Stand by for another burst of Bank black mail. Both in Europe and the US.
Here in Europe the second failure of Hungary's debt auctions has prompted Willem Buiter of Citi, to tell the EU that it will have to double it's bail out fund. 680 Billion is not enough he said. The ECB will have to find 2 Trillion and give it to the banks. Of course the banker will call it bailing out bankrupt states. But the bail out is for the banks. It's in their vaults where the money will end up.
More bail outs or the banks will all die and then so will all of you when the sky falls in! The thickness of the irony that Willem Buiter of CITI should advise anyone on debts is beyond me and lost on him. Head of the world's MOST insolvent, most bailed out bank!
Meanwhile in America, the DOW is hovering around a 130 point drop today( at time of writting) and the headline writers are stirring up the panic and blackmail headlines for the financial lobby to whisper in the receptive ears of Senators and Congressmen, in the final hours of lobbying against any remaining bank regulations.
So far they have made a mockery of the little that is left. The big Banks now have 5 years to stop using Trust Preferred Securities as Tier One capital. FIVE YEARS! What use is that in heading off another bank crash? 5 years in finance is never. Next to be killed is any levy on the banks to deal with the 1.3 triilion dollars worth of mortgages they wrote and vomited on to Fannie and Freddie. F&F had to eat them up otherwise the banks would have died last year. Now that F&F are vast lagoons of toxic excrement, the banks don't want to pay a penny to clear it all up. No, they are going to make sure it gets left for the US taxpayer to deal with. Like all toxic industrial waste - after the profits have been taken, its up to the locals to live in the shit left behind.
Unless all this communist talk of regulating and taxing is stopped NOW the markets are going to show you how scary they can make it! I think that's the clear message from Wall Street to Congress.
Obama is going to be told, via Geithner that another stimulus and bail-out is what is on order. How to pay? Well that's his problem. He's the President isn't he? Isn't that what President's are for - taking care of the people - those who matter that is!
Hi Golem
ReplyDeleteI came across this blog this morning:
There is no surprise regarding the lacklustre style nor the anaemic content, having to comply with the BBC's strict policies for attention seekers and media mavericks.
However, what did surprise me was the wholesale rejection of the report by quite knowledgeable readers in the 'comments' section. There seems to be growing dissent amongst the masses against the gloop they are being spoon-fed.
Frank Zappa said it best:
I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set
That's the thing about blackmail, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteIf you pay it the first time, the blackmailer is just going to keep coming back for more...
Exactly. The banks are getting ready to come back for another go. The US is on the verge of another huge give-away. How they will pay I don't know. QE probably.
ReplyDeleteAnd as RichGb was pointing out the media are there to keep us from thinking about it.
In short it is up to us. There are no leaders coming to save us. We are going to have to be that leadership. And why not?
- And why not?
ReplyDeleteIndeed, we could hardly do worse than what's currently on hand...
How do you go about removing the current status quo though?
On a positive note, I think processes or organisms that fail to adapt are often removed by nature (call it an invisible hand!)
Maybe redundant politics and systems will simply be overwhelmed by the changing circumstances.
Sorry, the URL link has disappeared. It should have pointed to Robert Peston's blog in the BBC business section.
ReplyDeleteAfter you have finished gagging on the sycophantic content, contrast this with the readers' feedback. LOL
I can see the light, but I'm not sure I can walk that far.
Bonjour Golem !
ReplyDeleteHmmm, but the non-performing loans and other garbage in the balance sheets are already far far more than the banks' capital, so any levy will be ineffective compared to the mountain ?
You've pointed that out in relation to the Regionals bleeding the FDIC so it's going to run out of funds in a few months .
Next tier up are the Central Banks...
RichGb,
ReplyDeleteWhat do think of Preston?
Frog2,
Salut. Ça va?
I think the levey, even their $19 Billion just agreed is window dressing. Divide it by the number of banks and other financial insitutions and what each bank has to pay is tea money.
The cost of dealing with a failing bank is going to be paid up front by the public and 'recouped' later - ie never.
It's what I thought. Pure Pipo as you would say.
Yes next Tier up is where we are headed. CB's floundering before long.
The debts overwhelm all their silly provisions.
Hi Tim
ReplyDeleteI think it depends on whether you can speak with authority or not. When somebody like Golem or GreatGrandDad or Eachran post to websites like The Guardian, I've noticed that the petty arguments such as 'haves versus have-nots', 'private versus public', 'Thatcher versus Blair years' suddenly diminish, for a short time, and some serious questions are posed by other contributors.
Those with the authority - the facts to back up the prose - must produce the material. Followers (like me) must point people in the direction of the material by posting links to sites like this one.
If you get enough followers then some of those people will want to be activists, and some will be in a position of power to spread the word far and wide.
Hi Golem
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that Robert Peston has an incredible network of contacts and walks through doors inaccessible to most of the other media personnel. He knows the truth.
However, he is tightly constrained to reporting 'what is acceptable' and 'what is on record'. When he strayed from this in the past it upset the markets and there was tremendous pressure on the BBC to rein him in.
Oh, the stories he could tell!
My impression also.
ReplyDeleteYes, it can get tedious sifting through CiF for genuinely enlightening comments, and there are, you just have to wade through a lot of carping, snide sideshots and people with too many ideological investments and too willing to accept dichotomies (public/private, left/right, bla, bla, bla.)
ReplyDeleteI still think that people finally do wake up to massive changes though, as there comes a point where the noise is too loud.
By the way, were you referring to the article called "will banks' medicine kill them and us"?
As to the blackmail, there's a temptation to say "go ahead. blow it all up. You've got more to lose from blowing up this system than I have"...
Just the titles of GreatGrandDad's books he refers to says it all really. Limits to Growth and The Collapse of Complex Societies.
ReplyDeleteYes Tim, that's the one. You can almost sense the sentences that he had to delete.
ReplyDelete