"The investigators discovered that the banks ran dedicated units to systematically aid the undetected transfer of money through the U.S. banking system. They did that by removing identifying coding on fund transfers so they could evade automated U.S. bank computer systems designed to spot money flowing from a sanctioned state."
Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts—the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year’s end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June.
The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear—why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel’s critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“The AIG rescue demonstrated that Treasury and the Federal Reserve would commit taxpayers to pay any price and bear any burden to prevent the collapse of America’s largest financial institutions,” the COP report said.
These two article disclose the fact that the U.S. State Department through the United States Agency for International Development will provide millions of U.S.taxpayer dollars to train foreign workers to work in American outsourced factories. This program is in effect in South Asia and will be extended now to Armenia.
I find this information very hard to understand. What do you suppose unemployed Americans feel about this?
"Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act."
"The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot."
The second-quarter results may include gains taken under a U.S. accounting rule known as Statement 159, adopted by the Financial Accounting Standards Board in 2007, which allows banks to book profits when the value of their bonds falls from par. The rule expanded the daily marking of banks’ trading assets to their liabilities, under the theory that a profit would be realized if the debt were bought back at a discount.
In practice, it’s an accounting "abomination" because fluctuations in the value of the debt don’t change the amount the banks owe, said Chris Kotowski, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York. "Just because Morgan’s credit spreads widened out this quarter doesn’t mean that their ultimate interest and principal payments changed one iota," Kotowski said. "The market will back it out, both on the upside and the downside."
Brazil has previously announced it will suspend its WTO-approved sanctions on U.S. COTTON exports. Brazil planned to place tariffs on U.S. products in retaliation for subsidies provided to U.S. cotton growers.
Now a Brazilian lobbying group in Washington D.C. has called on President Obama to remove the tariffs on imported sugar-based ETHANOL that protects the U.S. corn industry. The current tariff is 54 cents and is supported by a 51 cent subsidy per gallon to U.S.-based ethanol producers.
"Chrysler entered and exited bankruptcy in 42 days, making it one of the fastest major industrial bankruptcies in memory. It entered as a company widely thought to be ripe for liquidation if left on its own, obtained massive funding from the United States Treasury, and exited via a pseudo sale of its main assets to a new government-funded entity. The unevenness of the compensation to prior creditors raised considerable concerns in capital markets, which we evaluate here. We conclude that the Chrysler bankruptcy cannot be understood as complying with good bankruptcy practice, that it resurrected discredited practices long thought interred in the 19th and early 20th century equity receiverships, and that its potential, if followed, for disrupting financial markets surrounding troubled companies in difficult economic times is more than small."
Harry Reid will make sure that an amendment to break up megabanks and cap their size comes up for a vote, the Senate majority leader said. He added that he was leaning heavily toward voting for the amendment, cosponsored by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.).
Reid will also support an amendment from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that will authorize an audit of the Federal Reserve, he said.
On Wednesday, Reid was noncommittal when asked by reporters at a briefing about the two major amendments. In an interview in his office with the Huffington Post on Thursday, Reid went further when asked if he'd considered the amendments since the briefing.
"I'll probably vote for it," Reid said. Does that mean it'll come up for a vote?
"Oh, it's going to come up. I'll make sure it comes up," said Reid of the Brown-Kaufman amendment. "Unless my staff convinces me differently. But what I know about it, I'll vote for it."
Reid said he has not been lobbied by the White House to oppose either Brown-Kaufman or the Sanders amendment. "No one's talked to me," he said.
Economists largely agree that the only way to end the bailout of big banks is to reduce banks to a size small enough so that if they fail, they don't bring down the entire system.
Reid's support gives a major boost to two amendments that have surged in the past few days and are now within a shot of passage. Brown-Kaufman is "among the most deeply dreaded by Wall Street," the New York Times wrote Thursday.
Reid's backing gives Brown-Kaufman two powerful backers. On Tuesday, Reid second in command, Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said on the Senate floor he was backing the measure.
"I would say that [of] all the many amendments which will be offered, this is clearly a game changer," said Durbin. "I am supportive of this amendment, even though I know that some of my friends in the banking -- some of my friends in the banking industry won't be happy with that. What they're talking about is dealing with the concentration of wealth and the concentration of economic power to a level which can literally bring the economy down. That's what we went through leading into this recession. That's what led to the massive taxpayer bailout. And that's what the Brown-Kaufman amendment addresses foursquare."
UPDATE: Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who had previously voted against a previous iteration of an audit of the Fed, will support the Sanders amendment, his spokesman Adam Bozzi tells HuffPost. Meanwhile, Greg Sargent reports that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) will vote for Kaufman-Brown.
"But Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny warned of a revolution if there was more money put into Anglo Irish Bank, which he described as a "dead bank, which will not lend any more money".
"I put it to you, Taoiseach, there will be revolution on the streets if you do that. Whatever case can be made for AIB, there can be no case made for giving €6bn more of taxpayers' money to Anglo Irish Bank."
This is a recent video of Hugh Hendry and Nassim Taleb taking up Mark Faber's challenge in the Russia Forum on where to invest $100,000.00 in 2010. Two different views on U.S. Treasuries:
"With the help of Goldman Sachs, Greece has been using giant swaps deals to ensure its national debt ratios meet EU targets. But these deals are likely to prove controversial". By Nicholas Dunbar
"The investigators discovered that the banks ran dedicated units to systematically aid the undetected transfer of money through the U.S. banking system. They did that by removing identifying coding on fund transfers so they could evade automated U.S. bank computer systems designed to spot money flowing from a sanctioned state."
http://tinyurl.com/28nucoj
It seems these banks are nothing more than criminal enterprises.
http://tinyurl.com/2925wus
No one went to jail.
http://www.nanex.net/FlashCrash/CCircleDay.html
http://tinyurl.com/35b8ehs
http://tinyurl.com/25scj5f
Hard to imagine how these two countries can service their debt...
United States:
$13.5 trillion in household sector debt
$10.9 trillion in business sector debt
$8.2 trillion of Federal debt
$14.9 trillion in financial sector debt
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/
[Debt growth, borrowing and debt outstanding tables, see bottom of page 3]
Japanese debt service:
1 quadrillion yen in total credit market debt
Tax receipts: 40 trillion yen
Expenses: 97 trillion yen.
Every 100 basis points costs Japan 25% of revenue for debt service.
Kyle Bass on Japan (starts at 02:20 mark)
http://tinyurl.com/2aykyqq
http://tinyurl.com/23m99qf
Triple top, turning down, PE of 39:
http://tinyurl.com/3y66vqt
Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts—the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year’s end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June.
The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear—why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel’s critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“The AIG rescue demonstrated that Treasury and the Federal Reserve would commit taxpayers to pay any price and bear any burden to prevent the collapse of America’s largest financial institutions,” the COP report said.
http://tinyurl.com/2dnqlw5
These two article disclose the fact that the U.S. State Department through the United States Agency for International Development will provide millions of U.S.taxpayer dollars to train foreign workers to work in American outsourced factories. This program is in effect in South Asia and will be extended now to Armenia.
I find this information very hard to understand. What do you suppose unemployed Americans feel about this?
http://tinyurl.com/2cbjfgv
http://tinyurl.com/35tfsvr
"Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act."
"The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot."
http://tinyurl.com/27xgtvt
STATEMENT 159
The second-quarter results may include gains taken under a U.S. accounting rule known as Statement 159, adopted by the Financial Accounting Standards Board in 2007, which allows banks to book profits when the value of their bonds falls from par. The rule expanded the daily marking of banks’ trading assets to their liabilities, under the theory that a profit would be realized if the debt were bought back at a discount.
In practice, it’s an accounting "abomination" because fluctuations in the value of the debt don’t change the amount the banks owe, said Chris Kotowski, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York. "Just because Morgan’s credit spreads widened out this quarter doesn’t mean that their ultimate interest and principal payments changed one iota," Kotowski said. "The market will back it out, both on the upside and the downside."
http://tinyurl.com/2783prq
Interesting move in sugar on the FINVIZ chart. SGG has been showing up a lot on the ETF screener (http://www.etfscreen.com/index.php).
Brazil has previously announced it will suspend its WTO-approved sanctions on U.S. COTTON exports. Brazil planned to place tariffs on U.S. products in retaliation for subsidies provided to U.S. cotton growers.
Now a Brazilian lobbying group in Washington D.C. has called on President Obama to remove the tariffs on imported sugar-based ETHANOL that protects the U.S. corn industry. The current tariff is 54 cents and is supported by a 51 cent subsidy per gallon to U.S.-based ethanol producers.
SGG up 5.6 percent last 4 weeks.
"Chrysler entered and exited bankruptcy in 42 days, making it one of the fastest major industrial bankruptcies in memory. It entered as a company widely thought to be ripe for liquidation if left on its own, obtained massive funding from the United States Treasury, and exited via a pseudo sale of its main assets to a new government-funded entity. The unevenness of the compensation to prior creditors raised considerable concerns in capital markets, which we evaluate here. We conclude that the Chrysler bankruptcy cannot be understood as complying with good bankruptcy practice, that it resurrected discredited practices long thought interred in the 19th and early 20th century equity receiverships, and that its potential, if followed, for disrupting financial markets surrounding troubled companies in difficult economic times is more than small."
http://tinyurl.com/2745wnr
"Look at the DOWN/UP ratio at the bottom. Looks like panic extreme today. $QQQQ $DIA $SPY"
See bottom of chart...
http://chart.ly/e447mw
They must intervene in the market Sunday night
"instead of getting an audit of the Fed, the Fed gets to audit us."
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/66439
FORCED MARGIN LIQUIDATION-got till 11:30am, sell or pay up.
Translation:
"Some connected people lost money to non-connected people. We are cancelling those trades. All other trades will stay as is."
First posted at 12:41pm
Reid Backs Breaking Up Banks, Auditing Fed
First Posted: 05- 6-10 12:41 PM | Updated: 05- 6-10 01:41 PM
Harry Reid will make sure that an amendment to break up megabanks and cap their size comes up for a vote, the Senate majority leader said. He added that he was leaning heavily toward voting for the amendment, cosponsored by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.).
Reid will also support an amendment from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that will authorize an audit of the Federal Reserve, he said.
On Wednesday, Reid was noncommittal when asked by reporters at a briefing about the two major amendments. In an interview in his office with the Huffington Post on Thursday, Reid went further when asked if he'd considered the amendments since the briefing.
"I'll probably vote for it," Reid said. Does that mean it'll come up for a vote?
"Oh, it's going to come up. I'll make sure it comes up," said Reid of the Brown-Kaufman amendment. "Unless my staff convinces me differently. But what I know about it, I'll vote for it."
Reid said he has not been lobbied by the White House to oppose either Brown-Kaufman or the Sanders amendment. "No one's talked to me," he said.
Economists largely agree that the only way to end the bailout of big banks is to reduce banks to a size small enough so that if they fail, they don't bring down the entire system.
Reid's support gives a major boost to two amendments that have surged in the past few days and are now within a shot of passage. Brown-Kaufman is "among the most deeply dreaded by Wall Street," the New York Times wrote Thursday.
Reid's backing gives Brown-Kaufman two powerful backers. On Tuesday, Reid second in command, Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said on the Senate floor he was backing the measure.
"I would say that [of] all the many amendments which will be offered, this is clearly a game changer," said Durbin. "I am supportive of this amendment, even though I know that some of my friends in the banking -- some of my friends in the banking industry won't be happy with that. What they're talking about is dealing with the concentration of wealth and the concentration of economic power to a level which can literally bring the economy down. That's what we went through leading into this recession. That's what led to the massive taxpayer bailout. And that's what the Brown-Kaufman amendment addresses foursquare."
UPDATE: Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who had previously voted against a previous iteration of an audit of the Fed, will support the Sanders amendment, his spokesman Adam Bozzi tells HuffPost. Meanwhile, Greg Sargent reports that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) will vote for Kaufman-Brown.
http://tinyurl.com/2bynged
first-quarter revenues. Goldman Sachs finds $5bn for pay and bonuses amid fraud investigation:
http://tinyurl.com/y2h9wr7
The Irish people are getting very upset...
"But Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny warned of a revolution if there was more money put into Anglo Irish Bank, which he described as a "dead bank, which will not lend any more money".
"I put it to you, Taoiseach, there will be revolution on the streets if you do that. Whatever case can be made for AIB, there can be no case made for giving €6bn more of taxpayers' money to Anglo Irish Bank."
http://tinyurl.com/yflsmqc
This is a recent video of Hugh Hendry and Nassim Taleb taking up Mark Faber's challenge in the Russia Forum on where to invest $100,000.00 in 2010. Two different views on U.S. Treasuries:
http://tinyurl.com/ygv9pc7
This headline is from July 1, 2003...
"With the help of Goldman Sachs, Greece has been using giant swaps deals to ensure its national debt ratios meet EU targets. But these deals are likely to prove controversial". By Nicholas Dunbar
http://tinyurl.com/ygw6nda