The Independent

Government won't prosecute Goldman Sachs in probe – USATODAY.com

WOW! My previous futures broker (PFGBest)... thank God I am no longer with them... and those that think "Obamacare", run by our government, is going to turn out swell this is what you can expect... AS USUAL OUR REGULATORS ARE ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL! WHEN ARE AMERICANS GOING TO WAKE AND DEMAND CHANGE! OH, THAT'S RIGHT, YOU DID IN THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION! THE CORRUPTION AND ROT RUN TO THE CORE NOW... LEHMAN BROS BERNIE MADOFF MF GLOBAL (Corzine) GOLDMAN SACHS (Lloyd Blankfien) JP MORGAN/CHASE (Jamie Dimon) PFGBest (Russell Wasendorf Sr.) WHERE IS THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ~ OH, THATS RIGHT ~ THEY TOO ARE ABOVE THE LAW NOW! SAD TO SAY... I SMELL A SYSTEMIC FAILURE AND THEN REVOLUTION IN OUR FUTURE... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304022004577518680956762826.html

We learned Monday that the Central Planners have proposed a $3.8 trillion budget, with $2.0 trillion of tax increases, $1.0 trillion coming by increasing income taxes on families who earn more than $250,000. For those of you earning $250,000 in your families, which is about $125,000 after taxes using current tax rates, I ask you the question, are you rich? You are paying $1,200 a month in health insurance, paying $40,000 a year in college tuition with no scholarship help because you make too much money, and had 40 percent of your stock investments and 20 percent of your real estate investments wiped out the past three years. You pay three times as much in real estate taxes on the same home you lived in ten years ago. Are you rich? You work for a firm that could downsize or go bankrupt at any moment. Are you rich? Government tax revenues decline due to economic recession, and government spending increases because that is what Central Planners do under the guise of stimulating the econom...

“Has there been one financial leader to say this is really excessive? Wake up, gentlemen. Your response, I can only say, has been inadequate.” Paul Volcker, former Fed Chairman, Dec 8, 2009From The Times: ‘Wake up, gentlemen’, world’s top bankers warned by former Fed chairman Volcker “I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth — one shred of evidence,” said Mr Volcker ... He said that financial services in the United States had increased its share of value added from 2 per cent to 6.5 per cent, but he asked: “Is that a reflection of your financial innovation, or just a reflection of what you’re paid?” And from the Telegraph: Ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker's 'telling' words on derivatives industry    "You can innovate as much as you like, but do it within a structure that doesn't put the whole economy at risk." ... Mr Volcker argued that banks did have a vital role to play as holders of ...

Here is what we (us, our kids, grandkids, great-grandkids) owe... Only taxes can pay for these or a default by the US congress. When you're in a hole, stop digging. Congress has to go - they are the diggers! Throw all the incumbent bums out!   U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart every hour of every day. 2. This results in $20,928 profit every minute! 3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year. 4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined. 5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest private employer.  And most speak English 6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the World. 7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years. 8. During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought bankruptcy (including Winn-Dixie).. 9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.. 10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had 5 years ago. 11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at a Wal-Mart store. (Earth's population i...

Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York “severely limited” its ability to save taxpayer money on American International Group Inc.’s rescue by refusing to compel banks to take concessions, said a Treasury Department watchdog. The Fed didn’t use its “considerable leverage” as regulator of several of AIG’s counterparties to force them to accept so-called haircuts on credit-default swaps, Neil Barofsky, special inspector for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said today in a report. The regulator gave up efforts to negotiate discounts from the banks after two days and opted to pay them in full for $62.1 billion in swaps, Barofsky said. “These policy decisions came with a cost -- they led directly to a negotiating strategy with the counterparties that even then-New York Fed President Geithner acknowledged had little likelihood of success,” Barofsky said. Timothy Geithner, now Treasury secretary, was among officials who took over negotiations with the banks from AIG in N...

by CalculatedRisk on 11/15/2009 09:20:00 AM From Bloomberg: China’s Liu Says U.S. Rates Cause Dollar Speculation “The continuous depreciation in the dollar, and the U.S. government’s indication, that in order to resume growth and maintain public confidence, it basically won’t raise interest rates for the coming 12 to 18 months, has led to massive dollar arbitrage speculation,” [Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission said] ... Liu said this has “seriously affected global asset prices, fuelled speculation in stock and property markets, and created new, real and insurmountable risks to the recovery of the global economy, especially emerging-market economies.” President Obama will be in China today, and there will probably be some dicussion of China's exchange rate policy.

From Floyd Norris This year, a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing at which legislators sought no facts but instead threatened dire action if the chairman of the financial accounting board did not promptly make it easier for banks to ignore market values of the toxic securities they owned. The board caved in, which may be one reason why banks are reporting fewer losses these days. But the board’s retreat was not enough to satisfy the banks. The American Bankers Association is now pushing Congress to give a new systemic risk regulator — either the Federal Reserve or some panel of regulators — the power to override accounting standards. The view of the bankers is that the financial crisis did not stem from the fact that the banks made lots of bad loans and invested in dubious securities; it was caused by accounting rules that required disclosure when the losses began to mount. The superciliousness continues.

16 Oct 2009 09:21 AM PDT From MarketWatch: Summers: 'Time has come' for deep change for banks White House senior economic adviser Lawrence Summers challenged U.S. financial institutions Friday to think about what they can do for their country by stepping up and accepting the regulations imposed upon them in the wake of the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. "Financial institutions that have benefited from government support can, should and must use this moment to think about what they can do for their country -- by accepting the necessary regulation to protect the American people," Summers said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Economist's Buttonwood Gathering in New York. "There is no financial institution that exists today that is not the direct or indirect beneficiary of trillions of dollars of taxpayer support for the financial system." ... "The time has come for fundamental change in the financial sector of our economy...

Paul B. Farrell Oct. 20, 2009, 8:08 a.m. EDT Death of 'Soul of Capitalism:' Bogle, Faber, Moore By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Jack Bogle published "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" four years ago. The battle's over. The sequel should be titled: "Capitalism Died a Lost Soul." Worse, we've lost "America's Soul." And worldwide the consequences will be catastrophic. That's why a man like Hong Kong's contrarian economist Marc Faber warns in his Doom, Boom & Gloom Report: "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today." No, not just another meltdown, another bear market recession like the one recently triggered by Wall Street's "too-greedy-to-fail" banks. Faber is warning that the entire system of capitalism will collapse. Get it? The engine driving the great "American Economic Empire" f...

Wall Street Regulation Won’t Be Completed This Year, Bair Says - Bloomberg.com Wall Street Regulation Won’t Be Completed This Year, Bair Says By Alison Vekshin Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Congress won’t approve an overhaul of Wall Street regulation this year because lawmakers disagree on the plan and need time to weigh proposals, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said. “I really don’t think anything is going to happen this year, certainly not a bill becoming law,” Bair said yesterday in a question-and-answer session at a dinner in New York honoring women in banking. “I think we’ll see a lot of activity hopefully in the first quarter of next year.” Bair, 55, said Congress should carefully study the options and hold more hearings. There are some areas where lawmakers clearly need to act and other areas “we still may be working through that maybe it would be better to take a deep breath and think about it a little more,” Bair said. House Financial Services Committee ...