Bulls, Bears & Bucks #69 Peak Debt

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Op dinsdag 5 april 2011 16:12 schreef zoost het volgende:

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Het is zuiverder m.i. om goud als waardevast te zien. Valuta devalueren dus als een idioot tegen goud. Negeer de teksten op het plaatje.

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Op maandag 4 april 2011 21:25 schreef LXIV het volgende:
Waar zijn trouwens de shorters, die de afgelopen jaren hier steeds kwamen verkondigen dat de aandelenmarkt spoedig ging crashen, tot 120 oid, en dat ze volop in de puts zaten?
Zolang je die ziet kun je met een gerust hart long zitten, want dan gebeurt er toch niks. Maar die stilte vanaf dat front maakt me lichtelijk nerveus.

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Op dinsdag 5 april 2011 16:27 schreef Mendeljev het volgende:
SE noemde eerder al dat commodities een sprong in de hoogte maakten vlak voor de vorige crash en dat lijkt nu weer te gebeuren.

Overigens vond ik deze reactie wel treffend hoewel ik over het algemeen weinig waarde hecht aan de publieke opinie.

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Ik ben benieuwd, is het stilte voor de storm?

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Op dinsdag 5 april 2011 16:29 schreef Perrin het volgende:
Tja, elke keer weer:

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Stimulus by Fed Is Disappointing, Economists Say

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve’s experimental effort to spur a recovery by purchasing vast quantities of federal debt has pumped up the stock market, reduced the cost of American exports and allowed companies to borrow money at lower interest rates.

But most Americans are not feeling the difference, in part because those benefits have been surprisingly small. The latest estimates from economists, in fact, suggest that the pace of recovery from the global financial crisis has flagged since November, when the Fed started buying $600 billion in Treasury securities to push private dollars into investments that create jobs.

A study published in February found that interest rates decreased, but only for companies with top credit ratings. “Rates that are highly relevant for households and many corporations — mortgage rates and rates on lower-grade corporate bonds — were largely unaffected by the policy,” wrote Arvind Krishnamurthy and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, both finance professors at Northwestern University.

Another indication of its limited success: Borrowing has not grown significantly, suggesting that corporations — which are sitting on record piles of cash — are not yet seeing opportunities for new investments. Until they do, some economists argue that the Fed is pushing on a string.

“What has it done? It has eased credit conditions, it has pumped up the stock market, it has suppressed the dollar,” said Mickey Levy, Bank of America’s chief economist. “But does the Fed think that buying Treasuries and bloating its balance sheet is really going to create permanent job increases?”

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Op woensdag 27 april 2011 16:09 schreef pberends het volgende:
Topeconomen luiden noodklok

Ze vergelijken NL zelfs een beetje met Ierland . Klinkt hoopvol.

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Japan's stunning stats: Yosano's new nightmare

As variously predicted, the “3/11 effect” on Japan’s economy is starting to kick in. And true to warnings that the impact could be far worse than feared, the latest batch of data is reasonably horrible.

Only a day after S&P signalled fresh concerns about Japan’s economy, official data on Thursday showed a far sharper plunge in March industrial production than the consensus 10.6 per cent – a whopping 15.3 per cent fall from February – while March household spending slid an annual 8.5 per cent.

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You Are What You Owe
Americans are forever grumbling about government gridlock. But the whole game changes when a credit-rating agency begins to echo them.

On April 18, Standard & Poor's, one of those mysteriously powerful firms that grade the financial strength of bond issuers, announced that it was starting to wonder whether the mighty U.S. government could be counted on to repay its creditors.

It was a big moment: the first time in seven decades of monitoring Uncle Sam that S&P had sounded such a warning. "The sign of political gridlock was a key determinant in our outlook change," explained an S&P executive. "Twilight in Washington," read a Financial Times caption.

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China pushes U.S. on debt ahead of high-level talks

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, wielding its huge dollar holdings, on Friday pressed Washington to tackle its huge fiscal deficit and said it would raise the issue of discrimination against Chinese investors at high-level talks next week.

"We are paying a lot of attention to this (the fiscal deficit)," Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao told reporters at a briefing about the talks.

"We hope that the United States in its fiscal clean-up will be able to adopt effective measures based on President Obama's proposal," Zhu said, giving unusually forthright backing to the Obama plan.

"For the present stage, we believe that the most crucial thing is that the U.S. economy maintains a vigorous impetus toward recovery and that this developing trend is maintained," Zhu said.

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Op vrijdag 6 mei 2011 17:06 schreef Perrin het volgende:

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Op vrijdag 6 mei 2011 17:31 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Het uitroken van de Chinezen werkt. De Amerikanen hebben gewoon de beste kaarten in deze standoff.

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Op zondag 8 mei 2011 18:52 schreef pberends het volgende:
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Op vrijdag 6 mei 2011 17:31 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Het uitroken van de Chinezen werkt. De Amerikanen hebben gewoon de beste kaarten in deze standoff.

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The People vs. Goldman Sachs

Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients.

America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.

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(Reuters) - Big hedge funds and speculators cut their bullish bets on commodity markets by $17 billion in the week through Tuesday, the biggest bear turn since at least 2009, regulatory data showed on Friday.

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How to invest for long-term inflation

It’s no secret that food and energy prices are volatile and rising of late. Yet what’s missing from the latest inflation hand-wringing is what’s down the road. Some commodities are becoming scarcer and that will drive long-term inflation.

How would you invest for scarcity? You might want to focus heavily on natural resources such as minerals, metals and agriculture. Countries and sectors likely to prosper from these trends are worth holding in your portfolio through exchange-traded funds:

• Global Agribusiness. The Market Vectors Global Agribusiness ETF follows an index of companies in this sector.

• Industrial Materials. The iShares S&P Global Materials Index ETF tracks an index of commodity-related mining/manufacturing firms.

• Australia. The island continent is blessed with abundant mineral resources. The iShares MSCI-Australia ETF follows an index of major Aussie stocks.

• Argentina. The South American country is big in both agriculture and resources. The Global X FTSE Argentina 20 follows major Argentine companies.

• Lithium. This pasty metal is the key component for high-tech batteries used in electric cars. The Global X Lithium ETF is a play on this important metal.

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Verhogen schuldenplafond noodzaak volgens Obama Uitgegeven: 15 mei 2011 16:23
Laatst gewijzigd: 15 mei 2011 23:56

WASHINGTON - Het verhogen van het schuldenplafond van de Verenigde Staten is absoluut noodzakelijk. Dat benadrukte president Barack Obama zondag tijdens een interview op de Amerikaanse televisiezender CBS.

© Getty ImagesWanneer de maximale limiet voor de nationale staatsschuld niet verder wordt verhoogd, kan het land volgens de president in een zwaardere recessie en financiele crisis terechtkomen dan in 2008 en 2009.

''Wanneer investeerders wereldwijd het vertrouwen in en de kredietwaardigheid van de Verenigde Staten verliezen, kan het hele financiële systeem ontwarren'', aldus Obama.


Ook minister van Financiën Timothy Geithner deed een duit in het zakje. Hij waarschuwde voor ''catastofale gevolgen'' en onherroepelijke schade voor de economie.

Limiet

De maximale limiet voor de Amerikaanse staatsschuld bedraagt nu 14,29 biljoen dollar (ruim 10.000 miljard euro). Naar verwachting wordt deze duizelingwekkende grens maandag bereikt.

Wanneer de limiet wordt bereikt, kan het land niet meer naar de obligatiemarkten om geld op te halen. Het Amerikaanse ministerie van Financiën heeft inmiddels aangegeven tot begin augustus de rekeningen te kunnen betalen met behulp van andere financieringsbronnen.

Discussie

Het Amerikaanse Congres en het Witte Huis voeren al tijden een felle discussie over het verhogen van het schuldenplafond. De Republikeinen, met een meerderheid in het Congres, eisen zware bezuinigingen op de overheidsuitgaven in ruil voor hun steun aan het plan.

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Op maandag 16 mei 2011 08:29 schreef Basp1 het volgende:
In het kader van de titel van deze topic reeks, peak debt, die verhogen we gewoon.

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Op maandag 16 mei 2011 08:29 schreef Basp1 het volgende:
"De maximale limiet voor de Amerikaanse staatsschuld bedraagt nu 14,29 biljoen dollar (ruim 10.000 miljard euro). Naar verwachting wordt deze duizelingwekkende grens maandag bereikt.

Wanneer de limiet wordt bereikt, kan het land niet meer naar de obligatiemarkten om geld op te halen. Het Amerikaanse ministerie van Financiën heeft inmiddels aangegeven tot begin augustus de rekeningen te kunnen betalen met behulp van andere financieringsbronnen."

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Op maandag 16 mei 2011 16:46 schreef dvr het volgende:

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Minister van Financiën Timothy Geithner heeft vandaag, omdat de schuldlimiet bereikt is, een graai uit het pensioenfonds voor ambtenaren gedaan. Daarmee is dan meteen duidelijk wat met 'andere financieringsbronnen' bedoeld werd

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Op zondag 15 mei 2011 22:08 schreef JimmyJames het volgende:
Zimbabwe Says Days Of The US Dollar Are Numbered, Pushes For Gold-Backed Local Currency
http://www.zerohedge.com/(...)acked-local-currency

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Op maandag 16 mei 2011 21:13 schreef LXIV het volgende:

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Wat de VS moet doen is heel simpel: belastingen omhoog (nog ruimte genoeg) en uitgaven omlaag (ook ruimte genoeg). Op de een of andere manier willen ze in hun eentje net zoveel aan defensie uitgeven als de rest van de wereld samen, maar betalen ze hun leraren niet. Op termijn wreekt dat zich. Dat is op zich veel erger dan die schuld zelf.

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Capitalists Who Fear Free Markets

In “free-market-based capitalism” — or at least the version they used to teach when I went to business school — lenders and shareholders were supposed to monitor the risks taken by companies. They would benefit if the company prospered and suffer if it failed.

By not spending more money on safety, Tepco was taking a risk. That risk did not work out. The question now is who will pay the bill. If it is the investors, that would serve as a powerful incentive to the other nuclear plant operators to make changes. If it is the government, with investors protected, we are left with only the hope of better regulation to prevent a recurrence.

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Fed Gave Banks Crisis Gains on $80 Billion Secretive Loans as Low as 0.01%

Credit Suisse Group AG (CS), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) each borrowed at least $30 billion in 2008 from a Federal Reserve emergency lending program whose details weren’t revealed to shareholders, members of Congress or the public.

The $80 billion initiative, called single-tranche open- market operations, or ST OMO, made 28-day loans from March through December 2008, a period in which confidence in global credit markets collapsed after the Sept. 15 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Units of 20 banks were required to bid at auctions for the cash. They paid interest rates as low as 0.01 percent that December, when the Fed’s main lending facility charged 0.5 percent.

“This was a pure subsidy,” said Robert A. Eisenbeis, former head of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and now chief monetary economist at Sarasota, Florida-based Cumberland Advisors Inc.

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'Europese bankregels soepeler'

BRUSSEL (AFN) - De kapitaaleisen voor Europese banken worden mogelijk minder aangescherpt dan in het Basel III-akkoord is afgesproken. De Britse krant Financial Times meldde vrijdag dat een conceptvoorstel van de Europese Commissie op enkele punten soepeler is dan de Basel III regels.

Volgens de krant zouden banken meer van het kapitaal in hun verzekeringsdochters mogen bijtellen bij hun eigen kapitaal. De afspraak onder Basel III is dat dit maximaal 10 procent van het kapitaal van de bank mag zijn. Onder het Europese voorstel zouden banken deze regel kunnen omzeilen.

Banken met een grote verzekeringstak zouden flink profiteren van de regels. De krant noemde in dit verband de grote Franse banken Société Générale en BNP Paribas en het Britse Lloyds.

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On the positive side, the Netherlands has seen its default risk fall the most of any country so far in 2011 with a decline of 52.05%. Austria ranks second at -36.04%, followed closely by Denmark at -36%.

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2011 14:02 schreef JimmyJames het volgende:
http://www.bespokeinvest.(...)bt-default-risk.html

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Toch opmerkelijk.

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2011 14:02 schreef JimmyJames het volgende:
http://www.bespokeinvest.(...)bt-default-risk.html

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Toch opmerkelijk.

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2011 19:40 schreef tjoptjop het volgende:

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Ik vind het altijd wel vermakelijk dat ze dat soort getallen tot de honderdste procent hebben

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2011 21:02 schreef LXIV het volgende:

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Volgens mij is dit gewoon bepaald aan de hand van de marktprijzen. Dus dat kan inderdaad. Het is niet zo dat dit percentage exact het werkelijke default-risk weergeeft, maar de interpretatie van de markt hiervan.

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2011 14:02 schreef JimmyJames het volgende:
http://www.bespokeinvest.(...)bt-default-risk.html
Toch opmerkelijk.

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2011 21:25 schreef pberends het volgende:

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Inderdaad, laat die investeerders maar niet horen wat onze hypotheekschuld is .

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Op vrijdag 27 mei 2011 21:50 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:

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Ik denk dat het voor een belangrijk deel, naast het effect dat de markt een toevlucht zoekt in zeer veilige obligaties, komt omdat Nederland laat zien dat het de staatsschuld echt serieus neemt. Er is politiek commitment om de overheidsfinanciën gezond te houden/maken. Dat betaalt zich uit in de daling van het risico van een default.

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Die schuld zit bij particulieren, niet bij de overheid.

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Pentagon concerned about Libya vote in U.S. House

SINGAPORE, June 2 (Reuters) - Approval of a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives directing President Barack Obama to withdraw from NATO operations against Libya would send an "unhelpful message of disunity" to allies and foes alike, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said that "once military forces are committed, such actions by Congress can have significant consequences," particularly on relations with members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

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A Flight Plan for the American Economy
The good news is that the American economy is back to its precrisis size. The U.S. GDP is now about $13.5 trillion, a bit above what it was in 2007, before the financial crisis. The bad news is that we are producing the same amount of goods and services as in 2007 with 7 million fewer workers. […] Most new jobs are for part-time work at wages that average $19,000, less than half the median income. […] the actual number of Americans without a real full-time job would be closer to 24 million.

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President Obama's budget assumes that the economy will create 20 million jobs over the next 10 years. That would be an almost magical acceleration. Over the past 10 years, it has produced only 1.7 million. […]

Usually, productivity gains translate into higher economic output, higher incomes and thus rising employment. That was the experience in the 1990s. This time, we've achieved productivity gains almost entirely by cutting jobs, finding ways of making the same products with fewer people. At many major companies, profits have returned to 2007 levels but with thousands fewer workers. "We've found ways to do more with fewer people," says Klaus Kleinfeld, the chairman and CEO of Alcoa.

Two powerful drivers have allowed for this new productivity. The first is technology, which is producing massive efficiencies across industries. […] The second force is, of course, globalization. There is now a single world market for many goods […] But the average American, who has seen his or her wages decline over the past decade, simply cannot find a good job. […] argue that "growth and employment are set to diverge" for decades in the U.S. They point out that over the past decade, most job growth was in two sectors — government and health care — and that neither is likely to grow dramatically over the next decade.

The bottom line: forget about the debt ceiling, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The crisis of our times is the employment crisis. And there are solutions to it. We need to focus on five areas that will create jobs.

Manufacturing. The image we all have in our heads when we think of bringing back good jobs is manufacturing. And such jobs fill a crucial space in the economy, allowing people with good skills but limited college education to earn a decent living. The trouble is, many of those people are now in places like China and Vietnam. But there is a way to keep manufacturing jobs in wealthy countries. Germany has managed to do so, bringing unemployment down sharply to an astonishing 20-year low in the midst of a global recession.

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The German path is simple to describe but harder to follow. Focus on technical education, technical institutes and polytechnics, as well as apprenticeship programs. Specialize in high-end, complex manufactured products that can command a premium price. Call it the BMW model. Or, for that matter, the Pratt & Whitney model.

Retraining. There are millions of Americans in industries like automobile parts in which lost jobs are unlikely to ever come back, certainly not at the pay they once commanded. That means people — many in their 40s or 50s — need to find new jobs. We need to create retraining programs for an entire generation of workers. Nothing we have done so far matches the scale of the problem. We need a program as ambitious as the GI Bill, which put returning veterans through college after World War II and prepared a generation of Americans for good jobs. Like the GI Bill, it would have to be a program in which government paid a large share of the costs while educational institutions provided the services. […]

Growth industries. […]

Our contentious health care debate aside, the U.S. is a destination for people around the world who seek top-quality medical care. Why not try to double or triple the number of people who go to the U.S. for treatment? Similarly, tourism accounts for millions of jobs, yet we have no plan to think about it as an industry and to increase its size. Unlike almost every other major country, the U.S. has no department of tourism, no growth plan, no coordination, no national ad campaigns. Far from trying to get more people to visit America, we spend a great deal of time, energy and effort scaring them away. It works. In surveys by the U.S. Travel Association, an industry group, foreigners said the most important deterrent to traveling in the U.S. is an unfriendly visa and immigration process.

Small businesses. The Kauffman Foundation has found that from 1980 to 2005, nearly all net job creation in the U.S. occurred in firms that were less than five years old. That suggests that we should focus on improving the ecosystem for start-ups and small businesses by funding basic research, streamlining the patent process, limiting regulation and encouraging venture-capital and private-equity companies that fund new ventures. […]

Jobs for now. While all the policies I have outlined above are important, they will take years to develop and take effect. The crisis, however, is with us now, and we need a short-term policy too. The bulk of the job losses in the past few years have been in construction and housing. We have armies of unemployed or underemployed workers in these fields. And we know America's infrastructure is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. infrastructure a grade of D and estimated that we need to spend $2.2 trillion to fix our airports, bridges, highways and train systems. Senators John Kerry and Kay Bailey Hutchison have made innovative proposals that would fund infrastructure projects through a national bank, allowing the private sector to participate, as it does in many countries.

Our entire economic conversation these days is about the country's debt, which is understandable and appropriate because our debt is unsustainable in the long run. But we also need to find ways to solve the unemployment problem, or everything else, including the debt problem, will get much worse. Without more workers, we will never have the tax revenue we need to fund even limited government. Right now we have our priorities badly skewed. We spend far too much on retirement and health care programs for the elderly, the Defense Department and tax exceptions and deductions for the middle and upper classes. […]

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Johann Hari: It's not just Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The IMF itself should be on trial

Sometimes, the most revealing aspect of the shrieking babble of the 24/7 news agenda is the silence. Often the most important facts are hiding beneath the noise, unmentioned and undiscussed.

So the fact that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is facing trial for allegedly raping a maid in a New York hotel room is – rightly – big news. But imagine a prominent figure was charged not with raping a maid, but starving her to death, along with her children, her parents, and thousands of other people. That is what the IMF has done to innocent people in the recent past. That is what it will do again, unless we transform it beyond all recognition. But that is left in the silence.

To understand this story, you have to reel back to the birth of the IMF. In 1944, the countries that were poised to win the Second World War gathered in a hotel in rural New Hampshire to divvy up the spoils. With a few honourable exceptions, like the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, the negotiators were determined to do one thing. They wanted to build a global financial system that ensured they received the lion's share of the planet's money and resources. They set up a series of institutions designed for that purpose – and so the IMF was delivered into the world.

The IMF’s official job sounds simple and attractive. It is supposedly there to ensure poor countries don’t fall into debt, and if they do, to lift them out with loans and economic expertise. It is presented as the poor world’s best friend and guardian. But beyond the rhetoric, the IMF was designed to be dominated by a handful of rich countries – and, more specifically, by their bankers and financial speculators. The IMF works in their interests, every step of the way.