Bulls, Bears & Bucks #54: Senaat akkoord met Obama-plan

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Aegon ratings verlaagd door Moody's
17-02-2009 18:14:00

AMSTERDAM (Dow Jones)--De rating op Aegon nv's senior debt, de schulden die het eerste moeten worden afgelost, wordt door Moody's Investor Services verlaagd naar A3 van A2. Dit maakt de kredietbeoordelaar dinsdag, na de voorlopige cijfers van Aegon over het vierde kwartaal van 2008, nabeurs bekend.

De kredietbeoordelaar verlaagt ook de rating op de Amerikaanse levensverzekeringactiviteiten naar A1 van Aa3. De outlook op alle activiteiten van Aegon is negatief.

"We verwachten op de middellange termijn aanhoudende financiele druk als gevolg van verliezen op beleggingen, de recessie en de dalende aandelenbeurzen", aldus een senior analist van Moody's.

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Op dinsdag 17 februari 2009 20:37 schreef simmu het volgende:
whehe, we hebben hier altijd oude elseviers. daar stond een artiekeltje in dat er op dat moment (vorige maand) meer mexicanen van de vs naar mexico gingen dan dat er mexicanen van mexico naar de vs gingen. heeft bush toch nog zn zin gekregen

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Nieuwe grote fraudezaak VS
DINSDAG 17 FEBRUARI 2009, 20:26 | 382 keer gelezen
WASHINGTON (AFN) - De Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), de Amerikaanse toezichthouder op de financiële markten, is op een nieuwe omvangrijke fraudezaak gestuit. Ruim twee maanden nadat de megafraude van Bernie Madoff aan het licht kwam, bleek dinsdag dat een Texaanse investeerder beleggers mogelijk ook voor miljarden heeft opgelicht.

De SEC deed dinsdag een inval in het Texaanse hoofdkwartier van Robert Stanford in de stad Houston. De toezichthouder richt zich op een investeringsfonds van 8 miljard dollar. Stanford en zijn drie bedrijven die ook onderdeel van onderzoek zijn, zouden valse beloften hebben gedaan en historische rendementen hebben gefabriceerd.

In december werd bekend dat Bernie Madoff beleggers mogelijk voor 50 miljard dollar heeft opgelicht. Bij deze zogenaamde Ponzi-fraude betaalde Madoff bestaande beleggers uit met de inleg van nieuwe beleggers.

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Stressing Out The Banks
Tim Geithner's plans to separate weak banks from strong are freaking out financials. What to expect.
The Treasury Department's plan to stress-test the capital levels of the top 15 U.S. banks is seriously stressing out the financial markets.

The goal is to find out whether the banks would have the capital they needed to continue to lend and absorb more losses if the economy were to weaken more than expected. Some outside observers of the Treasury's new Financial Stability Plan said last week it seemed likely the regulators were imposing stricter capital standards on banks, though the Treasury denied raising that bar.

Uncertainty over the plan is taking its toll on banks. Shares of the top U.S. banks, those that will have to submit to the stress testing, fell sharply Tuesday, including 11% declines in shares of Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ), Bank of America (nyse: BAC - news - people ), and Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ); a 12% decline in JPMorgan Chase (nyse: JPM - news - people ); and 13% declines in Morgan Stanley (nyse: MS - news - people ) and Wells Fargo (nyse: WFC - news - people ).

The administration is "so scared of looking silly and being taken advantage of by Wall Street that they're being excessively cautious," says Reed Auerbach, a structured finance attorney at McKee Nelson.

« KNIP »

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Op woensdag 18 februari 2009 10:55 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:
En tussendoor wordt er ook nog oorlog voorspelt maar dan moet dit zaakje wel wat langer doorgaan al zou er intern wel het een en ander kunnen gaan gebeuren in china en consorten

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Latvian PM quits as crisis bites

Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and his government have resigned, amid political turmoil triggered by the Baltic state's economic crisis.

President Valdis Zatlers has accepted the resignations.

Earlier the two largest parties in the ruling centre-right coalition had demanded the PM's resignation.

International lenders, including the IMF, World Bank and EU, have pledged 7.5bn euros (£6.6bn; $9.5bn) to shore up Latvia's struggling economy.

Protesters demanding the government's resignation clashed with police in the capital Riga on 13 January.

But Mr Godmanis then survived a parliamentary no-confidence vote on 3 February.

Latvia's economy is in recession, having shrunk at the fastest rate since the early 1990s, when it split from the Soviet Union. It is expected to contract by 12% this year.

Gross domestic product (GDP) fell 10.5% in the last quarter of 2008, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The Latvian economy had been booming for several years, but the global credit crunch hit the country hard.

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Op vrijdag 20 februari 2009 15:37 schreef simmu het volgende:
mijn stelling wb deflatie: "de mate waarin waarde (schuld) vernietigd wordt weegt niet op tegen de mate waarin waarde (geld) gecreerd wordt.

mish probeert het uit te leggen via grafieken en een minimaal mathematisch model.

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Op vrijdag 20 februari 2009 15:54 schreef Lemmeb het volgende:

[..]

Dat volg ik even niet.

Maar het is imho heel logisch dat er deflatie zou komen ipv inflatie, al weet ik het ook niet 100% zeker. Het gecreërde geld komt immers niet in handen van degenen die het moeten uitgeven, maar komt op de balanzen van financiële instellingen terecht. Of zoals henkway zegt: "de periode van inflatie hebben we al gehad", de afgelopen jaren toen het werd uitgeleend en uitgegeven.

Echter, als het vertrouwen in het geld volledig instort, dan wordt geld waardeloos en krijg je hyperinflatie. Maar dan kunnen we allemaal opnieuw beginnen.

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Op vrijdag 20 februari 2009 15:54 schreef Lemmeb het volgende:

[..]

Dat volg ik even niet.

Maar het is imho heel logisch dat er deflatie zou komen ipv inflatie, al weet ik het ook niet 100% zeker. Het gecreërde geld komt immers niet in handen van degenen die het moeten uitgeven, maar komt op de balanzen van financiële instellingen terecht. Of zoals henkway zegt: "de periode van inflatie hebben we al gehad", de afgelopen jaren toen het werd uitgeleend en uitgegeven.

Echter, als het vertrouwen in het geld volledig instort, dan wordt geld waardeloos en krijg je hyperinflatie. Maar dan kunnen we allemaal opnieuw beginnen.

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Op vrijdag 20 februari 2009 23:47 schreef pberends het volgende:
http://www.rtl.nl/compone(...)willem.avi_plain.xml

De laatste beursupdate van Willem, na 8 jaar lang gelijk krijgen

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Don't expect miracles during big week in EU's battle with depression
Latvia: staring into the abyss

Is the EU falling apart? Can the euro survive? The coming week is scheduled to deliver some eagerly awaited policy responses to these suddenly urgent questions, but the prospects are that they will fall short of what is required and that the "worst depression for a century" will deepen.

Europe, as in tackling climate change, has preened itself on taking on a global leadership role in confronting, first, the financial crisis and, then, the economic recession. But there is every evidence that, amid the clarion and confusing calls for a co-ordinated response, the 27 EU governments are engaged in a turf war of beggar-thy-neighbour policies.

Economically, the perspectives are dire. The Dutch economy is officially forecast to shrink by 3.5% this year, the German economy by more than 3%, the British by as much as 4% and Latvia is "staring into the abyss" with a 10% shrinkage at least.

Social unrest is growing, notably in eastern Europe. Austrian banks alone face self-inflicted losses of ¤150bn on their exposures to bad loans and credit rating company Moody's said this week that "a widespread deterioration in the economic health of core markets" could hit other banks such as France's SocGen, Italy's UniCredit and Belgium's KBC.

Moody's said the recession in the region, much of it already bailed out by the IMF, would be the worst in the world because of large currency imbalances. Wealthier EU countries, led by Germany, are refusing to countenance common eurobonds to cover debts and there is little concerted appetite to bail out defaulting countries.

The euro, de facto currency in countries such as non-EU Montenegro, is again under severe pressure, falling this week to a three-month low against the dollar. "There is no doubt that markets have decided that emerging Europe is the sub-prime of Europe and now everybody is running for the door," said Lars Christensen of Danske Bank.

The European Central Bank, still imposing the highest interest rates in "mature" economies, is at sixes and sevens over "non-standard measures" such as quantitative easing.

There's worse news to come as governments grapple with the Everest of toxic and impaired assets still sitting on banks' balance sheets – perhaps as much as ¤18 trillion in Europe alone. Last week, the EU's 27 finance ministers were told by the European commission that go-it-alone policies and a subsidy race for ailing and sound banks could trigger "a drift towards financial protectionism and fragmentation of the internal market".

In other words, the whole of the EU could be Balkanised, leaving in tatters the single market, the pride of Jacques Delors and engine of relative prosperity, growth and jobs in Europe for two decades.

The commission's "draft guidance paper" on how to treat toxic assets warns dramatically that this drift could develop into a torrent, with weaker banks damaging even further the real economy, requiring even more state aid, sending government borrowing sky-high and necessitating self-defeating tax increases. "Such risks are serious given the likely scale of state exposure," it says.

In the week beginning 22 February, there are three EU events designed to stop the poisonous rot attacking the central nervous system of Europe.

First, Neelie Kroes, the EU competition commissioner, and colleagues could finalise guidance for governments circling around different models: a state-owned bad bank, a public-private fund for holding and disposing of impaired assets or a UK-style liability insurance scheme for banks retaining the poison they manufactured on their trading books.

Kroes, under siege from many governments for allegedly delaying approval of bank and industry rescue schemes, has, in fact, been highly flexible in applying state aid rules as she struggles to reassert the single market. "If every country acts according to 'my way or the highway', the banking sector as a whole – and with it the entire world economy – will suffer for many, many years to come," she told the OECD in Paris.

Secondly, Wednesday sees the commission accept the report of a "high-level expert group on financial supervision" chaired by Jacques de Larosière, the former International Monetary Fund managing director, governor of the Bank of France and president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Its report, unusually leak-proof so far, is expected to recommend a single pan-European prudential supervisor to regulate cross-border banks (46 in the EU) and preserve/recreate financial stability through early-warning mechanisms and crisis management.

Phew! What we know is that Brother Jacques has, in this regard, favoured a pivotal role for the ECB – a position that would be endorsed by at least some of the central bank governing council members. Certainly for the 16-strong eurozone and, maybe, for the EU as a whole.

Given the long deadlock over agreeing to more centralised supervision of the EU insurance sector, which generates premium income of ¤1.11 trillion and invests ¤7.2 trillion, this seems nigh impossible. The 27 member states will immediately start squabbling and picking apart the recommendations, which are due to be formalised by the EC on 4 March.

Gordon Brown, who proposed a strengthened "college of supervisors" on a global scale back in the autumn of 2008, will resist any proposal to boost the regulatory powers of the ECB. But, unusually and pertinently, a series of City bodies have proposed to the de Larosière team much greater and urgent strengthening of existing "colleges" for securities, banks and insurance.

Stuart Fraser, the head of the City of London's policy and resources committee, has even given a nod to more radical changes "as long as they could demonstrably deliver better outcomes".

The Association of British Insurers says it is willing to countenance a debate on a single prudential supervisor "to overcome the current lack of trust between European regulators".

The UK accountancy body, the ACCA, is a bit more iffy, worried that EU countries are already seeking exemptions from new international standards.

Stage three, in a week billed as momentous but, as ever, likely to deliver a mouse, is the 1 March (Sunday!) emergency EU summit on how to beat the crisis, called by the Czechs, the current EU president, in protest at French moves to rescue their auto industry. They want a "clear no to protectionism" to emerge – as it did at the Washington G20 summit in mid-November with zilch effect.

And the euro? It's clear that the ECB is closing ranks around current members, slamming the door of the "safe haven" shut against would-be entrants not only in eastern Europe but elsewhere (Iceland) for years to come. But the 10-year-old central bank faces its toughest year yet as members such as Ireland and Italy come under severe default pressures.

But, again, my French socialist friend, Pervenche Beres, who heads the European parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee, has the last and, probably, correct response to "catastrophic" comments: "The cost of leaving the eurozone would in fact be so high for the country concerned and for European monetary union that such a scenario is just not possible."

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Op vrijdag 20 februari 2009 23:53 schreef henkway het volgende:

[..]

maar goud blijft wel de waarde houden