I started this blog in June 2007 asking these questions: Are we in a massive asset bubble that will blow up in our faces ??? - ANSWERED YES ! Is western and particularly British society on the verge of social collapse??? What are the best common sense long term investment strategies to keep you rich? When will consumption/debt bubble economics end and a real savings/production economy begin ???

Tuesday 30 September 2008

Derivatives market faces biggest test

The $54,000bn credit derivatives market faces its biggest test in October as billions of dollars worth of contracts on now-defaulted derivatives on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual are settled.

Highlighting the opacity of this market, it is still not clear how many contracts have to be settled, and whether payouts on the defaulted contracts, which could reach billions of dollars, are concentrated with any particular institutions.

more ...

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Fox News Trys to Force McCain to Suspend Campaign Again !

I thought they were his friends ???



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Largest One Day Dow Drop Ever



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Gold is real money, unlike the dollar



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McCain Does Not Know If He's For or Against the Bailout



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Palin Couric Interview: Asking Questions Gotcha Journalism ?



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Ron Paul on Palin's "RELIGIOUS DUTY TO FIGHT THE WARS" and God's Oil Pipeline !



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Monday 29 September 2008

Republicans Vote No: Obama and Pelosi to blame for bailout failure ???





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Ron Paul: Bailout will destroy the dollar



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Bloomberg Analyst: $700 Billion Bailout Could Balloon to $5 Trillion

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=182363

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Palin Claimed Dinosaurs And People Coexisted





Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.

more ...

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Hey U.S., welcome to the Third World

Dear United States, Welcome to the Third World!

It's not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department's request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisors willing to perform an emergency overhaul of your entire government.


http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-brooks18-2008sep18,0,2481300.column

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Bailout's success will be evident once banks begin lending freely to each other -- and then us



The government's biggest economic bailout since the Great Depression is aimed not at relieving unemployment or reforming questionable business practices, but at resuscitating financial markets debilitated by lousy bets on the housing market.

Put simply, the hastily crafted plan lawmakers agreed to in principle on Sunday is intended to revive jittery and fragile banks on Wall Street and Main Street with enough money -- by using taxpayer funds to purchase billions upon billions of their worst mortgage-related assets -- so that lending, the lifeblood of the American economy, flows freely again.

If it is working, signs will emerge almost immediately in the interest rates on short-term Treasury securities and in an array of obscure -- but crucial -- financial benchmarks

more ...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4842927.ece

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Ron Paul Advisor Peter Schiff On The Bailout



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How do we bring back TRUST ?



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Sunday 28 September 2008

Fey often quotes directly from Palin's original interview -- apparently no parody was required





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Too much money = dollar collapse = stagDeflation !







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Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr - American Trotskyite Leader

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. (born September 8, 1922 in Rochester, New Hampshire) is an American political activist and founder of several political organizations in the United States and elsewhere, known collectively as the LaRouche movement. He is a perennial candidate for President of the United States, having run in eight elections since 1976, once as a U.S. Labor Party candidate and seven times as a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination.

There are sharply contrasting views of LaRouche. His supporters regard him as a brilliant and original thinker, whereas critics have variously seen him as a conspiracy theorist, an anti-Semite, or the leader of a political cult.[1][2] The Heritage Foundation has said that he "leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history."[3][4] In 1984, LaRouche's research staff was described by Norman Bailey, a former senior staffer of the National Security Council, as "one of the best private intelligence services in the world."[4]

LaRouche was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment in 1988 for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax code violations, but continued his political activities from behind bars until his release in 1994 on parole. His defense attorney, Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. Attorney General, argued that the case represented an unprecedented abuse of power by the U.S. government in an effort to destroy the LaRouche organizations.[5] LaRouche and his defenders claim the prosecution was a politically motivated conspiracy involving government officials, numerous others, and a mass media brainwashing campaign.[6]



http://www.youtube.com/user/LaRoucheisright

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche

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KUCINICH on work versus gambling



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Saudi King Abdullah wants to bring prices down to ensure long-term demand, but other OPEC ministers disagree

It happens almost like clockwork. A few days before the end of every month, marketing executives from Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company, ring up the likes of ExxonMobil (XOM) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS), sounding them out about the oil they need and the price they would be willing to pay. The Saudis crunch the numbers, set a price, then call the global customers back to see how much they'd be willing to buy. By the 10th of the following month, customers—there are about 80 in all—are told how much crude they'll actually get.

more ...

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Bradford & Bingley Death Watch: rescue will cost taxpayer billions as Treasury will keep bad mortgages

Reports suggest the biggest buy-to-let operator is due to be nationalised after its survival as an independent bank proved impossible.
Downing Street has called an emergency summit with banking chiefs to decide by Monday whether the bank should be nationalised or broken up and sold off.


It is the second time in a fortnight that a major British bank has had to be rescued, fuelling fears for the fate of the banking system.
In a sign that the credit crisis is spreading through the wider economic system, the home furnishings retailer MFI also came close to collapse.

more ...

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Saturday 27 September 2008

Death Watch UPDATE: Bradford & Bingley is to be nationalised and sold off piece by piece

Officials from the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority (FSA) have been in talks with executives from the bank in a bid to secure its future.
BBC News business editor Robert Peston says the Treasury will almost instantaneously sell to a bank, or a number of banks.

more ...

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McCain wants more financial deregulation ???



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McCain thinks Spain is as bad as Iran and North Korea !



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If you want to know what's wrong with sub-prime republican America, these books are a good place to start





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Credit Crunch getting worse - global recession now unavoidable ?



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Bradford & Bingley Death Watch: Nationalisation looms

Alistair Darling is close to ordering the nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley as a search for a private sector buyer for the stricken lender becomes increasingly desperate.

Seven months after Northern Rock was taken over, the Chancellor has ordered officials to prepare to take a second financial institution into public ownership, although Treasury officials last night stressed no decisions had been taken.

Last ditch talks to find a buyer are set to continue through the weekend but officials did not deny that Mr Darling was considering using new powers to nationalise banks passed after the run on Northern Rock.

more ...

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Friday 26 September 2008

Marcy Kaptur: Let's Play "WALLSTREET BAILOUT"



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcy_Kaptur


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Jaguar to halt production for a week



http://uk.reuters.com/article/motoringNews/idUKLNE48P06N20080926

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Fortis to sell assets worth €10bn

Banking turmoil spread to the heart of Europe today as Fortis, the Belgian-Dutch banking group, was forced to deny speculation that it was about to go out of business after announcing an acceleration of asset sales.

With its shares tumbling for the fifth day in a row and the Dutch central bank reportedly seeking to shore up its financial base, Fortis announced plans to offload assets worth up to €10 billion (£7.9 billion).

The bank joined forces with Royal Bank of Scotland to buy ABN Amro last year.

As investors continued to panic, Herman Verwilst, the group's interim chief executive, hastily convened a press conference in a bid to reassure the markets that the bank was not set to follow Lehman Brothers.

more ...


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Death Watch UPDATE: Bradford & Bingley shares fall to a new all-time low



The country's eight largest mortgage lender, and one of Britain's biggest buy-to-let specialists, has become the latest company to be hit by the mounting crisis in the financial markets and the worsening state of the UK housing market.

City analysts said the bank was unlikely to survive in its current form and one called on it to be nationalised as Northern Rock was last year.

The shares fell 12 per cent to 18¾p, and has now fallen 90 per cent since the start of the year, with the once multi-billion pound bank worth just £271 million.

more ...

http://news.google.co.uk/?ncl=1248850344&hl=en&topic=b

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Thursday 25 September 2008

Can the feds find the smoking gun of the crisis ???



The FBI is investigating Lehman Brothers and three other contributors to America’s financial crisis to determine whether they put pressure on ratings agencies to award top ratings to securities they issued.

Concerns that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG or Lehman may have sought to encourage agencies to inflate their ratings — by offering higher fees or the promise of more work — form part of a broad inquiry by the bureau.

The agencies are widely regarded as having failed debtholders by attributing the top ratings to many securities that turned out to be extremely risky and have lost investors hundreds of billions of dollars.

The FBI, which is also investigating whether any of the four institutions deliberately misled investors about the true health of their assets, is expected to demand that they “hold all papers and e-mails under lock and key” as it sifts through the evidence, a source said

more ...


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The staggering incompetence of the US Treasury Secretary



The Emperor has no clothes. If you want to know why American capitalism is on the brink of disaster, but also want to understand what will save it, then log on to the C-Span congressional website and watch the interrogations of Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, by the Senate and House banking committees.

Until last week, I was in a minority of one in arguing that Mr Paulson was personally responsible for suddenly turning the painful but manageable credit crunch that had been grinding away 18 months in the background of the US economy into a global catastrophe. Mr Paulson's appearances on Capitol Hill, marked by the characteristic Bush-era combination of arrogance and incompetence, are turning my once-outlandish view into conventional wisdom: Henry Paulson is to finance what Donald Rumsfeld was to military strategy, Dick Cheney to geopolitics and Michael Chertoff to flood defence.

more ...

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Will Dubai Real Estate be next to Crash or will it be saved by Oil Money ?



The real estate sector in Dubai is largely controlled by three big property companies and their multitude of subsidiaries that are "directly or indirectly government owned," according to an August Morgan Stanley report on the Middle East North Africa property market. The report warned that, while long term market prospects looked good, 2009 may bring some negative news for investors. Risks facing the real estate market include falling investor confidence, the possibility of oversupply, and a price correction against sharp rises fed by a speculative market. From 2008 to 2010, the report predicted price increases of 25 percent in Abu Dhabi and 15 percent in Qatar and a 10 percent decline in Dubai.


http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/dubai-real-estate-beset-by-scandals-and-uncertainty-52012.aspx

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Ron Paul Teaches Bernanke Austrian School Economics and the Dangers of Price Fixing



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_school


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Bradford & Bingley Death Watch

In a statement to the stock exchange today (25 September), the lender said the changes would result in the loss of 370 jobs, with a targeted annualised savings of £15m.

The lender said the cuts would include 20 business development managers and the remaining 50 in-branch mortgage advisers.


Kerry Harvey, press officer for Bradford & Bingley, said she could not comment on individual positions or if senior management roles would be affected.

Existing activities at the company's mortgage processing centre in Borehamwood will be transferred to Bradford & Bingley's larger operations centre in Bingley, West Yorkshire.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ncl=http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gnt7Au3PWmiL9ZPjZGAlPqnOnHwg

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Even Fox Business News is now listening to Ron Paul



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President Bush warns of 'long and painful recession'



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Tuesday 23 September 2008

Bradford & Bingley is flat on its back but it is still buying junk US mortgages



The latest bank to find itself the focus of attention from speculators is the Bradford & Bingley.

Several newspapers report that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is so worried about the bank that it has been trying to line up a potential buyer to rescue it.


The bank denies it and the FSA is being very coy.

But there is no doubt the B&B is in a very awkward spot.

The former building society is heavily exposed to the now shrinking UK property market and last year was the UK's 8th largest lender of new mortgages.

Last month, it reported a loss of £27m for the first six months of the year, blaming this on a rise in bad debts and losses on its own investments in dud mortgage-related derivatives.

more ...

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IT’S THE DERIVATIVES, STUPID!



Occasionally, central bankers reveal their deepest darkest fears. That fear has a name - derivatives. Although not a central banker, Warren Buffet famously articulated the problem:

"I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system. The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear. In my view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal"


He said that back in 2002, when according to the BIS, the end-of-year notional value of derivative contracts were valued at $142 trillion.

That number is so large that is defies comprehension. In 2002, US nominal GDP was $10.5 trillion. So at the time that Buffet gave his dire warning, the notional value of outstanding derivatives was 13.5 times US GDP.

more ...


http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/its_the_derivatives.php

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Monday 22 September 2008

Ron Paul on the Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer discussing government bailouts 9/21/2008



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Sunday 21 September 2008

Suze Orman: US Buy-to-let horror story



The moral of the buy-to-let story is that it is a great business, IF you have a big deposit and lots of working capital and you treat it as a long term venture. Buy-to-let is not an investment, it is a business lone.

The business is ultra cyclical and you have to expect periods of years where it makes no money. You have to be prepared to wait for the next boom.

Do not gear yourself 9:1 ! It looks great until property prices fall and the rent dries up.

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Taxes will soar in credit crisis

TAXPAYERS in Britain face up to 5p in the pound in extra taxes because of the credit crunch created by the banks, leading economists have warned.

After a week of unprecedented financial turmoil, they predict that government borrowing is about to surge as the Treasury’s tax take is slashed by a slump in earnings from the City and the downturn.

Leading forecasters say the government will soon be forced to borrow as much as £100 billion a year, giving Britain easily the biggest budget deficit of any western country.

Any tax rises would come on top of increases imposed by Gordon Brown when he was chancellor. He repeatedly raised indirect “stealth” taxes while leaving income tax unchanged. Taxes went up by 3% of national income, equivalent to more than 10p on the basic rate of income tax.

more ...

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No One Listens to Ron Paul - Until there is a meltdown



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul

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Thursday 18 September 2008

UK unemployment soars at fastest rate since 92 - but no early rate cut



The number of Britons claiming unemployment benefit is rising at its sharpest rate since December 1992 as companies including housebuilders, airlines and banks shed jobs as the economy teeters on the edge of recession.

Official figures show that the claimant count in August jumped by 32,500 – higher than the 22,300 forecast by analysts – piling more pressure on Bank of England policymakers to cut interest rates.

But the majority of the Bank's monetary policy committee appeared to be firmly against a rate cut. Minutes, released yesterday, from the Bank's latest policy meeting showed that only one member of the committee voted for a cut.

more ...


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Panic grips credit markets

The panic in world credit markets reached historic intensity on Wednesday, prompting a flight to safety of the kind not seen since the second world war.

Barometers of financial stress hit record peaks across the world. Yields on short-term US Treasuries hit their lowest level since the London Blitz, while gold had its biggest one-day gain ever in dollar terms. Lending between banks, in effect, stopped

more ...

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Wednesday 17 September 2008

HBOS - Lloyds TSB merger: mortgage rates to rise

Mortgage rates are likely to rise if Lloyds TSB takes over HBOS, according to personal finance experts.

The merger will create Britain's biggest mortgage company, supplying more than one in four mortgages in Britain.

Mortgage experts said the creation of such a big player would be bad for competition in the market, causing rates to increase.

more ...


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If America Doesn't Elect This Man The World Is In Big Trouble



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Tuesday 16 September 2008

UK inflation 4.7% - highest rate for 16 years


Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, insisted on Tuesday that the Monetary Policy Committee “has become firmer in its belief” that a period of economic weakness is needed to bring inflation back down.

Consumer price inflation rose to 4.7 per cent in August, the Office for National Statistics reported earlier, up from 4.4 per cent in July on the back of sharp rises in gas and electricity bills.


more ...

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Paulson : Banking system is 'safe and sound'



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Monday 15 September 2008

The fourth-largest investment bank in the US, Lehman Brothers, says it will file for bankruptcy protection


Lehman had incurred losses of billions of dollars in the US mortgage market.
The move threatens to deal a further blow to the global financial system, as banks unwind their deals with Lehman.

Merrill Lynch, also stung by the credit crunch, has agreed to be taken over by Bank of America in a dramatic weekend of events for Wall Street.

more ...

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Sunday 14 September 2008

A must-read on the origins of the crisis



The crunch has lasted long enough to spawn its own publishing mini-boom, as authors have raced to give their diagnoses in print. George Cooper, a strategist at JPMorgan, an investment bank, has produced by far the best so far*, skewering both academic orthodoxy and central-bank policy in the process.


more ...



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RenterGirl talks about the reality of living in new build city centre flats owned by BTL investors




My landlord is going bankrupt, and so I must leave. Somehow, he’s accumulated twelve buy-to-let mortgages, you see, and nine are in negative equity.


http://rentergirl.blogspot.com/


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History of UK house prices



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The buy-to-let madness ???





The credit crunch doesn't seem to have hit the buy-to-let market. During the 12 months up to June, the number of BTL mortgages increased by 176,500. That is almost 15,000 a month.


What is going on ??? Do these people think prices are going to start rising by 10% a year again soon ??? Would they borrow to buy into a falling stock market ? With BTL making up 60% of the London market how can people say there is a property shortage ? Surely it is more a case of a lack of shares is a stock market ?

What will happen in three years time when BTL investors are sitting on big losses ?

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Saturday 6 September 2008

Credit crunch 'to last into 2010'



The credit crunch is likely to last well into 2010, the head of the UK's largest mortgage provider has warned.

HBOS chief Andy Hornby told the BBC it would take 18 months before US house prices started to rise again. That was needed "to give the confidence back into the system for banks to start lending again," he said.

His comments suggested there was little that the UK Government could do to stimulate the markets, the BBC's business editor Robert Peston said.

more ...

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Thursday 4 September 2008

Living In Our Vans - USA


Living In Our Vans - USA

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Tuesday 2 September 2008

The old adage that one can't lose money on Manhattan real estate doesn't seem to be holding up.

Recently released city records indicate that apartments in prime Manhattan neighborhoods are selling for less than their purchase prices — a phenomenon that until now was virtually unheard of in the seemingly invincible New York City real estate market.

Among the apartments selling for a loss is a unit at 80 John St., in the financial district, which recently sold for $590,000, much lower than the $720,000 selling price in January. At 515 West End Ave., on the Upper West Side, an apartment recently sold for $2.1 million — $50,000 less than its 2005 purchase price. There are also apartments currently on the market that are listed for below their previous purchase prices: A three-bedroom condominium at 166 Duane St. in TriBeCa — the wealthiest ZIP code in America, according to Forbes magazine — is on the market for $4.495 million, well below the $4.7 million paid for the unit in April.

more ...

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Mary Buffett - Warren Buffett and Long-Term Investing



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Warren Buffett Watch

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