Bulls, Bears & Bucks #11: Euro 1,60 dollar waard

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Op maandag 14 april 200815:01 schreef tony_clifton- het volgende:
Ik heb alvast wat cash overgemaakt om soon-to-be-absurd goedkope aandelen te kunnen oppikken.

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Opvolger Buffett weg na fraude
15 Apr 08, 08:32

door een onzer redacteuren
AMSTERDAM (DFT) - Joseph Brandon, de gedoodverfde opvolger van ’s werelds grootste investeerder Warren Buffett (77) in diens verzekeraar Berkshire Hathaway, is wegens beschuldigingen van fraude plotseling teruggetreden.
De 49-jarige bestuursvoorzitter van General Re, onderdeel van Berkshire Hathaway werd anders dan vier medebestuursleden niet veroordeeld voor verzekeringsfraude, maar trad desondanks af. Het in 1998 door Buffett opgekochte General Re werkte in 2006 met de grootste verzekeraar AIG samen bij het opzetten van een fictief verlies.

Dft

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General Re werkte in 2006 met de grootste verzekeraar AIG samen bij het opzetten van een fictief verlies.

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Op dinsdag 15 april 2008 06:56 schreef indahnesia.com het volgende:

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ben wel gek, met een dergelijk snel dalende USD heb je er in euro's geen kut aan uiteindelijk. Maar ze zullen het wellicht wel waarderen dat je wat extra dollars in het systeem pompt.

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Op dinsdag 15 april 2008 12:35 schreef indahnesia.com het volgende:

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Echt of nep, zolang het in de VS is kun je bij de FED onbeperkt geld halen om het gat te dichten...

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Op maandag 14 april 2008 17:26 schreef ItaloDancer het volgende:

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Laten we eerst de eerstekwartaalcijfers van deze week maar eens afwachten, juli is een beetje ver weg.

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Op dinsdag 15 april 2008 13:47 schreef Drugshond het volgende:
Als markering waar we nu staan ben ik juist benieuwd naar de cijfers van Ambac, Bank of America.
En die komen deze maand.

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US credit rating under threat
By Aline van Duyn in New York
Monday Apr 14 2008 16:10

The US government's need to provide financial backing to the state-sponsored mortgage financiers that dominate the US housing market could pose a risk to the country's triple-A credit rating, Standard & Poor's, the credit rating agency, said on Monday.

In the event of a deep and prolonged US recession, S&P said the potential costs of propping up government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) like Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac, which have implicit government backing, could cost the US government up to 10 per cent of GDP.

The costs of supporting broker-dealers like Bear Stearns in a dire economic situation would be much lower, at below 3 per cent of GDP, S&P said.
The size of GSEs, coupled with their current level of common equity, could create a material fiscal burden to the government that would lead to downward pressure on its rating," the S&P report said.

The S&P comments come amid increased pressure for better regulation of the mortgage financiers, especially as their role in the US housing market is likely to increase as they are used to provide support for struggling homeowners.

Policymakers are pushing for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the lesser-known Federal Home Loan Banks to pump liquidity into the US mortgage market and this has prompted regulators to call for stronger oversight of such institutions.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks have become the backbone of the troubled US mortgage market as purely private sources of finance have all but dried up or are offered only at punitive terms.

In the second half of 2007, about 90 per cent of new mortgage funding was provided by GSEs. They have about $6,300bn of public debt and mortgage securities outstanding, more than the $5,100bn of outstanding US government debt.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have no formal state guarantees but investors believe the US government would step in if the system got into trouble. This allows the agencies to raise funds at very low rates against a triple-A credit rating, in spite of high levels of leverage.

The capital surplus ratio for GSEs was recently reduced to 20 per cent from 30 per cent, allowing them to operate on a more leveraged basis.

In January, Moody's Investors Service, another credit rating agency, said the US could risk its triple-A rating within a decade unless soaring healthcare costs and social security spending was curbed.

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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Intel Corp. said Tuesday that earnings fell 12% during the first quarter, but the chipmaker also issued an upbeat forecast for the current period.
That forecast helped send Intel shares up about 7% in after-hours trading.

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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Washington Mutual Inc. reported a $1.14 billion first-quarter net loss late Tuesday as the lender suffered from the mortgage meltdown and broader credit crunch.
The Seattle-based company also said it closed a previously announced deal to raise $7 billion from a group of investors led by private-equity firm Texas Pacific Group. It also reported "steady" results from its retail banking, credit card and commercial businesses.

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America, Ex-Distortion

4/12/2008
by John Rubino



In yet another sign that the end is near, Harper’s Magazine, that venerable fount of left wing culture, has become a source of clear-eyed financial journalism. In February it ran a cover story by iTuilip’s Eric Janszen explaining America’s devolution from goods-production to paper shuffling. Janszen calls this the FIRE economy (for Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) and concludes that it can only survive by blowing ever-bigger bubbles (read the article here for Eric’s prediction on where the next bubble will appear).

And the May Harper’s just hit the newsstands with a cover story by veteran political analyst Kevin Phillips on how the U.S. government has been systematically distorting the economic numbers it reports. Here’s his opening:


"Almost four decades have passed since the United States scrapped its last currency ties to precious metals. Our copper and nickel coinage still retains some metallic value, but not nearly enough for the purpose of currency tampering--the historic temptation of inflation-plagued or otherwise wayward governments, including, at times, our own. Instead, since the 1960s, Washington has been forced to gull its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics: the vital instruments with which the vigor and muscle of the American economy are measured. The effect, over the past twenty-five years, has been to create a false sense of economic achievement and rectitude, allowing us to maintain artificially low interest rates, massive government borrowing, and a dangerous reliance on mortgage and financial debt even as real economic growth has been slower than claimed. If Washington’s harping on weapons of mass destruction was essential to buoy public support for the invasion of Iraq, the use of deceptive statistics has played its own vital role in convincing many Americans that the U.S. economy is stronger, fairer, more productive, more dominant, and richer with opportunity than it actually is."




According to Phillips, this misinformation campaign began under LBJ, continued under Reagan, took off under Clinton, and was refined by Bush. So the enterprise is bi-partisan. And it’s not just one statistic. Our leaders lie about unemployment, inflation, growth and the deficit. Because Social Security payments are indexed to inflation, government statisticians suppress reported inflation, and thus their need to increase monthly SS checks, by arbitrarily eliminating from their calculations products that are rising too quickly in price. If they were adjusted for the true cost of living, today’s Social Security checks would be 70% higher and the Federal deficit would be exploding. (Questions for seniors: Why haven’t you burned down the White House? Are you waiting for the Baby Boomers to do it?)

Since the true level of unemployment would upset voters in crucial swing states, the government simply eliminates whole categories of people from the statistical workforce so they don’t show up as unemployed. To make GDP look better Washington “imputes” (i.e. makes up) new income sources and credits them to homeowners and others. When the money supply starts growing to fast to effectively hide, the Fed just stops reporting measures like M3. And the lies, like our accumulated debts, keep getting bigger. If Washington suddenly decided to tell the truth, America's vital statistics would look like this:


Inflation 12%
Unemployment 12%
Economic Growth Negative
National Debt $60 Trillion


The really cool thing about Phillips’ article is that he cites as his main source none other than John Williams of Shadow Government statistics. Williams is already a folk hero in sound money circles, where his numbers are seen as far more trustworthy than anything coming out of the Fed or Treasury. To see him given this much respect in Harper’s means the idea that we’re being conned on a vast scale is no longer the paranoid fantasy of a few lonely gold bugs. Now it’s the conventional wisdom.

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Op woensdag 16 april 2008 11:39 schreef pberends het volgende:
Nog steeds geen 1,60... wie loopt hier kunstmatig de boel te manipuleren ?