Geldgroei explodeert wereldwijd

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Op zondag 13 mei 2007 18:08 schreef gronk het volgende:

Prachtig. 'Centrale banken zijn onbetrouwbaar, lever jezelf over aan een stel andere boeven'

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Op zondag 13 mei 2007 18:23 schreef gronk het volgende:
Enig idee hoeveel d'r in amerikaans vastgoed wordt gerotzooid momenteel? Die bedragen lopen in de miljarden.

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Op zondag 13 mei 2007 18:45 schreef gronk het volgende:
http://money.cnn.com/2007(...)t.moneymag/index.htm

Eat that. 120 miljard in beroerde leningen, versus 175 miljoen in 'goud'.

Maar het leidt wel mooi de aandacht af van de werkelijke problemen, zo'n illuminatie-verhaal.

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'Rentetarieven eurozone zijn laag'
Uitgegeven: 4 juni 2007 19:41

BUENOS AIRES - De rentetarieven in de eurozone zijn laag. Dat zei Nout Wellink, president van De Nederlandsche Bank en bestuurslid van de Europese Centrale Bank (ECB), maandag.

Wellink sprak op een conferentie over monetair beleid in de hoofdstad van Argentinië. "De rentetarieven kunnen nu laag zijn, omdat de inflatie nog steeds laag is", zei Wellink.

"Maar deze lage tarieven zie je ook terug in de aandelenmarkt, de huizenmarkt en andere financiële markten." De ECB maakt woensdag zijn rentebesluit bekend en verwacht wordt dat het belangrijkste tarief, de herfinancieringsrente, met 25 basispunten wordt verhoogd tot 4 procent. Verhoging

De ECB hintte al eerder op een renteverhoging in juni. ECB-president Jean-Claude Trichet zei drie weken geleden dat de bank "zeer waakzaam" moet zijn ten opzichte van de inflatierisico's in de eurozone.

De financiële markten beschouwden deze bewoordingen als een signaal dat de rente snel omhooggaat

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BIS warns of Great Depression dangers from credit spree
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 9:02am BST 25/06/2007

The Bank for International Settlements, the world's most prestigious financial body, has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fuelled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy more vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump than generally understood.

The BIS said China may have repeated the disastrous errors made by Japan in the 1980s

"Virtually nobody foresaw the Great Depression of the 1930s, or the crises which affected Japan and southeast Asia in the early and late 1990s. In fact, each downturn was preceded by a period of non-inflationary growth exuberant enough to lead many commentators to suggest that a 'new era' had arrived", said the bank.

The BIS, the ultimate bank of central bankers, pointed to a confluence a worrying signs, citing mass issuance of new-fangled credit instruments, soaring levels of household debt, extreme appetite for risk shown by investors, and entrenched imbalances in the world currency system.

"Behind each set of concerns lurks the common factor of highly accommodating financial conditions. Tail events affecting the global economy might at some point have much higher costs than is commonly supposed," it said.

The BIS said China may have repeated the disastrous errors made by Japan in the 1980s when Tokyo let rip with excess liquidity.

advertisement"The Chinese economy seems to be demonstrating very similar, disquieting symptoms," it said, citing ballooning credit, an asset boom, and "massive investments" in heavy industry.

Some 40pc of China's state-owned enterprises are loss-making, exposing the banking system to likely stress in a downturn.

It said China's growth was "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable", borrowing a line from Chinese premier Wen Jiabao

In a thinly-veiled rebuke to the US Federal Reserve, the BIS said central banks were starting to doubt the wisdom of letting asset bubbles build up on the assumption that they could safely be "cleaned up" afterwards - which was more or less the strategy pursued by former Fed chief Alan Greenspan after the dotcom bust.

It said this approach had failed in the US in 1930 and in Japan in 1991 because excess debt and investment built up in the boom years had suffocating effects.

While cutting interest rates in such a crisis may help, it has the effect of transferring wealth from creditors to debtors and "sowing the seeds for more serious problems further ahead."

The bank said it was far from clear whether the US would be able to shrug off the consequences of its latest imbalances, citing a current account deficit running at 6.5pc of GDP, a rise in US external liabilities by over $4 trillion from 2001 to 2005, and an unpredented drop in the savings rate. "The dollar clearly remains vulnerable to a sudden loss of private sector confidence," it said.

The BIS said last year's record issuance of $470bn in collateralized debt obligations (CDO), and a further $524bn in "synthetic" CDOs had effectively opened the lending taps even further. "Mortgage credit has become more available and on easier terms to borrowers almost everywhere. Only in recent months has the downside become more apparent," it said.

CDO's are bond-like packages of mortgages and other forms of debt. The BIS said banks transfer the exposure to buyers of the securities, giving them little incentive to assess risk or carry out due diligence.

Mergers and takeovers reached $4.1 trillion worldwide last year.

Leveraged buy-outs touched $753bn, with an average debt/cash flow ratio hitting a record 5:4.

"Sooner or later the credit cycle will turn and default rates will begin to rise," said the bank.

"The levels of leverage employed in private equity transactions have raised questions about their longer-term sustainability. The strategy depends on the availability of cheap funding," it said.

That may not last much longer.

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European Money-Supply Growth Accelerated in October (Update2)

By Gabi Thesing

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Money-supply growth in the euro region accelerated more than economists forecast in October to the fastest pace in more than 28 years, adding to the European Central Bank's inflation concerns.

M3 money supply, which the ECB uses as a gauge of future inflation, grew 12.3 percent from a year earlier, after gaining 11.3 percent in September, the Frankfurt-based bank said today. That's the highest rate since July 1979. Economists expected growth of 11.5 percent, according to the median of 35 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey.

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