Citigroup Memo Points to Gold as a Safe Haven

"Gold has tripled in value over the last seven years, vastly outperforming Wall Street and European bourses."

This is perhaps the gem in this article, the reminder that gold has proven to be one of the best stores of value through the turmoil of the turn of the century. People tend to lose sight of this, being preoccupied with the short term up and down of markets.

And it is most probable that it will continue to be an excellent store of value, a safe haven for wealth, over the next twenty or more years, as it has been over the past twenty or more centuries.

Why is this? Because although governments may seek to control it, prohibit it, monopolize it, disdain or disfavor it, they cannot create it, or prevent it from being valued by independent minds throughout recorded history as genuine wealth.

UK Telegraph
Citigroup says gold could rise above $2,000 next year as world unravels
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
7:29AM GMT 27 Nov 2008

Gold is poised for a dramatic surge and could blast through $2,000 an ounce by the end of next year as central banks flood the world's monetary system with liquidity, according to an internal client note from the US bank Citigroup.

The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world's authorities to take steps that had never been tried before.

This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold. (A resurgence of inflation is hardly an extreme outcome, being more like the norm for the past 90 years. And we have had civil disorder and wars throughout the period of fiat inflation. - Jesse)

"They are throwing the kitchen sink at this," said Tom Fitzpatrick, the bank's chief technical strategist.

"The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock.

"Or it will not work because too much damage has already been done, and we will see continued financial deterioration, causing further economic deterioration, with the risk of a feedback loop. We don't think this is the more likely outcome, but as each week and month passes, there is a growing danger of vicious circle as confidence erodes," he said.

"This will lead to political instability. We are already seeing countries on the periphery of Europe under severe stress. Some leaders are now at record levels of unpopularity. There is a risk of domestic unrest, starting with strikes because people are feeling disenfranchised." (President Bush set record lows for popularity, and he did not require deflation to do it. Deflation is being held up as a boogeyman in this note. - Jesse)

"What happens if there is a meltdown in a country like Pakistan, which is a nuclear power. People react when they have their backs to the wall. We're already seeing doubts emerge about the sovereign debts of developed AAA-rated countries, which is not something you can ignore," he said. (We have not read the original note, but the questions of sovereign debt are related to default and inflation, not deflation. This is an awfully muddled set of ideas. - Jesse)

Gold traders are playing close attention to reports from Beijing that the China is thinking of boosting its gold reserves from 600 tonnes to nearer 4,000 tonnes to diversify away from paper currencies. "If true, this is a very material change," he said. (True and it would be an extremely intelligent move if they were to do so. - Jesse)

Mr Fitzpatrick said Britain had made a mistake selling off half its gold at the bottom of the market between 1999 to 2002. "People have started to question the value of government debt," he said. (Government debt has always been devalued and defaulted upon throughout history without exception. - Jesse)

Citigroup said the blast-off was likely to occur within two years, and possibly as soon as 2009. Gold was trading yesterday at $812 an ounce. It is well off its all-time peak of $1,030 in February but has held up much better than other commodities over the last few months – reverting to is historical role as a safe-haven store of value and a de facto currency. (This is not much of a prediction to be frank. Gold was bouncing along the 1000 level on the last leg up, and is now consolidating. A target of 2000 over the next two years seems a bit tame. - Jesse)

Gold has tripled in value over the last seven years, vastly outperforming Wall Street and European bourses.

Money Supply, Paul Krugman, and the Great Depression

We like Paul Krugman and enjoy reading his columns. But every so often he writes a column that is so off his normal standards that it makes us wonder if he is on vacation and the task of producing the column has been delegated to a graduate assistant.

Here is one such example.

NY Times
Was the Great Depression a monetary phenomenon?
By Paul Krugman
November 28, 2008, 1:47 pm



Has anyone else noticed that the current crisis sheds light on one of the great controversies of economic history?

A central theme of Keynes’s General Theory was the impotence of monetary policy in depression-type conditions. But Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, in their magisterial monetary history of the United States, claimed that the Fed could have prevented the Great Depression — a claim that in later, popular writings, including those of Friedman himself, was transmuted into the claim that the Fed caused the Depression.

Now, what the Fed really controlled was the monetary base — currency plus bank reserves. As the figure shows, the base actually rose during the great slump, which is why it’s hard to make the case that the Fed caused the Depression. But arguably the Depression could have been prevented if the Fed had done more — if it had expanded the monetary base faster and done more to rescue banks in trouble.

So here we are, facing a new crisis reminiscent of the 1930s. And this time the Fed has been spectacularly aggressive about expanding the monetary base:



And guess what — it doesn’t seem to be working.

I think the thesis of the Monetary History has just taken a hit.

We have mixed emotions on this one since we think the monetarist approach is a too one-dimensional to explain what happened then and now, and agree with Keynes that monetary policy alone is incapable of dealing with a complex economic event such as we are now facing. We also do not believe that the Fed 'caused' the Great Depression.

However, to try and make the case that the Fed can "only" control reserves and the currency base, the monetary base, is an old canard trotted out by the likes of Greenspan and his ilk when they wish to make the case that things are happening, like enormous bubbles, that are beyond the Fed's control. This is a Clintonian use of the word 'control' and is always and everywhere rubbish.

The Fed's power, its influence, is profound, and ever moreso in this era of aggressive financial engineering. Krugman uses the narrow argument of literal control to point to the Adjusted Monetary Base as his sole metric and say, "See the monetary base went up in the Depression in his Chart 1, just as it is today in Chart 2. Therefore there was no error from the Fed at that time because it was all that they could do."

Here are two other charts that help to provide a better view of what really happened.



Please note in the above chart that after the British abandoned the gold standard, the Federal Reserve RAISED the discount rate for US banks in the spring of 1931 from 1.5 to 3.5 percent, or 200 basis points.



To emphasize the policy error look at this estimate of real interest rates leading into the bottom of the Great Depression in 1933. Nine out of ten economists might notice that, relative to the price deflation which was obviously occurring, that the increase in Discount Rate was motivated by other than monetary and domestic considerations.

Finally, let's take a look at a broader money supply for the period, M1, against the change in GDP.



Please notice the decline in M1 tracking the changes in GDP.

So, what might the Fed had done differently?

It is obvious that devaluing the dollar was the right thing to do. To that end, the Fed might have cut the discount rate to less than one percent, instead of raising it, which was likely in response to the movement of the British pound and the Bank of England's abandonment of the gold standard. They also might have lent in size to any bank requiring deposits, so that there would be no more bank failures for banks that were in otherwise reasonably good shape, that is, because of depositor runs.

And this is where we do part company with Mr. Friedman and Ms. Schwarz and join Lord Keynes in his observation that it requires fiscal and legislative actions to repair an economic shock such as the country was experiencing in the early 1930's.



Notice that Government Purchase drop, and rather sharply, into the trough of 1933, along with aggregate demand. This would have been the point where Keynes would have likely observed that supply money was not enough, but was only a first step in stabilizing the system. The 'real cure' was to get people working again, to provide wages and gainful employment, to encourage consumption and economic activity.

As an aside, notice that net exports were negative and remained so throughout the period of 1929 through 1933. Much has been made of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, and indeed exports did nominally decrease. But the proportion of decline to imports makes it clear that protectionism was rampant throughout the rest of the world, and had not been caused by anything the United States was doing per se.

We don't have the chart at hand, and will continue to look for it, but the United States was one of the last of the developed nations to emerge from the Depression with positive GDP growth. We think that this was caused by exactly the phenomenon that Keynes observed, which was a lack of government fiscal and legislative activity to promote economic activity, as well as a relatively open market for imports and a "business first" bias, to the disadvantage of the unemployed working people.

In conclusion we would say that contrary to what Mr. Krugman asserts it is apparent that the Fed made a significant policy error in raising the discount rate in early 1931. It is less clear what latitude they might have had to do more to stem the tide of bank failures because of depositor fears, but they clearly could have done more to react to the contracting money supply. We have heard that they only were able to think in termed of the monetary base and had no statistics beyond that with which to guide their efforts.

We think that this is a weak rationale at best for their failure as bankers to respond to the obviously dire situation of the economy which evident in and of itself. We would not accuse them of lacking imagination, inventiveness, determination, and a spirit of pragmatic activism. In fact, they strike us as 'clubbable men' acting for their club.

We shall see this time perhaps if monetary activism alone is sufficient, especially if the Republicans and corporate banking interests have their way. But it does not appear to be the case since making money available to lend does not solve the problem of helping to create an economic environment in which profits might be made.

Indeed, we can imagine an outcome in which misbegotten monetary policy results in an oligopoly of corporate interests and an economy that is permanently frozen in a series of de facto monopolies based on central planning, not all that dissimilar to the experience of the Soviet Union prior to its dissolution and some countries in which a hundred or so powerful families control the government and its economy in a state of permanent corruption and malaise.

Second Largest UK Bank RBS to be Nationalized

If you watch Bloomberg television you may have seen the Royal Bank of Scotland commercial advertisements which display some of the worst corporate hubris imaginable.

RBS is the second largest UK bank by assets, following HSBC. It is being taken over by the British government. Their bailout plan involves the dividend being cancelled, and top management losing their bonuses and jobs, among other things.

AP
RBS to be taken over by British government
By Emily Flynn Vencat
Friday November 28, 12:51 pm ET

Royal Bank of Scotland says British government will buy majority stake in bank

LONDON (AP) - The British government will take over Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC with a majority stake of almost 60 percent after the shareholders of the nation's second-largest bank shunned an emergency share issue.

The 20 billion pound ($31 billion) rescue takeover, the result of a plan announced last month, means that dividends on common shares will be scrapped and top executives' bonuses will be canceled. Chief Executive Fred Goodwin has resigned and Chairman Tom McKillop, who last week personally apologized to shareholders for the 85 percent fall in the bank's share value, has said he will retire next year.

RBS's 1.8 trillion pounds in assets are topped among U.K. banks only by those of HSBC. Its operations around the world include Citizens Financial Group, a commercial bank holding company headquartered in Providence, R.I., and Greenwich Capital Markets, based in Greenwich, Conn.

Fears about the solvency of RBS intensified this year as the global credit crisis contributed to it writing off 5.9 billion pounds ($9.2 billion) in bad loans. A third of that was due to last year's ill-timed euro14 billion acquisition of part of Dutch bank ABN Amro.

The government's shares will be held by a company called UK Financial Investments LTD. Its charge is to maximize value for taxpayers and prevent politicians from making business decisions about the bank.

"The investment will be managed at an arm's length from government," the Treasury spokesman said.

The bank, which has indicated it could post its first ever annual loss this year, was forced to resort last month to the British government's bailout plan, which offered as much as 37 billion pounds to prop up RBS and two other U.K.-based banks, Lloyds TSB Group PLC and HBOS PLC. In all three cases, the government guaranteed to buy any shares not purchased by investors.

At the government's request, RBS announced a share issue a month ago at 65.5 pence a share. But because its share price has fallen by almost a quarter since then, investors knew the government, in its role as guarantor of the issue, would end up having to shoulder the full amount when the deadline expired Friday. The result is an immediate $5 billion pound paper loss for taxpayers.

Only 0.2 percent of the shares were taken up by investors, leaving the state with the balance and boosting its ownership stake to 57.9 percent. Three-quarters of Friday's 20 billion-pound government investment was in ordinary shares and the remainder was preference shares.

Shares in RBS fell 2.4 percent to 53.7 pence on the London Stock Exchange Friday as investors braced for dividend payments to be cut.

As long as the government owns preferential shares, its restrictions on dividends and bonuses will be enforced. The bank had already scrapped a cash dividend for the first half of the fiscal year 2008, paying instead a dividend in shares.

A Treasury spokesman, who declined to be named because of government policy, called the government's imminent purchase of the stake in RBS "the next step" in "a process that supports financial stability, protects ordinary savers, depositors, businesses and borrowers; while safeguarding the interests of the taxpayer."

The drastic fundraising plan comes on top of a 12 billion pounds rights issue by RBS earlier this year -- at the time the biggest ever rights issue in Europe.

RBS shares were above 380 pence last December, and above 200 pence as recently as Sept. 26.

The Wages of Irrational Greed

The actual costs of several of the items can be debated, especially in the case of warfare and its soft and collateral costs. Joe Stiglitz has estimated the cost of the total Iraq war to three trillion dollars when all the expenses are considered.

One can quibble with the details, and even make the case that any expenditures financed by debt are of equal economic value, that there is no difference between pure consumption and greed, and productive investment in infrastructure. That there exists no good or evil and that justice has no penalty or value.

But one has to ask what could have been accomplished, what great achievements could we have endowed to posterity, if we had only restrained the greed of Wall Street and the corruption of the world's economy through the US dollar as its reserve currency which permitted the almost unrestrained creation of debt by a succession of narcissists and sociopaths?

If this chart is not shocking, does not sicken you at heart, repulse you, fill you with righteous anger, make you feel ashamed, then you may be emotionally a child, or perhaps no longer human.

An Itemized Breakdown of the 8.5 Trillion Bailout to Date

Ecuador to Selectively Default on Foreign Debt as "Illegitimate"

Opening salvo in a restructuring negotiation no doubt, but it will be interesting if this becomes a trend amongst those who perceive themselves in debt peonage to the corrupting schemes and usury of economic hitmen.

Alter.net
As Crisis Mounts, Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate and Illegal
By Daniel Denvir
November 26, 2008.

A special debt audit commission released a report charging that much of Ecuador's foreign debt was illegitimate or illegal.

Amidst the spreading global financial crisis, a special debt audit commission released a report charging that much of Ecuador's foreign debt was illegitimate or illegal. The commission recommended that Ecuador default on $3.9 billion in foreign commercial debts--Global Bonds 2012, 2015 and 2030--the result of debts restructured in 2000 after the country's 1999 default.

Although Ecuador currently has the capacity to pay, dropping oil prices and squeezed credit markets are putting President Rafael Correa's plans to boost spending on education and health care in jeopardy. Correa has pledged to prioritize the "social debt" over debt to foreign creditors.

The commission accused Salomon Smith Barney, now part of Citigroup Inc., of handling the 2000 restructuring without Ecuador's authorization, leading to the application of 10 and 12 percent interest rates. The commission evaluated all commercial, multilateral, government-to-government and domestic debt from 1976-2006.

Commercial debt, or debt to private banks, made up 44% of Ecuador's interest payments in 2007, considerably more than the 27% paid to multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But the report also lambasted multilateral debt, saying that many IMF and World Bank loans were used to advance the interests of transnational corporations. Ecuador's military dictatorship (1974-1979) was the first government to lead the country into indebtedness.

The commission found that usurious interest rates were applied for many bonds and that past Ecuadorian governments illegally took other loans on. Debt restructurings consistently forced Ecuador to take on more foreign debt to pay outstanding debt, and often at much higher interest rates. The commission also charged that the U.S. Federal Reserve's late 1970's interest rate hikes constituted a "unilateral" increase in global rates, compounding Ecuador's indebtedness.

If President Rafael Correa follows the commission's recommendations--which is far from a certainty--Ecuador could default on some portion of its foreign debt, becoming the first Latin American country to do so since Argentina in 2001.

But despite all the hints at a default, it seems likely that Ecuador will use the commission's report as leverage for restructuring the country's debt. Commission president Ricardo Patiño indicated as much to Bloomberg News, but said that Ecuador would not settle for a 60% reduction, a number that had earlier been mentioned.

Ecuador announced that it would delay paying $30.6 million in interest on the Global Bonus 2012, taking advantage of a month-long grace period. The announcement sent the global financial universe into a panic, with Standard and Poor's cutting Ecuador's risk rating to CCC-.

Social movements have long alleged that corrupt former governments illegally negotiated loans for their own personal financial gain.

Significantly, the commission singled out foreign debt for being "illegitimate" rather than simply illegal. Social movements have long declared most foreign debt to be illegitimate, but Ecuador's use of legitimacy as a legal argument for defaulting would set a major precedent; indeed, the mere formation of a debt auditing commission does so. Osvaldo Leon, of the Latin American Information Agency (ALAI), says that it remains to be seen if other countries in Latin America will follow suit.

Ecuador's findings could set an important precedent for the poorest of indebted countries, whose debt burden has long been criticized as inhumane...

Chicago PMI Worst Report Since 1982

It may seem counterintuitive that US stocks are resilient after a morning of some of the bloodiest economic numbers to date.

Talking heads were on the financial channels proclaiming "Priced In!" and "a bottom is at hand."

It should be noted that this is a holiday-shortened week, heading into the November weekend close. Many financial institutions end their fiscal year in November.

The nation will not recover until the financial sector is brought back into a balance with the real economy.

Increasingly the public is not believing the usual lies and deceptions. A bottom may be in for the willing acceptance of fraud and a tolerance of white collar crime. The backlash could be terrific.

Dollar briefly extends declines vs yen after Chicago PMI
Wed Nov 26, 2008 9:58am EST

NEW YORK, Nov 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar briefly extended declines versus the Japanese yen on Wednesday after a report on business activity in the Midwest fell more than expected...

The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago said its index of Midwest business activity fell in November to 33.8 from 37.8 in October. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a drop to 36.7.

"The Chicago PMI is the worst number since Feb. 1982 and the numbers continue to show that the economy is still deteriorating," said Andrew Bekoff, chief investment officer at LPB Capital LLC in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

AIG Under Investigation for Fraud

Rogue executive in a rogue company.

Tainting the purity of Wall Street insiders most likely.

Looks like AIG might have to take a hit for the team.


Ex-AIG exec under probe by U.S. prosecutors
Wed Nov 26, 2008 1:35am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former American International Group Inc executive Joseph Cassano is under investigation by U.S. prosecutors for possibly misleading auditors and investors about subprime mortgage-related losses, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the probe.

The report said investigators are asking auditors at PricewaterhouseCoopers about memos they wrote last fall on how Cassano and other AIG executives valued contracts protecting $62 billion in mortgage-backed securities.

The U.S. government is also investigating AIG's reliance on valuations that have been questioned by auditors and banks, according to the report.

Cassano previously led AIG Financial Products, the source of billions of dollars of losses which led to the insurance company needing to be rescued by the U.S. government in a $85 billion deal in September.

In October, U.S. lawmakers criticized AIG for giving Cassano a $1 million-a-month consulting contract after he retired in March.

Having Trouble With This Market? Highest Volatility in a Century at Least

Can't seem to hold a position, make a decent return, keep from getting whipsawed, find a trend?

No wonder, because this is one of the most volatile markets in the past century.

Our opinion, for what it is worth, is that the volatility is being turbocharged by the injections of Fed liquidity into the Wall Street banks, who have few options for higher returns than Treasuries. So their trading desks are churning the markets to hammer the hedge funds and skin the small specs who are loss sensitive and unsophisticated in their use of leverage and hedging.

The financial sector needs to be reformed badly. The economy will not recover until real wages start advancing again so consumption and savings can resume. Look for the well-heeled elites to fight that every step of the way, and appeal to the worst in our character as part of a campaign to do it.

If you are not an experienced trader now is a good time to sit in cash and add some precious metals on weakness, and above all, learn to live within your means.

Russian Expert Says US Headed for Collapse

Are we going to allow the Russians to have the last laugh?

No way.

So get out there and buy some stocks, rubes, and help to fully fund our oligarchs so they do not fall behind the elite that divided up Russia's wealth after its collapse.

We cannot afford to have an oligarch gap.

If you are not sure what fraudulent stocks to buy, just put your money in the long bond, and the Treasury and Fed will manage the distribution for you.

UPI
Russian expert: U.S. headed for collapse
Nov. 24, 2008 at 7:58 PM

MOSCOW, Nov. 24 -- The United States is heading for collapse amid its financial crisis, a leading political analyst in Russia says.

Igor Panarin, a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, said in an interview with Izvestia, published Monday, that the U.S. economy is in dire straits, RIA Novosti reported.

"The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse," he said.

Asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said the process has already begun.

"It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving," he said. "Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world's financial regulator."

The Buck Slumps to Support as Stocks Rally Up to Resistance

The dollar showed weakness today as US equities ran the shorts on vaporous hopes of bailouts for the banks.

Notice though that Bucko has not broken any serious support levels so it is too soon to send flowers. So far this is a normal consolidation in a parabolic short squeeze and flight to safety.

We took profits on our long positions today, and went slightly net short when the SP 500 futures hit our intraday target of 866. This rally has a lot of air in it, but this is a light week, with the US markets closing for the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday.

We are far from a recovery, and will likely go back down and test those lows again, but first things first, and we may see more rally in US stock indices up to the 62% retracement levels.

US Treasury Default Swaps Soar to Records

Reuters
U.S. Treasury CDS Hit Record Wide Levels
By Richard Leong and George Matlock in London
Mon Nov 24, 2008 11:21am EST

NEW YORK, Nov 24 - The spread or risk premium on 10-year U.S. Treasury credit default swaps hit record wide levels on Monday, prompted by worries about how the cost of rescuing banks and carmakers would affect U.S. creditworthiness, CMA DataVision said.

As the global financial crisis worsened in recent weeks, traders increased their bets on the bigger toll of the U.S. government's array of programs to help these ailing industries.

Ten-year U.S. Treasury CDS edged out to 49.8 basis points from 49.3 basis points at Friday's close, according to the credit data company.

Five-year Treasury CDS grew to 43.5 basis points versus 43.0 basis points late Friday, it said.

The risk premiums have nearly doubled from levels seen two months ago after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Prior to the financial crisis, default risk premiums on U.S. government debt had been running in the low-to-mid single digits.

CNBC Scores Major Exclusive Interview with Alaweed Bin Talal

Federal Reserve and Treasury Offer Half of US GDP to the Wall Street Banks

Our motto used to be "millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."

That has changed to "Trillions for the banks, but a few dollars loaned at interest for the real economy."

Hey there all you big strong men,
Time to serve your Uncle Ben,
Don't give up, you must be bold,
Get out there and short some gold.
The Treasury's stash is almost dry,
Oops, the Buck is going to die.

And its one, two, three who are we working for,
Hey hey we know who to thank,
So give your all to Uncle Hank.
And its five, six, seven, don't you dare be late,
Well, there ain't no time to ask them why,
But the Buck is gonna die.

Fed Pledges Top $7.4 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit
By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago. (But there is no money for Social Security, for Medical programs, for real industry, for people - Jesse)

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $2.8 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the only plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis. (This isn't the New Deal, its the Raw Deal for the people and the Sweet Deal for the banks that caused our problems through their reckless greed - Jesse)

When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in. (That's nothing compared to what the public is calling to be done to the Fed and the Bush Treasury - Jesse)

“Whether it’s lending or spending, it’s tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding collateral we don’t know anything about,” said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “The time has come that we consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to elected officials as opposed to appointed ones...”

‘Snookered’

Regulators hope the rescue will contain the damage and keep banks providing the credit that is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy.

Most of the spending programs are run out of the New York Fed, whose president, Timothy Geithner, is said to be President- elect Barack Obama’s choice to be Treasury Secretary.

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Vineland, New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors Inc. and an economist for the Atlanta Fed for 10 years until January. “The backlash has begun already. Congress is taking a lot of hits from their constituents because they got snookered on the TARP big time. There’s a lot of supposedly smart people who look to be totally incompetent and it’s all going to fall on the taxpayer...”

$4.4 Trillion

Bernanke’s Fed is responsible for $4.4 trillion of pledges, or 60 percent of the total commitment of $7.4 trillion, based on data compiled by Bloomberg concerning U.S. bailout steps started a year ago.

“Too often the public is focused on the wrong piece of that number, the $700 billion that Congress approved,” said J.D. Foster, a former staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers who is now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “The other areas are quite a bit larger.”

The Fed’s rescue attempts began last December with the creation of the Term Auction Facility to allow lending to dealers for collateral. After Bear Stearns’s collapse in March, the central bank started making direct loans to securities firms at the same discount rate it charges commercial banks, which take customer deposits.

In the three years before the crisis, such average weekly borrowing by banks was $48 million, according to the central bank. Last week it was $91.5 billion.

Lehman Failure

The failure of a second securities firm, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., in September, led to the creation of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and the Money Market Investor Funding Facility, or MMIFF. The two programs, which have pledged $2.3 trillion, are designed to restore calm in the money markets, which deal in certificates of deposit, commercial paper and Treasury bills.

“Money markets seized up after Lehman failed,” said Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse Group in New York and a former aide to Fed chief Paul Volcker. “Lehman failing made a lot of subsequent actions necessary.”

The FDIC, chaired by Sheila Bair, is contributing 20 percent of total rescue commitments. The FDIC’s $1.4 trillion in guarantees will amount to a bank subsidy of as much as $54 billion over three years, or $18 billion a year, because borrowers will pay a lower interest rate than they would on the open market, according to Raghu Sundurum and Viral Acharya of New York University and the London Business School.

Bank Subsidy

Congress and the Treasury have ponied up $892 billion in TARP and other funding, or 12 percent.

The Federal Housing Administration, overseen by Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Steven Preston, was given the authority to guarantee $300 billion of mortgages, or about 4 percent of the total commitment, with its Hope for Homeowners program, designed to keep distressed borrowers from foreclosure.

Most of the federal guarantees reduce interest rates on loans to banks and securities firms, which would create a subsidy of at least $6.6 billion annually for the financial industry, according to data compiled by Bloomberg comparing rates charged by the Fed against market interest currently paid by banks.

Not included in the calculation of pledged funds is an FDIC proposal to prevent foreclosures by guaranteeing modifications on $444 billion in mortgages at an expected cost of $24.4 billion to be paid from the TARP, according to FDIC spokesman David Barr. The Treasury Department hasn’t approved the program.

Automakers

Bernanke and Paulson, former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, have also promised as much as $200 billion to shore up nationalized mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The FDIC arranged for $139 billion in loan guarantees for General Electric Co.’s finance unit.

The tally doesn’t include money to General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC. Obama has said he favors financial assistance to keep them from collapse.

Paulson told the House Financial Services Committee Nov. 18 that the $250 billion already allocated to banks through the TARP is an investment, not an expenditure.

“I think it would be extraordinarily unusual if the government did not get that money back and more,” Paulson said.

‘We Haircut It’

In his Nov. 18 testimony, Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee that the central bank wouldn’t lose money.

“We take collateral, we haircut it, it is a short-term loan, it is very safe, we have never lost a penny in these various lending programs,” he said.

A haircut refers to the practice of lending less money than the collateral’s current market value.

Requiring the Fed to disclose loan recipients might set off panic, said David Tobin, principal of New York-based loan-sale consultants and investment bank Mission Capital Advisors LLC.

“If you mark to market today, the banking system is bankrupt,” Tobin said. “So what do you do? You try to keep it going as best you can.” (Please take note holders of dollars and Treasuries. If the banking system is bankrupt, guess what is next - Jesse)

“Mark to market” means adjusting the value of an asset, such as a mortgage-backed security, to reflect current prices.

US Takes a $20 Billion Stake and Guarantees $306 Billion of Risky Loans for Citigroup

And the hits just keep on coming.

International Herald Tribune
U.S. to inject $20 billion into Citigroup
The Associated Press
Sunday, November 23, 2008

WASHINGTON: The U.S. government unveiled a plan Sunday to rescue Citigroup, including taking a $20 billion stake in the firm, whose stock has been hammered on worries about its financial health.

In addition, the government will guarantee as much as $306 billion of risky loans and securities backed by commercial and residential mortgages.

The announcement was made by the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Citigroup in Emergency Talks with Government for Cash

Here we are, behind financial lines, huddled over our shortwave radios, waiting to hear about the true state of of our economy from the BBC... LOL.

BBC News
Citigroup seeks 'emergency cash'
15:54 GMT, Sunday, 23 November 2008

Executives of Citigroup, one of the biggest banks in the US, are in emergency talks with the US Treasury to gain much-needed funding, reports say.

The bank is also said to have contacted certain shareholders to assess their interest in increasing their stakes as as it faces an uncertain future.

Citigroup stock ended 20% lower on Friday as its board members met.

Last week the company announced 52,000 job losses worldwide on top of 23,000 job cuts previously announced.

No one from Citigroup was immediately available for comment.

There are fears that without further funding the bank might not be able to survive. Any money would be in addition to the $25bn injection it received in October from the US Treasury.

Options being discussed included a government cash injection as well as Citigroup selling some of its business, reported The Sunday Times. (Remember you heard about all of this here first - Jesse)

Chief executive Vikram Pandit told employees on Friday that the firm did not want to change its business model, Reuters reported, citing two employees.

He also reiterated that the firm had a robust capital position. (That seems to be financial CEO-speak for "we are on the brink, mates, and its been good to know you "- Jesse)

But Sean Egan, analyst at ratings agency Egan-Jones Ratings, said, "Citigroup needs a deep-pocketed investor that is ready, willing, and able to step up in the next few days." (Prince Alwaleed has a hole in his pocket? - Jesse)

"The only one who comes to mind is the government," he said, adding that $50bn might ne needed. (ROFLMAO, you can't make this stuff up. Hmmm, I'm thinking of a bigger fool, and a bigger number.... - Jesse)

In a bid to reassure investors, Citigroup is running advertisements in US and international newspapers on Sunday underlining its stability. (NY global bank with gaping holes in balance sheet desparately seeking a deep-pocketed investor 'just in case' we wish to re-open on Monday - Jesse)

It is widely expected that Citigroup will issue a statement on Monday before the US markets open. (They just said they had a robust cash position and that everything was fine. What are they going to say now, that they expect a cash surge from the Bush Administration to turn the tide? - Jesse)

This Bear Market Is One for the Record Books Part II

Here is a chart of the major bear markets since 1900 that shows the impact of the Great Crash of 1929 as a solitary event, and then again as the prelude included in the bear market of the Great Depression of 1929 - 1932.

We were bothered a little on the first version of this chart that the Great Crash did not show its full impact. Imagine the decline we have seen over the past year, but with more intensity, occurring in less than two months!




Special thanks to our friend Elvis_Knows for the chart update, and for all his many contributions and charts over the past year.

Robert Rubin's Role in the Bubble that Broke the World

Is it premature to speak of the failure of Citigroup?

No, the bank is finished. The only question is the nature of its post-death life as a zombie.

The Fed and FDIC may cut off a few of the more gangrenous pieces, stuff it full of paper, bolt on a prosthetic or two, perhaps apply enough cosmetics to give it some semblance of an afterlife, but the hard fact is the bank has collapsed, and would not open its doors again without extraordinary measures to maintain the appearance of existence.

How did this happen? Although this article does not mention the chief architect, Sanford Weil and another member of the supporting cast Larry Summers, it does pay tribute to Robert Rubin who, with Alan Greenspan, helped to create one of the greatest financial bubbles in history.

The New York Times
Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk
November 22, 2008

...The bank’s downfall was years in the making and involved many in its hierarchy, particularly Mr. Prince and Robert E. Rubin, an influential director and senior adviser.

Citigroup insiders and analysts say that Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin played pivotal roles in the bank’s current woes, by drafting and blessing a strategy that involved taking greater trading risks to expand its business and reap higher profits. Mr. Prince and Mr. Rubin both declined to comment for this article.

When he was Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent.

And since joining Citigroup in 1999 as a trusted adviser to the bank’s senior executives, Mr. Rubin, who is an economic adviser on the transition team of President-elect Barack Obama, has sat atop a bank that has been roiled by one financial miscue after another.

Citigroup was ensnared in murky financial dealings with the defunct energy company Enron, which drew the attention of federal investigators; it was criticized by law enforcement officials for the role one of its prominent research analysts played during the telecom bubble several years ago; and it found itself in the middle of regulatory violations in Britain and Japan....As it built up that business, it used accounting maneuvers to move billions of dollars of the troubled assets off its books, freeing capital so the bank could grow even larger....

Does a Weakness in Banking Regulations Result in Economic Imbalances and Asset Bubbles?

PBS Frontline: Mr. Weill Goes to Washington


Time Magazine February 15, 1999

E*Trade on the Brink - Seeks $800 Million from TARP to Stay Solvent

Battered E*Trade banking on government funds
Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:15pm EST
By Jonathan Spicer

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The troubles at E*Trade Financial Corp have worsened and now hinge on whether it can secure U.S. government funds that would bring some relief to its book of bad mortgage loans.

Shares of the discount brokerage tumbled below $1 to its lowest price ever this week, indicating that investors think chances are slim it will secure the $800 million it applied for under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) rescue program.

Competitors, including Charles Schwab Corp and TD Ameritrade Holding Corp have said they are loath to bid for the smaller and now very cheap company, but have made no secret they covet E*Trade's brokerage business, which has kept it afloat despite the drag of its mortgage business.

Roger Freeman, a Barclays Capital analyst attending a business update hosted by Schwab this week, said E*Trade's existence "depends on whether it gets the TARP."

E*Trade's survival probably hinges more on whether its customers continue to drive growth, according to analysts. But after a string of quarterly losses, the TARP funding is vital for the near term. But there are serious doubts the company will qualify alongside larger banks whose collapse could further shake a weakened U.S. economy.

"The way the stock is trading now, it appears as though a lot of investors don't expect them to get the TARP funding," said one analyst, who did not want to be named due to E*Trade's delicate situation. E*Trade Bank offers credit cards, savings and checking accounts, and mortgage and home equity loans and hash about $28 billion in deposits.

About 5 percent, or $1.4 billion, of the customer deposits are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, according to the company.

The purpose of the government's TARP program is to capitalize struggling financial institutions so they can resume lending. Some analysts said it is unlikely that E*Trade, in crisis mode, will be able to lend.

"Inherently, it seems to go against the spirit of the TARP program," the analyst said of E*Trade's application.

The company's argument for public funds focuses on the fact that TARP is partly intended to support those institutions that facilitate liquidity in the market.

E*Trade has said it is confident it will secure the funding and expects to make an announcement later this month. The company has $665 million in cash available to increase the capital of its banking arm if necessary.

Last month, E*Trade's daily trading and new client accounts both jumped from September, due largely to the volatile market selloff. "Customers have been consistently supportive of our business," said company spokeswoman Pam Erickson.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO

Overall, discount brokers are enjoying a spike in trading revenues, but they face the worst-case prospect of a lengthy bear market during which individual investors could exit in droves.

"Despite the reasonably healthy trends in the core brokerage franchise, we believe continued credit headwinds, a lack of earnings visibility and a limited capital cushion for common shareholders gives us no reason to become more constructive on E*Trade shares at current levels," Credit Suisse analyst Howard Chen wrote to clients this week.

The analyst added that because few details on the TARP application have been provided, he has not factored that into earnings estimates.

Shares fell 7 cents to 87 cents on Nasdaq on Friday.

The company spokeswoman declined to comment on the stock price.

E*Trade has absorbed a series of price and ratings downgrades since the last quarterly update, when it boosted its provision for loan losses by 62 percent and warned that charges in its home equity portfolio would be higher than expected.

The company had $26.4 billion in total loans -- including consumer, mortgages and home equity -- on its books at the end of September, with about 3 percent, or about $792 million, considered "nonperforming".

TELEBANC ACQUISITION

E*Trade, a high flyer in the 1990s technology boom, entered the mortgage business with its 2000 acquisition of Internet bank Telebanc.

The deal helped E*Trade weather the tech-market crash that followed, but also hurt when the mortgage market started to crack last year.

As recently as July, 2007, E*Trade shares were worth more than the stock of both Schwab and Ameritrade. But they plunged as the mortgage portfolio soured, and now the larger rivals are eyeing the healthy segments of E*Trade's business.

If E*Trade fails, some 4.4 million retail accounts would be exposed, opening the door to a possible government-sponsored takeover intended to protect clients, analysts said.

"We have an interest in the brokerage accounts of any of our competitors in the brokerage business," Schwab Chief Executive Walter Bettinger said this week. But he added: "We do not have any interest in taking on a complex balance sheet issue, a complex set of loans or securities that will require ... massive work-outs, writedowns and impairments."

E*Trade had $119.4 billion in total assets at the end of October, of which $16.4 billion was brokerage-related cash.

E*Trade has "a very good brokerage operation," Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) CEO Ed Clark -- who also sits on Ameritrade's board -- said in an interview this week.

"But they are associated with very bad assets, and so we're not interested to take asset risk in order to buy E*Trade."

Is the Gold Bull Over? The Price of Gold From Various Global Perspectives

A similar question to ask would be, has the US dollar topped out yet as measured against a basket of currencies such as the DX Index?

It is important to note that this is the price of gold in US dollars.




According to this chart we are still in a downtrend, bouncing off the bottom of the decline. Americans tend to forget this since the US is such a large, almost homogenous country with its own currency and language, but with a growing element of Spanish.

Most Americans do not own passports and do not have any experience with a foreign currency excepting visits to Canada and Mexico.

Let's take a look at the price of gold in a few other world currencies.

It is a challenge to describe the color of the sky, of the trees, to people who have been wearing rose coloured glasses since birth.

"But what creates the most intense surprise
His soul looks out through renovated eyes."
John Keats, Ode to Apollo

The US Stock Markets Have Now Declined More than 50% - Intermediate Target Hit Today

Remember this chart from October?



Here's another view of the big picture.

Alwaleed bin Talal Increases Stake in Citi

Alwaleed Plans to Increase His Stake in Citigroup Back to 5%
By Steve Dickson

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal plans to increase his stake in Citigroup Inc. to 5 percent after the U.S. bank lost almost a quarter of its value yesterday.

``Prince Alwaleed began buying Citi shares, as he strongly believes that they are dramatically undervalued,'' he said today in a statement.

In addition to his princely duties, the multi-talented Alwaleed is also the gossip columnist and rock critic for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano under the pen name Guido Sarducci.

An Historic Divergence on the Long End of the Yield Curves

Original Chart from Econompic Data

European Union to Unveil €130 Billion Stimulus Plan

We can only hope that Europe follows the US model and gives the funds to a small group of bankers who, without independent oversight and accountability, can allocate the €130 Billion economic stimulus package to their industry friends and associates for executive pay and bonuses, dividends, and exclusive corporate resorts.

Economic Times
EU plans 130-billion-euro stimulus plan: Germany
20 Nov, 2008, 0359 hrs IST

BERLIN: The European Commission is planning a 130-billion-euro (163-billion-dollar) economic stimulus programme, a spokeswoman for the German economy ministry said Wednesday.

"That represents one percent of gross domestic product for each member state," she told AFP.
"For Germany, that means 25 billion euros."

German news weekly Der Spiegel reported earlier that the Commission would also set aside some of its own funds to arrive at the 130-billion-euro sum.

The Commission is due to present proposals to grapple with the impact of the global financial crisis on November 26.

Commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said no decision had been taken on the stimulus package.

"It is premature to talk about the size and specific orientation of the package because the preparatory work is still underway and there has not yet been a definitive political decision," Laitenberger told reporters.

German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm stressed that Berlin had just committed 32 billion euros over the next two years to its own economic jumpstart plan and expected that to figure in Brussels' calculations.

"It is unimaginable that our own programme would not be taken into account" by the EU Commission, he told the daily Financial Times Deutschland in an article to appear in its Thursday issue.

Other member states have cried poverty amid calls for a continent-wide growth plan and the European Commission is likely to seek to redirect funds committed to other efforts to the new package.

The 15-nation eurozone confirmed last week it had fallen into recession for the first time ever, with gross domestic product in the economies using the euro falling by 0.2 percent in the third quarter after a similar drop in the second quarter

Trading Note. Approaching our SP Futures Target of 810

We were looking for 810 to the downside and have been riding Index doubler shorts down since yesterday afternoon in our trading portfolios. We make changes to our investment portfolio only a few times each year.

Now we are buying some long positions to offset those shorts since we approach a possible support area.

The longs are individual stocks, precious metal miners and oil producers with strong cashflows and/or dividends, and some of the long index funds.

Please note that these longs are MORE than offset by the remaining short positions. This is a hedged play to take some short profits off the table without necessarily selling them. If we get a rally from here it will be relatively easy to reduce the three short positions. The longs are more diversified so obviously there are many more positions, but less in total dollar and leverage value. We are trading without margin.

We'll have to see how we close and what happens as we approach 800 if we do. If we go lower tomorrow we can adjust the long-short balance in the portfolio to take advantage of the decline.

Recall that we are in an option expiry week, and we have expiry in some of the commodity futures as well.

We offer the occasional example of how we might be trading a market not for specific examples or 'calls' but rather to reflect the style and money management we are using to match the character of a particular market. This one needs a whip and chair. Use of uni-directional positions and leverage are particularly dangerous since even in a bear downtrend, there is room for enormous swings even intraday.

Today did seem a little 'climactic' but it is too soon to tell.

Have a pleasant evening.

What Happened When They Pulled the TARP Out from Under the Mortgage Asset Markets?

The mortgage markets are imploding.

This is not the sort of action we might have expected given the panic story that Hank and Ben presented to Congress when they originally asked for the emergency $750 Billion to immediately buy troubled assets to 'save the system.' Well, from the looks of these charts those assets have become a lot more 'troubled.'

On the surface it appears as though they have washed their hands of the larger financial system, particularly the mortgage markets, after they supplied a select group of banks with no-strings equity investments.

Paulson and Bernanke need someone with experience in crisis management on their team. At this point the broader market can trust nothing that they say since it is inconsistent, opaque, and without principle to the point of seeming arbitrary. Suspicion of favoritism and insider dealing is clouding all that they do.

Bill Poole Thinks the Fed is Confusing the Markets with a Lack of Transparency and Clarity of Intent

The ABX indices are based on credit default swaps (CDS) for tranches of subprime mortgage-backed securities(MBS).

The CMBX is a Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities credit default index. CMBX is quoted as credit spreads, whereas ABX is quoted as bond prices.

The Dollar Trap Part II: Mutually Assured Financial Destruction

The current structure of the remnants of the Bretton Woods agreement with the US dollar as the dominant reserve currency is not sustainable unless the rest of the world is willing to accept a form of neo-colonialism.

The developed nations are holding approximately 70% of their reserves in US dollars.

The rest of the world knows it must find an acceptable substitute for the dollar as the reserve currency.

The US does not wish to change the status quo for several reasons.

First, it provides an automatic funding mechanism for incredibly large budget deficits that would collapse without this mechanism.

Additionally, the US economy has become badly distorted, with an outsized financial sector as a percent of GDP created to manage its artificial reserve construct.

Change will be painful for all. Yet change must and will come, even as the US resists that change and uses a type of Mutually Assured Financial Destruction policy to maintain its hegemony.

No one wishes to make the 'first move' to the exit, since it will cause a severe depreciation of their dollar reserves, and possibly provoke clandestine and military action by the world's sole superpower.

And yet, the inching to the exits is underway, and the world holds its breath in case a shift occurs that will precipitously unravel 37 years of financial imbalance in a global economic earthquake.

The dollar will either be saved with a new formal structure, with more fiscal and political overtones to support an otherwise unstable monetary regime, or it will be decimated.

It would be naive to think that the US financial planners do not see this and are not using it to their advantage.

One can always count on a reversion to the mean. We just cannot know when it will happen, or how, or in what period of time.

When it comes it will come quickly like a lightning strike, with a terrific thunderclap heard around the world.

US Debt has grown to be about ten percent of World GDP (excluding the US) which is without historic precedent.



Approximately thirty percent of US debt is being held by non-US entities, in particular foreign central banks.



The Developed Countries are holding approximately 70% of their reserves in US Dollars. The Developing Nations have less exposure on a percentage basis.

Above Charts from "Is the US Too Big to Fail?" by the Reinharts at VoxEU


Total US Dollar Credit Market Debt Now Stands at 350% of GDP. This cannot be sustained. Certainly a certain portion of credit will be written off in defaults. But notice that the strategy of the US is not to make structural reforms but to try and restart the debt creation engine. This will require continued subsidies from foreign sources with waning appetites for US debt that can never be repaid.



Above chart courtesy of Ned Davis Research.

Mark Cuban Responds to the SEC

This looks like it might be an interesting case.

If he is guilty, the conversation between Mark Cuban and the CEO of Momma.com will be absolutely pivotal, especially the source of the record of it. Secondly, the nature of the large sale of stock that Mr. Cuban made will be equally important. Was it previously planned and committed to without question? (and something more than altered notations on scrap paper as in the case of Martha Stewart).

Another issue is whether or not this was polticial payback for Mr. Cuban's participation in criticism of the Bush Administration and his involvement in the movie "Loose Change." Is the 'enemies list' another of the artifacts of the Nixon Administration that turned up in Bush II? There were many.

It will take a 'smoking gun' and a witness such as John Dean to bring that level of government misdeeds to light. That requires a confluence of events that cannot be predicted in advance. But the elements of secrecy, contempt for the laws, hubris, and a willingness to do 'whatever it takes' were all there.

This is a sideshow for now, and we cannot help but believe that Mr. Cuban's attorneys are urging him to shut up, take the fine, and settle. Judging from this he has not yet internalized their advice.

Let's see what happens.

The SEC
Mark Cuban's Blog
Nov 17th 2008 1:20PM

I wish I could say more, but I will have to leave it to this, and let the judicial process do its job.

November 17, 2008
RE: SEC Civil Action in the United States District

for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division

Mark Cuban today responded to a civil complaint filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States District for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. In its complaint, the Commission charges that Mr. Cuban engaged in violations of the federal securities laws in connection with transactions in the securities of Mamma.com Inc.

This matter, which has been pending before the Commission for nearly two years, has no merit and is a product of gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Mr. Cuban intends to contest the allegations and to demonstrate that the Commission’s claims are infected by the misconduct of the staff of its Enforcement Division.

Mr. Cuban stated, “I am disappointed that the Commission chose to bring this case based upon its Enforcement staff’s win-at-any-cost ambitions. The staff’s process was result-oriented, facts be damned. The government’s claims are false and they will be proven to be so.”

Tall Paul Delivers a Dismal Diagnosis for the US Economy

As much as we admire Paul Volcker, we can't help but notice that he, like so many others, did not have all that much to say while Greenspan and his merry banksters were running around setting fire to the economy while President Zero fiddled.

Also, he is not offering much in the way of innovation or suggestions for the incoming administration, at least so far.

Perhaps they should trigger a nasty inflation and then they can roll Volcker out to fix it. Hmmm, that seems to be in the works.

The 1930's script says that we have a Republican minority and a conservative Supreme court that block the many attempts of an incoming Democratic president to help the general public survive a devastating economic downturn, after a decade of seriously greasing the elites' monetary skids, pushing us to the brink of domestic insurrection, until it takes a world war to pull us out.

Wow, déjà vu!

UK Telegraph
Volcker issues dire warning on slump
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
10:39 PM GMT 17 Nov 2008

Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has warned that the economic slump has begun to metastasise after a shocking collapse in output over the past two months, threatening to overwhelm the incoming Obama administration as it struggles to restore confidence.

"What this crisis reveals is a broken financial system like no other in my lifetime," he told a conference at Lombard Street Research in London.

"Normal monetary policy is not able to get money flowing. The trouble is that, even with all this [government] protection, the market is not moving again. The only other time we have seen the US economy drop as suddenly as this was when the Carter administration imposed credit controls, which was artificial."

His comments come as the blizzard of dire data in the US continues to crush spirits. The Empire State index of manufacturing dropped to minus 24.6 in October, the lowest ever recorded. Paul Ashworth, US economist at Capital Economics, said business spending was now going into "meltdown", compounding the collapse in consumer spending that is already under way.

Mr Volcker, an adviser to President-Elect Barack Obama and a short-list candidate for Treasury Secretary, warned that it is already too late to avoid a severe downturn even if the credit markets stabilise over coming months. "I don't think anybody thinks we're going to get through this recession in a hurry," he said. (Perhaps Paul needs to send a postcard update to the talking heads at CNBC and Bloomberg - Jesse)

He advised Mr Obama to tread a fine line, embarking on bold action with a "compelling economic logic" rather than scattering fiscal stimulus or resorting to a wholesale bail-out of Detroit. "He can't just throw money at the auto industry."

Mr Volcker is a towering figure in the US, praised for taming the great inflation of the late 1970s with unpopular monetary rigour. He is no friend of Alan Greenspan, who replaced him at the Fed and presided over credit excess that pushed private debt to 300pc of GDP. (Funny how Greenspan has so few friends now, but was so widely lionized by the corporate support structure while he was helping to destroy the economy - Jesse)

"There has been leveraging in the economy beyond imagination, and nobody was saying we need to do something," he said. "There are cycles in human nature and it is up to regulators to moderate these excesses. Alan was not a big regulator." (There were quite a few people warning about a credit bubble but they were largely shouted down, ignored, and dismissed by the cognoscenti, largely fueled by conservative think tanks and corporate funding - Jesse)

Even so, he said the arch-culprit was the bonus system that allowed bankers to draw forward "tremendous rewards" before the disastrous consequences of their actions became clear, as well as the new means of credit alchemy that let them slice and dice mortgage debt into packages that disguised risk. (So let's make sure we try to prolong that system by handing them billions of dollars in taxpayer money without conditions or serious reform - Jesse)

The Dollar Trap: Michael Hudson's Incisive Characterization of Our Global Economic Dilemma

Bretton Woods has not worked well for a long time, despite the best efforts of the world's bankers to pretend that it has. As the charade continues, the economy of the United States and the composition of international trade has grown increasingly artificial and unsustainable.

The dilemma facing us now is what happens when the dollar hegemony finally breaks down and falls apart? Which countries will break ranks and begin offloading their dollar reserves in size into more tangible and less arbitrary stores of value, risking the value of their remaining reserves, in a classic Prisoner's Dilemma? Be assured that this is happening quietly behind the scenes, despite some of the recent financial engineering that has caused a dollar short squeeze, primarily in Europe.

More on this later. But first, here is a major plank in our construct so very well expressed by the classical economist Michael Hudson. What we are approaching is the failure of the Bretton Woods arrangement. How this is accomplished, how it unfolds, will shape at least next several decades of history and the fortunes of our generation.

"What happens in practice is that foreign central banks recycle the dollars that
their exporters and asset sellers receive because their currencies would rise if
they failed to do this. That would price their exports out of world markets,
leading to unemployment. Foreign countries thus are in a dollar trap.
They send their savings to finance the domestic U.S. Government budget deficit
instead of helping their own domestic economics, because they have not been able
to create an alternative to the dollar."

Our Trash for Your Cash
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20
By MICHAEL HUDSON

The financial press has been negligent in reporting how last week’s two top financial stories are linked: first, the testimony by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his evasive Interim Assistant Secretary Neel Kashkari defending why they followed a completely different giveaway plan to the banks (their own Wall Street constituency) than what Congress authorized; and second, the G-20 standoff among the world’s leading finance ministers this weekend.

The dollar glut is one of the key factors that has aggravated the junk-mortgage problem in recent years. Looking forward, if foreign countries are no longer to invest their dollar inflows in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and toxic packaged mortgage derivatives, what are they to do with these dollars? The U.S. Government refuses to let foreign government funds acquire anything but financial junk such as the plunging Citibank shares that Arab oil sheikhs have bought.

Here’s the problem that faced global finance ministers this weekend: The U.S. payments deficit has been pumping excess dollars into foreign economies, whose recipients have turned them over to their central banks. These central banks have saved their currencies from rising (and thus losing foreign markets by making their exports more expensive) by buying Treasury bonds so as to support the dollar’s exchange rate by recycling their dollar inflows back to the United States – enough to finance most of our federal budget deficit, and indeed much of Fannie Mae’s mortgage lending as well.

Mr. Bush for his part would like to shape the global financial system so that foreign economies continue giving the United States a free lunch. U.S. officials control the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and use these institutions to impose neoliberal privatization policies on foreign countries, thereby destroying the post-Soviet economies, Australia and New Zealand since the 1990s, just as they destroyed Third World economies from the 1960s through the ’80s.

That’s why, until last month, the IMF had lost its clients and was almost universally shunned. French President Nicolas Sarkozy led foreign calls for a “new Bretton Woods,” by which he meant not just an upgrading of U.S. dollar hegemony but a different world order – more regulated with a fairer quid pro quo. And as the Financial Times reported: “Spain’s governing Socialist party summed up the heady mood in some parts of Europe in an internal document, seen by El Mundo, that identified the summit as a moment of historic change. ‘The origins of this crisis lie in neoliberal and neoconservative ideology,’ it said.”

Mr. Paulson and other U.S. officials have long been promising foreign finance ministers that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities are as good as U.S. Treasury bonds while yielding higher interest. The resulting investment in these two mortgage-packaging agencies was a major factor in their $200 billion bailout. Letting their securities go under would have ended Dollar Hegemony for good. So getting foreign acquiescence in financing future U.S. balance-of-payments deficit is inextricably bound up with how to resolve the U.S. financial and real estate bubble.

Its bursting has prompted Congress to authorize $700 billion supposedly to re-inflate the property market. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) gives Wall Street money in the hope that it will lend enough to start inflating asset prices again, enable borrowers to get rich by going into debt again – “wealth creation” Alan Greenspan-style. It is as if the neoliberal bubble years 2002-07 were a golden age to be recovered, not the road to financial perdition. In doing this, Mr. Paulson is using junk economics to cope with the junk mortgage problem that in turn was based on junk mathematical models. His problem is to keep the fantasy going.

Congress has caught onto the game being played. Now that the bailout looks like a last-minute giveaway to insiders while the giving is good, Congress held hearings last week to ask why the Treasury abandoned its plan to buy the “troubled assets” (junk mortgages) that Mr. Paulson had originally said was the problem. Why has the Treasury bought $250 billion of ersatz “preferred common stock” in banks at prices far above what private investors such as Warren Buffett paid?

Drawing a picture of a just-pretend world to rationalize Wall Street’s free lunch, Mr. Paulson sought to deflect the issue by postulating a series of “ifs.” The Treasury’s $250 billion in bank stock would give lenders money that might be used to re-inflate the credit supply if banks chose to re-enter the commercial paper market and provide more mortgages on easier terms. This trickle-down patter talk is what passes for neoliberal economic theory these days. The fantasy is for banks to restore “balance” by granting more credit, increasing the indebtedness of bank customers so as to restore the housing market to its former degree of unaffordability.

Congressional interrogators pointed out that banks were not lending more money. Mortgage interest rates have risen, not fallen, even though the Fed is supplying banks with credit at only a quarter of a percentage point (an average of about 0.30 per cent last week). Credit standards (understandably) have been tightened to require prospective buyers to put up more of their own money. Foreclosures and evictions are up and real estate prices continue to plunge. Also plunging almost straight down has been the Dow Jones Industrial Average, sinking below the 8000 mark last week to the lowest levels in years. Nothing is working out the way Mr. Paulson promised.

The word being used most by Treasury officials these days is “unexpected.” At his subcommittee hearing on Friday, Nov. 14, Dennis Kucinich asked Mr. Paulson’s sidekick, Neel Kashkari, whether the Treasury’s lack of realistic foresight was an innocent error or a case of bait and switch. Mr. Kashkari stonewalled by repeating a “talking point” loop-tape claiming that giveaways were the way to get the economy “moving” again. The banks would use their newfound power to help customers run back into debt even more deeply, presumably at the exponential rates needed to re-inflate property and stock prices

Republican Congressman Darrill Issa asked just when the Treasury decided to dump the law as written and pursue an alternative giveaway to Wall Street rather than help defaulting homeowners. Why hasn’t it done what the law that Mr. Paulson himself insisted that Congress agree to – arrange orderly debt write-downs by using the promised $50 billion of public money to buy mortgages headed for foreclosure, and re-set unrealistically high mortgages to reflect current price levels? Renegotiating bad mortgages down to this price for existing owner-occupants – or selling the property to a buyer who could afford fair terms – would avert the distress sales that are poisoning local property markets Isn’t this what the Congressional plan called for, after all?

Mr. Kashkeri kept trying to run out the time clock by explaining rote Treasury procedure. He assured the committee that he worried each night about the fate of homeowners, and said that Mr. Paulson also was wringing his hands in empathy, but they had found it much better to give money to the banks in the hope that they would show similarc concern for their customers. The committee members simply gave up when it became apparent that the Treasury officials were stonewalling, just as the Fed has stonewalled Congress by refusing to give any details of the $850 billion giveaway it’s been conducting under its own cash-for-trash program. On November 12, Mr. Paulson gave his excuse: “We changed our strategy when the facts changed.”

What were these facts? For starters, the Federal Reserve found that it was able to pump an even larger amount into the “cash for trash” program than the Treasury originally was to have provided. The Treasury plan would have obliged the banks to take a loss by selling their “troubled assets” (junk mortgages) at today’s post-bubble prices. Bankers don’t like to take losses. That’s what the government is supposed to do. The Fed can do anything it wants in order to “stabilize markets,” under an umbrella clause inserted into its Act for just such purposes. Applying the “privatize the profits, socialize the losses” rationale that bank lobbyists have polished over the past century, it has decided that the best way to “stabilize the economy” is to swap Treasury bonds for high-risk junk assets at face value, saving the banks from having to take a loss.

The more wealth that is concentrated at the top of the economic pyramid and the more banks that can be consolidated into just a market-setting few, the more “stable” markets will be. This is the neoliberal economic doctrine used to justify the Fed’s purchase of junk mortgages, junk bonds and the bad gambles in insuring derivatives that A.I.G. had drawn up. One can only conclude that Mr. Paulson was knowingly deceptive when he told Congress on November 12 that the government has found a better way for the giveaway to trickle down from the banks to the credit markets than to buy their bad loans. It has indeed been doing just this, but via the Fed at full price and in secret, away from the prying eyes of Congress rather than through the Treasury program that Congress authorized under more current market-oriented terms intended to protect “taxpayer interests.” The Fed values junk mortgages at the high fantasy prices that banks, A.I.G. and other companies had bought them for, saving them from having to take a loss. Hedge funds and speculators who had bought junk-insurance from A.I.G. were made whole, and A.I.G. stockholders were saved by the infusion of government capital so that players would not have to take losses in the Wall Street casino.

Now that the Fed is doing this, the Treasury can turn to its own form of giveaway: buying bank stocks at far above their market price (that is, the price paid by investors such as Warren Buffett for Goldman Sachs stock), on terms that permit the banks to turn around and use the money to buy other banks, pay out as dividends to shareholders or pay high executive salaries rather than helping mortgage debtors. “I don’t think the government should put money into failing institutions,” Mr. Kashkari assured Congress, explaining that the bailout of A.I.G., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be in vain without yet further government bailouts. Rep. Kucinich’s final remark to Mr. Kashkari was: “That statement that you just made, you will hear about for the rest of your career.

The internal contradiction here is that why the Republican logic of breaking up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into smaller companies does not apply to the commercial banking system. Rather than consolidating the banking system in the hands of New York and East Coast banks, why shouldn’t the government break up financial institutions “too big to fail?" Instead, the Treasury is simply investing in stocks of banks, leaving existing stockholders in place rather than wiping them out.

Mr. Paulson under George Bush in 2008 is looking like the U.S. counterpart to Anatoly Chubais under Boris Yeltsin in 1996. Just as Russian neoliberals led by Chubais were promoted by Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs, today’s Wall Street power grab to replace the government as the economy’s central planner is being orchestrated by another Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs, empowered to decide which kleptocrats are to receive what public resources and on what terms, aided by “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve. Mr. Bernanke’s famous quip about helicopters dropping money to get the economy moving seems to be limited to Wall Street for use in buying financial assets, not real goods and services for the population at large.

The road to G-20

Speaking on Thursday, November 13, before the Manhattan Institute, a lobbying organization for finance and real estate, President Bush repeated the myth that foreign countries recycle so many dollars to America because of our “strong economy” and free markets.

The reality is quite different. There is no such thing as a “free market.” For a few days after announcement of the $700 billion giveaway, some knee-jerk opponents of government spending accused this of being “socialism,” but they quickly discovered that not all government spending is socialist. Regardless of what economic system is followed, all markets are planned, and have been ever since calendars were developed back in the Ice Age. Most market structures throughout history have been organized in a way that provides the vested interests with a free lunch. This remains the essence of post-feudal capitalism – or as some have expressed it, corporativism.

What happens in practice is that foreign central banks recycle the dollars that their exporters and asset sellers receive because (as noted above) their currencies would rise if they failed to do this. That would price their exports out of world markets, leading to unemployment. Foreign countries thus are in a dollar trap. They send their savings to finance the domestic U.S. Government budget deficit instead of helping their own domestic economics, because they have not been able to create an alternative to the dollar.

Next to Treasury debt, real estate mortgages are the only category large enough to absorb the excess dollars being thrown off by the U.S. payments deficit – thrown off, that is, by U.S. military spending abroad, consumer spending to swell the trade deficit, and investment outflows as investors here and abroad diversified their holdings outside of the United States. The upshot is that world monetary reserves have come to consist of central bank loans to finance the U.S. bubble economy. But the knee-jerk deregulatory philosophy of the Clinton and Bush eras has killed the U.S. investment market.

What makes this dynamic unstable is that U.S. exports become even less competitive as higher housing costs and debt-service charges push up the cost of living and doing business. The more dollars foreign countries recycle, the less the U.S. economy will be able to work off its debts by exporting more. So the dynamic is guaranteed to be a losing game for foreign governments – unless anyone can explain how the United States can generate the $4 trillion to repay its debt to the world’s central banks. To make matters worse, the dollar’s downward drift against the euro and sterling obliges foreign creditors to take a loss on their dollar holdings as denominated in their own currencies.

Nobody has found a “market-oriented” solution to this problem. That is what doomed the G-20 meetings this weekend to failure, just as there could be no agreement at the G7 meetings a few weeks ago. In the face of U.S. Treasury dreams of re-inflating the mortgage market, Europe is trying to draw the line at financing a losing proposition.

But now that gold no longer is the means of settling balance-of-payments deficits, foreign central banks lack an alternative to the U.S. dollar to hold their monetary reserves. This leaves them with (1) U.S. Treasury securities, and (2) U.S. mortgage securities. Recent years have seen a further diversification via “sovereign wealth funds” into (3) direct ownership of mineral resources, industrial companies, privatized national infrastructure and other equity investment rather than debt. But rather than welcoming this, the U.S. Government seeks to limit foreign central banks to buying junk mortgages, junk bonds and other financial garbage. To call this “market equilibrium” is to indulge in the feel-good argot that fogs today’s international financial dialogue.

To put matters bluntly, the issue at the G-20 meetings is mistrust of the unregulated U.S. banking system and, behind it, government “regulators” who refuse to regulate. China and other foreign dollar recipients have been treating the dollar like a hot potato, trying to spend it on buying foreign minerals, fuels and other assets from any country that will accept payment in dollars. Most of the takers are third world countries still committed to paying the heavy dollarized debts owed to the World Bank and other global creditors. The price of their remaining in the Bretton Woods system is to sacrifice their public domain in a kind of pre-bankruptcy sale rather than repudiating their debts under the “odious debt” and “fraudulent conveyance” escape valves. What is needed is not to “reform” the World Bank and IMF, but to replace them. But that is another story, one that other countries dared not even bring up at the November 15-16 meetings.

Euroland is officially in a recession for the first time since the birth of the single currency. Part of the reason is that its member countries have felt obliged to use their monetary surpluses to support the dollar – and hence, the U.S. Treasury’s budget deficit – instead of supporting their own domestic economies. Just before flying to America this weekend, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his position: “‘The dollar, which at the end of World War II was the only world currency, can no longer claim to be the sole world currency … What was true in 1945 can no longer be true today.’” Stating this fact was not a matter of ‘courage,’ but ‘good sense.’” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made a point of defending Russia, criticizing the US for “provoking” Moscow with its missile defense shield. But Mr. Paulson insisted that the global financial crisis was “no nation’s fault.”

U.S. officials chose to brazen it out, including a new wave of American protectionism for the auto industry in what may be a foretaste of economic nationalism to come. “Bankers complain that the financial rescue plans put in place in many countries distort competition because they operate on very different terms while others say that the bail-outs under consideration for U.S. carmakers represent a classic effort to protect national champions that could inspire copycat efforts elsewhere.”. So wrote Krishna Goha in the Financial Times, describing why, when G-20 finance ministers reaffirmed their support for free trade, they were talking largely at cross-purposes.

The past eight years have demonstrated the folly of imagining that the stock market and real estate can provide steady rates of return that compound into exponential increases in savings sufficient to pay retirement income and make homeowners and small investors rich without really having to work. Money managers advertise “Let your money work for you,” but only people actually work. Financial returns are paid in the form of command over labor power – workers “doing time.” What banks do provide is debt, and this remains in place after the force of asset-price inflation is spent and market prices fall below liabilities to cause Negative Equity. That is how economic bubbles operate. But to hear Wall Street’s neoliberals tell the story, it is not necessary to pay retirees out of what is produced. Finance capitalism can replace industrial capitalism without a “real” economic base at all.

Who Really Gets the “Free Lunch”?

So much for the material conditions of production! We can all live free as financial engineering replaces industrial engineering. The Treasury is now reported to be discussing bailouts for credit card issuers by taking over their bad debts. The banks presumably would even be able to charge the government for the accumulation of exorbitant penalty fees.

The banks and Wall Street are threatening to wreck the economy by “going on strike” and creating a credit squeeze forcing foreclosures and economic collapse, if Congress and the Federal Reserve don’t save them from taking a loss on their bad loans and financial derivatives. Foreigners also must play a subordinate role in this game, or the international financial system itself will be collapsed. Financial customers must absorb the loss.

The most reasonable response to this brazen stance may be to return the Federal Reserve’s monetary functions to the U.S. Treasury. This is where they were conducted with great success prior to 1913. Back in the 1930s the “Chicago Plan,” put forth in the wreckage of the banking system’s and Wall Street misbehavior that aggravated the Great Depression, proposed to turn commercial banking into classic-style savings banks with 100 per cent reserves. A modernized version is put forth in the American Monetary Institute’s proposed Monetary Reform Act as an alternative to the dysfunctional high finance that Wall Street lobbyists have created as a Frankenstein debt-selling machine. The U.S. economy has been living on a combination of foreign dollar recycling and bank credit that has been used simply to “create wealth” by inflating asset prices, not by financing new capital formation.

As matters have turned out, the banks have gone broke doing this. The Treasury has given them trillions of dollars of aid, and even more as special tax favoritism, loan and deposit insurance guarantees. This can only continue as long as banks can make the inevitable collapse of compound interest schemes appear to be unthinkable. That attempt is what doomed the G-20 meetings this weekend, and it will doom any future U.S. administration that tries to follow in its footsteps.