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EDIT: GG, AUY, SLW & PAL.
options on pal
“Schmecksperts” lol
Very good, all should READ./
>>OPEC feel's one of the major problems in rising gasoline prices is the individual government's take at the pump. The Gulf Times ran an article pointing out that the UK, France and Italy pocket more than 50% of the price of a liter of gasoline as taxes. UK collects 55% tax, France and Italy are 53%. Germany 49%, Japan 38%, Canada 30% and the U.S. averages 26%. Using gasoline prices from around the world OPEC calculated that individual governments were collecting $460 billion in annual taxes while OPEC only received $410 billion for its exported oil in 2007. Gasoline prices in UK, France and Italy average about $8 per gallon after you convert liters to gallons and the local currency to dollars.
In London Mayor Ken Livingstone is trying to raise the congestion tax to $50 per day. In New York City Mayor Bloomberg is trying to launch larger congestion fees through higher tolls and add an $8 fee to drive below 60th street during daytime hours on weekdays.
<<
Jim Brown, OptionInvestor.com
Fed auctions $50 billion more to cash-strapped banks:
10:14 AM ET, Apr 08, 2008 - By Sue Chang
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Reserve on Tuesday auctioned another $50 billion in funds to cash-strapped banks at an interest rate of 2.82%, the Associated Press reported. It is the ninth auction since December through which the Fed has injected $310 billion in short-term loans into the banking system, the news agency said. The auction, held on Monday, attracted 91 bids seeking a total of $91.6 billion, the Associated Press said
IMF Approves Huge Eventual Gold Sale
By HARRY DUNPHY – 14 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The International Monetary Fund's executive board has approved a broad financial overhaul plan that could lead to the eventual sale of a little over 400 tons of its substantial gold supplies.
The sale cannot occur without congressional approval as well as legislative action in many of the 184 other nations that are members of the Washington-based lending institution.
IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn welcomed the board's decision Monday to propose a new framework for the fund, designed to close a projected $400 million budget deficit over the next few years.
It is "a landmark agreement that will put the institution on a solid financial footing and modernize the IMF's structure and operations," he said in a statement.
The budget proposal includes sharp spending cuts of $100 million over the next three years that will include up to 100 staff dismissals.
"We have made difficult but necessary choices to close the projected income shortfall and put the fund's finances on a sustainable basis, but in the end it will make the fund more focused, efficient and cost-effective in serving our members," said Strauss-Kahn, a former French finance minister.
The IMF said the board agreed to revamp the fund's income model from one that primarily relies on lending to one that generates money from various sources.
During the 1990s, the IMF lent billions to countries in Asia and Latin America that were facing financial crises and financed its operations on interest from those loans. In recent years, IMF lending has dried up as many of those countries have built up reserves to prevent them from having to borrow again from the IMF, which often puts severe restrictions and conditions on its loans. The declining interest payments led to the IMF's budget gap.
Actual sale of the gold cannot start immediately because the U.S. member on the IMF board cannot vote for it until Congress approves. Congress has made approval conditional on a broad range of operational changes that Strauss-Khan has pledged to carry out to preserve the relevancy of the 64-year-old organization, whose mission is to promote global financial stability.
Under the plan, the IMF would sell the 403 tons, or nearly 13 million ounces, of gold for about $11 billion over several years. The IMF would keep $4.4 billion on its books, and the remaining $6.6 billion would go into an investment account.
The IMF, which has sold gold before, said it would coordinate the sales with central banks in an effort to prevent market disruptions.
"Gold sales would be conducted in a transparent manner with strong safeguards to ensure that they do not add to official sales and avoid any risk of market disruption," the IMF said in a statement.
The Bush administration said in February it could support selling a limited amount of IMF gold as away to ensure the agency's long-term financial stability, but Treasury officials realized this would be a hard sell. In 1999 Congress rejected a previous proposal to sell IMF gold, and the current majority leader of the Senate, Democrat Harry Reid, comes from the gold-mining state of Nevada.
Strauss-Khan, who took over last November as head of the IMF, said the financial overhaul was another major step in the organization's reform process. It followed a decision last month to slightly increase the voting power of rapidly developing countries such as China, India and Brazil, who are playing a growing role in the world economy. Since its founding, the United States and European nations have dominated IMF decision-making.
Besides using the gold sales to produce an income stream, the fund's narrow investment authority will be broadened.
Fed.(2)1 Day Forward 28day + 20.00B
Mortgage-Backed
The Slosh Report:
http://www.gmtfo.com/RepoReader/OMOps.aspx
Fed.(2)1 Day Forward 28day + 20.00B
Mortgage-Backed
The Slosh Report:
http://www.gmtfo.com/RepoReader/OMOps.aspx
Fed. 2day RP + 14.75B
The Slosh Report:
http://www.gmtfo.com/RepoReader/OMOps.aspx
Fed. 2day RP + 14.75B
The Slosh Report:
http://www.gmtfo.com/RepoReader/OMOps.aspx
Gold drops 1%, as IMF announces gold sales
By Polya Lesova
Last update: 8:20 a.m. EDT April 8, 2008Print RSS Enable Live Quotes
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Gold futures dropped sharply Tuesday, as the International Monetary Fund said it would sell more than 14.2 million ounces of gold, currently valued at more than $13 billion. Gold for June delivery fell $8.60 to $918.20 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gold drops 1%, as IMF announces gold sales
By Polya Lesova
Last update: 8:20 a.m. EDT April 8, 2008Print RSS Enable Live Quotes
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Gold futures dropped sharply Tuesday, as the International Monetary Fund said it would sell more than 14.2 million ounces of gold, currently valued at more than $13 billion. Gold for June delivery fell $8.60 to $918.20 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Fannie Mae to issue $3 bln in 2-year Benchmark Notes
11:10 AM ET, Apr 07, 2008 - By Wallace Witkowski
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Fannie Mae said Monday it plans to issue about $3 billion in its two-year Benchmark Notes. Fannie Mae said the notes will be priced on Wednesday and will settle on Friday. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and J.P. Morgan are the joint lead managers.
Fed. 1day RP + 16.50B
Mortgage-Backed
The Slosh Report:
http://www.gmtfo.com/RepoReader/OMOps.aspx
Fed. 1day RP + 16.50B
Mortgage-Backed
The Slosh Report:
http://www.gmtfo.com/RepoReader/OMOps.aspx
EMKR, gap open Pounding table [solar]
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=emkr
W@G1 QQQQ 04/07/08 for a 04/09/08 close
47.12 bob3
46.85 frenchee
46.92 Farooq
Futures (2) + World Indices
http://www.cme.com/dta/del/globex.html
http://money.cnn.com/data/premarket/
World Indices (2) Mini Charts
Updates every 60sec ~ Watch the dates!!
http://www.wwfn.com/commentary/oscharts.html
http://www.allstocks.com/markets/World_Charts/Asian_Stock_Markets/asian_stock_markets.html
Asian demand dominates copper market
http://www.commodityonline.com/news/topstory/newsdetails.php?id=7011
Strong Asian demand continues to dominate the copper market. On March 27, 2008, the International Copper Study Group (ICSG) said that its preliminary data showed that world copper production fell short of consumption by 42,000 tons in 2007.
World mine production was up 3% in 2007 while total usage was up 7%. The big increases in usage came from China, Africa, and Oceania.
On October 1, 2007, the ICSG reduced its estimate of a 2008 world production surplus was reduced from 527,000 tons to 249,000 tons.
For all of 2006, the ICSG said that world copper production exceeded consumption by 287,000 tons in all of 2006, a fairly dramatic increase from the 131,000 ton production deficit in 2005.
London inventories of copper started 2007 at 182,800 tons and ended the year at 197,450 tons
Fed. Ops: 42.00B Matures this week.**
Mon: 3.00B 3day
Wed: 15.00B 28day [Mortgage-Backed]
Thu:
5.00B 14day
19.00B 7day
=============================-==
Float: 47.00B
================================================
Temp Ops:
Perm Ops:
=================================================
Public Debt:
Limit ~ $9,815 T
4/03 ~~ $9,437 T
=========================================================
The Slosh Report:
http://www.gmtfo.com/RepoReader/OMOps.aspx
http://www.ny.frb.org/markets/omo/dmm/temp.cfm?SHOWMORE=TRUE
=========================================================
** Anyone paying attention to this data ??? cuz l may only post it @ Abet Chichi2 in order to save posts.
Fed. Ops: 42.00B Matures this week.**
Mon: 3.00B 3day
Wed: 15.00B 28day [Mortgage-Backed]
Thu:
5.00B 14day
19.00B 7day
=============================-==
Float: 47.00B
================================================
Temp Ops:
Perm Ops:
=================================================
Public Debt:
Limit ~ $9,815 T
4/03 ~~ $9,437 T
=========================================================
The Slosh Report:
http://www.gmtfo.com/RepoReader/OMOps.aspx
http://www.ny.frb.org/markets/omo/dmm/temp.cfm?SHOWMORE=TRUE
=========================================================
** Anyone paying attention to this data ??? cuz l may only post it @ Abet Chichi2 in order to save posts.
The Mortgage Bust Goes Global
Alessandro Della Bella/Keystone
Associated Press
NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
April 6, 2008
Basel, Switzerland
When a shareholder asked him to step down at a meeting in Switzerland in February, the UBS chairman Marcel Ospel politely declined. He has since obliged.
In February, shareholders had harsh words for UBS’s leaders, including Marcel Ospel, left, Marcel Rohner and Luzius Cameron.
NORMALLY, St. Jakob’s Hall here is home to soccer tournaments or the occasional hockey game. But on a sunny morning in February, the stadium offered a corporate face-off every bit as contentious as any athletic event. More than 6,000 shareholders of the Swiss banking giant UBS packed the house to vent their fury over tens of billions in losses on American subprime mortgages and what they saw as an insult to traditional Swiss values like prudence and thrift.
The target of their anger wasn’t just UBS’s chairman, Marcel Ospel, or any of the bank’s other top executives, who were arrayed under a giant screen near where goalies usually tend the net. Instead, much of their ire was aimed at the United States itself — specifically an addiction to high-octane risk-taking, easy credit and dubious financial assumptions that created the domestic mortgage mess in the first place.
“The American El Dorado has become a scene from a Western,” declared one middle-aged shareholder, Therese Klemenz. “UBS was the figurehead of Swiss business. As a good housewife, I know you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. A bank is not a casino.”
Thomas Minder, a local shareholder activist, was even more outraged. “What happened here is a scandal,” he thundered. “You’re responsible for the biggest loss in the history of the Swiss economy. Put an end to the Americanization of the Swiss economy!” At that point, Mr. Minder charged the podium, only to be dragged away by security guards.
While the housing slump has come to dominate American presidential debates and has sent Wall Street into a tailspin, the consequences of millions of foreclosures across the United States are also being felt far overseas. Nowhere is that more true than in this serene land of snowy peaks, ice-cold lakes and staid banks long considered to be among the most cautious in the world.
Until now, that is. That’s because UBS — with $3.1 trillion in assets, Switzerland’s biggest bank — made an astonishingly large bet on risky mortgage securities. At one point, that wager amounted to $80 billion, a gambit the bank lost. UBS has already been forced to write down about $37 billion of that financial roll of the dice — more than Citigroup, more than Merrill Lynch, more than any other bank in the world.
Last week, after enduring months of fierce criticism, Mr. Ospel abruptly announced that he would step down as chairman later this month. Shares of UBS rallied, but that’s cold comfort to people like Mrs. Klemenz, who have watched the stock drop by half since last summer.
IN Switzerland, they say, if you want to be nice, speak Italian. If you want to be understood, speak French. And if you want to be heard, speak German.
Like much of the financial and political elite here, Mr. Ospel is Swiss-German, and he speaks fluent English and French. But his style is definitely Teutonic. When a shareholder at the Basel meeting insisted on speaking in Italian, one of Switzerland’s four official languages, Mr. Ospel cut him off.
“You can speak Italian if you want to, but I won’t understand,” he said.
Looking out at the huge crowd over a pair of half-rim glasses, Mr. Ospel, 58, never lost his poise. When a shareholder named Jakob Trump called for him and the rest of the board to resign, adding that “a normal worker would be sacked for this,” Mr. Ospel coolly responded, “Danke, Herr Trump.”
But during an interview on Friday at UBS’s neo-Classical headquarters in downtown Zurich, the steely composure Mr. Ospel brandished at the Basel meeting was gone. Sitting in a plain white conference room adorned with maps of the world and the United States, his hands trembled and his eyes were cast downwards.
“I’m the chairman of this firm and ultimately responsible for what has happened,” he said, taking a long drag on a cigarette. “But I have the highest respect and confidence for the leadership as it is now in charge.”
Mr. Ospel said he first became aware of the extent of the threat UBS was facing in early August — three months after its Dillon Read Capital Management hedge fund unit was shuttered after big trading losses. This was six weeks after the implosion of two highly leveraged Bear Stearns hedge funds kicked off the credit crisis for the rest of Wall Street.
“I remember when I came back from summer vacation, Rohner explained we had this gigantic exposure,” he recalled, referring to UBS’s chief executive, Marcel Rohner.
Like others at UBS interviewed for this article, Mr. Ospel said the bank’s failure stemmed from a fundamental misreading of the market for mortgage securities. But he also acknowledged that the losses showed that UBS’s vaunted risk-management system had broken down.
“The key issue is that the system operated within its limits, given the assumed quality and liquidity of the assets,” he said. “Clearly, there was a problem when you build such a concentrated exposure and it doesn’t appear on any of the appropriate radar screens.”
MORE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/business/06ubs.html?pagewanted=2&ref=business
A Road Not Taken by Lenders
Gretchen Morgenson
April 6, 2008
WE’VE all heard a great deal in recent months about the greedy borrowers who caused the subprime mortgage calamity. Hordes of them duped unsuspecting lenders, don’t you know, by falsifying their incomes on loan documents. Now those loans are in default and the rapacious borrowers have moved on with their riches.
People who make these claims, with a straight face no less, overlook a crucial fact. Almost all mortgage applicants had to sign a document allowing lenders to verify their incomes with the Internal Revenue Service. At least 90 percent of borrowers had to sign, seal and deliver this form, known as a 4506T, industry experts say. This includes the so-called stated income mortgages, affectionately known as “liar loans.”
So while borrowers may have misrepresented their incomes, either on their own or at the urging of their mortgage brokers, lenders had the tools to identify these fibs before making the loans. All they had to do was ask the I.R.S. The fact that in most cases they apparently didn’t do so puts the lie to the idea that cagey borrowers duped unsuspecting lenders to secure on loans that are now — surprise! — failing.
Instead, lenders appear to be complicit in the rampant fibbery that is one of the root causes of our continuing mortgage nightmare.
Mike Summers, vice president for sales and marketing at Veri-tax Inc., in Tustin, Calif., knows plenty about this. His company handles the filing of these verification forms with the I.R.S. on behalf of lenders and loan originators. He began selling the service to lenders in 1999 and said he was surprised at the reaction he received — like that of a skunk at a garden party.
“In 2001, I was going around the subprime world trying to get them to sign up,” Mr. Summers recalled. “Ameriquest, and others I don’t want to name, just didn’t want to know because it would kill the deals. The attitude was don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Ameriquest, just to jog your memory, is now defunct.
Mr. Summers said Ameriquest and other prospective clients used lame reasons for turning him down. Submitting the forms was too costly, they said ($20 per loan, on average), or too time-consuming (the information came back to the lender in about one business day).
“It was greed on a few different levels,” Mr. Summers said. “I don’t think $20 to protect your interest in a $500,000 loan and weed out things that aren’t going to work is that big an investment.”
In 2006, the I.R.S. made it even easier for lenders to verify borrowers’ incomes by automating its systems, Mr. Summers said. The turnaround time under the new system fell significantly.
Still, the tool remained unused. When a customer signed up for Veri-tax’s service, it was typically to spot-check the quality of loans after they were made, Mr. Summers said.
“My estimate was between 3 and 5 percent of all the loans that were funded in 2006 were executed with a 4506,” Mr. Summers said. “They just turned a blind eye, saying, ‘Everything is going to be fine.’ ”
We know how well that turned out. Lenders still do not routinely check borrowers’ incomes with the I.R.S., Mr. Summers said. This seems odd, given how easy it is to hop onto the Internet and create documents that look like authentic W-2s or Form 1040s.
Indeed, according to a report on mortgage fraud released Thursday by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a unit of the Treasury Department, only 31 percent of suspected fraud was detected before loan disbursements in the 12 months ended March 31, 2007. On stated income loans, only 19 percent of the cases of suspected fraud were detected before the loans were financed, versus 33.5 percent on more fully documented loans.
Yet 43 percent of the cases sampled in the study involved misrepresentation of income, assets or debts. The next-largest category was forged documents, totaling 28 percent of the sampled loans.
Mortgage brokers initiated the loans on 64 percent of the reports involving misrepresentation of income, assets or debt, the study said.
The study’s findings on the institutions that file suspicious-activity reports related to mortgages are also revealing. Banks, of course, file a vast majority of these reports. Securities firms, which packaged and sold billions of dollars in mortgage loans to investors and were certainly in a position to identify problems in them, filed almost none. They seemed to have little appetite for the job.
During the 12 months ended March 31, 2007, banks filed 41,000 reports on suspected mortgage fraud. By comparison, during the more than four years that ended May 1 of last year, 18 securities firms filed just 36 reports of suspicious activity.
THE degree to which mortgage lenders and Wall Street looked the other way on borrowers’ incomes, a sin of commission given the ease with which they could have been checked, raises an intriguing question.
Can investors stuck with losses on these loans sue to recover their investments based on this due-diligence failure? After all, mortgage originators made representations and warranties to investors that the quality of these loans was good when it clearly was not. And they made these representations knowing that they had not bothered to conduct quick and easy borrower-income checks.
“Investors hoping to put back the loans for deficient underwriting under reps and warranties would end up going back to the originators,” said Josh Rosner, an analyst at Graham Fisher & Company and an authority on mortgage-backed securities. “Given that many of these lenders are out of business, ultimately this could come back to the bank or investment bank.”
“The general view is this should not be talked about out loud,” Mr. Rosner added.
Wall Street will certainly battle forcefully against such lawsuits, if investors bring them. But its role as one of the great enablers in this mortgage debacle is something that even Wall Street can’t deny.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/business/06gret.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin
Credit Bust: Avoid Being the Little Guy
http://seekingalpha.com/article/71275-credit-bust-avoid-being-the-little-guy?source=yahoo
The long (and maybe not-so-slow-anymore) unwinding of the credit excess of recent years is starting to show up as missed payments in all the usual places - mortgages, credit cards, and auto loans.
Maybe someday they'll look back at this period in history and think that we all should have seen what was coming - to think that asset prices would rise indefinitely, forever masking the amount of credit and debt that was being created, seemed like an awfully stupid way to run an economy.
Bloomberg reports that late payments just hit a high not seen since 1992:
Consumers fell behind on car, credit-card and home-equity loans at the highest level in 15 years, another sign the U.S. economy is slowing, according to the American Bankers Association's quarterly survey.
Payments at least 30 days past due increased across all eight categories of loans tracked during the fourth quarter, the Washington-based group said today in a statement. Late loans in the quarter climbed 21 basis points to 2.65 percent of all accounts in a consumer-loan index created by the group.
"It's an indication of the degree of stress consumers are facing right now," said Nigel Gault, director of U.S. research at Lexington, Massachusetts-based Global Insight Inc. "People overextended themselves, they took out loans they thought weren't a problem as long as house prices kept rising."
Last year, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan noted that many of the developing economic problems would be alleviated if home prices went up by ten percent.
From today's levels, that would be more than a twenty percent increase, but, from the sound of what's coming out of Washington, don't be surprised if they bring The Maestro out of retirement to try to engineer such a feat.
As Angelo Mozilo once noted, you have to get to the root of the problem and that is that home prices are falling (see Angelo Mozilo is a moron).
Meanwhile, writing in The New Yorker, James Surowiecki laments the bankruptcy reform that was passed a couple years ago:
In recent months, a lot of people have been handed financial get-out-of-jail-free cards. C.E.O.s who presided over billions in losses have walked away with tens of millions in compensation. The Federal Reserve has showered cheap money on banks and brokerages. Even Bear Stearns caught a break when, last week, J. P. Morgan agreed to quintuple the price it will pay to take over the firm. But there’s one group for whom forgiveness has not been forthcoming: ordinary consumers struggling with piles of credit-card debt. For them, escaping the burden of their bad decisions and their bad luck has become much harder.
That’s because of a law that Congress passed in 2005 which has made it more difficult for people to write off their debts. Filing for bankruptcy has become much more expensive. More important, while lower-income people can still declare Chapter 7, which takes away your assets but then discharges your debts, most middle- and higher-income people now have to declare Chapter 13. That means they have to pay their creditors monthly for five years before they’re free.
The little guy, it seems, sometimes has a different set of consequences at the end of the credit and debt party. That's why it's not a good idea to be the little guy.
Not coincidentally (perhaps), just the other day, PBS re-ran their excellent Frontline documentary on The Secret History of the Credit Card. You can watch the whole thing online now and, maybe after living through the mortgage mess for almost a year now, this will make a little more sense to a few more people.
more than one occasion in these pages you've read that the "Reagan Revolution" was thought to have more to do with the expansion of credit than anything else.
Now this is something new - a link to Web of Debt was left in the comments section the other day and, though, nothing is known about this book, it certainly is in keeping with the general theme around here and has one heck of an image on the cover.
Shouldn't someone be sending me a copy of this in the mail?
Does anyone know how the documentary Credit Card Nation did? You'd think that someday, people would take an interest in this stuff.
Thanks Jim, noted same Zinc & Nickel
it's becoming more clear why Don Coxe takes his bullish position for assets out of ground.
Don Coxe: Weekly audio program. MUST
http://events.startcast.com/events/199/B0003/#
Run time 38min Q&A @ 23min
A few spips from others....
Great talk by Don Coxe on the Bear Sterns fiasco,
why it happened, its effect on the US financial system,
and how to invest in its aftermath.
---------
You're right, I'm about a 1/3 away into Donald Coxe's institutional client conference call from April 4th, and it's excellent. In fact, the core themes sound a lot like the Fleckenstein interview on Puplava's FSO this weekend.
It was interesting to hear Coxe's "mea culpa" that he had misassessed the health of the banks and financials in his past recommendations. This ties back to my earlier criticism of Coxe that he failed to appreciate the seriousness of the credit crisis, and it systemic nature.
That being said, he's certainly holding no punches back in his criticism of how the Bear Stearns bailout is part of a continuous patter by the Fed of bailing out speculators at the expense of savers. Good for Coxe.
Well, back to the Coxe call[i/]
------------
Fantastic interview of Bill Fleckenstein on Puplava's Financial Sense Newshour this weekend.
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/Fleckenstein.html
Don Coxe: Weekly audio program. MUST
http://events.startcast.com/events/199/B0003/#
Run time 38min Q&A @ 23min
A few spips from others....
Great talk by Don Coxe on the Bear Sterns fiasco,
why it happened, its effect on the US financial system,
and how to invest in its aftermath.
---------
You're right, I'm about a 1/3 away into Donald Coxe's institutional client conference call from April 4th, and it's excellent. In fact, the core themes sound a lot like the Fleckenstein interview on Puplava's FSO this weekend.
It was interesting to hear Coxe's "mea culpa" that he had misassessed the health of the banks and financials in his past recommendations. This ties back to my earlier criticism of Coxe that he failed to appreciate the seriousness of the credit crisis, and it systemic nature.
That being said, he's certainly holding no punches back in his criticism of how the Bear Stearns bailout is part of a continuous patter by the Fed of bailing out speculators at the expense of savers. Good for Coxe.
Well, back to the Coxe call[i/]
------------
Fantastic interview of Bill Fleckenstein on Puplava's Financial Sense Newshour this weekend.
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/Fleckenstein.html
Bradley turn on 4/7.
http://www.amanita.at/e/faq/e-bradley-com.htm
OT: Farmer cuts property in two to give to ex-wife
Fri Apr 4, 1:39 PM ET
BELGRADE (Reuters) -
A Serb farmer used a grinding machine to cut in half his farm tools and machines to comply with a court ruling that he must share all his property with his ex-wife, local media reported on Thursday.
Branko Zivkov, 76, told Belgrade daily Kurir he had been ready to give his wife Vukadinka her equal share of everything earned during their 45-year marriage, but was furious at being asked to give away half his farming equipment.
Instead, he bought a grinder and cut in two all his tools, including large items such as cattle scales, a harrow and a sowing machine.
"I still haven't decided how to split the cow," he told the newspaper. "She should just say what she wants -- the part with the horns or the part with the tail."
The Assault on Free Markets
Peter Schiff
Apr 4, 2008
Those blindsided by the recent financial meltdown are now loudly blaming the free market for its failure to police its own excesses, and are calling for greater regulation to prevent future disasters. But for those who clearly observed the problems developing (in high definition slow motion) the blame can be directed squarely at the policies of the Greenspan/Bernanke Federal Reserve. As has been the case countless times in history, the free market will now pay the price for government incompetence.
In Senate hearings this week, all parties involved completely ignored the Fed's own culpability in igniting the speculative fever. It's as if a senior prom had turned into a wild bacchanalia, and angry parents now question why the chaperones failed to notice the disrobing or why the DJ played provocative music, all the while ignoring the bearded gentleman pouring grain alcohol into the punch bowl.
A perfect illustration of the Fed's failure to take responsibility can be found in Bernanke's explanations regarding inflation, which he solely attributes to the effects of the rapid increase in global commodity prices. He failed to mention that commodity prices are rising as a direct consequence of his monetary policy, which is debasing not just the U.S. dollar, but currencies around the world. Rather than accepting the blame for creating inflation, Bernanke is shifting the blame to the free market. The Senators are happy to let him get away with it as it provides more evidence to support the "need " for more government to save the economy from the disastrous effects of unbridled capitalism.
When asked how we got into this mess, Bernanke replied that our problems resulted from an excessive credit bubble characterized by aggressive leverage, reckless lending, and extreme risk taking. Absent from his explanation was the Fed's role in irresponsibly setting interest rates below market levels, which mispriced risk, got the party started and kept it raging into the wee hours of the morning. The expressed goal of the Fed for much of this decade was, and is, to encourage and facilitate borrowing and lending.
During his testimony, Bernanke continued to claim that Bear Steams was not bailed out as shareholders only received about $10 per share. Of course, $10 is better than zero, which is what they surely would have received if the Fed hadn't thrown taxpayer money around. What about Bear's creditors though? Although the collapse of Bear Stearns would have cost bond holders dearly, the bailout essentially makes them whole. Here again, the Fed creates even greater moral hazards by encouraging excessive risk taking. By bailing out lenders who extend excessive credit, the Fed simply invites more of that behavior. The free market must be allowed to properly price risk. Lenders need to know that when they lend money, whether to highly leveraged investment banks and hedge funds, or to over-stretched homebuyers or credit card users, they risk not getting paid back. By interfering with this process the Fed simply guarantees more losses and even bigger bailouts in the future.
Also, leveraged speculators need to know that it is not "heads they win, tails the taxpayers lose". Wall Street executives amassed fortunes by making extremely risky bets. Now that those bets have soured, why is it taxpayers that have to swallow the losses? Wall Street billionaires earn their bucks on the backs of the middle class, who made little on the way up, but foot the entire bill on the way down.
While Bernanke talked about the underlying strength of our economy, he claimed necessity in saving Bear Stearns from bankruptcy as it would have brought down our entire financial system. How sound can our economy be if the failure of one investment bank could topple it? Does this now mean that no more major banks or brokerage firms will be allowed to fail? Since we routinely accused Japan of practicing "crony capitalism" what do you suppose we should call our version?
Not to be outdone in rewarding reckless behavior, earlier in the week Congress passed $15 billion in tax breaks for homebuilders, who had made their fortunes overbuilding during the bubble and unloading their shares to a gullible public. By threatening to hold back on their political contributions, these same homebuilders are awarded still more billions. The last ones we should be subsidizing are homebuilders. After all, the last thing we need right now is more homes.
The legislation also contained a provision that offers generous tax credits to individuals who buy homes out of foreclosure. While this is billed as a benefit to homebuyers, it is just another hand out to lenders, as those qualifying for the tax breaks will simply pay more at auctions as the tax breaks subsidize higher bids. The real winners are the creditors who get more in foreclosure than would have been the case had buyers not had their bids subsidized by the government.
Of course, for all the talk about taxpayer bailouts, none of the senators bothered to mention that, for the moment, no tax increases are actually on the table. Instead, the bailouts are being financed by savers, pensioners, wage earners, investors and the elderly on fixed incomes, who all suffer staggering increases in their costs of living, as the Fed uses inflation to rob Main Street to pay off Wall Street.
***
For a more in depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar denominated investments, read my new book "Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse." Click here to buy a copy today.
More importantly, don't wait for reality to set in. Protect your wealth and preserve your purchasing power before it's too late. Discover the best way to buy gold at www.goldyoucanfold.com, download my free research report on the powerful case for investing in foreign equities available at www.researchreportone.com, and subscribe to my free, on-line investment newsletter.
Peter Schiff
C.E.O. and Chief Global Strategist
Euro Pacific Capital, Inc.
1 800-727-7922
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/schiff/schiff040408.html
The Assault on Free Markets
Peter Schiff
Apr 4, 2008
Those blindsided by the recent financial meltdown are now loudly blaming the free market for its failure to police its own excesses, and are calling for greater regulation to prevent future disasters. But for those who clearly observed the problems developing (in high definition slow motion) the blame can be directed squarely at the policies of the Greenspan/Bernanke Federal Reserve. As has been the case countless times in history, the free market will now pay the price for government incompetence.
In Senate hearings this week, all parties involved completely ignored the Fed's own culpability in igniting the speculative fever. It's as if a senior prom had turned into a wild bacchanalia, and angry parents now question why the chaperones failed to notice the disrobing or why the DJ played provocative music, all the while ignoring the bearded gentleman pouring grain alcohol into the punch bowl.
A perfect illustration of the Fed's failure to take responsibility can be found in Bernanke's explanations regarding inflation, which he solely attributes to the effects of the rapid increase in global commodity prices. He failed to mention that commodity prices are rising as a direct consequence of his monetary policy, which is debasing not just the U.S. dollar, but currencies around the world. Rather than accepting the blame for creating inflation, Bernanke is shifting the blame to the free market. The Senators are happy to let him get away with it as it provides more evidence to support the "need " for more government to save the economy from the disastrous effects of unbridled capitalism.
When asked how we got into this mess, Bernanke replied that our problems resulted from an excessive credit bubble characterized by aggressive leverage, reckless lending, and extreme risk taking. Absent from his explanation was the Fed's role in irresponsibly setting interest rates below market levels, which mispriced risk, got the party started and kept it raging into the wee hours of the morning. The expressed goal of the Fed for much of this decade was, and is, to encourage and facilitate borrowing and lending.
During his testimony, Bernanke continued to claim that Bear Steams was not bailed out as shareholders only received about $10 per share. Of course, $10 is better than zero, which is what they surely would have received if the Fed hadn't thrown taxpayer money around. What about Bear's creditors though? Although the collapse of Bear Stearns would have cost bond holders dearly, the bailout essentially makes them whole. Here again, the Fed creates even greater moral hazards by encouraging excessive risk taking. By bailing out lenders who extend excessive credit, the Fed simply invites more of that behavior. The free market must be allowed to properly price risk. Lenders need to know that when they lend money, whether to highly leveraged investment banks and hedge funds, or to over-stretched homebuyers or credit card users, they risk not getting paid back. By interfering with this process the Fed simply guarantees more losses and even bigger bailouts in the future.
Also, leveraged speculators need to know that it is not "heads they win, tails the taxpayers lose". Wall Street executives amassed fortunes by making extremely risky bets. Now that those bets have soured, why is it taxpayers that have to swallow the losses? Wall Street billionaires earn their bucks on the backs of the middle class, who made little on the way up, but foot the entire bill on the way down.
While Bernanke talked about the underlying strength of our economy, he claimed necessity in saving Bear Stearns from bankruptcy as it would have brought down our entire financial system. How sound can our economy be if the failure of one investment bank could topple it? Does this now mean that no more major banks or brokerage firms will be allowed to fail? Since we routinely accused Japan of practicing "crony capitalism" what do you suppose we should call our version?
Not to be outdone in rewarding reckless behavior, earlier in the week Congress passed $15 billion in tax breaks for homebuilders, who had made their fortunes overbuilding during the bubble and unloading their shares to a gullible public. By threatening to hold back on their political contributions, these same homebuilders are awarded still more billions. The last ones we should be subsidizing are homebuilders. After all, the last thing we need right now is more homes.
The legislation also contained a provision that offers generous tax credits to individuals who buy homes out of foreclosure. While this is billed as a benefit to homebuyers, it is just another hand out to lenders, as those qualifying for the tax breaks will simply pay more at auctions as the tax breaks subsidize higher bids. The real winners are the creditors who get more in foreclosure than would have been the case had buyers not had their bids subsidized by the government.
Of course, for all the talk about taxpayer bailouts, none of the senators bothered to mention that, for the moment, no tax increases are actually on the table. Instead, the bailouts are being financed by savers, pensioners, wage earners, investors and the elderly on fixed incomes, who all suffer staggering increases in their costs of living, as the Fed uses inflation to rob Main Street to pay off Wall Street.
***
For a more in depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar denominated investments, read my new book "Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse." Click here to buy a copy today.
More importantly, don't wait for reality to set in. Protect your wealth and preserve your purchasing power before it's too late. Discover the best way to buy gold at www.goldyoucanfold.com, download my free research report on the powerful case for investing in foreign equities available at www.researchreportone.com, and subscribe to my free, on-line investment newsletter.
Peter Schiff
C.E.O. and Chief Global Strategist
Euro Pacific Capital, Inc.
1 800-727-7922
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/schiff/schiff040408.html
QT, My son was laid off but has found out source contract work of course no benefits. [Contract below]
--------
Subject: E-Systems - Countrywide Home Loans Asset Inventory 4/7/08
Importance: High
Richard,
I have a site that needs an asset inventory on their Single Monitor Systems in Charlotte for Monday 4/7/08. I have included the site info below along with the documents and overview. You will have to contact the Branch contact to set up a start time. Can you let me know if you are available for this? Let me know as soon as possible.
--------------------------
Judge in Countrywide Lawsuit Denies Request for Bank of America Records
DOVER, Del. (AP) -- A judge rejected a request by lawyers representing Countrywide Financial shareholders to examine Bank of America's internal documents related to the pending merger of the two companies.
Plaintiffs challenging the $4 billion stock deal argue that it undervalues Countrywide to the detriment of its shareholders, while enriching executives at Countrywide,
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080404/bank_of_america_countrywide.html?.v=2
Fed. 3 Days Forward + 15.00B Mortgage-Backed 23day.
The results for the following single collateral tranche operation.
Fed. 3 Days Forward + 15.00B Mortgage-Backed 23day.
The results for the following single collateral tranche operation.
Fed. 3day RP + 3.00B [net all add ]
Fed. 3day RP + 3.00B [net all add ]
6:27AM Anglogold revises production guidance for Q1 (AU) 35.87 : Following the stabilisation of Eskom power supply to South African operations during the quarter, AngloGold Ashanti is forecasting first quarter production of approximately 1.19 million ounces. The revised production outlook is around 8% above guidance provided at the fourth quarter results presentation. The company has also fully delivered into maturing hedge contracts during the quarter.
6:27AM Anglogold revises production guidance for Q1 (AU) 35.87 : Following the stabilisation of Eskom power supply to South African operations during the quarter, AngloGold Ashanti is forecasting first quarter production of approximately 1.19 million ounces. The revised production outlook is around 8% above guidance provided at the fourth quarter results presentation. The company has also fully delivered into maturing hedge contracts during the quarter.
Links to all 15 AMEX $HUI (goldbugs) charts:
ABX,AEM,AUY,CDE,EGO:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=22553993
GFI,GG,GOLD,GSS,HL:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22554028
HMY,IAG,KGC,MDG,NEM:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22554046
Purty Charts Courtesy old pal 4God
Let em breath a bit now out TY
perfect timing DIAs & QQQs
Nice Job Chichi2 !!