Bulls, Bears & Bucks #59: The Lost Decade

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Op zondag 5 juli 2009 11:11 schreef Drugshond het volgende:

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Dat wordt rellen....Als ze je zo leest is de UK een soort Californië aan het woirden.
Probeer dat maar eens door de strot van het publiek te drukken.

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Op zondag 5 juli 2009 15:34 schreef RodeRidderrr het volgende:

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Volgens mij valt het begrotingstekort van de UK nog wel mee.

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Op zondag 5 juli 2009 16:03 schreef Perrin het volgende:

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Geschat op 14(!!) procent volgend jaar. (zie eerdere posts)

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Op zondag 5 juli 2009 16:17 schreef Zero2Nine het volgende:
Bij ons wordt het ook niet mals.

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The banking industry is exceeding all expectations. The biggest players are raking in profits and planning much higher compensation so far this year, on the back of increased market share (wouldn’t you like two of your major competitors to go out of business?). And banks in general are managing to project widely a completely negative attitude towards all attempts to protect consumers.

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Small banks have always had clout in the American political system, particularly when they work through the Senate. But we have not always had our current kind of crisis. The executives of these banks lived comfortably in the 1950s and 1960s; their kind of banking was boring, stable, and nicely remunerated.

It is the changing nature and power of the largest financial institutions – banks of various kinds – that has damaged our system since the 1980s; the rise in financial services compensation is part symptom and part pathogen. Big banks present the major risk going forward – to both the economy in general and to smaller banks in particular.

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Op maandag 6 juli 2009 18:51 schreef pberends het volgende:

7/5/09 Gerald Celente on Fox News: Obamageddon is coming!

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Goldman Sachs Trading Source Code In the Wild?
"The world's most valuable source code could be in the wild. According to a report by Reuters, a Russian immigrant and former Goldman Sachs developer named Sergey Aleynikov was picked up at Newark Airport on July 4th by the FBI on charges of industrial espionage. According to the complaint, Sergey, prior to his early June exit from Goldman, copied, encrypted and uploaded source code inferred to be the code used by Goldman Sachs to process in real-time (micro-seconds) trades between multiple equity and commodity platforms. While trying to cover his tracks, the system backed up a series of bash commands so he was unable to erase his history, which would later give him away to Goldman and the authorities. So the question is: where are the 32MB of encrypted files that Sergey uploaded to a German server?

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Op dinsdag 7 juli 2009 10:35 schreef Ali_Kannibali het volgende:
Zijn er hier nog steeds mensen die denken dat het goed gaat komen?

Dat overheden en grote namen in het centrale bankwezen er echt alles aan doen om de vrije markt economie te redden?

Of ziet men hier ook een geplande crash, een vestiging van corporatisme en plundering van de burger?

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The weak development of the economy requires a somewhat more expansionary monetary policy. The Executive Board of the Riksbank has therefore decided to cut the repo rate by 0.25 of a percentage point to 0.25 per cent. The repo rate is expected to remain at this low level over the coming year. At the same time there are several signs that economic activity will improve.

Deep economic downturn

Economic activity abroad is very weak and this hits Sweden hard. Exports have fallen substantially and the situation on the labour market is continuing to deteriorate rapidly. The information received in recent months points to the economic downturn in 2009 being somewhat deeper than the Riksbank forecast in April.

Low repo rate over a long period of time

A lower repo rate and repo rate path are needed to counteract the fall in production and employment and to attain the inflation target of 2 per cent. The Executive Board of the Riksbank has therefore decided to cut the repo rate to 0.25 per cent. The repo rate is expected to remain at this low level until autumn 2010. The Riksbank’s assessment is that cutting the rate to 0.25 per cent will not threaten the functioning of the financial markets.

The Riksbank’s assessment is that after cutting the repo rate to 0.25 per cent it will have reached its lower limit in practice, and that the situation on the financial markets is still not completely normal. Supplementary measures are necessary to ensure that monetary policy has the intended effect. The Executive Board of the Riksbank has therefore decided to offer loans totalling SEK 100 billion to the banks at a fixed interest rate and with a maturity of 12 months. This should contribute to lower interest rates on loans to companies and households.

Stable underlying inflation

Despite the expansionary monetary policy, production and employment will be lower than normal over the next few years. Inflation will be kept up by weak productivity and a weak krona. However, there will be large fluctuations in CPI inflation during the coming period. This is primarily due to the fact that changes in the repo rate affect mortgage rates, which are included in the CPI. The CPIF underlying inflation rate (the CPI with a fixed mortgage rate) will on the other hand remain stable close to 2 per cent during the forecast period.

Signs of a turnaround

In recent months there have been several signs that economic activity will improve. At the same time, the financial markets in Sweden and abroad have begun to function more effectively, which creates the potential for an acceleration in international and domestic demand. The low repo rate and current fiscal policy will also contribute to the recovery. GDP growth is expected to be positive in 2010, but the labour market will lag behind and employment will not begin to rise until 2011.

Considerable uncertainty

The economic outlook is still uncertain. When the turnaround comes, the upturn may be stronger than in the main scenario. However, it could also be the case that the recovery will take longer than expected. The future direction for monetary policy will therefore depend on how new information on economic developments abroad and in Sweden will affect the prospects for inflation and economic activity in Sweden.

Deputy Governor Lars E.O. Svensson entered a reservation against the decision and advocated cutting the repo rate to 0 per cent and a repo rate path in line with the scenario for a lower repo rate in the Monetary Policy Report, so that the repo rate would be kept at this level for one year. He considered that such a repo rate path entails a better balanced monetary policy, with lower unemployment and higher resource utilisation without inflation deviating too far from the target.

Deputy Governor Barbro Wickman-Parak supported the decision to cut the repo rate to 0.25 percentage points, but entered a reservation against the growth forecasts, and thereby the repo rate path these entailed, in the Monetary Policy Report. Ms Wickman-Parak said her stance was due to a more positive view of economic activity both abroad and in Sweden further ahead, which would mean that the repo rate would need to be raised earlier than is forecast in the main scenario of the Monetary Policy Report.

The minutes from the Executive Board’s monetary policy discussion will be published on 16 July. The decision on the repo rate will apply with effect from Wednesday, 8 July. The deposit rate is at the same time cut to -0.25 per cent and the lending rate to 0.75 per cent. A press conference with Deputy Governor Barbro Wickman-Parak and Anders Vredin, Head of the Monetary Policy Department, will be held today at 11 a.m. in the Riksbank. Entry via the bank's main entrance, Brunkebergstorg 11. Press cards must be shown. The press conference will be broadcast live on the Riksbank’s website, www.riksbank.se/.

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Op maandag 6 juli 2009 18:51 schreef pberends het volgende:

7/5/09 Gerald Celente on Fox News: Obamageddon is coming!

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We have a group of individuals, entrusted with the job of reading the economic tea leaves and enacting policies in response, which not only failed to anticipate the worst financial crisis this century, but has yet to make a usefully accurate forecast since the disaster started. Remember, Chairman Bernanke is the individual who maintained that the subprime meltdown would remain "contained." He also said in March that he could see the now elusive "green shoots" sprouting throughout the economy.

And once the crisis began to unfold in earnest, what was the response of those charged with looking after our nation's economic and financial interests? Cynica might describe it as Keystone Cops-like chaos. On the one hand, we've had a reactive whirlwind of aggressive monetary measures that, while creating the semblance of stability, have resolved little and stymied desperately-needed restructuring. Worse still, a broad swath of corporate America is now dependent on government support for its continued existence.

Add that to the alphabet soup of Fed-devised bailouts and rescue plans, nearly all of which seem to have been designed to reward failure, subsidize mostly insolvent but politically powerful businesses, and obscure the reality of how bad things are, and you have a system that could be characterized as even more dysfunctional than it was before the bubble burst. While it might seem like tranquility, it is more likely the calm before the (next) storm.

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Op woensdag 8 juli 2009 07:53 schreef Perrin het volgende:
How Long Before the Fed's Days Are Numbered?

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Debt Relief USA Inc., an Addison debt settlement company, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and has ceased operations.

In its court filing, the company listed $4.65 million in assets and $5 million in liabilities.

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Bloomberg: At a court appearance July 4 in Manhattan, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti told a federal judge that Aleynikov’s alleged theft poses a risk to U.S. markets. Aleynikov transferred the code, which is worth millions of dollars, to a computer server in Germany, and others may have had access to it, Facciponti said, adding that New York-based Goldman Sachs may be harmed if the software is disseminated.

“The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways,” Facciponti said, according to a recording of the hearing made public yesterday. “The copy in Germany is still out there, and we at this time do not know who else has access to it.”