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  • geithner - America is Being Looted - Apr. 14, 2009 | Blogs at Chris Martenson - geithner, Goldman Sachs, TARP

    The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

    www.chrismartenson.com/...16444 - Preview

    economy 2009 on 2009-04-15 and saved by 2 people

    • Money is a social contract, especially fiat money, and abusing the trust inherent to making that money system work is the gravest of all possible errors.
      I am not exaggerating here.
    • Thus Geithner reports to a board that is composed of people who are not only under his purview but would also benefit from any potential bailouts. The structure of the New York Fed’s board bears more than a passing resemblance to that of the New York Stock Exchange in the bad old days, when member firms, regulated by the N.Y.S.E., were heavily represented on its board.
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  • "The Fault Lines Emerge" by Peter Schiff, FSU Editorial 03/27/2009

    For a few fleeting, horrifying moments this past week the fault lines that underlie the global economic crisis erupted into plain view. With deft and quick effort leaders in Washington, Europe and Asia papered over the fissures and fears largely subsided. But the shock of plain truths which resulted in violent currency movements are the latest reminder that the 21st century economic order will bear little resemblance to the world we now know.

    www.financialsense.com/...0327.html - Preview

    talous finance 2009 on 2009-04-01

    • The tremors began in Beijing, where a essay from the governor of the People's Bank of China seemed to favor the creation of an IMF currency to replace the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve.
    • In Europe, the rotating president of the European Union, outgoing Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, characterized America's plan to combat the widening global recession as the "road to hell."
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  • The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone

    The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution

    www.rollingstone.com/...print - Preview

    politics economy AIG bailout analysis on 2009-03-24 and saved by 75 people

    • When Morgan presented their plans for credit swaps to regulators
      in the late Nineties, they argued that if they bought CDS
      protection for enough of the investments in their portfolio, they
      had effectively moved the risk off their books.
    • What Cassano did was to transform the credit swaps that Morgan
      popularized into the world's largest bet on the housing boom. In
      theory, at least, there's nothing wrong with buying a CDS to insure
      your investments. Investors paid a premium to AIGFP, and in return
      the company promised to pick up the tab if the mortgage-backed CDOs
      went bust. But as Cassano went on a selling spree, the deals he
      made differed from traditional insurance in several significant
      ways. First, the party selling CDS protection didn't have to post
      any money upfront. When a $100 corporate bond is sold, for example,
      someone has to show 100 actual dollars. But when you sell a $100
      CDS guarantee, you don't have to show a dime. So Cassano could sell
      investment banks billions in guarantees without having any single
      asset to back it up.


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  • The five stages of collapse | Energy Bulletin

    Several thinkers, notably James Howard Kunstler and, more recently John Michael Greer, have pointed out that the Kübler-Ross model is also quite terrifyingly accurate in reflecting the process by which society as a whole (or at least the informed and thinking parts of it) is reconciling itself to the inevitability of a discontinuous future

    www.energybulletin.net/40919 - Preview

    economy finance collapse talous on 2009-02-23 and saved by 2 people

    • The command-and-control structure of the Soviet economy largely decoupled the necessities of daily life from any element of market psychology, associating them instead with physical flows of energy and physical access to resources. Thus situation, as I argue in my forthcoming book, Reinventing Collapse, allowed the Soviet population to inadvertently achieve a greater level of collapse-preparedness than is currently possible in the United States.
    • Stages of Collapse


      Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in "business as usual" is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.


      Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that "the market shall provide" is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.


      Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that "the government will take care of you" is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.


      Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that "your people will take care of you" is lost. As local social institutions, be they charities, community leaders, or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.


      Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for "kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity" (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes "May you die today so that I die tomorrow" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism.

  • The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com

    The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.

    www.portfolio.com/...The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom - Preview

    2008 talous economy on 2009-01-08 and saved by 147 people

    • Wall Street investment banks took huge piles of loans that in and of themselves might be rated BBB, threw them into a trust, carved the trust into tranches, and wound up with 60 percent of the new total being rated AAA.
    • “We always asked the same question,” says Eisman. “Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I’d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.”
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  • Op-Ed Contributors - How to Repair a Broken Financial World - NYTimes.com

    Jatkoa edelliselle; Tässä kerrotaan, miten talous saadaan taas kuntoon.

    www.nytimes.com/...04lewiseinhornb.html - Preview

    2009 talous economy on 2009-01-06 and saved by 31 people

    • Had Mr. Paulson executed his initial plan, and bought Citigroup’s pile of troubled assets at market prices, there would have been a limit to our exposure, as the money would have counted against the $700 billion Mr. Paulson had been given to dispense. Instead, he in effect granted himself the power to dispense unlimited sums of money without Congressional oversight.
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  • Op-Ed Contributors - The End of the Financial World as We Know It - NYTimes.com

    Tiukkaa analyysiä finanssikriisin todellisista syistä ja taustatekijöistä.

    www.nytimes.com/...04lewiseinhorn.html - Preview

    2009 economy talous on 2009-01-06

    • OUR financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense.
    • But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest.
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  • White House philosophy stoked mortgage bonfire - International Herald Tribune

    The story of how we got here is partly one of Bush's own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

    www.iht.com/...21admin.php - Preview

    2008 talous on 2008-12-22 and saved by 3 people

    • "We can put light where there's darkness, and hope where there's despondency in this country. And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home." — President George W. Bush, Oct. 15, 2002
    • Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, "faced with the prospect of a global meltdown" with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.
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  • Albert Bartlett on Growth | Chris Martenson

    Growth is neither good nor bad - it merely delivers more of what we already have, but in larger quantities, with higher risks, costs, and complexity. Given this, shouldn't it at least be questioned and challenged?

    www.chrismartenson.com/...10466 - Preview

    2008 talous economy energy peakoil growth on 2008-12-21

    • It’s time to try again to correct the educationally credentialed but innumerate experts (innumeracy is the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy) who say that growth is inevitable. They fail to recognize that after maturity, continued growth is either obesity or cancer.
    • The arithmetic is clear. Steady growth produces impossibly large numbers in modest periods of time. SO GROWTH WILL STOP.
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  • "The US Economy has become a "Fiat Economy" by Charles Young, FSU Editorial 12/17/2008

    The Federal Reserve is desperately trying to ‘create credit growth‘, not organic economic growth. When the United States lost its status as a manufacturing powerhouse in the 1970’s and the nation became ever more dependent on a consumer driven ’services industry’ the only way to show any growth was to keep the availability of money growing.

    www.financialsense.com/...1217.html - Preview

    2008 talous on 2008-12-19

    • Tuesday’s 75 basis point rate cut by the Federal Reserve is indeed historic. So far every rate cut over the past 16 months has done nothing to improve the real economy, and it has done very little to improve the forged (credit) economy either. So why is it all of a sudden that many in the media are claiming that this ‘is the one that will do it’? Well maybe because there is nothing left in Ben Bernanke’s arsenal, that’s why.


    • Simply put… the excess credit growth must be allowed to deflate without intervention and prices must be allowed to adjust to the real economy (not the forged one). The desperate measures to keep credit growth going, at any cost, are to prevent you from seeing the economy without its mask.
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  • Fed cuts rate to less than 0.25% - promises to flood the world with money | Chris Martenson

    Well, folks, history was made today. Keep a journal because these are the days upon which everyone will look back and ask, "what happened?"

    www.chrismartenson.com/...10297 - Preview

    2008 talous on 2008-12-17

    • Bernanke is trying out a gigantic academic experiment to see if past excesses and malinvestments caused by interest rates set too low and money made too cheap can be fixed by setting interest rates even lower and money even cheaper.

    • I see this path as fraught with risks and I would have preferred that we wring out the bad debts as quickly as possible.  



      Instead we get this collection of policy failures guaranteed to either make this whole thing last a lot longer than it otherwise would, make it all worse by compounding past mistakes, or both.

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  • Talouskriisi pakottaa bisneskoulut tarkistamaan opetuksensa sisältöä - HS.fi - Pääkirjoitus

    Amerikassa on alettu pohtia, ovatko kauppakorkeakoulut osasyyllisiä talouskriisiin, koska ne eivät ole opettaneet opiskelijoilleen oikeanlaisia arvoja ja menetelmiä, kirjoittaa Jaakko Aspara.

    www.hs.fi/...1135241678450 - Preview

    2008 talous on 2008-12-05


    • Vääristä asenteista ja arvoista on kysymys esimerkiksi silloin, kun yrityksen johtajat ja työntekijät ottavat yrityksen lukuun tietoisesti riskejä, jotka lyhyellä aikavälillä ehkä hyödyttävät sekä yritystä että heitä itseään, mutta ajan oloon aiheuttavat tappioita, jotka jäävät yrityksen yksin kannettaviksi.



    • Opportunistinen riskinotto rikastutti viime vuosina monet johtajat upporikkaiksi ja kuplan lopulta puhjettua köyhdytti heidän päämiehensä eli työnantajayritykset ja niiden omistajat jopa konkurssiin asti.


  • Paniikkinappula löytyi keskuspankeissa - Kaleva.plus.pääkirjoitus

    Suomi alkaa olla niitä harvoja teollisuusmaita, jotka eivät ole vielä virallisesti taantumassa.

    www.kaleva.fi/...index.cfm - Preview

    2008 talous on 2008-12-05

  • Black Swan author says present economy worse than Depression - Boing Boing

    Taleb and Mandelbrot discuss the current economic crisis: "The banking system, the way we have it, is a monstrous giant built on feet of clay. And if that topples, we're gone."

    www.boingboing.net/...black-swan-author-sa.html - Preview

    2008 economy talous on 2008-12-01 and saved by 2 people

    • "The banking system, the way we have it, is a monstrous giant built on feet of clay. And if that topples, we're gone."
  • Kruunun sukellus jyrkentää Ruotsin talouden taantumaa

    Maailmantalouden myllerryksiltä ei ole säästynyt edes vakaa ja vauras naapurimaamme Ruotsi. Pikemminkin Ruotsin talouden alamäki on ollut jyrkempää kuin Pohjanlahden tällä puolen.

    www.turunsanomat.fi/mielipiteet - Preview

    2008 talous ruotsi valuutta on 2008-11-22

    • Maailmantalouden myllerryksiltä ei ole säästynyt edes vakaa ja vauras naapurimaamme Ruotsi. Pikemminkin Ruotsin talouden alamäki on ollut jyrkempää kuin Pohjanlahden tällä puolen.
  • Death and Taxes: 2009 by ~mibi on deviantART

    Visualization of how the US budget is split out in 2009.

    mibi.deviantart.com/...Death-and-Taxes-2009-86140295 - Preview

    2009 finance on 2008-11-18

  • Finanssikriisi on seurausta uusliberalismin epäonnistumisesta - HS.fi - Pääkirjoitus

    Kriisin taustalta löytyy 1970-luvulla alkanut systemaattinen pyrkimys vapauttaa maailman rahamarkkinoita ja kauppaa uusliberaalien oppien mukaisesti. Voidaan puhua myös aggressiivisen kapitalistisen ekspansion aikakaudesta.

    www.hs.fi/...1135240308238 - Preview

    2008 talous on 2008-10-18

    • Uusliberalismilla tarkoitan pyrkimystä minimoida julkisen vallan rooli talous- ja yhteiskunnallisessa elämässä niin globaalisti kuin valtioissakin.
    • Kriisin pitäisi olla mahdottomuus myös, jos uusliberaalien oletukset markkinoiden kyvystä itsesäätelyyn pitäisivät paikkansa.
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  • Kuinka jatkuva kasvu pysäytetään? « Ajatuksia ensimmäisestä maailmasta

    Mikäli haluamme välttää täyden katastrofin, meidän tulee hyvin nopeasti keksiä järjestelmä jolla jaamme tuon luonnon vuotuisen uudistuskyvyn keskenämme. Ellemme keksi menetelmää niin se löytyy itsestään todennäköisesti sillä keinolla jolla valtiot nykyisinkin sopivat riitatilanteet.

    metsamies.com/...inka-jatkuva-kasvu-pysaytetaan - Preview

    2008 talous on 2008-10-13

    • BKT-ajattelusta johtuen emme huomaa kuinka kansantuotteen kasvattamisesta vientituloilla aiheutuu suurempaa haittaa kuin hyötyä. Esimerkkinä hän käyttää Kiinan ympäristön tuhoutumista länsimaiden kulutustavaroiden tuottamiseksi. Kasvu ei enään paranna hyvinvointia vaan heikentää sitä.
    • Nobelin talouspalkinnon saanut Robert Solow pitää kapitalistista nolla-kasvuyhteiskuntaa mahdollisena, “mikäli länsimaalaiset alkavat tulevien vuosikymmenien aikana ajatella, että kasvusta on enemmän haittaa kuin hyötyä ja sen vuoksi tavoittelevat onnellisuutta toisin kuin nykyään.”
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