I don't believe gold has an inherent value. Any act of exchange hinges on a mutual fiat. Gold also has as much value as I want to believe it has value.
hamilcarr
JoinedPosts by hamilcarr
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8
For the Paine fans: Thomas Paine on Fiat Currency (Paper Money)
by BurnTheShips infamous revolutionary pamphleteer, author of common sense and , age of reason, thomas paine engages in a blistering attack on fiat currency:.
i remember a german farmer expressing as much in a few words as the whole subject requires; "money is money, and paper is paper.".
all the invention of man cannot make them otherwise.
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For the Paine fans: Thomas Paine on Fiat Currency (Paper Money)
by BurnTheShips infamous revolutionary pamphleteer, author of common sense and , age of reason, thomas paine engages in a blistering attack on fiat currency:.
i remember a german farmer expressing as much in a few words as the whole subject requires; "money is money, and paper is paper.".
all the invention of man cannot make them otherwise.
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hamilcarr
Oh no, no medieval gold standard!
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Citigroup Nationalization: Talks Of 40% Gov Stake Causes Stock Rally
by hamilcarr incitigroup nationalization: talks of 40% gov stake causes stock rally chicklets /chicklets tim paradis | february 23, 2009 08:41 am est |.
/inline toolbox new york investors showed relief early monday following a report that citigroup inc. is in talks for the u.s. government to boost its stake in the bank.. overseas markets rose on the report, and u.s. stock futures pointed to a higher open.. stocks tumbled last week as investors worried that the government would be forced to funnel more money to citigroup and bank of america corp. and, in the process, completely wipe out shareholders.
the wall street journal reported late sunday that citi is negotiating to increase the u.s. government's stake to as much as 40 percent.
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hamilcarr
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/23/citigroup-nationalization_n_169050.html?view=screen
Citigroup Nationalization: Talks Of 40% Gov Stake Causes Stock Rally
TIM PARADIS | February 23, 2009 08:41 AM EST |
NEW YORK — Investors showed relief early Monday following a report that Citigroup Inc. is in talks for the U.S. government to boost its stake in the bank.
Overseas markets rose on the report, and U.S. stock futures pointed to a higher open.
Stocks tumbled last week as investors worried that the government would be forced to funnel more money to Citigroup and Bank of America Corp. and, in the process, completely wipe out shareholders. The Wall Street Journal reported late Sunday that Citi is negotiating to increase the U.S. government's stake to as much as 40 percent. The government, which has already invested $25 billion in the company, would convert its preferred shares to common shares; this would leave existing shareholders with some stake, albeit one that is diluted, the Journal reported.
Investors have been anticipating that the overall number of shares would increase and therefore reduce the value of each share. But investors also seemed to welcome the report because it lessened uncertainty about the company.
"People don't want to see the banks nationalized but they know something has to be done for Citi," said Dave Rovelli, managing director of trading at brokerage Canaccord Adams in New York. "A lot of people were scared of full-fledged nationalization."
"People are thinking at least maybe we know what they're doing now," he said.
Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 58, or 0.79 percent, to 7,410. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures rose 9.10, or 1.16 percent, to 778.40, while Nasdaq 100 index futures rose 8.25, or 0.70 percent, to 1,180.00.
Overseas, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.42 percent, Germany's DAX index rose 1.20 percent, and France's CAC-40 rose 0.95 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.54 percent.
Bond prices fell as demand for the safety of government debt eased. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 2.85 percent from 2.79 percent late Friday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, rose to 0.30 percent from 0.26 percent Friday.
The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices fell.
Light, sweet crude rose 19 cents to $40.22 per barrel in premarket trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Shares of Citigroup Inc. rose 7.7 percent in electronic trading. The stock ended Friday at $1.95.
Bank of America shares rose 10.8 percent after closing Friday at $3.79.
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On the Net:
New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com
Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com
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Call it what it is. The BUSH RECESSION.
by sammielee24 incall to arms.
the creeprepublicans are already in force trying to strategize for the next election with lies - of course what else is new?
the party that just finished bringing down the country haven't even bothered to let people breathe or let them see the results of the lawsuits and justice for all of those people that they allowed to destroy us.
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hamilcarr
Madam Speaker, today we are considering a bill aimed at modernizing the financial services industry through deregulation. It is a worthy goal which I support. However, this bill falls short of that goal. The negative aspects of this bill outweigh the benefits. Many have already argued for the need to update our financial laws. I would just add that I agree on the need for reform but oppose this approach.
Deregulation of the financial sector is no myth?
Government regulations present the greatest threat to privacy and consumers' loss of control over their own personal information. In the private sector, individuals protect their financial privacy as an integral part of the market process by providing information they regard as private only to entities they trust will maintain a degree of privacy of which they approve. Individuals avoid privacy violators by `opting out' and doing business only with such privacy-respecting companies.
I guess we need more not less transparency. Glasnost was a great tool to bring authoritarian systems down.
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Call it what it is. The BUSH RECESSION.
by sammielee24 incall to arms.
the creeprepublicans are already in force trying to strategize for the next election with lies - of course what else is new?
the party that just finished bringing down the country haven't even bothered to let people breathe or let them see the results of the lawsuits and justice for all of those people that they allowed to destroy us.
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hamilcarr
Here's my cut and paste
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/emtimeem-rewrote-history_b_168503.html
CNBC's David Faber confirmed that the problems all occurred during the Bush Administration. "There was a precipitous drop in [residential mortgage] lending standards that took place in this country... from 2003 until 2006," Faber told Charlie Rose. "Wall Street [] became a much larger player in those securitization markets, beginning in 2003 right through 2006. They did not apply the same lending standards that did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to originators, and that is where the balance shifted significantly..."
Why was there a drop in lending standards? Several reasons:
The rating agencies stopped performing independent analysis of mortgage pools. In March 2001, Standard & Poor's started rating real state investments without first going through the analytic review process. As reported by Bloomberg, S&P and Moody's would rely on each other's analysis and "substituted theoretical mathematic assumptions for the experience and judgment of their own analysts. Regulators found that Moody's and S&P also didn't have enough people and didn't adequately monitor the thousands of fixed-income securities they were grading AAA."
Then, in August 2004, reports Bloomberg, Moody's took another step to subvert the independent ratings process. It removed the diversification criteria used for rating collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. Subprime mortgage CDOs, of which about 3/4 were rated AAA, took off.
The investment community's reliance on AAA ratings cannot be overestimated. Although bankers and regulators are obligated to do independent analyses, they still tend to reference the agencies' opinions as a benchmark. Trillions of dollars of AAA securities were held by banks and others in the belief that they would pay out at close to par.
In 2003 the Bush Administration opened the floodgates to predatory lenders.
"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye...[though] the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
"In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules...But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks.""Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime," By Eliot Spitzer, The Washington Post, February 14, 2008
As for unregulated mortgage lenders, Greenspan ignored his duty to provide regulatory oversight. In the aftermath of the S&L crisis, unregulated lenders were becoming a major force in mortgage lending, so in 1994 the Democratic congress passed the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA) directing the Federal Reserve protect the public against predatory lenders. Greenspan, warned repeatedly about the problem, refused to do anything.
How did the drop in lending standards play out?
Fraud and predatory lending took off. The primary participants of the fraud, the mortgage brokers and mortgage lenders, were not subject to any real regulatory oversight. Consumers went to mortgage brokers, who got bigger upfront fees from steering their customers to subprime mortgages. The loans were issued by mortgage lenders like Countrywide Financial, which then packaged and sold the loans to investment banks. Because there were no protections against predatory lending, consumers got mortgage loans that they could not afford to repay. Loans had teaser rates of 3% for the first two or three years, before the monthly payments doubled or tripled.
Banks relied on AAA ratings and credit default swaps. The subprime mortgage pools were sliced and diced into mortgage securities that were sold to various investors. About 80% of the securities were rated AAA by S&P or Moody's, and a huge chunk of those securities were held by American and European banks. Why? Bankers thought if a bond is rated AAA, they could always sell it at something close to par. Also, residential home values had held up fairly well during the Great Depression. Finally, because of rules related to regulatory capital, the mortgage bonds received a lower weighting on mortgage securities than on ordinary corporate loans.
The real estate bubble burst and bond prices collapsed. Most subprime mortgages were extended for 80% of the appraised value, but many home buyers in California and elsewhere financed 100% of their home purchase.
Because so many people were buying homes they could not afford, market discipline was lost. California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona experienced a real estate bubble. When the bubble collapsed, almost everyone who bought a home in those markets from 2005 onward saw their home equity wiped out.
Three years after private label mortgage securities took off, they started collapsing. Because of the non-standard documentation, the suspicion of underlying fraud, and the difficulty in restructuring the loans with the borrowers, the securities became very difficult to value and market for them dried up.
How did this steady deterioration suddenly become a global financial meltdown? The two-word answer is Hank Paulson.
9/12 Changed Everything. On September 12, 2008, just as Lehman entered into final negotiations to find a buyer, Hank Paulson announced that the government would not backstop Lehman's solvency. What was the difference between Lehman and Bear Sterns, or between Lehman and the other banks? The prices of mortgage securities had declined since the Bear Stearns bailout, so the level of government support for Lehman would have been higher. Also, Lehman's fiscal quarter ended one month earlier than the other banks, so the magnitude of its problems was disclosed before those of other banks.
Paulson's refusal to support Lehman was extraordinarily reckless, because there was no transparency in the financial markets, given that vast amounts of money tied up in hedge funds and credit default swaps. Markets became destabilized right after Lehman declared bankruptcy on September 15, 2008.
Lehman suddenly defaulted on 900,000 derivatives, hedge fund assets were frozen, and countless hedged positions suddenly became unhedged. Nobody knew who was solvent and who was not. The different capital markets started freezing up in succession: the interbank lending market, money market funds, the commercial paper market. Banks cut back on extending trade letters of credit, thereby slowing down shipping and the trade of raw materials around the world, and further pushing down commodity prices. Global trade declined for the first time since World War II.
Paulson's TARP bait and switch. To stabilize the markets, Congress forked over $700 billion to Paulson, who then gave the banks another sucker punch on November 12, one week after Obama was elected. Paulson said he would not apply TARP funds to help abate the foreclosure crisis, and the prices of mortgage securities plunged further, effectively forcing the largest banks into insolvency.
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Call it what it is. The BUSH RECESSION.
by sammielee24 incall to arms.
the creeprepublicans are already in force trying to strategize for the next election with lies - of course what else is new?
the party that just finished bringing down the country haven't even bothered to let people breathe or let them see the results of the lawsuits and justice for all of those people that they allowed to destroy us.
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hamilcarr
quod erat demonstrandum ut Barca
Demonstrate me Gramm/Leach/Bliley was not an act that deregulated the financial sector.
Barca, atcque res publica delenda est.
That's a very childish statement. Dismantling the res publica has led to a concentration of economic power. Its power should be extended to undo the wreckages of decades of neoliberalism.
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Call it what it is. The BUSH RECESSION.
by sammielee24 incall to arms.
the creeprepublicans are already in force trying to strategize for the next election with lies - of course what else is new?
the party that just finished bringing down the country haven't even bothered to let people breathe or let them see the results of the lawsuits and justice for all of those people that they allowed to destroy us.
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hamilcarr
This is not a recession. It is the end of capitalism. deregulation.
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Call it what it is. The BUSH RECESSION.
by sammielee24 incall to arms.
the creeprepublicans are already in force trying to strategize for the next election with lies - of course what else is new?
the party that just finished bringing down the country haven't even bothered to let people breathe or let them see the results of the lawsuits and justice for all of those people that they allowed to destroy us.
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hamilcarr
Maybe rather the Phil Gramm / Alan Greenspan recession, the two high priests of the deregulation cult (the cult analogy is very popular these days), stealing power from the people.
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MAMS'S CLUB;NEW BOOK ABOUT JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
by badboy init will appear at a arizona book fair?.
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hamilcarr
Written by Ex-Bethelite Richard Kelly.
http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Mamas-Club-Richard-Kelly/dp/0979509416
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For the Peter Schiff fans
by BurnTheShips inthe prescient stock broker, and austrian school econ guru that called this current economics crisis well ahead of time.
i remember him in 2004/2005 like a voice in the wilderness.. http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/02/netroots_promot.php#013623.
web-savvy libertarians in california have launched a nationwide movement to draft a new haven-born celebrity pundit to take on connecticut u.s. sen. chris dodd.
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hamilcarr
There is a difference between advice and directives. ;-)
Ok, but then how should such a "less money" policy be enforced? It looks like if libertarians grabbed power, a corresponding majority of people would consider their policies as intrusive.