Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, Michigan, just won the Democratic nomination for governor of his state, making a state-owned Bank of Michigan a real possibility. Bernero is one of at least a dozen candidates promoting that solution to the states’ economic woes. It is an innovative idea, with little precedent in the United...
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Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian philosopher and esotericist and founder of one of the key modern spiritual movements in the West. He is best known for his books and lectures before and after World War I, when he founded the Anthroposophical Society with its present-day headquarters in Dornach, Switzerland. After World War I,...
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As they prepare for holiday reading in Tuscany, City bankers are buying up rare copies of an obscure book on the mechanics of Weimar inflation published in 1974. Ebay is offering a well-thumbed volume of “Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations” at a starting bid of $699 (shipping free.....
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As we long ago predicted, 2005 was the beginning of the collapse of the housing bubble. The result was financial chaos and a credit crisis that enveloped the US, Europe and eventually the world. Some would like us to believe that materialism and selfishness were the reasons for bubbles, but the causes go far...
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The housing depression will last for a decade or more. This is by design. The Fed has been working with the banks to withhold inventory so prices do not fall too fast or too far. That way the banks can manage their write-downs without slipping into insolvency. But what’s good for the banks is...
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Financial services are reaching the world’s poorest by mobile phone. Thanks to a mobile banking system launched last month in Senegal, people with no previous access to bank accounts were able to watch the World Cup via satellite services that they paid for electronically with a few taps on a mobile phone. The service...
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Thamizarasi does not know job safety or regular income. Work comes and goes for this 40-something agri-labourer in Alakudi, a village in Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu. This month, for instance, farm owners did not need labourers like her because the local dam was yet to release water to irrigate their fields. During such...
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Thomas Ferguson: A few small useful measures, but the bill strengthens the Fed and is weak on big issues. Thomas Ferguson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a Senior Fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and taught formerly at the Massachusetts Institute...
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Ever since December 2008, the Federal Reserve has held short-term interest rates near zero. This was not only to try to stimulate the housing and credit markets but also to allow the federal government to increase its debt levels without increasing the interest tab picked up by the taxpayers. The total public U.S. debt...
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It looks like the next big wave of deflation is upon us. Looking at some key fundamentals, we see the labor market is again shredding jobs (652,000 in June), the money supply is contracting at levels not seen since the Great Depression and the US Federal Governments finances are in complete disaster. We stand...
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Recently we were again witness to three gold market takedowns. The first was engineered just prior to and into gold and silver options expiration. Then prior to the ETF GLD gold option expiry and the last manipulative attack commenced just prior to the dreadful unemployment housing and inventory statistics. This sort of action began...
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The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive...
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“The majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds...
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Workers in Greece today stand in the forefront of the converging European class struggles against big capital’s attempt to make working people pay the costs of its crisis. Mobilizations against this austerity drive are spreading across Europe. In France, strikes and demonstrations were held on May 27 and a day of actions is planned...
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Banks Profit from Near-zero Interest Rates: Another Reason for States to Own Their Banks While individuals, businesses and governments suffer from a credit crisis created on Wall Street, the banks responsible for the crisis are tapping into nearly-interest-free credit lines and using the money to speculate or to make commercial loans at much higher...
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In the old days the U.S. government used different tactics to trick the population into accepting policies that only the elite wanted. For example, it took legions of hired speakers (propagandists) to travel the country and to explain to people the “necessity” of fighting WWI and WWII. Movie stars were put on the government payroll, too,...
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Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don’t know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is. The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a “downturn” or a “recession”. What we are witnessing is the beginning of...
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Derivatives come to the movies As if attacks from paparazzi and star-crazed fans weren’t enough, Hollywood stars may soon have a literal price put on their heads by investors in the Cantor Exchange, a real-money trading platform where people can bet on the gross profits of upcoming movies. Sales of The Dark Knight skyrocketed...
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While the SEC is busy investigating Goldman Sachs, it might want to look into another Goldman-dominated fraud: computerized front running using high-frequency trading programs. Market commentators are fond of talking about “free market capitalism,” but according to Wall Street commentator Max Keiser, it is no more. It has morphed into what his TV co-host...
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The financially stricken Greek government is beginning talks with the EU and the International Monetary Fund about a possible bailout. Greece has found borrowing from banks too costly recently and is struggling to refinance old debts. Let’s get some analysis with economist and author William Engdahl. Source.
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A Crackdown on Financial Crime or a Kabuki Play Maneuvre to Avoid Bringing Criminal Charges Fox Business News was engrossed in interviewing a blonder than thou reality TV bimbo when the news that the Securities And Exchange Commission was filing fraud charges against Goldman Sachs broke on Friday afternoon. The breaking news bulletins were...
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Understanding the Nature of the Global Economic Crisis The people have been lulled into a false sense of safety under the ruse of a perceived “economic recovery.” Unfortunately, what the majority of people think does not make it so, especially when the people making the key decisions think and act to the contrary. The...
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“It is well enough that people … do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” Henry Ford, American industrialist “It seems to me that Europe, especially with the addition of more countries, is becoming ever-more susceptible to any asymmetric shock....
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As the states’ budget and credit crises deepen, four states have initiated bills for state-owned banks, and candidates in seven states have included that solution in their platforms. “Hundreds of job-creating projects are still on hold because Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs cannot get bank financing. We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall...
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Evidence of a Financial Coup in America How much more evidence of a financial coup and the THEFT of TRILLIONS of DOLLARS do we need before the media and our politicians do something, anything, to restore a rule of law in this nation? What is it going to take? About four months ago, I...
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This is an open letter to the economics, finance and banking communities. I don’t have any dog in the fight, other than to figure out and then publicize what is best for the greatest number of people. People I greatly respect advocate for federal-level public banking, state public banks or a return to the...
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Or Why the Market Was Down for 7 Days in a Row We are witnessing an epic battle between two banking giants, JPMorgan Chase (Paul Volcker) and Goldman Sachs (Geithner/Summers/Rubin). Left strewn on the battleground could be your pension fund and 401K. The late Libertarian economist Murray Rothbard wrote that U.S. politics since 1900,...
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This article was first published in October 2009. Oil in Haiti and Oil Refinery – an old notion for Fort Liberte as a transshipment terminal for US supertankers – Another economic reason for the ouster of President Aristide and current UN occupation (Haiti’s Riches:Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti) There is evidence...
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People have asked whether moving your money from your giant bank to a small community bank or credit union will have any real affect on the too big to fails, given that most of their profits come from speculative investments instead of normal banking deposits. According to the Nation, the answer is yes: The...
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The world has come to a line in the sand. Over one and a half billion people live in abject poverty today. Millions die each year of malnutrition or from treatable disease. This condition has existed for decades and yet help from the rich nations of the world has been inadequate, inefficient and achingly...
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Fresh on the heels of a Dutch investigation into the conflicts of interest of their chief influenza advisor and the bombshell announcement that the Council of Europe will be probing their role in creating and sustaining panic over the recent H1N1 outbreak in order to sell vaccines for Big Pharma, the World Health Organization...
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The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Hearings You almost could hear the bankers heave a sigh of relief when Haiti’s earthquake knocked the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings off the front pages and evening news broadcasts last week. At stake, after all, is Wall Street’s power grab seeking to centralize policy control firmly in its...
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It is said that a near-death experience forces one to reevaluate priorities and values. The global economy has just escaped a near-death experience. The crisis exposed the flaws in the prevailing economic model, but it also exposed flaws in our society. Much has been written about the foolishness of the risks that the financial...
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At the start of the last decade, in March 2000, the European Union heads of state announced the Lisbon Strategy. Its aim, by 2010, was to make Europe “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.” This would...
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To anybody interested in the future of the earth’s climate, the conclusion of the Copenhagen conference represents either colossal disappointment or profound rage. The financial pledges— if honored— that rich nations made to poor nations will do nothing to combat global warming. The few climate related agreements that were made were of zero substance,...
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“Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama, is Preparing for War in South America”; Interview with Eva Golinger Mike Whitney—-The US media is very critical of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He’s frequently denounced as “anti-American”, a “leftist strongman”, and a dictator. Can you briefly summarize some of the positive social, economic and judicial changes for...
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The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute film that takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the real costs of our consumer driven culture—from resource extraction to iPod incineration. Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats, narrates the Story of Stuff, delivering...
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Preface: I studied global warming at a top university in the early 1980′s. I was taught – as Al Gore was taught in college – that temperatures are directly correlated with CO2 levels. This essay will not address the question of whether global temperatures are rising, and if so, how much. Others have written...
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The crisis of 2008-2009 exposed the U.S. financial system as being unstable, subject to abuse, and tending to favor the rich while putting everyone else deeper into debt. The housing bubble was based on the biggest credit inflation in history. It raised the prices of homes to unprecedented levels but created the deepest recession...
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The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in...
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It all started with Sting, this fad for owning one’s very own patch of tropical rainforest, though it is probably unfair to blame him entirely for creating the boom industry that buying up forests piecemeal has become. It is 20 years since the musician first set foot in Brazil and pledged to fight the...
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Architect of Credit Default Swaps behind the Development of “Carbon Derivatives” As I have previously shown, speculative derivatives (especially credit default swaps) are a primary cause of the economic crisis. And I have pointed out that (1) the giant banks will make a killing on carbon trading, (2) while the leading scientist crusading against...
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The following text (in annex) was published simultaneously by major Newspapers around the World. It constitutes a Worldwide public relations initiative, intended to sway public opinion into unreservedly accepting the “Global Warming consensus”. The text of the editorial was prepared by The Guardian team. The editorial presents an apocalyptic scenario, with global warming ravaging...
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Questions for Bernanke’s Senate Confirmation Hearing The Senate Banking Committee will be chatting with Ben Bernanke this Thursday to vote on his reappointment. Demand that the Committee ask the following questions for our esteemed Esteemed Chairman (and contact your own Senators also and demand that they find out the answers to the following questions)....
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Will Dr. Evangelos Michelakis’ Invention be blocked by a Profit Driven Pharmaceutical Industry? University of Alberta Researcher Dr. Evangelos Michelakis has developed an effective drug which can be used to treat cancer. The project of this inexpensive drug does not fit the plans of the Pharmaceutical industry. CTV Background Article Researchers at the University...
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The default in Dubai is not the beginning of Financial Meltdown 2. Don’t look for dominoes here. Yes, it does raise serious questions about the vast debt-overhang in emerging economies–particularly East Europe. But, this is not a “sovereign default” in the strict sense, nor is there any great risk of contagion. Oil-rich Abu Dhabi...
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A Paradigm Shift: APEC Offers No Clear Answers Like scores of journalists, I attentively listened as Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong delivering his closing remarks, and for the last time answering journalists’ questions. It was the conclusion of 17th Apec Economies Leaders’ Meeting in Singapore, on November 15, and Prime Minister Lee was...
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“We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic...
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The United States does not control its own destiny. Rather it is controlled by an international financial elite, of which the American branch works out of big New York banks like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wall Street investment firms such as Goldman Sachs, and the Federal Reserve System. They in turn control the White House,...
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Whenever I hold my two-year old grandson, Grant, in my arms I wonder what this world will look like six decades from now, when he is my age. I know that if we “stay the course” it will be ugly. The current economic meltdown is a harbinger. Panama’s chief of government, Omar Torrijos, foresaw...
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“Every really successful system of agriculture…..must be based on the long view, otherwise the day of reckoning is certain.” Importance of rice in Asia Rice is Asia’s staple food and pivotal to the Asian way of life, culture, customs, traditions...
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Why the President Warns of a Deeper Drop, Not a Recovery When I was a kid, a “double dip” was an ice cream cone with two scoops. Yummy, Today, the same expression is being used to warn us that the recession we are still struggling with could, and is supposedly posed for recovery could...
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Société Générale has advised clients to be ready for a possible “global economic collapse” over the next two years, mapping a strategy of defensive investments to avoid wealth destruction. In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto...
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The Wave Is gathering force & could hit between the first & second quarter of 2010 Many of my friends who have been receiving my e-mail alerts over the last two years have lamented that in recent weeks I have not commented on the state of the global economy. I appreciate their anxiety but...
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Ever wonder why you succumbed, yet again, to advertising hype or deceptive packaging and overpaid for a product? Or bought securities that you know were overvalued when the herd instinct was just too strong to resist? Such irrationality is the focus of behavioral economists, who appear to be gaining greater credibility in macroeconomic circles...
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HOW much political power can one number exert? Gross domestic product (GDP) is a strong candidate for the world’s most potent numerical indicator. Politicians use it to rank states in order of production, and to guide policies to maintain their place in the pecking order. Its year-on-year changes dictate whether an economy is “in...
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What Is India and China Doing That Malaysia Has Neglected To Do? On 27th August 2009 I wrote an article, “An Appeal To Malaysia’s Prime Minister Cum Finance Minister – Re-Examine the Country’s Strategy For Foreign Reserves”, to urge our Prime Minister to examine the critical need to diversify our foreign reserves, specifically to...
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Interest rates. The Fed does not need slinky women in plunging necklines to peddle money. All it needs is low interest rates. When rates are pushed lower than the rate of inflation, the Fed provides a subsidy for borrowing. This is not as hard to grasp as it sounds. If I offered to give...
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Greg Gordon: There is nothing that can prohibit or stop the Wall St. firms from making secret bets. Bio: Greg Gordon, an investigative reporter, has spent 30 years uncovering waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct in Washington. Since joining McClatchy’s national staff in 2006, he has helped expose partisanship in the Justice Department and gaps...
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Goldman climbed into bed with New Century Financial Corp’s unreviewed and off shore deals. Goldman Sachs was among the last Wall Street giants to enter the lucrative world of subprime mortgages, but it didn’t take long before the elite investment house was cutting deals with firms whose reputations would soon be tarnished, at best...
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Inside investment circular were the details of a secret $2 billion deal channeled through a tax haven. Inside the thick Goldman Sachs investment circular were the details of a secret, $2 billion deal channeled through a Caribbean tax haven. The Sept. 26, 2006, document offered sophisticated U.S. and European investors an opportunity to buy...
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Goldman didn’t tell buyers of $40 billion in securities it was secretly betting the other way In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers that it also was secretly betting that a sharp drop in...
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McClatchy’s Greg Gordon reports that Goldman knew that mortgages were not being properly reviewed Transcript: GREG GORDON, MCCLATCHY (VOICEOVER): This is Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers. When the housing bubble burst and millions of Americans defaulted on their subprime mortgages, few places were harder hit than the Southern California city of Moreno Valley. As...
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Pouring money into the private banking system has only fixed the economy for bankers and the wealthy; it has not done much to address either the fundamental problem of unemployment or the debt trap so many Americans find themselves in. President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan has so far failed to halt the growth...
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Worldwide, industrial mono-culture farming has displaced traditional food production and farmers, wreaking havoc on food prices and food sovereignty. This is particularly true for the global south, where land has been concentrated for crops destined for biodiesel and animal feed. In response, peasants and small farmers organized actions in more than 53 countries on...
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On February 1, 1960, four students sat down at a lunch counter at
the former Woolworth’s store in Greensboro North Carolina. 4 students! Just four! They were protesting racial segregation. They were denied,
service, harassed and arrested. Greensboro was and still is a backwater, yet their courage and
commitment sparked and helped drive a national movement that
would,...
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Causes, consequences and appropriate economic policies Introduction The deep and ongoing crises of leading capitalist countries, especially the United States, has provoked a debate over the causes, consequences and appropriate policies to remedy it. The debate has revealed a deep division over the causes and remedies, with Anglo-Franco American (AFA) politicians, columnists and economists...
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Our view is that the elitists are currently buying time for the dollar, and stalling the rally in precious metals, by weakening other currencies until they are ready for the big stock takedown/correction. This process of supporting the dollar is becoming extremely expensive and difficult, so they had to take the Dow down 200...
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GrillzillaWilliam K. Black – professor of economics and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis – says that that the government’s entire strategy now – as during the S&L crisis – is to cover up how bad things are (“the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts”). Indeed, as...
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State and local leaders are considering creating publicly owned banks that can funnel credit to where it is needed most: directly into the local economy. The credit crunch is getting worse on Main Street, despite a Wall Street bailout now in the trillions of dollars. The Federal Reserve’s charts show that “base money” is...
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I was dismayed when I heard Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on wars in two countries and launching military action in a third country (Pakistan), would be given a peace prize. But then I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger...
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Thousands of alternatives to the punishing corporate model have sprouted up across the US, building up an alternative economy as Wall St. crumbles. America is in the midst of a new revolution. But this revolution is quiet, incremental, nonviolent and traveling beneath the mainstream media’s radar. The new American revolution challenges the current notions...
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Outgoing General Assembly prez says most powerful are to blame for UN failure to address war and poverty As he leaves the office of the President of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto gave Real News Senior Editor Paul Jay a no holds barred interview on the issues plaguing the United Nations. D’Escoto...
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A special focus on the International Monetary Fund and whether it is suited for its purpose. There were violent protests on the streets of Istanbul as the IMF held its annual meeting. We look at whether recession-hit Turkey can actually live without the IMF. We also ask if the IMF has lived up to...
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Arab oil producing nations and the some world’s largest oil consumers including China and Japan are reliably reported to be secretly planning a long-term exit from pricing their oil trade in dollars. If true, it would spell the death knell for the dollar as world reserve currency and for the USA as global economic...
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In 2009, China opened up various exchanges for investment in both gold and silver to the Chinese public, which previously was not allowed to invest in gold and silver. The opening of silver exchanges to the Chinese public is the most recent development and was accompanied by a ban on silver exports. The Chinese government...
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A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, questions still swirl around its collapse. Lawrence MacDonald, whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense came out in July 2009, maintains that the bank was not in substantially worse shape than other major Wall Street banks. He says Lehman was just...
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Focus on the face at the top of Federal Reserve neglects questioning the institution and the system President Obama has re-nominated Ben Bernanke to sit as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for another four-year term. Most of the media has praised Bernanke for his handling of the current economic crisis, Obama himself suggests that...
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Text presented to the American Monetary Institute 2009 Conference It is not difficult to come up with methods to solve today’s economic crisis through monetary reform. Many of us are doing it. The key, as I have been writing for the past several years, is to treat credit as a public utility, not the...
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Companies from US, UK and Australia have the most concentrated financial power. A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world’s finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial...
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One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered financial turmoil around the world By Channel 4 News One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered financial turmoil around the world, Faisal Islam reveals the inside story of how close Britain came to a costly bailout. Channel 4 News looks at everything from...
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Although the Department of Commerce claims that GDP measures the final value of goods and services produced in the United States in a given period of time, it merely measures the income of the politically sanctioned commercial class. GDP is used as an indicator of how well that commercial class is doing; it is...
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Richard Posner writes in the FT. Read the whole thing! I doubt academic economists are to blame for the crisis in any direct sense — the real perps are on Wall Street and Main Street — but they do deserve blame for the “ideological capture” of regulators and policy makers, many of whom, through...
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Entering the Greatest Depression in History Introduction While there is much talk of a recovery on the horizon, commentators are forgetting some crucial aspects of the financial crisis. The crisis is not simply composed of one bubble, the housing real estate bubble, which has already burst. The crisis has many bubbles, all of which...
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Bankrupt US Financial System: The Bubble Bursts and the Economy goes into a Tailspin. We’re making this way too complicated. It’s simple really. The Fed has only one tool at its disposal; to create more money. Typically, the way the Fed adds to the money supply is by lowering interest rates. When the Fed...
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Stealing the Indigenous area of Northern Great Turtle Island More colonial subterfuge! Canada, US, Russia, Norway, Denmark and other imperialist entities are trying to steal the Indigenous area of northern Great Turtle Island. Climate change is causing the ice to recede. They all want to cart away our minerals, oil and gas. Ruskie and...
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Continuing the pattern by top Canadian federal officials over the past year of issuing blunt and bravado statements aimed at Russia over the Arctic, on August 1 Defence Minister Peter MacKay was paraphrased as “warn Russia that Canuck fighter jets will scramble to meet any unauthorized aircraft” as a mainstream Canadian news agency less...
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In the real economy, unemployment is at Depression-era levels (see this, this and this). In the real economy, bank loan loss rates will be higher than the Depression. In the real economy, government revenue is at its lowest level since the Depression, and most states are on the verge of bankruptcy. In the real...
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On its July 18, 2009, edition The Economist on article on Bolivia (“Bolivia’s divisive president. The Permanent Campaign”, July 18), asserted that “Venezuelan troops helped quell a rebellion centred on the airport at Santa Cruz in the east in 2007.” The article did not bother to substantiate such a serious charge against Venezuela and is...
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Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is a man who knows how Washington works and uses that knowledge to great effect. His appearances on Capital Hill are always worth watching. He sits politely with his hands folded in front of him playing the bashful professor while one one preening congressman after another makes a fool out...
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The global financial and economic crisis has hit the small Baltic country Latvia harder than any single country with the possible exception of Iceland. As part of its attempt to join the European Monetary Union the country has fixed its currency the Lats to the Euro. The result has been to make a bad...
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“Blowing Bubbles” and “Using Palliatives” which “Make Things Worse” BIS Slammed Federal Reserve and Other Central Banks for Blowing Bubbles and then “Using Gimmicks and Palliatives” which “Will Only Make Things Worse” If you have any doubt that the Fed and other central banks should have known that a crash was coming, all you...
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At the start of this week, German-based Deutsche Bank announced a huge increase in its profits. The bank reported a net profit of €1.1 billion in the second quarter of this year, nearly doubling its earnings over the same period last year (€645 million). The massive increase in Deutsche Bank’s profits follows record earnings...
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International media attention is focused this week on the visit of the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to seven countries in Africa. Judging by the behaviour of representatives of many African governments, there are great expectations that this visit – following so closely after President Obama’s two earlier visits to Egypt and Ghana...
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A senior OECD official says the global financial crisis is far from over and the world faces a serious risk of another credit crunch and a double dip recession. Adrian Blundell-Wignall is the deputy director of financial and enterprise affairs at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In an interview with ABC...
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The Conservatives have pledged to hand the Bank and its Governor Mervyn King power to control the balance sheets of all Britain’s major banks and finance houses, as well as regulation of the broader financial system. With its existing power to control interest rates, the proposed reforms will mean the Bank will rival the...
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Bank of America Corp is operating under a secret U.S. regulatory sanction that requires it to overhaul its board and address perceived problems with risk and liquidity management, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation. Rarely disclosed publicly, the so-called memorandum of understanding (MOU) gives banks a chance to work...
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William White predicted the approaching financial crisis years before 2007′s subprime meltdown. But central bankers preferred to listen to his great rival Alan Greenspan instead, with devastating consequences for the global economy. William White had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life after shedding his pinstriped suit and...
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President Obama has repeated his call for a public option in health care, in order to create some competition for the insurance companies and keep them honest. We the people need to call for a public option in banking, in order to create some competition for the private banks and keep them honest. In...
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“The empire of the dollar is crashing.” Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan President “The U.S. dollar is a worthless piece of paper.” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian President “losing its status as the world currency.” Xu Jian, vice director, People’s Bank of China, “It is the policy of the United States and it will...
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Upswing in stocks comes from profits due to cutbacks and concessions, worse is yet to come
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Introduction Humanity is on the verge of entering into the most tumultuous period in our history. The prospects of a global depression, the likes of which have never been seen before; a truly global war, on a scale never before imagined; and societal collapse, for which nations of the world are building totalitarian police...
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With a view to restoring financial stability, World leaders have called upon the Group of 20 countries (G-20) to instigate a new global currency based on the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). The media has presented the global currency initiative as a consensus building process, in which BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China)...
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California has over $17 billion on deposit in banks that have refused to honor its IOUs, forcing legislators to accept crippling budget cuts. These austerity measures are unnecessary. If the state were to deposit its money in its own state-owned bank, it could have enough credit to solve its budget crisis with funds to...
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A careful reading of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, shows that Bernanke thinks the economy is in a deflationary spiral that will last for some time. Ben Bernanke: “The depth and breadth of the global recession has required a highly accommodative monetary policy. Since the onset of the...
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Bank that is repossessing homes by the hundred, turns a massive profit The bank that is repossessing homes by the hundred, turns a massive profit with bonuses to match. Faisal Islam reports. Just six months ago, they were on the ropes, begging for government bailouts to survive. But billions of taxpayer dollars later, America’s...
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I don’t post with the aim of being contrarian, but lately I’ve found myself swimming against the tide of Democratic/progressive conventional wisdom. I questioned the strategy of elevating Rush Limbaugh’s profile and engaging him from the White House podium; I criticized President Obama’s Cairo speech for being tepid on women’s rights; and I argued...
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Economist and writer Max Fraad Wolff says Goldman Sachs is making huge profits because it got special help from the government and because it is still taking the same sort of risk that sent the financial world into a tailspin last year. But, he cautions, that the bank may end up suffering severe losses.
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Details emerge of how the Fed secretly doled out trillions of dollars during the financial crisis The Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful and secretive institutions in Washington, long considered beyond the reach of lawmakers. But now, as details emerge of how the Fed secretly doled out more than a trillion dollars...
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The US Department of State had prior knowledge of the coup. The Department of State and the US Congress funded and advised the actors and organisations in Honduras that participated in the coup. The Pentagon trained, schooled, commanded, funded and armed the Honduran armed forces that perpetrated the coup and that continue to repress...
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The State could walk away & create its own credit machine Four Wall Street banks, which received $15-25 billion each from the taxpayers, have rejected California’s IOUs because the State is supposedly a bad credit risk. The bailed out banks would seem to have a duty to lend a helping hand, but they say...
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Last week I was very pleased that hearings were held on the independence of the Federal Reserve system. My bill HR 1207, known as the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, was discussed at length, as well as the general question of whether or not the Federal Reserve should continue to operate independently. The public is...
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Pollin: Obama plan to ‘empower’ the Fed won’t reign in casino capitalism; finance must be democratized Barack Obama recently announced that his new plan for Wall Street regulation would be hinged upon an enhanced oversight role for the Federal Reserve. Robert Pollin, while welcoming a first attempt at regulation, points out that the Fed...
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“Banking Establishments Are More Dangerous Than Standing Armies.” Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President “… a serious depression seems improbable; recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall.” Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 10, 1929 “While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have...
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“Our wallet is empty, our bank is closed and our credit is dried up.” – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, June 2, 2009 California State Controller John Chiang has warned that without a balanced budget in place by July 1, he will begin using IOUs to pay most of the state’s bills. On June 25, California...
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As global leaders struggle to rescue their nations from economic breakdown, the legitimacy of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is under attack. Perhaps the problem lies with the Fed. A large part of the “super” in the American superpower is based on the modern creed of liberal democracy, which serves as the...
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Calculus has two main variants—derivative and integral. The Eurasian energy pipeline geopolitics between Turkey Washington and Moscow today has elements of both. It is highly derivative in that the major actors across Central Asia from China, Russia to Turkey are very much engaged in a derived power game which has less to do with...
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Welcoming Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov to Foggy Bottom in early May of this year, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could think of nothing more original to say than “Azerbaijan has a very strategic location that is one important not only to their country, but really, regionally and globally….” But what Clinton’s...
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Any coming rally will be built on sand, Fed over a barrel and will act that way, big leverages led to a the big collapse, we know financial institutions should never be allowed to self regulate, production decreasing, liquidations rise, lies of Cheney exposed, GM in chapter 11. Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed bill...
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Dollar vulnerability no surprise to us, collapse is the cost for not paying attention, Fed failures the cause of devaluations, stimulus plans may well be insufficient to bolster economy, Jobless rate indicates where we stand now in our weakened economy Re-emergence of dollar vulnerability has taken almost all professionals by surprise. That has been...
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This June, the doors will open at the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, a state-of-the-art, nearly $6 million facility in Cleveland, Ohio. What’s so special about this laundry? In a word, ownership. The business will be 100 percent owned by its 50 employees, virtually all of whom live in the surrounding community. Life is tough in...
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The Mondragón Cooperative Corporation (MCC), the largest consortium of worker-owned companies, has developed a different way of doing business—a way that puts workers, not shareholders, first. Here’s how it played out when one of the Mondragón cooperatives fell on hard times. The worker/owners and the managers met to review their options. After three days...
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Wall Street is bankrupt. Instead of trying to save it, we can build a new economy that puts money and business in the service of people and the planet—not the other way around. Whether it was divine providence or just good luck, we should give thanks that financial collapse hit us before the worst...
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New Ways To Do Money Old Economy: The measure of a healthy economy is a growing GDP. Get Real: A healthy economy meets real needs within ecological limits. Old Economy: All you need is money. Get Real: You can’t eat money. What we need is healthy families, communities, and ecosystems. Old Economy: Booms and...
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Rebecca Adamson offers Native American views on scarcity, Wall Street, and how to thrive in hard times. Indigenous peoples have known hard times. There are signs of drought, crop failure, and forced migration over the millennia, and of course these peoples survived centuries of colonialism. When we were looking for some wisdom on building...
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During the Great Depression, my grandfather ran a butter creamery in rural Minnesota. Growing up, I heard how a group of farmers stormed in one day and threatened to burn the place down if he didn’t stop production. I had no idea who those farmers were or why they had done that—it was just...
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The way money is created and issued, who creates it and in what form—as debt or debt-free, in one currency or another—largely determines whether a financial system works fairly and efficiently or not. In our global village, money shapes our lives at personal, household, local, national, and international levels. The system now in place...
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Buying local isn’t just about freshness. Source: Published in Yes! Magazine.
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Local currencies value time, build community, and keep business moving even when credit dries up. Total dependence on one currency is like total dependence on one crop, or, for that matter, a single energy source: there’s always the risk that crop failure or a cutoff in supply will topple the whole system. This is...
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Americans want to invest locally: here’s how. The Obama Administration believes that the best way to repair our financial system after the Great Crash of 2008 is to improve the performance and oversight of global banks and investment firms. A growing number of Americans, however, would prefer to pull their retirement savings out of...
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Social activist and local living economies advocate shares her investment secrets I have always felt uneasy about the stock market. As a longtime organizer and a local restaurant founder and owner, I put nearly all of my money, time, and energy into my local community, rather than into global corporate investments. When I inherited...
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Local banks can change the world, one neighborly investment at a time. William Spademan is a radical banker. In an era when Wall Street executives frequent talk shows to defend lavish bonuses “earned” through reckless speculation, Spademan has been working to create a new kind of bank that would empower communities instead of enriching...
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Financial Deregulation has Opened Up A Pandora’s box Is it possible to make hundreds of billions of dollars in profits on securities that are backed by nothing more than cyber-entries into a loan book? It’s not only possible; it’s been done. And now the scoundrels who cashed in on the swindle have lined up...
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Jim Rogers, the bow tie-wearing fund manager who made George Soros a billionaire, thinks it’s time to get back to the land. Agriculture has “been a terrible business for 30 years,” he says in this CNBC Asia discussion of China’s stimulus package. “It’s about to be a fabulous business.” Rogers points out that global...
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What began with a loan of $27 to 42 women in a small village 33 years ago has grown into a global microcredit movement that has changed the lives of millions of poor people around the world. Muhammad Yunus, founder and managing director of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, was the guest speaker at Wharton’s MBA...
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According to a new Wall Street Journal analysis that uses data from the Center for Responsive Politics, during the first three months of 2009, 31 financial institutions and trade groups spent a combined $27.6 million on federal lobbying and gave $286,000 in campaign contributions to lawmakers tasked with the oversight of the financial rules...
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Confessions of an ‘ex’ Peak Oil believer The good news is that panic scenarios about the world running out of oil anytime soon are wrong. The bad news is that the price of oil is going to continue to rise. Peak Oil is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high...
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Some of the best ideas are often the simplest. When applied to the global economic crisis, the solution is easier than imagined. What’s hard, in fact a Gordian Knot, is the political will to embrace it. But even matters that great can be solved by a bold stoke, and according to legend, Alexander the...
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In 1900, Argentina was one of the richest, most promising countries in the world. Just 100 years later it was, well…Argentina. A beautiful, cultured, wonderful place that’s such an economic basket case that many of its promising young people emigrate to Mexico to find work and opportunities. What happened to this country so rich...
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With the annual U.S. government deficit recently projected at $1.2 trillion (not counting additional spending expected from the fiscal stimulus package now before Congress) and President Barack Obama warning about “red ink...
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The world economy is not only showing few signs of recovery, but we are also looking at the end of the American century, according to German author and economist William Engdahl. In an exclusive interview with RT, he highlights the different ways in which the crisis has affected America and Europe and their subsequent...
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The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve have arguably two of the least transparent balance sheets known to humankind. This wouldn’t be such a big issue if the amount of money funneled into these organizations was small. That is not the case. The Federal Reserve since October of 2008 has held on its balance...
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This week couldn’t end fast enough for the Treasury bond market or the dollar, both of which were hammered again today as investors bailed out in thin pre-holiday trading. The yield on the 10-year T-note jumped to 3.45%, up from 3.35% on Thursday and 3.14% a week ago. The yield now is the highest...
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Bill Murphy and Chris Powell, co-founders of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. (www.gata.org), will be in London, England. Their trip is part of GATA’s ongoing effort to raise awareness of the gold cartel and its surreptitious intervention in the gold market. Bill and Chris will meet with the British news media to explain...
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Almost completely lost in the drama over the war supplemental for Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan is a sneaky play by the US Treasury Department to get $108 billion in tax dollars for the International Monetary Fund through the supplemental. Of course, if Treasury can get the money through the supplemental, it can avoid any...
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Marginalist Panaceas to Today’s Structural Problems It looks like bookstores are about to be swamped this summer and fall by a forest of advice for which publishers gave respectable advances a year ago as the economy was going off the rails. Seeking to minimize the risk of cognitive dissonance, the marketing strategy seems to...
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The Earth stood still, the seas parted and a member of the U.S. political class admitted last week that the Federal Reserve helped to cause the financial meltdown. OK, only the last of those happened, but it’s a welcome miracle nonetheless. The revelation came from Timothy Geithner last Wednesday with PBS’s Charlie Rose, who...
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Treasury Secy Tim Geithner Testimony Senate Banking Committee, May 20, 2009 – Full Text Good morning. Chairman Dodd, Ranking Member Shelby, members of the Senate Banking Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. On October 3, 2008, during a time of tremendous financial upheaval and economic uncertainty, Congress passed the...
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The US dollar is not Russia’s basic reserve currency anymore. The euro-based share of reserve assets of Russia’s Central Bank increased to the level of 47.5 percent as of January 1, 2009 and exceeded the investments in dollar assets, which made up 41.5 percent, The Vedomosti newspaper wrote. The dollar has thus lost the...
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Zhou did not mention the dollar by name but said the financial crisis had shown the need for reform. The head of the Chinese central bank has called for a new global currency controlled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), saying such a move would give governments particularly in the developing world the ability...
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But, you may ask, won’t the powers that be step into the breach again and abort the crisis before it gets a chance to run its course? Yes, certainly. That, by now, is standard operating procedure, and it cannot be excluded that it will succeed in the same ambiguous sense that it did after...
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Some worried commentators are predicting a massive hyperinflation of the sort suffered by Weimar Germany in 1923, when a wheelbarrow full of paper money could barely buy a loaf of bread. An April 29 editorial in the San Francisco Examiner warned: “With an unprecedented deficit that’s approaching $2 trillion, budget proposal...
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Introduction Following the 2009 G20 summit, plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the US dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. Point 19 of the communiqué released by the G20 at the end of the Summit stated, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation...
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It is payback time for Rothschild in Dubai. The 200-year-old banking house, perhaps the bluest of the blue bloods of the world’s financial dynasties, has always prided itself on the strength of its relationships, especially with governments and global power brokers. Now, after years of cultivating Dubai corporations with advice and assistance, it has...
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For more than a year, the U.S. Federal Reserve System has been increasingly acting as the world’s central bank, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign government treasuries in an effort to increase liquidity in those countries. The foreign central banks have used the U.S. currency to bail out financial institutions within their...
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Taming the Speculators: What Should Countries Do With Their Central Bank Reserves? Last week Izvestiya published an interview with former Premier Yevgeny Primakov, now president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. (Johnson’s Russia List published a translation on May 8). The discussion centered on a universal problem – what China and other Asian...
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The Federal Reserve Act was legislated in 1913 to end recessions, panics and depression. Over that almost 100-year period they have been eminently no more successful then their predecessors. The Fed is a private corporation, which guides US monetary policy. Its staff is from Wall Street, banking, and transnational conglomerates and occasionally from academia....
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This is the second in our Contours of Crisis paper series. The first article set the stage for the series. It began by outlining the conventional view that this is a finance-led crisis, that this turmoil was triggered and amplified by “financial excesses”; it then described the domino sequence of collapsing markets—a process that...
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This is the first in a series of short articles we plan to write on the current crisis. Our aim in this series is threefold: to outline some of the important contours of the crisis; to situate these patterns in historical context; and to reflect on their possible causes and implications. Since the crisis...
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Calls for nationalizing the banking industry have been bubbling since at least last September 2008, when the current Banking Panic began in the wake of the Lehman Brothers bank collapse, the initial AIG bailout, and the quick absorption of Merrill Lynch-Wachovia-Washington Mutual banks by their larger competitors, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JP...
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Do Economists Understand the Causes and Consequences of the Crisis? Classical/neoclassical economics has consistently protected the wealth of the privileged; it has preserved the status quo. This is capitalism’s intent, and the evidence for it is overwhelming. It has impeded the improvement of the human condition for two hundred years, and unless it is...
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THE LEVEL OF PUBLIC IGNORANCE on the topic of the U.S. and world monetary system is astonishing. This is part of the plan, of course, because the monetary elite control not only the financial system but also the news media, the publishing industry, and the educational system. The blueprint for control was put together...
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By far the most secret and least accountable operation of the federal government is not, as one might expect, the CIA, DIA, or some other super-secret intelligence agency. The CIA and other intelligence operations are under control of the Congress. They are accountable: a Congressional committee supervises these operations, controls their budgets, and is...
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In 2000, Big Oil teamed up with the nation’s largest investment banks and Enron to achieve the mother-of-all deregulatory loopholes. We are all paying the price today. In a monumental about-face, U.S. Security and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox became the latest deregulation devotee to confess utter failure, repudiating the policies to which he...
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SHARE Microcredit Program from E. F. Schumacher Society The Self-Help Association for a Regional Economy (SHARE) is a model community-based nonprofit that offers a simple way for citizens to create a sustainable local economy by supporting businesses that provide products or services needed in the region. SHARE makes micro-credit loans available at manageable interest...
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Microenterprise is an escape valve for social tension at times of crisis, and microbusinesses do a better job of weathering the storm than bigger companies because they are used to overcoming difficulties – a positive effect that is further multiplied when it involves women. “Microbusiness owners have always operated in tough conditions. For them,...
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We take a look at how one North Carolina town is trying to become more self-sufficient by moving toward being able to feed, fuel and finance itself. The town of Pittsboro houses the nation’s largest biodiesel cooperative, a food co-op, a farmers’ market and, most recently, its own currency, the Pittsboro Plenty. Pittsboro is...
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E. F. Schumacher Society Local Currencies and Self-Financing Tools The theory, history, and practice of the Schumacher Society’s work with local currencies is detailed in Local Currencies: Catalysts for Sustainable Regional Economies. Additionally, Bob Swann, founder of the E. F. Schumacher society, wrote several clear, compelling essays on local currencies, which can be found...
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There is a long list of professions that failed to see the financial crisis brewing. Wall Street bankers and deal-makers top it, but banking regulators are on it as well, along with the Federal Reserve. Politicians and journalists have shared the blame, as have mortgage lenders and even real estate agents. But what about...
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What are BerkShares? BerkShares are a local currency for the Berkshire region. Dubbed a “great economic experiment” by the New York Times, BerkShares are a tool for community empowerment, enabling merchants and consumers to plant the seeds for an alternative economic future for their communities. Launched in the fall of 2006, BerkShares had a...
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Education is Ignorance by Noam Chomsky Excerpted from Class Warfare DAVID BARSAMIAN: One of the heroes of the current right-wing revival… is Adam Smith. You’ve done some pretty impressive research on Smith that has excavated… a lot of information that’s not coming out. You’ve often quoted him describing the “vile maxim of the masters...
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A Video in Six Parts Written and Produced by Richard C. Cook This is a six-part professional-quality video that is over two hours in length. Each part consists of a lecture by Richard C. Cook on the economic crisis and its solution. This is the most in-depth and complete critique of our debt-based monetary...
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Part5: Understanding Money Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul Bernie Madoff showed us how it was done: you induce many investors to invest their money, promising steady above-market returns; and you deliver – at least on paper. When your clients check their accounts, they see that their investments have indeed increased by the promised...
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Do we really want the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) issuing our global currency In an April 7 article in The London Telegraph titled “The G20 Moves the World a Step Closer to a Global Currency,” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote: “A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts...
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Professor Muhammad Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves....
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Patrick Carmack, Producer of The Money Masters DVD open letter to American citizens on the $700 bailout Dear Fellow American Citizen: The ongoing, severe economic turmoil in our nation – destined to get worse if the right remedy is not enacted – was predicted in our video The Money Masters as the inevitable result...
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Money & Barter Some say that gold is not money; perhaps they are right, perhaps not. Money is a funny thing, an odd sort of duck, as no one seems to know for sure, just what it is – and what it isn’t. Who invented the stuff; and for what reason; from whence did...
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F. William Engdahl is an American-German freelance journalist, historian and economic researcher. He is author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (2004 Pluto Press. London). It has been published as well in French, German, Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Croatian, Slovenian and...
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Yes, the government prints our paper money. But that’s only a small fraction of the money in use. Most of the money in national economies is created when banks write it into their customers’ accounts out of thin air as bank loans. 1. You earn $100 and put it in the bank. And then…...
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Are you aware that the U.S. Constitution states that only Congress has the authority to create money; this money must be backed by gold and silver; and “bills of credit,” also known as Federal Reserve Notes, are illegal under Article I? Are you aware that our government is violating all of these stipulations at...
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Just how did we get into this economic mess? The answers are both complex and troubling. Blame greed, irresponsibility, lax government oversight, conflicts of interest and especially blind faith in a housing boom that seemingly had no end. But end it did, setting off a chain reaction that has left the economy in tatters...
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The South American country’s refusal to make ‘immoral and illegitimate’ payments exposes an international financial architecture glitch. When the government of Ecuador failed to make a scheduled interest payment on private bonds today, it was hardly the first time a country had defaulted in the middle of a financial crisis. In fact, it wasn’t...
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1. Losing Lehman Of all the decisions made by Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, the one to let Lehman go under stands as the most pivotal. And the most controversial. The Federal Reserve and Treasury decided to let Lehman fail and set a “moral hazard” example: from now on, you can’t rely on Uncle...
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Emmy-winning journalist Danny Schechter investigates America’s mounting debt crisis in this latest hard-hitting expose. The film reveals the unknown cabal of credit card companies, lobbyists, media conglomerates and the Bush administration itself who have colluded to deregulate the lending industry ensuring that a culture of credit dependency can flourish.
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Paul Grignon’s 47-minute animated presentation of “Money as Debt” tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created. In many nations debt is becoming a serious problem, with a huge proportion of people living in a world of loans and credit cards, building up unmanageable debts....
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On January 5, Ron Paul addressed the House Financial Services Committee’s hearing on the Madoff Ponzi scandal. He pointed out that Bernard Madoff was operating under the supervision of the SEC, that more regulation will only make the job of cunning fraudsters easier because they can claim to be approved by the government, and...
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Fuelling a new world money supply A paper written ahead of the recent G20 summit by Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the Chinese central bank, caused quite a stir. Zhou called for the establishment of a global reserve currency, a step which would firmly tip the balance of economic power in the direction of emerging...
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Attention around the world in recent weeks has been focused on microfinance and its untapped potential in developing countries like India, triggered by the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize that went last month to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, the microfinance organization he founded in Bangladesh three decades ago. The prize helped reemphasize the appeal...
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The American economy has gone away. It is not coming back until free trade myths are buried six feet under. America’s 20th century economic success was based on two things. Free trade was not one of them. America’s economic success was based on protectionism, which was ensured by the union victory in the Civil...
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At a Cambridge House Investment Conference I received a question about Bear Stearns. In my answer I alluded to the possible financial benefit of some from its implosion. When pressed I had to explain how credit default swaps worked and then we were out of time. Because the owners of the majority of the...
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Peter Millar: Seven-fold increase in gold needed to avert debt depression While it is almost three year old, a study of the enduring importance of gold in the world economic system by R. Peter W. Millar, founder of Valu-Trac Investment Research Ltd. in Scotland (www.valu-trac.com), seems ever more compelling to share with you. Millar...
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The value of gold is kept low to keep the value of the dollar high. Traditionally the value of a currency is measured in gold. Current economic policy (Monetarism) advices to infuse new money into the economy to stimulate economic growth. For the last few years money growth in the US has been over...
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The Capitalist Conspiracy: An Inside view of International Banking Written and narrated by G. Edward Griffin (1960′s) An old film, made sometime in the 60′s. This is an adaptation of a documentary filmstrip tracing the history of a small group of people who control the money systems of the world. It shows how this...
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The Money Masters is a documentary, produced by Patrick S. J. Carmack and directed and narrated by William T. Still. It discusses the concepts of money, debt, and taxes, and describes their development from biblical times onward. It covers the history of fractional-reserve banking, central banking, monetary policy, the bond system, and the Federal...
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What is a fiat currency? A currency that’s created and controlled by a government. In other words, it exists by government “fiat.” Using the dollar as an example, the U.S. Federal Reserve creates new dollars simply by printing them or injecting electronic “reserves” into the banking system. The supply of dollars thus depends on...
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Could the IMF run out of money? Who’s your bailout daddy? Well, if you’re Ukraine, Iceland, Hungary, Belarus, and Pakistan right now, it’s the International Monetary Fund. New loan commitments made by...
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(One of our objectives is to help non-specialist readers understand what they are reading in the news. Read Financial Crisis for Beginners.) I’ve had two posts so far on the terms under which Treasury sold back to Old National the warrants on Old National stock that Treasury got in exchange for its TARP investment,...
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(One of our objectives is to help non-specialist readers understand what they are reading in the news. Read Financial Crisis for Beginners.) The big news on the banking front this week will be the public release of the stress test results, currently scheduled for Thursday (originally it was supposed to be today). Over at...
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(One of our objectives is to help non-specialist readers understand what they are reading in the news. Read Financial Crisis for Beginners.) My post about French sociology got a wide range of comments, ranging from “Without a doubt, your best post yet” to “Reading this post made me think, for the first time, of...
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(One of our objectives is to help non-specialist readers understand what they are reading in the news. Read Financial Crisis for Beginners.) Kevin Drum pointed me to Ryan Avent’s insightful review of Ben Bernanke’s recent speech on financial innovation. (How’s that for the Internets in action?) Bernanke’s brief was simple: to defend financial innovation...
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