, driven by better-than expected swine flu vaccine sales.
Apr 28 09:11
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World Bank and OECD say water is a finite resource that must be valued at a higher price in order to repair old supply systems and build new ones
Webmaster’s Commentary:
The next commodity to be "ENRONized" to soak the public.
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Apr 28 09:09
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Jewish community leaders have urged the White House to refrain from publicly pledging to defend Israel against possible Iranian hostilities, senior Jewish activists told the Forward.
Messages were passed to the White House through several channels, Jewish activists said. And it seems to have worked: Speaking before the annual conference of the American Jewish Committee in Washington last week — his most recent address before a Jewish audience — President Bush talked about America’s commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and about his administration’s commitment to Israeli security, but he did not link the two, as he has several times in recent months.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Translation: "You should go attack Iran for Israel, but don’t say it’s for Israel!"
Apr 28 09:08
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Mayor Nir Barkat said that construction in East Jerusalem will continue, despite the "slap in the face" Israel received from the United States over the matter, Army Radio reported on Wednesday.
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Apr 28 09:05
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The eurozone "lurched towards the endgame" yesterday as Standard & Poor’s finally relegated Greece’s sovereign credit rating to "junk" status, downgraded Portugal by two steps to A-, and the yields on Greek debt climbed beyond 15 per cent, a signal that the market regards a default as virtually certain.
The contagion that many feared is threatening to overwhelm the entire single currency area in a remarkably short time. The course of events has parallels with the banking crises of the autumn of 2008, when successive institutions came under attack and their interrelationships and size devastated confidence in the financial system, famously so after the failure of Lehman’s.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
The trap of a private central bank lending the public currency at interest is that the moment that first pretty printed piece of paper goes into circulation, more money is owed to that private bank than is actually in existence. Hence the debt trap is permanent and eventual default literally built into the system itself.
Apr 28 09:02
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Apr 28 09:01
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Law firms are cutting salaries and hiring fewer graduates, reports Ameet Sachdev in the Chicago Tribune, which means that a law degree may not be a foolproof way to get a high-paying job after graduation. In addition, ongoing tuition hikes on already-overpriced law school degrees make the prospect of unemployment (and loan repayment) after graduation even more dire.
Apr 28 09:00
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Students, especially at for-profit universities, are leaving college in the U.S. with a debt load large enough to raise questions about the ability of many to repay loans, a study found.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
The high-paying jobs used to lure students into debt for their education have fled to foreign shores, and the end result is that in the United States, college graduates are working as cooks and store clerks.
Apr 28 08:58
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Senate Democrats agreed Monday to kill a provision from their derivatives bill pushed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., a change one analyst predicted could force the Nebraska company to set aside up to $8 billion.
The Senate Agriculture Committee inserted language into its derivatives bill last week at the request of Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.) that would have exempted any existing derivatives contracts from new collateral requirements—the money set aside to cover potential losses.
Berkshire has $63 billion in derivatives contracts, and Mr. Buffett has boasted he holds very little collateral against these products.
Apr 28 08:58
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The Barack Obama administration’s declaration in its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that it is reserving the right to use nuclear weapons against Iran represents a new element in a strategy of persuading Tehran that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites is a serious possibility if Iran does not bow to the demand that it cease uranium enrichment.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Yesterday we quoted Hillary Clinton that Iran is not a direct threat to the United States, hence this bludgeoning of Iran in violation of the NNPT is done solely to please Israel.
America needs leaders who will put America first, second, and third.
Apr 28 08:55
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The mystique of Goldman Sachs is based in large part on their reputation as the smartest financiers on Wall Street. After today’s hearings, this mystique has permanently dissipated. The Goldman executives babbled. They sounded dumb. They stalled and stammered and went into contortions to avoid giving straight answers to simple questions. They were mendacious and evasive when they did speak. Financial powers around the world will note carefully the refusal of three out of four Goldman executives on one panel to state that they had a duty to defend the interests of their clients. Who will want to do business with such a gang?
Apr 28 08:52
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Persons working with aid organizations assisting the victims of the Darfur conflict have passed on the news that they have confirmed through their contacts in the so called "Save Darfur Coalition" that millions of dollars raised to help the Darfur refugees have ended up in Israeli bank accounts. These accounts help fund programs that include illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Apr 28 08:50
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Webmaster’s Commentary:
I have been saying this for the last week. Clients who owe us money cannot pay us because the people who owe them money cannot pay them because the people who owe them money cannot pay them because the people who owe THEM money cannot pay them because ……
Yes, the Federal Reserve is creating new money hand over fist but that cash is not going into general circulation but into the Wall Street bailouts and from there into the pockets of the financial elites. Commerce in the real world is grinding to a halt!
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Apr 28 08:46
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Lindsey Graham has withdrawn his support for both the Democrat’s pro-amnesty immigration bill and cap and trade legislation just a week after ALIPAC Chairman Gheen gave a speech in which he demanded that Graham come clean on the fact that he is being blackmailed over his homosexuality.
Apr 28 08:40
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Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah in an article published on Wednesday scoffed at recent comments by US Defense Minister Robert Gates that Hezbollah’s arms exceeded those held by many states in the world, saying Hezbollah’s arms did not compare to the “armament” and “crimes” of the United States and its ally Israel.
Apr 28 08:39
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If Obama interferes with the Arizona Immigration law now, it will send a message all across America that rioting will get you what you want!
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Apr 28 08:34
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In small but significant numbers, filmmakers and casting executives are beginning to re-examine Hollywood’s attitude toward breast implants, Botox, collagen-injected lips and all manner of plastic surgery.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
In the recent casting call for the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" film, specific mention was made that women with breast implants need not apply, and that potential cast members would be subject to a "bounce test" to make sure that all jiggles are ‘au natural’!
Personally, I think this is a healthy trend. I prefer women as the universe made them, not as the product of Dow Chemical and Corning Glass Works, and since I am not trying to seduce any of the women reading this blog, I can be 100% honest with you and tell you that you are really far more beautiful without all that paint and chemical coating. I know you do not want to hear that on a date after spending several hours and a few hundred dollars applying the latest fashion facade, but that’s really how most guys feel about it.
In the middle east women are taught to cover their faces with cloth. In the west they are taught to cover their faces with paints. Both customs teach women a terrible lie; that their undecorated faces are not suitable for display in public.
Apr 28 08:27
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I hereby announce that I am going to provide Greece with a trillion dollar bailout. And in the spirit of the Ben Bernanke school of money printing, the interest rate will be zero. In fact, under my GARP plan (Greek Assistance and Rejuvenation Program), the Greeks don’t even have to pay the money back, ever.. This means that European stock markets can now spike up, that the Greeks no longer have to strike–and in fact, they don’t even have to work once my money hits.
Apr 28 08:26
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“We keep saying it’s unacceptable for Iran to have a bomb, but we don’t mean it. We mean it’s terrible, we don’t want it. But when Israel says it’s unacceptable, they mean it.”
Steve Rosen, director of the Middle East Forum’s Washington Project and a former top staffer at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, agreed with Abrams’ assessment
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Steve Rosen was one of the AIPAC staffers accused of espionage in connection with the feeding of false information about Iraq sent from Israel into the Pentagon Office of Special Projects where confessed Israel spy Larry Franklin fed it to the White House. His near brush with prison has apparently not taught Rosen not to continue lying America into Israel’s wars.
Apr 28 08:21
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Israeli officers held responsible for the deaths of four Palestinians in the West Bank received only minor reprimands after an internal investigation concluded that the deaths could have been avoided.
Apr 28 08:20
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The funniest introduction to the topic is through a Hebrew article published a few years ago by Yedihot Aharonot. I had a copy of it in the memory cards stolen by Israeli agents in the attack of July 2009 against me; after it I thought it was lost. However, a few days ago I found a copy online while searching something else. Since it is in Hebrew, I won’t reproduce it here; drop me a line if you want a copy. The article is hilarious not because the author’s sense of humor, but due to the constant reminder of the author’s – and the Jewish society – moral limitations.
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Apr 28 08:19
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‘When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,’ General Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO force commander, remarked wryly when confronted by the sprawling spaghetti diagram in a briefing.
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Apr 28 08:17
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Officials are considering setting fire to an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as efforts to stem a leak from a rig that exploded and sank are failing.
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Ask Al Gore to tax the oil slick out of existence.
Apr 28 07:09
By: dean
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Saying he was simply following a masterplan for Jerusalem, Barkat said he aimed to keep the holy city’s Jewish population at 65 percent and the Palestinian population at 35 percent.
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Apr 28 07:00
By: portos
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Apr 28 06:56
By: portos
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Apr 28 06:29
By: malterwitty
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A 19-year-old Hebron resident was detained by Israeli forces Tuesday night, removed from the West Bank, and expelled into Gaza, security sources said.
Apr 28 06:16
By: malterwitty
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Microphone picks up comments by prime minister about Labour supporter Gillian Duffy, who had challenged him over the economy.
Video:
Apr 28 04:55
By: 911insidejob
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April 25, 2010 posted by Jeff Gates
Americans can now see the light at the end of a long dark tunnel—if only they will look.
We entered this tunnel in 1948 when an enclave of religious fanatics induced President Harry Truman to portray them as a “state” meriting recognition, aid and protection.
We were warned not to do so.
These extremists had just inflicted on the Palestinians an ethnic cleansing that rivaled in its savagery the fascist abuse of ethnic groups during WWII. In December 1948, Albert Einstein and 27 other concerned Jews urged us “not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.”
»
Apr 28 04:54
By: 911insidejob
Tags:
April 26, 2010 posted by Jeff Gates
Israel has long been waging war on the U.S. by way of deception. To date, its operatives have worked from the shadows hoping not to be detected. Their duplicity typically includes the displacement of facts with what the American public can be deceived to believe.
Thus the need to create a widely held belief around Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi meetings in Prague, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories and Iraq’s purchase of uranium from Niger. Though all five “facts” were false, only the last claim was conceded as phony prior to inducing our invasion of Iraq.
There lies our national security challenge as the groundwork is being laid for another 911.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED | The History The US Government HOPES You Never Learn!
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Sunday, March 14th, 2010
by Bob Chapman
Global Research, March 14, 2010
The International Forecaster – 2010-03-13
The dramatic and costly undertow of deflation continues unabated, as government via fiscal policy and the Federal Reserve, by creating money and credit out of thin air, proceed to overpower this deflation with massive inflation.
Unbeknownst to most the Fed and the Treasury have been maintaining this program for the past several years, accompanied by most major countries, all of which have taken the path of least resistance rather than address the underlying problems.
The current stage of problems had to be addressed 2-1/2 years ago in what has become known as a credit crisis. This continuing crisis has been accompanied by 22-1/8% current unemployment that has resulted in a perpetual fall in tax revenues and a resultant enlargement of government deficits. We might add that this condition is being experienced by many countries worldwide, which followed America’s leadership into this terrible financial and economic morass. These policies have led to massive sovereign debt policies, a hangover of the policies of 1933 and 1971.
The financial system in America is on the edge of default. A recent poll found that 92% of those surveyed wanted to unseat their current representative or Senator in Washington and only 21% believed that government enjoyed the consent of the governed. It’s very obvious people are not happy with the political, economic and financial situation presently. Eighty percent believe that government is enmeshed in partisan infighting. Not only between parties, but within parties as well. Politicians are very aware of these numbers and are frantic to get reelected. The public has recoiled in disgust. People are demanding that the power of government be curbed. People are sick and tired of paid off corrupt politicians, more than half of whom have been in office for more than ten years.
It is not healthy for a nation to have $3.3 trillion in Treasury bonds held by foreigners. China holds about $900 billion and Japan about $800 billion. We also understand that hedge funds and others also are fronting both countries, so the figures are not really reflective in their total positions. These nations for the most part are rolling their positions, but have not injected new capital into US Treasuries. That is why the Fed had to fund 80% of new Treasury debt last year.
Presently the Fed is fighting and pulling out all stops to halt legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, a private corporation, which has managed our monetary policy since 1913, under the Federal Reserve Act. On Monday the Treasury held a media conference for financial reporters and bloggers in which the Fed was discussed. The meeting had some very strange conditions. Mr. Geithner, Mr. Krueger and Mr. Sperling could be paraphrased but not quoted and what was paraphrased could not be connected to a specific official. Again, the element of secrecy to protect the guilty. One blogger said, “Did they get the ground rules from Al Qaeda?” The meeting was a travesty. How can government officials demand secrecy in public briefings? It is no wonder that 90% of the public and 317 members of Congress want more Treasury transparency and an audit and investigation of the Fed. This is the same gang run by Geithner and Bernanke that are currently running the gold suppression scheme. When you have a criminal cabal involved you have no transparency. That is why the audit of the Fed is so important. Such an exercise would expose exactly what both have been doing in the markets. The Fed and Treasury have lied for years about what they have been up too in behalf of their Illuminist friends. It is not only about the actions of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, but the funding of Watergate, Saddam Hussein, who they supposedly conveniently hung, the countries that secretly received loans, how much, who got them and what was the collateral? Were currency swaps with foreign control banks used to strengthen the dollar by the Fed and for those foreign control banks to purchase Treasury and Agency paper? How about all the inside information funneled to Wall Street and banking for almost a century from both the Fed and Treasury? Their lies are legion. They both are manipulating every market in the world 24/7 and the American people want it stopped. We also want an audit of America’s gold and the testing of the gold bars held. There is much we want to know, so we can save our country and our freedom.
Investors continue to chase yields, which is a dumb practice. Interest rates are at 80-year lows and can only stay the same or rise. People are grabbing junk bond yields that will come back to haunt them.
At least for now Greece and euro problems are being shuffled into the background. You can imagine this is not the last of the eurozone problems. The PIIGS will be back one by one to cause never-ending problems until they are forced to leave the eurozone. That will cause a eurozone breakup, probably by the end of next year.
This is the first real threat to the eurozone since its beginning ten years ago, and we think they will find that their rules are so restrictive that weak members will be forced to leave. The monetary policy and interest rates may be singular, but fiscal policy is not. Exchange rates for the euro must fit all members, but rates and methods of growth vary widely. With one currency sovereignty has effectively been lost. Public debt to GDP has to be under 3%, while most are over 3%: Greece is at 10.7%. There is also a public debt limit of 60% of GDP, which all nations in the zone have broken. All precepts have not and cannot be met. There is no effective policy because there is no way to enforce the rules. In addition most have current account deficits and the zone effectively has been carried by Germany from this aspect. The bottom line is a few have growth, the rest do not. As a result there is pressure, due to poor growth in some of the nations, for austerity measures to reduce fiscal deficits at the worst possible time. Greece comes first along with Ireland and the rest will follow.
Just as an example, Spain has a fiscal deficit of 10% of GDP that has to fall to 3% within three years, which is virtually impossible just as it is in Greece. Their current account deficit is 4.5% of GDP. In a recessionary/depressionary world getting into the plus column is a tall order. This dilemma is the result in part of the housing collapse caused by Spanish banks and inattention by the Bank for International Settlements. We see consumption continuing to fall in the face of 20% unemployment, which worsens by the day. The PIIGS and a present total of 19 nations are effectively bankrupt. We do not believe they can survive without devaluation and debt default. That is why we expect that to happen next year.
Historically banks have kept loan loss allowance ratios at $1.33 for every dollar of debt. Today it is 0.58%.
The commercial paper market rose $11.2 billion last week to $1.145 trillion.
The Treasury sold $21 billion in 10-year T-notes. The bid-to-cover was 3.45 to 1, which is average vs. 2.85 to 1. This was the highest since 1995. Indirect bidders, which include foreign central banks, bought 35.1%, compared to an average of 41.7% at the last four re-openings.
Almost 39 million Americans received food stamps in December, the most ever, as the jobless rate hovered near a 26- year high, the government said.
Recipients of the subsidies for food purchases climbed 23 percent from a year earlier and rose 2.1 percent from November, the U. S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday in a statement on its Web site. The number receiving the benefit has set records for 13 straight months.
Food aid climbed as the national unemployment rate reached 10.1 percent in October, the highest since June 1983, and remained at 10 percent through December before easing to 9.7 percent in January.
An average of 40.5 million people will get food stamps each month in the federal fiscal year that began Oct. 1, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said last week. The figure is projected to rise to 43.3 million in 2011.
Nevada had the biggest increase in the percentage of the population receiving the coupons, up 49 percent from December, USDA figures show. Texas had the most recipients, at 3.31 million, topping California’s 3.11 million.
The U.S. government recorded a budget deficit of $221 billion in February, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday, even as its income posted a big increase for the month.
Income totaled $107.5 billion in February, a 23% increase over last February’s total, and marking the first monthly year-over-year increase since April 2008.
Spending was $328 billion in February, up 17% year over year. That was the largest February total on record, a Treasury official said.
February was the 17th consecutive month that the government recorded a deficit. It was a little less than expected: last week the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the deficit would be $223 billion in February.
Year to date, the deficit is $652 billion, according to the Treasury data.
The Senate approved a $140 billion package of tax breaks and aid to the unemployed Wednesday, the most substantial effort by the chamber to boost the nation’s economy since passing the stimulus bill last year.
Six Republicans joined 56 Democrats to pass the “tax extenders” measure, 62 to 36. The package faces an uncertain future in the House, where Democrats have taken a markedly different approach to the “jobs agenda” than have their Senate colleagues.
Small defense companies, energy firms, and other technology start-ups throughout New England could lose tens of millions of dollars a year because of a decision by House Democrats yesterday to abruptly halt budget earmarks for companies.
The decision follows a House ethics probe into an alleged pay-to-play system in which investigators followed a trail of campaign contributions and linked them to earmarks — a provision added to a bill that directs money to a specific project, in this case, a private company. Although the House Ethics Committee cleared members of specific wrongdoing, House leaders remained sensitive to the appearance of a rampant quid-pro-quo system that has stoked outrage around the country.
The decision, which exempts earmarks for nonprofit groups, could significantly affect Massachusetts because the House delegation has proved adept at the political horse-trading required to obtain funding for private companies.
Can Nancy Pelosi Get the Votes?
The Senate bill’s abortion language is not the House Speaker’s only problem.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703701004575113292688090292.html#printMode
*****
SEVEN HOUSE members, including Northern Virginia Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D), collected more than $840,000 in political contributions from employees and clients of a lobbying firm, Paul Magliocchetti and Associates Group (PMA), during a two-year span. In that same period, the lawmakers, strategically situated on the Appropriations defense subcommittee, directed more than $245 million in earmarks to clients of PMA.
If you think those two facts are unrelated, you are qualified to be on the House ethics committee. The panel recently found that “simply because a member sponsors an earmark for an entity that also happens to be a campaign contributor does not, on these two facts alone, support a claim that a member’s actions are being influenced by campaign contributions.”
The ethics committee acknowledged that “there is a widespread perception among corporations and lobbyists that campaign contributions provide enhanced access to members or a greater chance of obtaining earmarks.” Gee, how could anyone have gotten that impression? Maybe because the lawmakers targeted those seeking earmarks for campaign contributions? Sent their key appropriations staffers to fundraisers?
For instance, in 2008, the appropriations director for Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) told corporations interested in obtaining earmarks that they needed to submit requests by Feb. 15. On Feb. 27, Mr. Visclosky’s campaign manager sent a letter to companies that had sought his help on defense matters inviting them to a fundraiser on March 12. Mr. Visclosky’s political committees received $35,300 from clients of PMA that month, plus another $12,000 from the lobbying firm and its employees. A week after the fundraiser, which was focused on defense contractors and attended by his chief of staff and appropriations director, Mr. Visclosky requested earmarks for six PMA clients, totaling more than $14 million.
House leaders understand that voters may not be quite as obtuse as the ethics committee seems to assume, and their extreme embarrassment — over this and other scandals — may lead to useful action. The House is right to ban lawmakers from earmarking government funds for for-profit companies. It should go further, and extend the prohibition to nonprofit and educational institutions as well. Some nonprofit institutions spend enormous sums on lobbyists, who dispense campaign donations in hope of obtaining earmarks. More important, the Senate must follow suit, as much as it appears disinclined to do so. A system that aligns campaign cash and earmarks is inherently unseemly, if not outright corrupt, and the Senate is tainted by this setup as well.
We say this fully aware that the Constitution grants Congress the power of the purse and that earmarks are not close to the biggest reason for out-of-control spending. And that lawmakers have taken steps in recent years to reduce the number of earmarks and make the process more open. And that eliminating earmarks would not end every instance in which private interests lobby for — and make campaign contributions in hope of obtaining — particular favors.
It would, however, eliminate the worst such abuse. The House Ethics Manual cautions members “to avoid even the appearance that solicitations of campaign contributions are connected in any way with an action taken or to be taken in an official capacity.” The ethics committee, dismissing that caution and a recommendation by the newly created independent Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate two of the seven representatives, decided there was nothing to worry about in the PMA case. With standards this lax, the only reasonable choice is to end the earmarks that fuel this sleazy process. [This dramatically shows you why campaign contributions have to end.]
The dramatic and costly undertow of deflation continues unabated, as government via fiscal policy and the Federal Reserve, by creating money and credit out of thin air, proceed to overpower this deflation with massive inflation.
Unbeknownst to most the Fed and the Treasury have been maintaining this program for the past several years, accompanied by most major countries, all of which have taken the path of least resistance rather than address the underlying problems.
The current stage of problems had to be addressed 2-1/2 years ago in what has become known as a credit crisis. This continuing crisis has been accompanied by 22-1/8% current unemployment that has resulted in a perpetual fall in tax revenues and a resultant enlargement of government deficits. We might add that this condition is being experienced by many countries worldwide, which followed America’s leadership into this terrible financial and economic morass. These policies have led to massive sovereign debt policies, a hangover of the policies of 1933 and 1971.
The financial system in America is on the edge of default. A recent poll found that 92% of those surveyed wanted to unseat their current representative or Senator in Washington and only 21% believed that government enjoyed the consent of the governed. It’s very obvious people are not happy with the political, economic and financial situation presently. Eighty percent believe that government is enmeshed in partisan infighting. Not only between parties, but within parties as well. Politicians are very aware of these numbers and are frantic to get reelected. The public has recoiled in disgust. People are demanding that the power of government be curbed. People are sick and tired of paid off corrupt politicians, more than half of whom have been in office for more than ten years.
It is not healthy for a nation to have $3.3 trillion in Treasury bonds held by foreigners. China holds about $900 billion and Japan about $800 billion. We also understand that hedge funds and others also are fronting both countries, so the figures are not really reflective in their total positions. These nations for the most part are rolling their positions, but have not injected new capital into US Treasuries. That is why the Fed had to fund 80% of new Treasury debt last year.
Presently the Fed is fighting and pulling out all stops to halt legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, a private corporation, which has managed our monetary policy since 1913, under the Federal Reserve Act. On Monday the Treasury held a media conference for financial reporters and bloggers in which the Fed was discussed. The meeting had some very strange conditions. Mr. Geithner, Mr. Krueger and Mr. Sperling could be paraphrased but not quoted and what was paraphrased could not be connected to a specific official. Again, the element of secrecy to protect the guilty. One blogger said, “Did they get the ground rules from Al Qaeda?” The meeting was a travesty. How can government officials demand secrecy in public briefings? It is no wonder that 90% of the public and 317 members of Congress want more Treasury transparency and an audit and investigation of the Fed. This is the same gang run by Geithner and Bernanke that are currently running the gold suppression scheme. When you have a criminal cabal involved you have no transparency. That is why the audit of the Fed is so important. Such an exercise would expose exactly what both have been doing in the markets. The Fed and Treasury have lied for years about what they have been up too in behalf of their Illuminist friends. It is not only about the actions of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, but the funding of Watergate, Saddam Hussein, who they supposedly conveniently hung, the countries that secretly received loans, how much, who got them and what was the collateral? Were currency swaps with foreign control banks used to strengthen the dollar by the Fed and for those foreign control banks to purchase Treasury and Agency paper? How about all the inside information funneled to Wall Street and banking for almost a century from both the Fed and Treasury? Their lies are legion. They both are manipulating every market in the world 24/7 and the American people want it stopped. We also want an audit of America’s gold and the testing of the gold bars held. There is much we want to know, so we can save our country and our freedom.
Investors continue to chase yields, which is a dumb practice. Interest rates are at 80-year lows and can only stay the same or rise. People are grabbing junk bond yields that will come back to haunt them.
At least for now Greece and euro problems are being shuffled into the background. You can imagine this is not the last of the eurozone problems. The PIIGS will be back one by one to cause never-ending problems until they are forced to leave the eurozone. That will cause a eurozone breakup, probably by the end of next year.
This is the first real threat to the eurozone since its beginning ten years ago, and we think they will find that their rules are so restrictive that weak members will be forced to leave. The monetary policy and interest rates may be singular, but fiscal policy is not. Exchange rates for the euro must fit all members, but rates and methods of growth vary widely. With one currency sovereignty has effectively been lost. Public debt to GDP has to be under 3%, while most are over 3%: Greece is at 10.7%. There is also a public debt limit of 60% of GDP, which all nations in the zone have broken. All precepts have not and cannot be met. There is no effective policy because there is no way to enforce the rules. In addition most have current account deficits and the zone effectively has been carried by Germany from this aspect. The bottom line is a few have growth, the rest do not. As a result there is pressure, due to poor growth in some of the nations, for austerity measures to reduce fiscal deficits at the worst possible time. Greece comes first along with Ireland and the rest will follow.
Just as an example, Spain has a fiscal deficit of 10% of GDP that has to fall to 3% within three years, which is virtually impossible just as it is in Greece. Their current account deficit is 4.5% of GDP. In a recessionary/depressionary world getting into the plus column is a tall order. This dilemma is the result in part of the housing collapse caused by Spanish banks and inattention by the Bank for International Settlements. We see consumption continuing to fall in the face of 20% unemployment, which worsens by the day. The PIIGS and a present total of 19 nations are effectively bankrupt. We do not believe they can survive without devaluation and debt default. That is why we expect that to happen next year.
Historically banks have kept loan loss allowance ratios at $1.33 for every dollar of debt. Today it is 0.58%.
The commercial paper market rose $11.2 billion last week to $1.145 trillion.
The Treasury sold $21 billion in 10-year T-notes. The bid-to-cover was 3.45 to 1, which is average vs. 2.85 to 1. This was the highest since 1995. Indirect bidders, which include foreign central banks, bought 35.1%, compared to an average of 41.7% at the last four re-openings.
Almost 39 million Americans received food stamps in December, the most ever, as the jobless rate hovered near a 26- year high, the government said.
Recipients of the subsidies for food purchases climbed 23 percent from a year earlier and rose 2.1 percent from November, the U. S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday in a statement on its Web site. The number receiving the benefit has set records for 13 straight months.
Food aid climbed as the national unemployment rate reached 10.1 percent in October, the highest since June 1983, and remained at 10 percent through December before easing to 9.7 percent in January.
An average of 40.5 million people will get food stamps each month in the federal fiscal year that began Oct. 1, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said last week. The figure is projected to rise to 43.3 million in 2011.
Nevada had the biggest increase in the percentage of the population receiving the coupons, up 49 percent from December, USDA figures show. Texas had the most recipients, at 3.31 million, topping California’s 3.11 million.
The U.S. government recorded a budget deficit of $221 billion in February, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday, even as its income posted a big increase for the month.
Income totaled $107.5 billion in February, a 23% increase over last February’s total, and marking the first monthly year-over-year increase since April 2008.
Spending was $328 billion in February, up 17% year over year. That was the largest February total on record, a Treasury official said.
February was the 17th consecutive month that the government recorded a deficit. It was a little less than expected: last week the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the deficit would be $223 billion in February.
Year to date, the deficit is $652 billion, according to the Treasury data.
The Senate approved a $140 billion package of tax breaks and aid to the unemployed Wednesday, the most substantial effort by the chamber to boost the nation’s economy since passing the stimulus bill last year.
Six Republicans joined 56 Democrats to pass the “tax extenders” measure, 62 to 36. The package faces an uncertain future in the House, where Democrats have taken a markedly different approach to the “jobs agenda” than have their Senate colleagues.
Small defense companies, energy firms, and other technology start-ups throughout New England could lose tens of millions of dollars a year because of a decision by House Democrats yesterday to abruptly halt budget earmarks for companies.
The decision follows a House ethics probe into an alleged pay-to-play system in which investigators followed a trail of campaign contributions and linked them to earmarks — a provision added to a bill that directs money to a specific project, in this case, a private company. Although the House Ethics Committee cleared members of specific wrongdoing, House leaders remained sensitive to the appearance of a rampant quid-pro-quo system that has stoked outrage around the country.
The decision, which exempts earmarks for nonprofit groups, could significantly affect Massachusetts because the House delegation has proved adept at the political horse-trading required to obtain funding for private companies.
http://www.manpower.com/investors/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=450330
Though 73% of firms surveyed said they plan on hiring NO employees and 8% intend to fire employees, Manpower is trying to spin the survey as a sign of an improving employment picture. But under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates — the longest period since the program’s inception.
But complaints that extending unemployment payments discourages job-seeking have begun to bubble into the political debate. “If anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,” Kyl said. “I am sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can’t argue it is a job enhancer.”
Shopping blues: Top tax 12%. Chicago’s 10.25% highest big-city rate. More Internet tax fights loom. But Vertex Inc., which calculates sales tax for Internet sellers, reports that the average general sales tax rate nationwide reached 8.629% at the end of 2009, the highest since the Berwyn, Pa., company started tracking data in 1982. That was up a nickel on a taxable $100 purchase from a year earlier and up nearly 40 cents for the decade. http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/109012/us-sales-tax-rates-hit-record-high
The number of Americans filing first-time claims for jobless benefits fell for a second week to a level that indicates companies are nearing the end of payroll reductions as the economy recovers.
First-time jobless applications dropped by 6,000 to 462,000 in the week ended March 6, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people receiving unemployment insurance increased, while those getting extended benefits fell.
The labor market in the United States remains fragile with the initial jobless claims declining less than expected and continuing claims increasing against expectations.
From the previous revised data of 468,000. 4-week average was 475,500, 5,000 claims more than previous week average of 470,500.
Continuing claims has been posted as increased of 37,000 in the week of February 27 to 4,558,000 from previous revised data of 4,521,000. Expectations were a decline to 4,500,000
Unemployment tops 20% in eight California counties. The state’s jobless rate of 12.5% in January was its worst on record and fifth-highest in the nation.
For many California areas, unemployment rates moved persistently higher in January, indicating that the national economic recovery hasn’t yet translated into jobs for the Golden State.
New county-by-county figures released by the state Wednesday showed that in eight counties, more than 1 in 5 people were out of work. Moreover, revised numbers for last year show that fewer people were employed than was previously believed.
The state was one of five, along with Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, that reached their highest unemployment rates since the government began keeping track in 1976, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. California’s was 12.5% in January, up from 12.3% in December.
“The unemployment rate will be persistently at this high level for at least a few more months,” said Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University in Orange.
The unemployment rate for the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro area reached 15% in January, its highest since 1990, the earliest year for which the state has comparable data available. Unemployment in Orange County reached 10.1%, up from 9.1% in December.
The state’s revised data for last year showing elevated unemployment indicate that a recovery could take longer than previously predicted.
“The impact on the labor market was much more severe than what we had estimated,” Adibi said. Most counties were still struggling under the burden of joblessness, especially the eight counties where rates were higher than 20%. Merced County, for instance, had an unemployment rate of 21.7% in January, and Imperial County’s rate was 27.3%.
The national unemployment rate in January was 9.7%, and the country experienced a strong 5.75% annualized increase in gross domestic product in last year’s final three months.
“The real mystery now is why we aren’t getting job growth when the GDP has been positive,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.
Budget problems in state and local government are expected to further drag down the state’s recovery, Levy said. Even if they don’t get pink slips, state employees are earning less money because of furloughs and salary reductions, which reduces consumer spending in the state.
The government sector, which includes public education, lost 4,500 jobs from December to January. Nancy Hack lost her job as a gardener with the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks a year ago, and said that finding work has been a challenge at her age, 54.
“I’m like a fish out of water,” she said.
Los Angeles County, with an unemployment rate of 12.5%, was hard hit by declines in the trade, transportation and utilities sector, which shed 21,900 jobs, and professional and business services, which lost 16,300 jobs.
The same sectors were hit in the Inland Empire, losing 7,700 and 3,600 jobs, respectively. Orange County lost 5,700 jobs in trade, transportation and utilities and 3,000 in professional and business services.
San Diego County’s unemployment rate reached 11% in January, up from a revised 10.3% in December. The unemployment rate in Ventura County was 11.6% in January, up from a revised 10.9% in December.
California’s unemployment rate was the fifth-highest in the nation, behind Michigan, Nevada, Rhode Island and South Carolina.
The foreclosure crisis in the U.S. isn’t over, but the pace of growth may finally be slowing down.
RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday that the number of households facing foreclosure in February grew 6 percent from a year ago, the smallest annual increase in four years. On the state level, foreclosures declined on a monthly and yearly basis in the hard-hit states of Nevada, Arizona and California, but still grew rapidly in Florida.
More than 308,000 U.S. households, or one in every 418 homes, received a foreclosure-related notice, the Irvine, California-based foreclosure listings company reported. That was down more than 2 percent from January
Still, fears remain about the hundreds of thousands of homeowners who are still being evaluated for help under loan modification programs. Many analysts say most of those borrowers will eventually lose their homes, sparking a new round of foreclosures later this year.
“It’s premature to declare victory just yet,” said Rick Sharga, a RealtyTrac senior vice president. He did, however, allow that, “If this is the beginning of a slowdown in growth rates, that would be a good thing.”
Banks repossessed nearly 79,000 homes last month, down 10 percent from January but still up 6 percent from February 2009.
The RealtyTrac report follows an encouraging report last month from the Mortgage Bankers Association. It said the percentage of borrowers who had missed just one payment on their home loans fell to 3.6 percent in the October to December quarter, down from 3.8 percent in the third quarter.
While that was a surprising piece of positive news, foreclosures were still at record high levels. The number of borrowers who have either missed a payment or are in foreclosure was at 15 percent.
A record 2.8 million households were threatened with foreclosure last year, RealtyTrac said, and the number is expected to rise to more than 3 million homes this year.
The foreclosure crisis forced the federal government and several states to come up with plans to prolong the process so delinquent borrowers can try to find help. But those efforts have barely dented the problem. Case in point: The Obama administration’s $75 billion foreclosure prevention program has helped only 116,300 homeowners in the past year.
After a year of trying to enroll homeowners in the Obama administration’s program, housing counselors are feeling deflated.
At many of the 100 mortgage companies charged with running the program, employees still “don’t really know what the guidelines are — or refuse to adhere” to them, said Cheryl Cassell, manager of housing counseling at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a community group in Washington.
Foreclosed homes are typically sold at steep discounts, lowering the value of surrounding properties. Cities lose property tax dollars from homes that sit empty and lower property values.
Economic woes, such as unemployment or reduced income, are expected to be the main catalysts for foreclosures this year. Initially, lax lending standards were the culprit, but homeowners with good credit who took out conventional, fixed-rate loans are the fastest growing group of foreclosures.
Among states, Nevada posted the highest foreclosure rate, though foreclosures there were down 7 percent from January and down more than 30 percent from a year earlier. It was followed by Arizona, Florida, California and Michigan.
The metro area with the highest foreclosure rate in February was Las Vegas.
Apartment vacancies in the U.S., which reached a record high of 7.4 percent in 2009, will fall this year as job losses stabilize and fewer new rental homes enter the market, CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. said.
The vacancy rate will decline to 6.8 percent in 2010, the property broker said in a report today. Effective rents, or what tenants pay after concessions, will end the year less than 1 percent down from the fourth quarter of 2009. Rents fell 4.7 percent in the final quarter of last year from a year earlier.
Apartments could fill up quickly as employers start hiring again and Americans in their 20s and early 30s give up sharing housing with roommates and parents, Bryce Blair, chief executive officer of apartment developer AvalonBay Communities Inc., said in an interview last month. Builders will have to ramp up rapidly to meet demand after cutting apartment starts by 58 percent last year.
“We’re seeing some stabilization in fundamentals for apartments as we do in the broader economy,” said CB Richard Ellis Senior Economist Gleb Nechayev, who expects job growth in the third quarter. “This gives us reason to be cautiously optimistic.”
Manhattan, Boston, Washington D.C., Denver, and Seattle are among the markets where rents will rise, Nechayev said.
In Boston, monthly rates will climb 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared with a year earlier. Rents will increase about 1 percent in Washington and Seattle and 2 percent in Denver, he said.
The trade deficit in the U.S. unexpectedly narrowed in January as imports fell for the first time in five months, indicating demand is cooling following the fastest pace of growth in six years.
The gap shrank 6.6 percent to $37.3 billion from $39.9 billion in December as refineries imported the fewest barrels of crude oil in a decade, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Exports decreased for the first time in nine months, on fewer shipments of aircraft and autos.
“The somewhat disappointing trade data seem likely to prove a brief pause in a generally improving trend,” said David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. in New York. “Trade flows are notoriously volatile from month- to-month, but declines in both exports and imports are hardly signs of economic vitality.”
After advancing at a 5.9 percent annual pace last quarter, the world’s largest economy may expand at less than half that pace in the first half of 2010, reflecting smaller gains in business investment and exports, according to economists surveyed this month by Bloomberg News. Another report showed fewer Americans filed claims for jobless benefits, pointing to a gradual recovery in the labor market.
The city’s major hospital network, which runs Miami’s only round-the-clock trauma center and is a safety net for the poor and uninsured, is running out of money and could close, a predicament that illustrates the precarious financial state of many hospitals around the country.
The Jackson Health System will have little cash on hand by the end of March if it does not receive a $67 million advance from the county, said Marcos Lapciuc, treasurer of the Public Health Trust, the institution’s governing board.
“We are very close, if not already in, a health care death spiral,” Chief Operating Officer David Small said.
Jackson could run out of cash and shut by May or sooner, Lapciuc said, and the county mayor said officials were preparing to advance the hospital some money.
“Sadly, it’s not all that unique,” Larry S. Gage, president of the National Association of Public Hospitals & Health System, said of financial difficulties like the one Jackson is facing.
US debt grew at the slowest pace on record during the fourth quarter, as households and businesses continued to deleverage, nearly offsetting another huge increase in federal debt, according to the quarterly flow of funds report released Thursday by the Federal Reserve. With businesses cutting their outstanding debt the most since 1991, nonfinancial debts increased at a 1.6% annual rate to $34.7 trillion at the end of the quarter, the smallest increase since the Fed began tracking the data in 1952. Meanwhile, household net wealth increased by $683 billion to $54.2 trillion, a 5.1% annual increase, the Fed said. [What they fail to tell you is that these figures are low because banks were writing off debt against the increase in debt growth.]
US households increased their holdings of Treasury securities to the highest level in at least two years, according to data released by the Federal Reserve on Thursday. Households held $795.2 billion in Treasuries at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009, up from $735.5 billion in the third quarter, as Americans continued to find U.S. debt an attractive investment amid continued uncertainty over the strength of the U.S. economic rebound and sovereign-debt problems abroad. That’s the highest level of holdings in any quarter since at least the beginning of 2008, according to the flow of funds data. The Fed’s household and nonprofit corporations sector include domestic hedge funds. [It is absolute fantasy to believe that American households purchased these securities. This is how the Fed is hiding their purchases of US Treasuries.]
State banking regulators on Thursday evening shut down the troubled LibertyPointe Bank, whose chairman, Shaya Boymelgreen, built more than 2,400 apartments in New York City in the last decade. The failure was the 27th in the nation this year but the first in the city in more than a decade, regulators said.
LibertyPointe, which had one branch in Manhattan and two in Brooklyn, had been struggling under the weight of bad real estate loans for many months. In mid-July, federal regulators ordered the bank to stop lending to developers and to raise cash.
But time ran out for LibertyPointe on Thursday. State regulators seized the bank and turned it over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which struck a deal with Valley National Bank. Valley National will assume LibertyPointe’s deposits, which totaled about $210 million, and about one-tenth of its outstanding loans.
Valley National, which is based in Wayne, N.J., agreed to share losses on the rest of LibertyPointe’s loan portfolio with the F.D.I.C., regulators said. The F.D.I.C. estimated that the rescue would cost its insurance fund $24.8 million.
Gerald H. Lipkin, the chairman and chief executive of Valley National, said in a statement that the three branches would reopen Friday morning as part of Valley National’s 201-branch network. LibertyPointe’s depositors will be treated as customers of Valley National. “Our primary focus is to assure customers that their deposits are safe and remain readily accessible to them,” Mr. Lipkin said.
The recession has caused a wave of bank failures across the country, but only one bank failed in New York State in the last five years. The State Banking Department closed Waterford Village Bank, based in Williamsville, near Buffalo, in July. The last failure of a New York City-based bank occurred in December 1999, when regulators closed Golden City Commercial Bank, a small bank that had an office in Flushing, Queens, and one on Lower Broadway in Manhattan.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. helped cause the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. by demanding more collateral and changing guarantee agreements, a bankruptcy examiner said today in a report.
“The demands for collateral by Lehman’s lenders had direct impact on Lehman’s liquidity pool,” said Anton Valukas, the U.S. Trustee-appointed examiner, in a 2,200-page report filed in Manhattan federal court. “Lehman’s available liquidity is central to the question of why Lehman failed.”
Former Lehman Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld, former Chief Financial Officer Erin Callan, former executive vice president Ian Lowitt and former managing director Christopher O’Meara certified misleading statements, the report said. Fuld was “at least grossly negligent,” the report said. Lehman collapsed in September 2008 with $639 billion in assets, the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Commenting on Barclays Plc’s purchase of Lehman’s North American brokerage, Valukas said a “limited amount of assets” belonging to Lehman were “improperly transferred to Barclays.”
Kerrie Cohen, a Barclays spokeswoman in New York, and JPMorgan spokesman Brian Marchiony declined to comment. Citigroup spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apsilos didn’t have an immediate comment. Lowitt, who is now at Barclays, didn’t immediately repond to an e-mail seeking comment. Barclays is Britain’s second-biggest bank. Citigroup is the third biggest U.S. bank, and JPMorgan is second.
Ezra Levy, a former hedge fund trader and former chief financial officer of Boston Provident Partners LP, pleaded guilty to federal charges he stole about $3 million from the Manhattan-based firm.
Levy, who was arrested in November, pleaded guilty to two schemes to defraud Boston Provident.
In federal court yesterday, Levy admitted he transferred $2.45 million from Boston Provident to his own account. He also said he had the fund buy shares of Atlas Energy Inc. and another stock at inflated prices from an account he controlled, generating a $537,000 profit.
“I used the funds to pay my personal expenses,’’ Levy, 32, told US District Judge Kevin Castel.
Boston Provident fired Levy after learning of the scheme.
Levy joined Kramer Spellman LP, which changed its name to Boston Provident in 2004, as an analyst in 2001.
Before that, he worked for Prudential Securities and SG Cowen after starting out as an accountant in a textiles firm.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, Levy, who is free on bail, faces between 63 and 78 months in prison when he is sentenced for securities fraud and wire fraud.
Sales at U.S. retailers unexpectedly climbed in February as shoppers braved blizzards to get to the malls, signaling consumers will contribute more to economic growth.
Purchases increased 0.3 percent, the fourth gain in the past five months, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Figures for the prior two months were revised down, taking some of the shine off of today’s data. Sales excluding autos rose 0.8 percent, exceeding all estimates.
A report last week showing the economy lost fewer jobs than anticipated in February signaled employment is on the verge of accelerating, a development that would spur spending in coming months. Macy’s Inc. was among retailers that beat estimates last month as customers overcame the weather to shop for Valentine’s Day gifts and spring merchandise, a sign the expansion is broadening beyond manufacturing.
“The storms were apparently not quite as disruptive as anticipated,” said Adam York, an economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina, whose forecast for a 0.6 percent gain excluding autos was the highest of those surveyed. “As we start adding jobs in the spring, employees will gain income and hours and retail sales should follow.” [This numbers are impossible. Washington still doesn’t get it. We know they are fudging the figures]
The housing market is facing swelling ranks of homeowners who are seriously delinquent but have yet to lose their homes, and this is threatening a new wave of foreclosures that could hit just as the real estate market has begun to stabilize.
About 5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale. Some economists project it could take nearly three years before all these homes have been put on the market and purchased by new owners. And the number of pending foreclosures could grow much bigger over the coming year as more distressed borrowers become delinquent and then, if they can’t obtain mortgage relief, wade through the foreclosure process, which often takes more than a year to complete.
As these foreclosed properties add to the supply of homes for sale, they could undercut housing prices, which have increased modestly through December, according to the most recent figures in the S&P/Case-Shiller home prices index. That rise partly reflected a slowdown in the flow of foreclosed homes onto the market.
The rate at which J.P. Morgan Chase seized properties, for example, peaked in the middle of 2008 and fell steadily last year, according to a February investor report. But the bank expects repossessions to increase this year, nearly doubling to 45,000 by the fourth quarter.
Business inventories were unexpectedly flat in January, while sales rose to their highest level since October 2008, government data showed on Friday.
The Commerce Department said inventories were unchanged after falling by a revised 0.3 percent in December, previously reported as a 0.2 percent drop.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 0.2 percent rise in January inventories.
Inventories are a key component of gross domestic product changes over the business cycle and a sharp slowdown in the pace of inventory liquidation handed the economy its fastest growth rate in six years in the fourth quarter.
Business sales rose 0.6 percent to $1.05 trillion in January following a 1.0 percent increase in December. The rise in sales left the inventory-to-sales-ratio, which measures how long it would take to clear shelves at the current sales pace, at 1.25 months’ worth, the lowest since November 2007.
Manufacturers’ inventories rose 0.2 percent in January after falling 0.2 percent the prior month. Inventories at retailers fell 0.1 percent after a 0.2 percent rise in December.
Retail motor vehicle and parts inventories rose 0.5 percent after falling 0.3 percent in December. Excluding autos, retail inventories fell 0.2 percent in January. Inventories at furniture, electronic and appliance stores fell 0.3 percent after a 0.2 percent gain the prior month
BOISE – Idaho may see more budget cuts next year.
At the state of the state address back in January, Governor Otter announced the state faced an 83 million dollar budget shortfall. To pick up the slack, public areas like schools took massive cuts. Now the state is losing even more money.
Idaho has 41 million fewer dollars than Governor Otter projected back in January.
And in an already troubling economic time, that’s not a good sign for public institutions.
“The signs are not good. The fact that we’re down another 15-million dollars in February in income tax is not a good sign,” said Governor Otter. “We’ve spent most all the rainy day funds. There’s no savings like we had last year. We had the opportunity to plug some money back into the system because we had some savings accounts. We’ve spent the savings accounts.”
Confidence among U.S. consumers unexpectedly declined for a second month in March, a sign Americans are discouraged about the labor market.
The Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary consumer sentiment index fell to 72.5 from February’s final reading of 73.6. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected the gauge would increase to 74, according to the median estimate.
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is the latest Democrat to demand a tax increase, this week proposing to raise the state’s top marginal individual income tax rate to 4% from 3%. He’d better hope this works out better than it has for Maryland.
We reported in May that after passing a millionaire surtax nearly one-third of Maryland’s millionaires had gone missing, thus contributing to a decline in state revenues. The politicians in Annapolis had said they’d collect $106 million by raising its income tax rate on millionaire households to 6.25% from 4.75%. In cities like Baltimore and Bethesda, which apply add-on income taxes, the top tax rate with the surcharge now reaches as high as 9.3%—fifth highest in the nation. Liberals said this was based on incomplete data and that rich Marylanders hadn’t fled the state.
Well, the state comptroller’s office now has the final tax return data for 2008, the first year that the higher tax rates applied. The number of millionaire tax returns fell sharply to 5,529 from 7,898 in 2007, a 30% tumble. The taxes paid by rich filers fell by 22%, and instead of their payments increasing by $106 million, they fell by some $257 million.
Yes, a big part of that decline results from the recession that eroded incomes, especially from capital gains. But there is also little doubt that some rich people moved out or filed their taxes in other states with lower burdens. One-in-eight millionaires who filed a Maryland tax return in 2007 filed no return in 2008. Some died, but the others presumably changed their state of residence. (Hint to the class warfare crowd: A lot of rich people have two homes.)
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Janet Yellen is President Barack Obama’s pick for vice chairman of the central bank in Washington, two people with knowledge of the selection process said.
The nomination is pending completion of vetting by the Obama administration, one person said. The vice chairman gets a four-year term, subject to Senate approval, and a separate term on the Fed Board of Governors. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the selection hasn’t yet been announced.
Yellen, 63, would replace Donald Kohn, a 40-year Fed veteran who resigned last week effective June 23. Yellen, who served as President Bill Clinton’s chief economist in the 1990s, said last month that the U.S. economy “still needs the support of extraordinarily low” interest rates. She would gain a permanent vote on monetary policy, instead of having a vote one year out of every three as a regional Fed chief. [She is a well-known inflationist.]
The brazenly bogus unemployment data disseminated to the news media each month by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics appears to have tripped up Colorado. Although the state had reported a loss of 89,375 non-farm jobs in 2009, the actual number appears to have been much larger — 106,300, according to the latest revision. Colorado attributes the discrepancy to the Bureau’s rosy estimates of the number of businesses that start and fail each year. Until the new numbers came out earlier this week, Colorado’s official line was that it had somehow been spared the worst of Great Recession’s effects on the labor market. Unofficially, however, the picture was never so bright. “I was surprised when they reported the numbers the first time,” Zoltan Mak, a freight-train conductor on furlough since October, told the Denver Post. “I see everybody around me scraping by and having a really hard time. I don’t think we’re any better off than any other state.”
As much could be said of the supposed economic recovery in the U.S. that we keep reading about but which few workers or businesspeople are able to corroborate. In the Rick’s Picks chat room, for one, out of the many hundreds who log on each day, there has been only a single person who has reported an upswing in business. He lives in the Michigan rust belt, of all places, and that is why his claims have met with skepticism, to put it mildly. But here in Colorado, the notion that recession has been somewhat less severe than elsewhere is flatly contradicted by a blighted retail landscape that seems to be metastasizing with each passing week. Entire strip malls and even some larger malls in the Denver area have imploded, and in our own neighborhood, a Sam’s Club called it quits. At a personal level, nearly everyone we know with a job or a business is working harder than ever just to stay afloat, and virtually everyone who was in real estate has left the field.
JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. helped cause the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. by demanding more collateral and changing guarantee agreements, a bankruptcy examiner said today in a report.
“The demands for collateral by Lehman’s lenders had direct impact on Lehman’s liquidity pool,” said Anton Valukas, the U.S. Trustee-appointed examiner, in a 2,200-page report filed in Manhattan federal court. “Lehman’s available liquidity is central to the question of why Lehman failed.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aH2GbcSnGE9
A one-year probe into the collapse of Lehman Brothers found “credible evidence” that top executives, including the former chief Dick Fuld, approved misleading financial statements and used an “accounting gimmick” to flatter results.
The long-awaited report by the court-appointed examiner Anton Valukas also said that there was enough evidence to claim that Ernst & Young, Lehman’s auditors, failed to “question and challenge improper or inadequate disclosures” in the firm’s results.
The 2,200-page report found some evidence that JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup might have contributed to Lehman’s slide into bankruptcy in September 2008 by demanding collateral from the struggling bank in the run-up to its failure.
Mr. Valukas’ report could pave the way for legal action by the Lehman estate, which is charged with recovering as much money as possible for its creditors, and class action lawsuits by investors who bought Lehman’s securities before its collapse. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2e412d50-2d6e-11df-a262-00144feabdc0.html
There are other bombshells in Lehman bankruptcy report. Valukas avers that Lehman used accounting gimmicks, specifically Repo 105s, to conceal its true financial condition – leverage and exposure.
Repo 105 transactions were not used for a business purpose, but instead for an accounting purpose: to reduce Lehman’s publicly reported net leverage and net balance sheet.
As set forth more fully below, the Examiner concludes that a fact finder could find that Lehman’s failure to disclose its use of Repo 105 transactions to impact its balance sheet at a time when both the market and senior Lehman management were keenly focused on the reduction of Lehman’s firm‐wide net leverage and balance sheet, and particularly in light of the specific volumes at which Lehman undertook Repo 105 transactions at quarter‐end in fourth quarter 2007, first quarter 2008, and second quarter 2008, materially misrepresented Lehman’s true financial condition.
A trier of fact could find that Lehman’s use of tens of billions of dollars of Repo 105 transactions at quarter‐end in late 2007 and early 2008 rendered the firm’s financial statements and related disclosures materially misleading. http://lehmanreport.jenner.com/VOLUME%203.pdf
We have complained for over a decade and a half that there is blatant manipulation of markets at month end and quarter end to manufacture profits. The practice is pervasive, if not endemic. Yet the Fed, Treasury and other regulators allow this repeated abuse, which conceals earnings and financial conditions for many entities. PS – Derivatives’ marking-to-model is the biggest abuse in generating bogus profits.
The big question is: What other banks, hedge funds, financial subsidiaries of major corporations, insurances companies, etc. are engaged in Repo 105 or similar means to conceal their finances.
The Fed expanded its balance sheet $2.321B for the week ended on Wed by buying $2.344B of MBS and $1.5B of agencies.
The nascent US recovery could falter because businesses are still reluctant to invest in new equipment and technology, the head of global delivery and logistics company FedEx has warned.
“Business investment went up somewhat in the fourth quarter but is far below what it ought to be in a cyclical recovery like this,” Fred Smith, chairman and chief executive of FedEx, told the Financial Times…“In my opinion, for consumers to spend you have to get business investment up because that is what creates the jobs,” Mr. Smith said. “I don’t think you will see substantial increases in employment until you see substantial increases in business investment.”
To help encourage businesses to start investing again, Mr. Smith has been urging politicians to change the tax rules on capital expenditures to allow companies to recoup money earlier than in the past.
Illinois is the leader of the pack when it comes to stupidity. They have a $13 billion budget deficit and the moron who is governor, Pat Quinn, says he will only raise taxes 1% for education. He will borrow money and let unpaid bills pile up, a true politician that Illinois surely deserves.
There are an additional 7 million homes eligible for foreclosure that have not been foreclosed on. The banks are hiding them. That is a 3 plus year overhang on the market.
As we reported long ago, but no one would listen, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup caused the collapse of Lehman Bros. by cutting off their loans. We bet there will be no civil or criminal charges. The Illuminists again devour their own.
On Thursday Citi’s volume accounted for 20% of NYSE volume and AIG was second, with Bank of America third. It is great having some 50% of daily volume in what we consider bankrupt entities.
Bob Chapman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Bob Chapman
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18105
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Sunday, February 21st, 2010
by Ellen Brown
Global Research, February 21, 2010
Web of Debt – 2010-02-17
While bank bailouts fatten Wall Street, states continue to battle the credit crisis. In the search for innovative solutions, some political candidates are proposing that states generate their own credit by setting up their own banks.
State budgets for 2010 face the largest shortfalls on record, totaling $194 billion or 28 percent of state budgets; and 2011 is expected to be worse. Unemployment has already officially hit 10 percent, and many economists expect it to rise higher. Continued high unemployment will keep state income tax receipts at low levels and increase demand for Medicaid and other essential services states provide. The existing alternatives are spending cuts or tax increases, but both will just serve to make the downturn deeper. When states cut spending, they lay off employees, cancel contracts with vendors, eliminate or lower payments to businesses and nonprofit organizations that provide direct services, and cut benefit payments to individuals. The result is a reduction in overall demand. Tax increases also remove demand, by reducing the amount of money people have to spend.
Amanda Paulson, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, quotes Arturo Pérez, fiscal analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures, which released its survey of state budget situations in December:
“Unless you’re North Dakota, you’re probably a state that has had some degree of difficulty or crisis involving finances. It’s the worst situation states have faced in decades, perhaps going as far back as the Great Depression in some states.”
“Unless you’re North Dakota” – a state with a sizeable budget surplus, and the only state that is adding jobs when other states are losing them. A poll reported on February 13 ranked that weather-challenged state first in the country for citizen satisfaction with their standard of living. North Dakota’s affluence has been attributed to oil, but other states with oil are in deep financial trouble. The big drop in oil and natural gas prices propelled Oklahoma into a budget gap that is 18.5% of its general-fund budget. California is also resource-rich, with a $2 trillion economy; yet it has a worse credit rating than Greece. So what is so special about North Dakota? The answer seems to be that it is the only state in the union that owns its own bank. It doesn’t have to rely on a recalcitrant Wall Street for credit. It makes its own.
Candidates Across the Political Spectrum Pick Up on the Public Bank Model
In the quest to find ways to divorce the well-being of their states from the financial sector, a growing number of candidates are picking up on the public bank alternative. Florida, Illinois, Oregon, Massachusetts, Idaho and California all have candidates whose platforms contain this proposed solution to the credit crisis.
A publicly-owned bank has also been proposed on the federal level. Nationalizing the Federal Reserve (which is not actually federal but is owned by a consortium of private banks) was advocated by 2008 Presidential candidates Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, and Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate. In 2009, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz said the government would have been better off funding a federally-owned bank than doling out trillions of dollars to private investment banks and CEOs who speculated their way into bankruptcy. Speaking at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on March 6, 2009, he said:
“If we had used the $700 billion to create a new financial institution, allowed it to lever 10 to 1, which is very modest compared to the 30 to 1 that we were doing, 10 to 1 would have generated $7 trillion of new lending capacity, far in excess of what our country needs. So the issue here is not about lending. It’s really about saving the bankers. And what we confused was saving the banks versus saving the bankers and their shareholders.”
But nationalizing the Federal Reserve faces powerful opponents in Congress. Meanwhile, on the state level the public bank concept is gaining ground, attracting proponents across the political spectrum, including Democrats, Republicans and Greens. The issue transcends party lines. In North Dakota, a Republican state, the state-owned bank was inaugurated by a political party appropriately called the “Non-Partisan League.”
Oregon: The Bankers’ Bank Model
In Oregon, Bill Bradbury has included a state bank platform in his bid for governor. Bradbury, a Democrat, was formerly secretary of state and has been endorsed by former Vice President Al Gore. His website declares:
“It is time to put Oregonians back to work. It is also time to declare economic sovereignty from the multi-national banks that in large part are responsible for much of our current economic crisis. We can achieve these two goals by creating our own bank.”
The Oregonian, Oregon’s largest newspaper, reported that Bradbury plans to deposit tax revenues in the public-interest bank, keeping Oregon’s money in Oregon. The bank would then lend the money to get the economy going again, targeting small and medium-sized businesses. Interest would be poured back into the state through more loans to start-up businesses, agriculture, and other key sectors. Currently, Oregon deposits hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues into large out-of-state banks, siphoning the money off from productive in-state uses. Many of these banks are the very banks needing federal bailouts to keep from failing in 2008, after years of handing out risky mortgage loans. These banks have now grown tight-fisted with Main Street borrowers, making Bradbury’s plan to get money flowing again especially appealing to Oregonian voters.
Bradbury uses the Bank of North Dakota (BND) as his model. Like the BND, the Bank of Oregon would return a dividend to the state based on its earnings, while creating jobs and stimulating the economy through lending. The state bank would not replace private banking institutions but would partner with them, particularly with community banks, providing them with new customers and helping them provide new services. To assure the state bank’s independence from existing financial powers, Bradbury proposes that a board of directors appointed by Oregon’s Senate should govern the bank, while taking advice from an advisory committee of experts.
Idaho: Keeping State Assets in the State
In Idaho, James Stivers, a Republican candidate for the State Senate, has also proposed a state bank to fill state coffers and protect the local economy. In the first indication of a political shift among grassroots Republicans, Stivers swept a closed-ballot preference poll at the GOP District 2 Central Committee meeting in Coeur d’Alene on February 13, winning the non-binding poll 10-0. Stivers declares:
“An important part of sovereignty is the monetary authority. Currently, banks are allowed to multiply many times over the tax receipts deposited in their institutions. This special privilege is partly responsible for the ‘sucking sound’ in our local economies, as regional banks send their assets to central banks that are playing the derivatives markets of the world.
“A state bank would restore this privilege to the people in a public trust and would give us the opportunity to back our deposits with the wealth from our public lands.”
Stivers sees the bank as a way to facilitate small business startups, end the ability of private banks to cream profits from the public treasury, protect key budget items, and stave off excessive influence from the federal government. He suggests the novel approach of expanding the role of Idaho’s Bond Bank authority into a full-fledged state bank. The current banking system, he says, causes inflation, one of the “greatest detriments to a living wage”:
“Inflation is caused by the secret tax of the banking industry in which lenders use the multiplier effect to the benefit of their cronies. This secret tax takes the form of a decline in the value of the dollar and results in higher prices. Wages never keep up with this process because its very purpose is to extract wealth from the wage earner to support the privileged classes who curry the favor of lenders. A state bank would restore this privilege to the people in a public trust and would give us the opportunity to back our deposits with the wealth from our public lands.”
Illinois: Using a State-owned Bank to Fund Infrastructure
In Illinois, Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney has other ideas for a state-owned bank. Illinois is listed by the Pew Center for the States as one of nine states confronting historic budget problems. In a recent response to the governor’s State of the State Address, Whitney said:
“I am the only candidate in this race who proposes to fund public improvements, and promote economic health, without any further tax increases, through the establishment of a state bank, a progressive idea that North Dakota adopted years ago, and that has helped keep that state debt-free even in these troubled economic times. Instead of going into more and more debt, to further enrich private banks, we should be using our tax revenue to further invest in our own State and its people, for the enrichment of our own economy.”
The bank would use tax revenues and pension contributions as the financial base to expand credit where it is most needed. Illinois’ bank would borrow from the Federal Reserve at the same 1 percent rate as commercial banks. Once the budget was balanced, Whitney’s top priorities would be to use the new money to modernize energy infrastructure and promote solar and wind power. To achieve this, property owners of land where wind and solar generators could be located would be lent money through the state bank at a minimal 1 percent interest rate. To secure repayment, Whitney would require utilities to buy power from the solar and wind-based producers at a premium rate. One option would then be to require part of this premium to be paid to the state bank until the loan is returned. This arrangement, says Whitney, would create a win-win situation:
“The bank is paid back. The homeowner, farmer or business investing in solar or wind generation realizes immediate savings on energy costs and in many cases will go from being a net consumer to a net producer of energy. Their greater income will further stimulate the economy. The utilities will have to pay the cost of the premium rate but in the long run will realize the benefits of having a greater, stable, more diversified and decentralized energy grid, ultimately cheaper in the face of rising fossil fuel prices. As economies of scale are realized in wind and solar power generation, the costs will fall, as will the necessary premium rate. And we all benefit from the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”
Florida: The Commercial Bank Model
Economist and author Farid Khavari, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Florida, proposes a state-owned bank that would lend directly to borrowers. The Bank of North Dakota usually uses a “lead lender” such as a bank, savings and loan company, or credit union rather than doing commercial lending directly. Dr. Khavari maintains that the Bank of the State of Florida could be launched at no cost to taxpayers by using the state’s assets as the reserves for making loans, employing the same fractional reserve lending rules used by private banks today. In this way, he says, the bank could drive an “economic miracle” in Florida, instigating massive job creation, cutting costs in half or more, providing low interest financing to homeowners and businesses, and improving teacher salaries and care for veterans and the elderly, while at the same reducing taxes. He explains:
“The economy is collapsing due to lack of demand. The economy needs money, but the banks are cutting credit, and then sucking all the cash out of the economy by raising interest rates to make sure no one has any cash left at the end of the month. The cost of interest is built into the cost of everything. People already work ten years of their lives just to pay interest in one form or another. The Bank of the State of Florida will end that for Floridians. And this model will work for every state. . . .
“We can pay 6% interest on savings. Using the same fractional reserve rules as all banks, we can create $900 of new money through loans for every $100 in deposits. We can loan that $900 in the form of 2% fixed rate 15-year mortgages, for example, and the state can earn $12 every year for every $100 in deposits. That means Floridians can save tens of billions of dollars per year while the state earns billions making it possible for them.
“State and local government budgets will balance without higher taxes when the BSF cuts interest costs. 6% BSF credit cards will save people billions per month, money that stays in Florida instead of going to the big banks—and the state will make huge profits on that, too. Saving billions in interest costs will create millions of jobs without subsidies just by keeping those billions circulating in Florida. Eventually the state will earn enough to reduce and eliminate state and local taxes while every Floridian has economic security in a recession-proof Florida.”
The Federal Reserve states on its website that the banking system as a whole leverages $100 in deposits into $900 in loans, but whether a single bank can do it alone has been challenged. Critics say that while banks do create money as loans, they have to replace the deposits when the checks leave the bank in order for the checks to clear. How this all works is a bit complicated and will be the subject of another article, but suffice it to say here in response that if a bank does not have the deposits to cover its outgoing checks, it borrows from the interbank lending market at very low rates, or issues commercial paper or CDs; and the state bank could do the same thing. It would not be fighting with the other banks for old deposits. Loans create new deposits, which can be borrowed back from the pool of “excess deposits” thereby created. Ninety-seven percent of the money supply has been created by commercial banks by turning loans into deposits, but that credit machine has frozen up. A state bank could get it flowing again.
California: Catching the Wave
California leads the nation in the sheer size of its budget gap. It too now has a gubernatorial candidate proposing to alleviate the state’s credit woes with a state-owned bank. Running on the Green Party ticket, Laura Wells is a former financial analyst who received 420,000 votes in her 2002 bid for State Controller, more than any other Green Party candidate has earned in a partisan statewide race. According to her website:
“Rather than drowning in debt and begging Wall Street for loans, California can institute a State Bank that invests in California’s infrastructure, and future generations.”
She stated in a comment, “A state bank for California is part of my platform as a candidate for the Green Party nomination for Governor. I ran for State Controller to ‘Follow the Money.’ Now, we need to Fix the Money. A state bank would keep California’s wealth in the state. Rather than invest in Wall Street (we’ve hit the wall on that one) we can invest in our infrastructure and our future generations.”
Legislative Proposals
It is not just political hopefuls who are exploring the public bank option. Therese Murray currently presides over the Massachusetts State Senate. She has introduced legislation that would study the formation of a state-owned bank with the principal aim of boosting job creation in the state. Massachusetts now faces a 9.4 percent unemployment rate. “It wouldn’t be in competition with our small community banks,” she says. “We’ve got to free up some credit, and mortgage companies and banks have got to do a better job of allowing people to redo their mortgages.”
In Virginia, Congressman Bob Marshall, a Republican, introduced a bill in January to study whether to establish a bank that was owned, run, and controlled by the state. However, the plan was tabled in committee.
On February 16, the front page of the Huffington Post featured an article on the Bank of North Dakota and the precedent it sets for financially-strapped states. Besides political candidates promoting this option, it noted that a Washington State legislator and a Vermont House committee were exploring it.
North Dakota hit the Wall Street wall in 1919, when the Bank of North Dakota was established by the state legislature specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers. For over 90 years, it has demonstrated the success of the public banking model. Other credit-choked states are finally taking notice and devising their own variations on the theme.
Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com, www.ellenbrown.com, and www.public-banking.com.
Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ellen Brown
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17732
Tags: Bank, benefit payments, budget surplus, Candidate, Christian Science Monitor, citizen satisfaction, Credit Crisis, Dr. Khavari, economy, energy, fiscal analyst, Florida, GOP District, Idaho, Illinois, income tax receipts, James Stivers, lending, national conference of state legislatures, North Dakota, Oregon, premium, rate, Rich Whitney, state, state budgets, state income tax, tax, Wind Posted in finance, nation | No Comments »
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Sunday, January 24th, 2010
How can there be a recovery with the threat of mounting unemployment?
by Bob Chapman
Global Research, January 24, 2010
The International Forecaster – 2010-01-23
Few professionals are yet willing to admit we have been in a depression for the last year.
You have to understand the position that economists and analysts are in. They work for corporations, insurance, Wall Street, banking and government and if they thought we were in a depression and they publicly announced that all chances for advancement would be lost or they would be squeezed out of the firm or simply fired.
Under such circumstances can you ever expect that you get the truth? We don’t think so. Furthermore the depression we are enveloped in is far from over. The recession encompassed a drop in real GDP in the midst of a credit crisis. The crisis was the result of over-extended credit, prohibitively low interest rates, massive speculation by banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies, and corporations worldwide. It just didn’t happen it was planned that way. We saw that recently in testimony before Congress when CEOs of these financial firms admitted they made a mistake in the process of enriching themselves.
The worst sin was the criminal securitization of mortgages and the deliberately criminal mislabeling of their ratings. Then making matters worse those who sold this toxic garbage to their clients such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup were shorting the product that they had just sold to their best clients. What kind of monsters are these people? Unethical doesn’t go far enough. It was criminal. These are the same characters, along with the Fed, and others, who gave us the dotcom boom and collapse and then foisted the real estate boom on our economy. The result has been deflating assets and contracting credit offset by massive lending, money and credit creation by the Fed and monetization, all temporary expedient measures, which in the context of history has led to failure. This has been in process for seven years. This second major abuse of our system in 14 years has presented a terrible dilemma and that is where we are today. Our monetary policy hasn’t worked and won’t work and there has been and presently is little fiscal control in Washington. This is no normal recession; it is a depression.
We have zero funds rates and up until six months ago M3 expansion of more than 17%. The Fed has monetized trillions of dollars of Treasuries, Agencies and toxic waste and now we are told we are in recovery – the worst is over. We wish we could agree, but we can’t. We are reenacting the same mistakes of the past all over again. Unemployment is close to the depression levels of the “Great Depression” and is still expanding albeit more slowly. Money velocity has fallen even after the massive infusion of aggregates. Liquidity is not flowing into the economy it is pouring into Wall Street to aid and abet more speculation, which has sent the Dow from 6600 to 10,700. This game cannot be played indefinitely. Wall Street cannot continue to prosper as the economy remains stagnant, and unemployment climbs higher.
The market is grossly overpriced and the effect of favorable news will begin to wane. It should be noted that insiders are selling into the never-ending rally, and mutual funds have very little money flow coming into the funds. That, of course, is our government at work manipulating the market. Just last week insiders bought $18 million worth of shares and sold $419 million.
This to us is more proof that the stock market is the most overvalued since September 1987, which brought about the market collapse of 10/19/87 and resulted in August 1988 in the Executive Order, “The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets,” which has led to market manipulation and the end of free markets.
That and the bailout of banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies too big to fail, those same entities carrying two sets of books as authorized by the BIS, FASD and the SEC, government purchase of stock in selective Illuminist controlled companies, and government control of the mortgage and real estate markets. This give you corporate fascism at its finest. We see intervention everywhere and that is not free markets.
How can there be a recovery with 22.5% unemployment, and with the additional threat of further unemployment? Who will buy the new housing and the tremendous inventory overhand? What will happen to the commercial inventory building up? Who has money in America to buy cars and trucks? Credits to buy housing for subprime and ALT-A buyers will end up with a 50% failure rate. Cash for clunkers was a colossal failure. Such exercises in futility only buy time, just as stimulus packages, and monetization do the same thing. The elitists behind the scenes know this just as we know this. That means the colossal deficit increase of $1.4 trillion a year will add 10% yearly to the federal debt to GDP ratio that will be over 100% by 2011. The tax liability to service this debt will be overwhelming. Government debt is rising exponentially and if further stimulus is not added the credit crisis will be renewed. This is why the Fed cannot remove further liquidity from the financial system, especially after having taken M3 from 17 to 18% to 6%. Incidentally, England and the ECB have done the same thing, and they still see rising inflation. If further stimulation is not forthcoming, or war, or default comes, we will see inflation reverse and deflation take over and that could last for ten years or more. This deflation, if allowed to take its course, will cause losses of $12 to $15 trillion from the economy and cause unemployment to rise to 40% to 50%. That would also entail cutting extended benefits. That would give us the scenes we saw in the 1930s. The debt we are facing knows no precedent in modern times, and there is no possible way it can be paid.
Bad debt is piling up again in residential and commercial real estate as well as in personal and business debt. This in part is why lenders are not talking about it if they can help it, but they are not lending. Without further lending increases the economy cannot function efficiently because it is so dependent on credit. That means higher unemployment, fewer buyers and a slower economy. If you think foreclosed inventory is bad now wait until the second wave hits and it is going to hit. If you are under water on your mortgage you do not care anymore. You stop paying your mortgage and you live rent-free for a year or more. There is no longer any stigma to walking away or going bankrupt. All the Mickey Mouse games being played by government to keep people in their homes are not going to work. Subprime and ALT-A loans are not the answer. They start going into default in a big way next year as the taxpayer again foots the bill.
The public is catching on. You saw this in Virginia, New Jersey and this week in Massachusetts. The public, a liberal public at that is trying to tell government we have had enough and we want the truth, not more lies. How bad is it? The Tea Party has spoken,, driven by talk radio and the Internet. The moment of truth is upon us. Each passing day brings us closer to facing the music.
Where does the accumulation of debt end? For the two fiscal years ended 9/30/99, the public increased Treasury debt $5 trillion to $7.5 trillion or by 50%. The Fed has purchased 80% of Treasury debt yoy, increasing the monetary base from $850 billion to $2 trillion, which includes Agencies and MBS. Seeking cover on their announcement, they said on Christmas they would supply unlimited funds for three years to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Government liabilities made in behalf of the American taxpayer since the third quarter of 2007 have jumped 61% to $3.62 trillion. It is our opinion that the inflation caused by funding and monetization over the next decade will be very disruptive and expensive to US dollar users as purchasing power falls. That translates into an additional loss in buying power of some 50%.
If liquidity stays at current levels the stock market will fall as it flourishes on increasing liquidity. In addition, higher inflation rates tend to push stocks lower. If we are correct and there is a second credit crisis ahead of us, M3 will rise again and monetization will be pushed into high gear again.
Meredith Whitney, the banking analyst who forecast bank shares would fall in June of 2008, said plans to limit risk-taking at financial companies will probably be approved and may dramatically reduce trading profits.
JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs as a result may have to sell some private-equity business and stop investing in buyouts under a proposal by the President. He wants to prohibit banks from owning or making investments in private-equity and hedge funds.
The banks make their money trading for their own accounts. They won’t have much in the way of earnings if legislation passes, the largest manipulations in history would come to an end.
The President has called for limiting the size and trading activities of financial institutions to prevent risk taking and another financial crisis. He also said there should be no proprietary trading. We are told Goldman Sachs will benefit from the President’s proposal to limit Wall Street risk by forcing deposit-taking banks to unwind trading operations.
Again the commercial paper market fell by $10 billion to $1.092 trillion. Asset-backed commercial paper rose by $3.5 billion to $430.0 billion.
Unsecured issuance fell by $9.9 billion versus rising $12.7 billion in the prior week.
Democrats have completely lost their moorings. They want to allow government to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion to put the national debt at $14.3 trillion. It would need 60 votes to pass.oqHo
Food prices are roaring upward again as the PPI rose 0.2%. That is a 4.4% gain month-on-month.
Housing starts were 575,000 and building permits rose 653,000. Starts fell 4%. How can any sane builder be building when official and bank hidden inventories are well over a year. Groundbreaking fell a record 38.8% to an all-time low of 553,000 units. Single-family starts fell 6.9% in January. New building permits rose 10.9% for all of 2009 permits fell 36.9%. A Florida builder who was going to build 5,000 units declared bankruptcy yesterday.
Americans haven’t been fooled by the Dow’s rise. What they see ahead are more taxes. Economists may see the recession as being over, but the man on the street does not. Roughly 60% of the public believes the recession still has a way to go,
a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll reported last October.
There are sound reasons for this gloom. Consumers have learned a bitter lesson. They understand that increased consumption—private and public—will have to come from income and not borrowing, and income will have to come from employment. Today, mainstream Americans are going on a financial diet amid deteriorating family finances. By 2008, suburbs were home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country.
Between 2000 and 2008, suburbs in the country’s largest metro areas saw their poor population grow by 25 percent—almost five times faster than primary cities and well ahead of the growth seen in smaller metro areas and non-metropolitan communities. As a result, by 2008 large suburbs were home to 1.5 million more poor than their primary cities and housed almost one-third of the nation’s poor overall.
Midwestern cities and suburbs experienced by far the largest poverty rate increases over the decade. In 2008, 91.6 million people—more than 30 percent of the nation’s population—fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
The timing was political: the president spoke on the day that Goldman Sachs announced fourth-quarter earnings of $4.95bn. Those of a more populist nature than Mr. Obama – both on the left and on the right – will say that he comes late to the game
Indeed, the White House and the US Treasury resisted the backlash against bankers earlier in 2009 – they opposed the punitive tax proposed in the House of Representatives. Instead of using the control they enjoyed over the banks through the troubled asset relief program in 2009, the authorities rushed to free banks from the restrictions associated with Tarp.
Mr. Obama may now be ruing this lost opportunity. The public mood has swung against Wall Street – to which Mr. Obama appears too close for comfort. Trillion-dollar bailouts for people on million-dollar salaries have infuriated Americans living in fear of losing their jobs and their homes.
Sheila Bair, one of the chief regulators overseeing Bank of America’s federal rescue, took out two mortgages worth more than $1 million from the banking giant last summer during ongoing negotiations about the bank’s bailout and its repayment.
In the weeks between the closings on her two mortgage loans, Bair met with Bank of America’s chief negotiator in the bailout talks. To avoid conflicts of interest, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which Bair heads, prohibits employees from participating in “any particular matter” involving a bank from which they are seeking a loan. [Is it stupidity or arrogance that induces solons to flaunt law & ethics?]
In the depths of the crisis, the Fed shipped more than $500 billion overseas through arrangements with other central banks, in exchange for their currencies. Such lending is down sharply and officials expect to end the program according to plan on Feb. 1. As of January 13, the Fed held $5.9 billion in dollar "swap" agreements with foreign central banks, down from $63 billion in early September and $583 billion in late December 2008 as the financial crisis was worsening. [This is very important. Without the swaps supporting the dollar in the Forex and buying Treasuries by foreign central banks will recede. The dollar will fall and there will be more monetization.]
The Fed balance sheet for the week ended yesterday declined $39.849B (Expiry has passed!) due to a TAF decline of $37.387B. Only $38.351B remains in TAF.
The Treasury on Thursday announced auctions to sell a total of $166 billion in securities in a range of offerings next week.
Brown’s victory in Massachusetts not only torpedoes Obamacare, it kills ‘cap & trade’, global warming and a host of other socialistic proposals. (You might want to reconsider your holdings of GE, GS and other cap & trade plays.). It also kills further Wall Street bailouts and impairs CEOs that have pandered to President Obama – Yes, this means you Jamie Dimon, Jeff Immeltdown, Buffett and the Google geeks.
The ginormous upset in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts – Tiananmen II – implies that the GOP could capture the House and possibly the Senate in 2010. Now that all but the safest Democratic House seats are in play, reputable GOP candidates will surface and money will pour into GOP coffers.
The same dynamic is likely to occur if the GOP takes one or both houses of government in November. First stocks will rally but then the medicine will be administered and the results will be extremely bitter.
Please keep this in mind as various blowhards spew ‘start of another massive bull market’ rhetoric. The dynamic behind any GOP revolution is limited government and no more bailouts. A new Congress will institute some degree of limited government, which might include handcuffing the Fed.
The Massachusetts unemployment rate surged by nearly a point in December, driving joblessness to its highest level since the 1970s and dealing another setback to a labor market that appeared to be on the mend.
The state unemployment rate leaped to 9.4 percent from 8.7 percent in November, more than reversing two previous months of significant declines, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported. It is the highest rate since August 1976, when the state was recovering from the energy crisis recession that began in 1973 after the Arab oil embargo.
Massachusetts employers, meanwhile, slashed another 8,400 jobs, the most since September. Since the recession began in March 2008, the state has shed more than 136,000 jobs, including 66,000 in 2009.
Under plan, NYC Aid Would Be Slashed By $800 Million; New Soda And Cigarette Tax Proposals Already Angering Masses Governor David Paterson said Tuesday that the days of profligate spending in Albany are over and that starting immediately lawmakers must participate in an "age of accountability”… the governor’s new budget has $1 billion in new taxes and nearly $800 million in cuts for New York City.
Senate Democrats on Wednesday proposed allowing the federal government to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion to pay its bills, a record increase that would permit the national debt to reach $14.3 trillion.
The unpopular legislation is needed to allow the federal government to issue bonds to fund programs and prevent a first-time default on obligations. It promises to be a challenging debate for Democrats, who, as the party in power, hold the responsibility for passing the legislation.
A 1.2% decline in light truck prices pulled core lower. Consumer prices, an actual cost to consumers unlike an accounting entry like light trucks, increased 0.3%. Food prices jumped 1.6%.
But inflation in the pipeline jumped. Intermediate goods prices (both headline & core) rose 0.5%. Crude prices jumped 1.0% headline and 5.0% core in surging commodity prices.
Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, said the U.S. should inject a second round of stimulus spending into the economy to avert a “double-dip” recession.
It will be “2012 or 2013 at the earliest that we will be back to normality,” Stiglitz said in an interview today on Bloomberg Television. “This is a scenario that is putting us a little better but not much better than the Japanese malaise.”
Releasing its first global economic forecasts since June, the World Bank was more upbeat about this year’s outlook, with the rate of recovery expected to reach 2.7% instead of 2%. The contraction in 2009 was also estimated to be more modest than expected, a drop of 2.2% instead of 2.9%.
The 2011 forecast was left unchanged at 3.2%. But the bank painted a more sobering picture for next year and beyond, as credit conditions remain tight and governments start to withdraw extraordinary support measures.
"If the private sector continues to save in order to restore balance sheets, a double-dip recession, characterized by a further slowing of growth in 2011, is entirely possible–especially as the growth impact of fiscal stimulus wanes," the bank said.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. responded to intense criticism of big Wall Street paychecks by putting less money into its bonus pool, a move that helped it earn a record $4.79 billion fourth-quarter profit.
The big bank said yesterday that it rewarded employees with $16.2 billion in salaries and bonuses for 2009. That’s up 47 percent from the previous year but much lower than many expected. In all, compensation accounted for 36 percent of Goldman’s $45.17 billion in 2009 revenue, the lowest annual ratio since the company went public in 1999. In 2008, Goldman set aside 48 percent of its revenue to pay employees.
The company is also shifting more pay into deferred stock, allowing it to hold off recording compensation costs for years.
The pay restructuring helped the bank easily top analysts’ earnings estimates. Goldman earned $8.20 a share in the last three months of the year, well above the $5.20 a share expected by analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.
The $4.79 billion profit was the biggest quarterly gain ever for the New York-based bank. The previous record was $3.16 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007, as the bull market on Wall Street was peaking.
Trading of fixed income, commodities, and currencies buoyed Goldman’s profits for the third straight quarter. The bank also reported higher fees from underwriting stock and debt offerings.
Berkshire Hathaway reinsurer General Re agreed to pay almost $100 million to settle several charges and a lawsuit related to its involvement in accounting frauds by American International Group and Prudential Financial, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday.
Gen Re agreed to pay $12.2 million to settle SEC charges that it helped AIG (AIG 28.01, +0.05, +0.18%) and Prudential (PRU 53.70, +0.08, +0.15%) manipulate and falsify their financial statements, the regulator said.
News Hub: Has commercial real estate bottomed?
Commercial real estate values fell so sharply that some analysts believe the prices may have stabilized, Christina Lewis reports.
Gen Re will also pay $19.5 million to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service Consumer Fraud Fund as part of a nonprosecution agreement unveiled by the Department of Justice, the SEC said. That was related to a criminal investigation into Gen Re’s transactions with AIG.
Gen Re also agreed to pay $60.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit on behalf of injured AIG shareholders. Gen Re also forfeited to the government roughly $5 million in fees it got from helping AIG falsify its financial statements, the SEC said.
Berkshire (BRK.A 104,500, +300.00, +0.29%) (BRK.B 3,492, +15.99, +0.46%) bought Gen Re in 1998. The acquisition has been one of Chairman Warren Buffett’s most troubled deals. Read about Gen Re and Berkshire.
The settlements stem from an accounting scandal that erupted at AIG during the previous decade, before the insurance giant almost collapsed and had to be bailed out by the government. The controversy led to the departure of longtime AIG Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.
The SEC alleges that a foreign subsidiary of Gen Re entered into two "sham" reinsurance transactions with AIG in 2000. The contracts allowed AIG to falsely report rising loss reserves and premiums written, the regulator claimed. AIG paid more than $800 million to settle the charges.
Gen Re also arranged a series of "sham" reinsurance contracts with Prudential’s property and casualty division from 1997 to 2002. The deals helped Prudential improperly recognize more than $200 million in revenue in 2000, 2001 and 2002, the SEC said. Prudential was separately charged with securities law violations in 2008, the regulator noted. [As you can see, members of the illuminati never go to jail; they just buy their way out. Warren Buffett and Maurice Greenberg are both crooks. If you or I did what they did we’d be doing 10 years in the slammer. This is a national disgrace that these people can get away with this. It is simply horrifying. Bob]
California is poised to become the first state to set time limits for doctors to see patients, the Department of Managed Health Care said.
Regulations to be announced today require family practitioners in health maintenance organizations to see patients seeking an appointment within 10 business days.
The deadline for specialists is 15 days.
A patient seeking urgent care that does not require prior authorization must see a doctor within 48 hours.
However, doctors can extend the waiting period if they determine it will not harm the patient’s health.
The rules, set to take effect in January 2011, “set reasonable expectations about when care should be provided,’’ said Cindy Ehnes, Department of Managed Health Care director.
The regulations follow years of negotiations among state officials, doctors, hospitals, HMOs, and consumer and health care activists. A 2002 state law mandated more timely access to medical care but didn’t provide specifics.
The rules could be an important change for the 21 million Californians who subscribe to HMO plans, state officials said.
The gap in productivity growth between the United States and Europe widened sharply as US businesses were more aggressive in laying off workers and pushing their remaining employees to be more efficient, according to a business research group. Growth in productivity is the key factor in rising living standards.
In a new report, the Conference Board estimated that productivity – the amount of output per hour of work – rose in the United States by 2.5 percent in 2009 while productivity was falling by 1 percent on average in the euro area, the 16 European nations that use the euro currency.
The Conference Board said in a report to be released today that the gap would narrow in the current year but the United States would still outperform much of the euro area.
The Federal Housing Administration plans to increase the amount of up-front cash paid by all new borrowers and to require higher down payments from those with the poorest credit, according to agency officials.
These policy changes, scheduled to be announced on Wednesday, are part of the agency’s effort to beef up its ailing finances, which have been eroded by rising defaults in its increasingly popular flagship mortgage insurance program. The FHA currently backs about 30 percent of all loans for home purchases and 20 percent of refinanced loans.
Under this plan, the agency would increase the up-front insurance premium that borrowers pay at the closing table from 1.75 percent to 2.25 percent of the loan’s value starting this spring.
While most FHA borrowers can continue to make down payments of as little as 3.5 percent when they take out a loan, those with a credit score of less than 580 will have to make a down payment of at least 10 percent, possibly starting in the early summer.
The agency also plans to propose limits on the amount of money sellers can kick in, including by paying closing costs or giving free upgrades. The agency will reduce seller concessions from 6 percent to 3 percent of the home’s value, in line with the industry norm, this summer.
EVER SINCE his inauguration a year ago, President Obama has tried to motivate Congress with a strong ultimatum: Pass climate-change legislation, or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will use its authority under the Clean Air Act to curb carbon emissions without your input.
Instead of accepting this as a prod toward useful action, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) apparently wants to disarm the administration. This week she is set to offer a measure, perhaps as an amendment to a bill raising the federal debt ceiling, that would, one way or another, strip the EPA of its power to regulate carbon emissions as pollutants, perhaps for a year, perhaps forever. We aren’t fans of the EPA-only route. The country would be better off if Congress established market-based, economy-wide emissions curbs. But hobbling the agency isn’t the right course, either.
If Congress fails to act, carefully administered EPA regulation of carbon emissions could ensure that America makes some real reductions, if not necessarily in an optimally efficient manner. If Congress passes climate legislation, the EPA’s role, if any, could be tailored to work with a legislated emissions-reduction regime. So removing the EPA’s authority now is at least premature. The correct response to the prospect of large-scale EPA regulation is not to waste lawmakers’ energy in a probably futile attempt to weaken the agency. Instead, the Senate should provide a better alternative.
That effort is already fraught. The best policies — a simple carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme — aren’t gaining steam. Instead, the House passed a leviathan bill, and the Senate is stalled. Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) indicated last week that he fears Ms. Murkowski’s measure will diminish chances of producing a bipartisan climate-change bill. Ms. Murkowski would do better by helping end the Senate’s paralysis than by seeking to condemn the rest of government to the same inaction.
The International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs Retail Chain Store Sales Index rose 2% in the week ended Saturday from the week before on a seasonally adjusted, comparable-store basis.
The increase–the biggest in the past month–came as consumers "headed to discounters to fight the post-holiday blues," ICSC said. The group noted that January is a low-volume month and can be affected by small swings.
"Sales shifted towards discounters during this past week, which helped to lift the week-over-week pace," added ICSC chief economist Michael Niemira.
Last week, ICSC said consumers after the holidays had tended not to purchase items unless they were on sale.
Niemira also reiterated that January industrywide comparable-store sales are likely to be flat to up 1% "as lean inventories and the lack of the consumer’s need to shop will keep sales moderate for the month."
On a year-on-year basis, the reading rose 2.6% last week.
Building permits in the U.S. unexpectedly jumped in December, signaling gains in housing will be sustained into 2010 after winter weather depressed construction at the end of last year.
Applications rose 11 percent to a 653,000 annual rate last month, the most since October 2008, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Work began on houses at a 557,000 pace, down 4 percent from November.
Wholesale prices in the U.S. rose at a slower pace in December, showing the economy is recovering without the immediate threat of inflation.
The 0.2 percent increase in prices paid to factories, farmers and other producers followed a 1.8 percent jump in November, according to Labor Department data released today in Washington. The gain was more than anticipated and reflected higher food costs. Excluding food and fuel, so-called core prices were unchanged.
Senate Democrats are to seek an increase to the federal government’s borrowing limit by $1.9 trillion lifting the total amount the U.S. government can owe to $14.294 trillion, several congressional aides said Wednesday.
The increase is forecast to support the federal government’s borrowing needs the end of 2010, one Senate Democratic aide said.
The borrowing hike comes fast on the heels of a $290 billion increase to the debt ceiling agreed to by lawmakers at the end of 2009.
This is not a perfect world, and there will be no way out of the current crisis – which has been decades in the making – without even more pain. But best to suffer the pain sharply than to drag it out like the death of a thousand cuts, as will be the case if we remain on the path of perpetual spending we are now on.
Ohio’s unemployment rate has edged up to 10.9 percent for December, from 10.6 percent the month before.
The U.S. government’s move to deepen its ties to mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by agreeing to absorb unlimited losses for the next three years is igniting a debate over whether it should bring the business operations of the companies onto its books.
A decision on how the government treats Fannie and Freddie could have broader political implications. So far, the White House has resisted calls by Republicans to bring Fannie’s and Freddie’s obligations onto the government’s books, a move that could boost the federal deficit by tens of billions of dollars. At a time when the deficit is already at a postwar high, that could create added urgency for Congress and the administration to address the companies’ future.
The Congressional Budget Office has reiterated its support for bringing the companies onto the federal budget—and onto the government books—which would effectively mean accounting for their operations in the federal budget as if they were federal agencies.
Manufacturing conditions in the Philadelphia Fed area have continued improving in January, although at at a slower pace than in December, according to the latest Business Outlook Survey by the Federal Reserve of Philadelphia.
The Philly Fed current business conditions Index has eased to 15.2 in January from 22.5 in December, somewhat below the 18.2 index forecasted by market analysts.
New orders and business indexes have continued growing although also at a slower pace than in December. New orders Index dipped to 3.2 in January from 6.5 in December, while shipments Index dropped to 11.0 from 15.3 in December.
The Leading Economic Index for the US grew to 1.1% in January from 0.9% in December. This result marks the ninth consecutive month of gains in the index and is ahead of forecasts of a slight decline to 0.7%.
The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly rose last week – an increase a U.S. Labor Department economist said is partly due to an administrative backlog in processing claims.
Total claims lasting more than one week, meanwhile, declined.
Initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 36,000 to 482,000 in the week ended Jan. 16, according to the Labor Department’s weekly report Thursday. The previous week’s level was revised upward to 446,000 from 444,000.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected a decrease of 4,000 initial claims.
The four-week moving average, which aims to smooth volatility in the data, also increased as well last week. The Labor Department said the four-week moving average increased by 7,000 to 448,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 441,250.
The loan troubles of many U.S. consumers weighed down fourth-quarter results at Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bancorp, but bank executives predicted loan losses are near a peak.
The three banks hold a combined 24% of all U.S. deposits and operate more than 15,000 retail branches, making them important barometers of consumer sentiment and the health of the U.S. banking industry.
The Treasury Department asked bond dealers on Friday what, if any, impact the Federal Reserve’s completion of its mortgage-related security purchases will have on bond markets, and financial markets more broadly. The Fed has said it would buy $1.425 trillion by late March. Before each quarterly debt refunding, the department meets with its primary dealers to discuss supply issues and anything else affecting the markets. The request came in its survey of dealers before that meeting. Estimates on how much mortgage rates may rise after the purchases end, including from the last committee meeting, range as high as one percentage point.
As Goldman Sachs prepared to announce its fourth quarter earnings and employee compensation levels yesterday, the bank had bomb-sniffing dogs and police barricades on hand at its New York City headquarters, the New York Post reports.
The decision to boost security as its offices was apparently driven by growing fervor over the bank’s huge profits and bonuses. Yesterday, the bank announced that it earned $13.4 billion for the year, and set aside $16 billion for employee compensation. Goldman was widely expected to set aside approximately $20 billion for employee pay, but CFO David Viniar suggested yesterday in a call with reporters that the bank wasn’t blind to the "pain and suffering in the world" and "wasn’t deaf to the calls for restraint."
Viniar’s remarks indicate an abrupt change in tone among Goldman Sachs execs. In November, CEO Lloyd Blankfein — who had previously bragged that the bank was doing "God’s work" — said the following at an industry conference:
I often hear references to higher compensation at Goldman. What people fail to mention is that net income generated per head is a multiple of our peer average. The people of Goldman Sachs are among the most productive in the world."
Despite what seems to be a new concern among the firm’s leaders about the PR implications of Goldman’s banner year, the bank’s announcement of the pay packages that individual executives receive will be closely scrutinized. Dealbook spoke to one Goldman insider, who suggested Blankfein’s bonus will be a measuring stick for employees who may see their pay cut. (Blankfein earned $68 million in 2007, but didn’t receive a bonus last year.) Here’s Dealbook:
"It all depends on what Lloyd gets," said one midlevel Goldman employee, referring to Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive. He said Mr. Blankfein’s bonus had become a popular water-cooler topic. "If Lloyd takes home a big bonus, even if it’s all stock, and everyone else receives less, there will be some concern," he said.
Top 100 Banking Companies in Real Estate Loan Holdings
Commercial Real Estate Loans
Total Construction Nonperf. Nonperf./
Assets Total Commercial Multi-family and Land R.E.Loans R.E.Loans
($Mil.) ($Mil.) ($Mil.) ($Mil.) ($Mil.) (Mil.) (%)
1 Wells Fargo,San Francisco 1,228,625.0 132,745.0 87,040.0 9,302.0 36,403.0 10,476.0 7.9
2 Bank of America,Charlotte 2,252,813.6 105,323.5 54,565.9 11,422.3 39,335.3 8,864.8 8.4
3 J.P. Morgan,New York 2,041,009.0 63,402.0 22,730.0 32,216.0 8,456.0 2,490.0 3.9
4 BB&T,Winston-Salem,N.C. 165,329.1 40,401.5 22,489.2 1,929.1 15,983.3 2,299.8 5.7
5 PNC Financial,Pittsburgh 271,449.9 35,485.2 21,697.3 2,952.6 10,835.3 4,869.3 13.7
6 Regions Financial,Birmingham,Ala. 140,169.4 34,117.9 20,486.3 3,745.7 9,886.0 2,945.8 8.6
7 U.S. Bancorp,Minneapolis 265,058.0 32,098.0 20,133.0 2,411.0 9,554.0 2,083.0 6.5
8 MetLife,New York 535,192.2 30,495.7 26,527.5 3,930.0 38.2 216.0 0.7
9 SunTrust Banks,Atlanta 172,814.1 23,860.9 13,863.4 1,251.6 8,745.9 2,053.3 8.6
10 Zions Bancorporation,Salt Lake City 53,425.1 23,296.6 15,165.9 985.3 7,145.4 1,882.9 8.1
11 Citigroup,New York 1,888,599.0 22,467.0 12,516.0 7,603.0 2,348.0 2,464.0 11.0
12 New York Community Bancorp,New York 32,922.0 22,010.0 4,870.0 16,472.9 667.1 427.4 1.9
13 M&T Bank,Buffalo 68,997.5 20,817.2 13,457.3 1,999.5 5,360.4 539.8 2.6
14 BBVA Compass,Birmingham,Ala. 67,792.7 19,524.9 7,946.4 2,630.2 8,948.3 1,565.4 8.0
15 Capital One Financial,McLean,Va. 168,503.9 19,311.3 10,756.2 5,238.5 3,316.6 808.1 4.2
16 TD Banknorth,Cherry Hill,N.J. 138,987.4 18,996.5 14,497.8 1,586.0 2,912.8 590.3 3.1
17 Fifth Third Bancorp,Cincinnati 110,740.4 18,674.9 9,876.2 671.5 8,127.1 2,487.3 13.3
18 Marshall & Ilsley,Milwaukee 58,664.5 18,351.8 9,326.1 2,709.9 6,315.8 1,397.7 7.6
19 Keycorp,Cleveland 96,985.3 16,854.4 9,412.8 1,835.4 5,606.3 1,672.3 9.9
20 Synovus Financial,Herndon,Va. 34,610.5 15,714.2 7,885.7 638.7 7,189.8 1,296.3 8.2
21 Citizens Financial,Providence,R.I. 150,538.2 15,325.5 10,857.7 1,348.9 3,119.0 812.2 5.3
22 Comerica,Detroit 59,752.9 14,818.2 9,825.6 547.9 4,444.6 957.1 6.5
23 Huntington Bancshares,Columbus,Ohio 52,510.9 12,144.2 7,218.4 823.9 4,101.9 1,295.1 10.7
24 BancWest,Honolulu 77,529.5 12,066.4 8,488.0 640.8 2,937.6 921.5 7.6
25 UnionBanCal,Los Angeles 78,153.2 11,188.9 6,347.9 2,159.7 2,681.3 771.3 6.9
26 FBOP Corp.,Oak Park,Ill. 19,577.1 10,726.7 4,783.3 1,677.5 4,265.9 833.2 7.8
27 Popular Inc.,San Juan,P.R. 35,638.0 9,272.0 6,393.0 905.0 1,974.0 1,238.0 13.4
28 HSBC North America,Prospect Heights,Ill. 390,657.8 8,616.5 4,468.6 1,178.4 2,969.5 693.3 8.0
29 RBC Bancorp.,Raleigh,N.C. 29,447.4 8,385.4 4,557.4 815.0 3,013.0 755.6 9.0
30 W Holding,Mayaguez,P.R. 13,489.4 6,311.1 4,958.1 0.0 1,353.0 1,258.7 19.9
31 First Citizens Bancshares,Raleigh,N.C. 18,512.9 6,211.4 5,078.1 75.3 1,058.0 136.1 2.2
32 Barclays Group U.S.,Wilmington,Del. 377,926.4 6,146.7 4,038.1 1,888.6 220.0 1,759.5 28.6
33 Fulton Financial,Lancaster,Pa. 16,526.7 5,799.9 4,099.0 252.2 1,448.7 177.3 3.1
34 East West Bancorp,San Marino,Calif. 12,486.0 5,724.9 3,621.9 1,033.4 1,069.6 168.4 2.9
35 Associated Banc-Corp,Green Bay,Wis. 22,884.6 5,465.6 3,315.0 538.7 1,611.9 514.0 9.4
36 South Financial Group,Greenville,S.C. 12,301.0 5,220.7 3,110.4 258.6 1,851.7 330.9 6.3
37 Sterling Financial,Lancaster,Pa. 11,898.9 5,148.6 2,581.8 594.4 1,972.4 651.0 12.6
38 Harris Financial,Palatine,Ill. 58,879.3 5,122.8 3,457.6 500.3 1,164.9 877.0 17.1
39 UCBH Holdings,San Francisco 10,925.5 4,980.2 2,311.0 1,195.3 1,473.8 950.9 19.1
40 PrivateBancorp,Chicago 12,082.6 4,919.2 2,981.7 701.8 1,235.7 257.9 5.2
41 Cathay General Bancorp,Los Angeles 11,749.8 4,790.5 3,548.4 326.4 915.7 334.9 7.0
42 BancorpSouth,Tupelo,Miss. 13,280.8 4,736.5 2,956.6 246.4 1,533.6 60.4 1.3
43 Wilmington Trust,Wilmington,Del. 11,168.0 4,611.9 2,618.0 79.1 1,914.7 266.5 5.8
44 Harris Bankcorp,Chicago 40,725.5 4,333.5 3,154.4 456.2 723.0 294.0 6.8
45 First Horizon National,Memphis 26,466.7 4,243.5 2,405.0 315.7 1,522.8 624.8 14.7
Bob Chapman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Bob Chapman
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17175
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