There have been many occasions over the past few years where I thought (and many others thought) that this could break the bank again, and put us firmly back into a financial crisis like 2008. To clear my head I thought about what I look for in the news to keep me on my toes about the potential for severe negative short term . . . → Read More: Reading the tea leaves: signs of coming crisis
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I responded to a comment on nakedcapitalism by Maju on a very good article on the EU’s outrageous bail-in of Cypriot bank account holders by confiscation of a part of all deposits. The commenter Maju wrote I agree with some of the commenters above in the sense that Germany/Eurogroup seem to have wanted to cause a bank run. Otherwise they are total idiots . . . → Read More: Cyprus: reasons to disbelieve what elites say about what they are doing In answer to a post on Nakedcapitalism by Philip Pilkington on Kill the King – Why are we so afraid of fiat money, I replied: I get a kick out of listening to Gold Bugs. They rail on and on about fiat money and fail to see the fact that ALL gold and/or silver based sovereign governments in history have also fallen. Non-fiat . . . → Read More: Fiat Money and debt The continuing development of finance capital has indeed led to monopolistic effects. The blog Global Economic Intersection published an interesting graphic in a syndicated blog article on the recent spate of banks payments for fraud without indictments entitled Bank Fraud: Underlings Arrested, Banks to big to indict. The image shows that banks have bought up each other in the wake of the Global . . . → Read More: US Bank Concentration in the wake of GFC I just read a line in a blog post by Michael Hoexter, Obama and Boehner’s Grand Bargain: Gullible Democrats are Falling for the Ol’ “Good Cop, Bad Cop” Routine at Naked Capitalism which crystallized a concern of mine that stretches back a few years: Why/How is it that Americans can persist in refusing to see their own clear interests and vote for people . . . → Read More: Why do Americans support politicians who do not support their constituents’ real interests A good friend of mine recently became Swiss. He is looking to let go of his American passport to escape the madness of the American Empire as much as possible on this planet. He asked me in a recent email: The USA has become a very weird place in many ways – or maybe I have over the now 25 years I have . . . → Read More: The USA morality play While not condoning the hiding of accounts by dictators and criminals, I have to say that the US trying to stake out a moral high ground in this is laughable. Attempting to influence the US to pursue the dictators’ money through somehow attacking their accounts is naive. . . . → Read More: Africa and the War on Offshore Finance Greg Palast, Guardian economist has written about Robert Mundell, evil genius of the euro: The euro would really do its work when crises hit, Mundell explained. Removing a government’s control over currency would prevent nasty little elected officials from using Keynesian monetary and fiscal juice to pull a nation out of recession. “It puts monetary policy out of the reach of politicians,” he . . . → Read More: Robert Mundell, evil genius of the euro Our societies are descending into a mire in which hope vanishes, prospects are annihilated, life is cheapened, and where the only winners are the misanthropes, the ‘haters’, the seekers of scapegoats in the form of the ‘alien’, the Jew, the ‘different’, the ‘other’. As the lights are literally going out, with families ‘choosing’ to have their electricity supply discontinued in order to put food on the dinner table, thugs ‘patrol’ the streets in search of the ‘enemy’. Nazi ideology is getting another chance, like hunger and dispossession, to infect, once again, our social fabric. And as our institutions, our trades unions, our cultural norms and organisations are turning into empty shells, little, if anything, stands in the way of the bigots, the racists, the exploiters of generalized pain and helplessness. Alas, the serpent’s egg is hatching again in Europe, and for the same reasons it did back then. . . . → Read More: Greek tragedy The government is up to some really weird things in mortgage land as Mandleman Matters tells us in this post on Hamp 2 is here – Some say it’s the best HAMP yet, and they’re probably right about that. Put your irony filter on wide band receiving about now… . . . → Read More: HAMP 2 – New Boss same as the old boss |
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