Wednesday - October 08, 2008

Jobless Afghan mother of seven gets £170,000 benefits and lives in £1million council house

Moonbat Award for the govt. if this is all actually true.  Double the prices you see for approx. dollars folks.  Unbelievable.  I sincerely hope that we aren’t this loopy back home in USA.  I have heard of this here already in regard to a muslim hate preacher whose family has a large house, SUVs and benefits etc.
But hey ... the taxpayer has too much spare cash laying around anyway.

How could I not post this item?  It’s just too darn mind numbing to ignore. 
I’ve recently read that some 70 or was it 75 thousand Brits have left their country.  Not surprising either.  In fact, I think it’s more like their country has left them. And stories like this are just part of the whole picture.

‘It’s like winning the lottery’: Jobless Afghan mother of seven gets £170,000 benefits and lives in £1million council house

By Danny Brierley
Last updated at 1:59 PM on 08th October 2008

A family living on benefits in a £1.2 million house in west London told today how they felt they had won the lottery.

Mother-of-seven Toorpakai Saindi gets £170,000 a year in benefits and the council pays the property’s private landlord £12,500 a month to accommodate the family who fled Afghanistan seven years ago.

The house in Acton has seven bedrooms, two reception rooms, a dining room and two kitchens, as well as an extensive back garden.

Mrs Saindi’s son, Jawad, 20, told the London Evening Standard: “If someone gave you a lottery ticket would you leave it? No. You take what you get given.

“It’s not that we wanted this big house - my mum is not happy because she has to clean all of it. The first day we moved in here we got lost because it was so big.”

It is owned by landlord Ajit Panesar, who is being paid double the normal market value of the property.

Mr Panesar said: “I can’t help it if the law says I should get paid that amount of money.”

The Saindis were first housed in a three-bed-room property in Enfield.

Four years later they moved to a five-bedroom house in Ealing and three months ago were placed at their current address which they are entitled to have by law given the size of their family.

Comfort: The spacious West London home which Mrs Saindi occupies with her seven children at the taxpayer’s expense.

Jawad, who is planning to study at the private Regents Park Business School, said the family had left Afghanistan because of the civil unrest.

He added: “It was a big choice to go to another country and we came here for the education for the little ones. It was great in Afghanistan, every house over there is enormous - this place would be as big as something we would give chickens but we are just grateful for what we can get.”

Jawad, who lives at home with his mother, three sisters and three brothers, said he could not believe how much the landlord was being paid by the council. Their father is separated from Mrs Saindi.

Ealing council, who housed the family, blamed the Government saying it set the rates for the property. However, Whitehall officials insisted the council could have put the family in a cheaper home.

Mrs Saindi approached Ealing council, which had a legal obligation to find her a seven-bedroom property, in July after being made homeless. It is understood the council did not have a suitable house available so turned to the private sector.

But the move has angered neighbours and campaigners who say vast sums of taxpayers’ money are being wasted in housing benefit, and claim a more suitable property could have been found.

Mark Walllace, campaign director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “The system has gone seriously wrong when one family is costing taxpayers so much. This family could be helped without the need for such a huge bill.”

Mrs Saindi, whose children are aged from eight to 22, said: “I always thought the housing benefit was a lot, but I’m told this is what it is for homes like this here. It’s a lot of money but the council pay it. This is their problem. I don’t know why they pay so much.”

Mr Panesar says he checked the price with the Rent Service, part of the Department of Work and Pensions, which agreed the rate was acceptable. It is believed the figure is so high because the Rent Service grouped Acton with wealthy Westminster during boundary changes in April.

http://tinyurl.com/54xzll

   Tuesday - October 07, 2008

Apologies to Dr. Suess

Uncle Sam and Congress-man

That Uncle Sam!
That Congress-man!
We do not like your bailout plan!
We do not like your taxing plan!

Should we pay so stocks don’t tank?
Should we pay for Barney Frank?

We should not pay so stocks won’t tank.
We should not pay for greedy banks.
We do not like your bailout plan,
We should not pay it, Congress-man.

Mr. Paulson made a call
For a plan to soak us all.

Could you, would you Mr. Bush,
Could you, would you push, push, push?

We should not pay you, Mr. Bush,
So Mae won’t fall upon her tush.

We should not pay you, AIG,
Though you ask on bended knee.
We should not pay you, Freddie Mac,
Just to lighten up your pack.
We should not pay for any bank,
Even one that’s in the tank.

We should not pay for umpteen years
Just because the market fears.
We do not like your bailout plan.
We do not like it, Uncle Sam.

We should not pay you, Mr. Raines,
You, the source of all our pains.
Franklin Raines don’t give a hoot,
He got a golden parachute.

This bailout plan sure is working well. The Dow closed under 10,000 yesterday. Thanks Congress.

   Wednesday - October 01, 2008

Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our crisis

Drew’s post and his comments following pretty much say as much as can be said.
I really can’t add anything of my own but will let this speak for itself.  Perhaps some of you haven’t seen it. It runs 8 minutes so grab a coffee or tea or whatever, click the start button but don’t be repaired to relax.

   Friday - September 26, 2008

The Brit View from the Telegraph:  Congress must agree Henry Paulson’s cheque

More economic stuff and I don’t think I like this word.  catastrophic

I guess is all depends on what they mean by .....

Congress must agree Henry Paulson’s cheque

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 26/09/2008

Once President George W. Bush had warned the American people in near-apocalyptic language that, if Congress failed to approve his $700billion bank bail-out, the entire US economy was in peril, it became hard to conceive of the deal being blocked.

Henry ‘Hank’ Paulson intends to buy the banks’ toxic debts with the $700 billion

Such once-in-a-lifetime threats can never be made — or taken — lightly. So, despite immense reservations on Capitol Hill, on both sides of the aisle, about the implications of the rescue package and the alarmingly slapdash way in which it appears to have been constructed, no one was under any illusion last night that, if it is not approved, the impact on world markets will be catastrophic.

That has not prevented both the Democratic and Republican leaderships in Congress pushing the plan to the wire. Neither side has been prepared to give Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, the blank cheque he was looking for.

They are right to be appalled at the size of the bail-out, the vagueness of Mr Paulson’s proposals and the unconscionable speed with which he wanted it approved. Congress has felt it is being bounced, and who can blame it?
# £$700bn bail-out deal hangs in the balance

In three days of wrangling, much of it conducted in public, it appears to have succeeded in building in safeguards for the American taxpayer: an oversight board to monitor the plan, combined with a requirement that taxpayers take a share of future profits from assisted lenders. Measures to help mortgage defaulters were also being bolted on.

If President Bush’s warning of Götterdämmerung looks like serving its purpose, his swipe at the “irresponsible actions” of bankers has been less helpful. Yes, some of the market practices we have witnessed in recent years have been hard to defend.

But the President — in much the same way as Gordon Brown in this country — breezily ignores the role of governments in laying the groundwork for this crisis. More precisely, it was the purely political decisions of the major central banks — notably the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan — to keep interest rates unfeasibly low for too long to boost their economies that created the cheap money world in which the banks made hay.

If the Paulson deal is sealed and has the desired effect of kick-starting the banking sector, there should be no need for a similar bail-out package in this country. Given that the Government has already committed £50 billion of taxpayers’ cash to rescuing Northern Rock, that is as well.

But this is far from being over. If the Paulson Plan clears Congress, the next big question will be: what if it doesn’t do the trick? Where do we go from here? Are there any more shots left in the locker? These are not comfortable thoughts.

http://tinyurl.com/4r4g3j

US taxpayers are being enrolled in an economic chain gang .

What Brits woke up to with their morning paper.  Read it right here.

Well people, I have to tell ya that I am very far from smart when it comes to high finance or for that matter, balancing a check book.

I recall some 20 years ago when the wife and I had a disagreement over who knows what at this late date.  But in the course of our chat she got a bit angry (probably cause I wasn’t) and asked me why I married her if ... but I no longer remember what the subject was.  I do recall my reply though which was meant to be funny and she laughed and that was the end of the disagreement.

What I answered was .... I married you because I couldn’t find an accountant that would have me. haha. You had to be there.

Point is ... I am hopeless with this stuff and the wife balances the check book and took care of the books when I was working. See, I add 1 plus 1 and come up with 11.  So I have to have ppl explain this stuff.  Like, do I need to be frightened?

Funny thing .... I understood the stock market well enough during the bubble (bubble? what bubble) thanks to a fellow named Wade Cook.
But this stuff?  Don’t think so. 

Well anyway ... I would be most interested in your opinions on the subject.

more later.

Thanks. jdp

US taxpayers are being enrolled in an economic chain gang

By Jeff Randall
Last Updated: 10:01pm BST 25/09/2008

“To preserve their [the people’s] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude” - Thomas Jefferson

There was a time, early in America’s history, when its leaders believed in financial discipline. No more. Perpetual debt, which Jefferson feared would enslave future generations, is clamped on Uncle Sam’s undercarriage like a ball and chain. US public borrowing is $9.8 trillion - and rising.

Jefferson, America’s third president (1801-09), is widely regarded as the White House’s most intellectually gifted occupant. He believed that “banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies”, and that “the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity … is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

If Congress approves the Treasury Secretary’s $700 billion bail-out of dysfunctional banks, it would be hard to invent a better example of what Jefferson foresaw: authorised “swindling”. Tomorrow’s Americans and those who come after them will pay and pay for the grotesque excesses and self-indulgence of today’s flim-flam merchants.

As Jefferson put it: “If we run into such debt, as we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts … [we will have] no means of calling our mis-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers.”

Having failed to deliver victory in the War on Terror, President Bush is hoping for better luck in the War on Error. His goal is to limit damage from the egregious mistakes of sub-prime mortgages; his tactics are to carpet-bomb the banking system with federal funds. The upshot, in Jeffersonian terms, is that US taxpayers are about to be enrolled in an economic chain gang.

The prospect is unappealing, but, we are told, there’s no alternative. Hank Paulson’s plan offers fewer details than his weekly milk bill, but now, it seems, is no time for nit-picking. Having collected sacks of gold at Goldman Sachs, this former champion of free markets wants to nationalise assets at a pace not seen since Che Guevara was lighting cigars with Batista’s legacy.

No wonder so many Congressmen look queasy. They must persuade constituents, many of whom are losing jobs and homes in the credit crunch, that it is a bright idea to rescue those who profited hugely from the creation of dark instruments. Not for the first time, Wall Street is bilking Main Street.

For those who work in the fast lane of finance, the speed of decline has been ear-popping. Less than a year ago, America’s investment banks were wallowing in record bonuses, totalling almost $38 billion. Yes, billion.

Their pool of monopoly money was greater than the GDP of Bulgaria. Split among 186,000 workers at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, it equated to an average of more than $200,000 per person, about four times the median US household income.

Goldman’s chairman, Lloyd Blankfein set a new standard in executive gluttony, collecting $68 million (about one third in cash), but at least his bank is still standing. Richard Fuld, Lehman’s chief executive, trousered $41 million. Nice work, except that he took the lot in the bank’s shares. Nine months later, when Lehman went bust, Fuld’s bonus joined his reputation, in the trash-can.

Banking’s bacchanalia has morphed into a therapy group for manic depressives. Those still in work look around the room and wonder how many will be flipping burgers by Christmas. In an interview with Fortune magazine, Mr Paulson admits: “Raw capitalism is a dead end. I’ve seen it.”

Now I have heard it all. What next?

In place of rip-roaring markets, according to a Wall Street trader, America has embraced “trickle-down communism”. This system involves the state paying “cash for trash” to benefit a few miscreants, and then hoping that some of the taxpayers’ largesse will trickle down to the masses.

Toxic rubbish will not be made to disappear by Mr Paulson’s proposals. All that will be different is ownership. It will be like removing nuclear waste from a failing business and parking it in a government building. The risk moves from private to public.

It is this form of regressive redistribution that Messrs Bush and Paulson are peddling as the road to redemption for Western finance. Excuse my cynicism, but would you buy a used derivative from either of them?

After Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, Mr Bush’s record on rescue missions does not inspire confidence. As for Mr Paulson, if he’s so insightful, why, when he was earning an $18 million bonus at Goldman in 2006, did he not spot the radio-active dump piling up in his industry’s back-yard?

Mr Paulson’s sales pitch is essentially: “American capitalism, I love you! But we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!” In return for a promise to head off financial obliteration, he is demanding a cheque of disturbing blankness. It is to be a bail-out with precious few strings, plus immunity from review “by any court of law or administrative agency”. His legal team must have chuckled when they slipped in that one.

The scheme is under attack from right and left. George Soros, the investor who helped break the pound in 1992, is in favour of action to stem insolvencies, but insists that Paulson’s plan falls short. Paul Krugman, professor of economics at Princeton, has little faith in Paulson as a fixer: “He’s making it up as he goes along, just like the rest of us.”

Outside Washington, in the real world, there is a growing clamour for something to be done. Ordinary voters are in pain. They want government to make it go away. But there is no magic powder.

Those who borrowed to buy assets at the wrong prices will have to suffer, as financial gravity re-asserts its downward pull. There is no policy yet invented that can make fifty cents worth two bucks forever.

Any long-term solution will have to recognise that contraction cannot be deferred in perpetuity. Having restored stability, it should punish those who created the mess. Where’s the retribution in Paulson’s package? It looks too much like a parachute for his chums at the back of a burning plane.

Finally, there needs to be an overhaul of banking governance. The rules of the game were, in effect, made redundant by the ingenuity of financial engineers. We do not need more regulation, but more appropriate regulation.

Which brings us back to Jefferson. Two hundred years ago, he demanded: “The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.” Twas ever thus.

http://tinyurl.com/4omo5q

   Saturday - September 20, 2008

IF THERE’S A WAY OUT OF A MESS, AMERICANS CAN FIND IT. A BRIT REPORT ON USA.

Crisis schmisis - there’s money to be made

By Tom Leonard
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 20/09/2008

The sight of jobless Lehman Brothers staff leaving their Manhattan headquarters clutching cardboard boxes, like a line of leaf-bearing ants, was an arresting one.

But far more startling was the crowd of people waiting to greet them last Tuesday morning. When Americans say - and they often do - that one man’s crisis is another man’s opportunity, they aren’t joking. A pair of bankers from a small - still solvent - Connecticut firm were dressed in pyjamas and dressing gowns waving “Brokers Wanted” placards and shouting, “Tired of the big boys? Get into bed with us”.

A few of the downcast Lehman people even managed to smile. The air was thick with flashing business cards. Recruitment consultants shoved theirs into the hands of anyone in a suit.

The entrepreneurial spirit in action outside Lehman Brothers’ New York offices.

A man seeking staff for a new internet company was doing the same and, although the news of Lehman’s collapse was only a day old, he had already printed a “Wanted For Hire: 7,000 Brothers of Lehman” T-shirt.

“I really want to get into the building and have a good chat with them,” he told me. Didn’t he think he was being a little insensitive? He smiled. Perhaps only a Brit would waste time asking such a question. Yes, he obviously did think that, but frankly so what?

It has been a miserable week in New York and it could get even worse. The bankers and brokers are inconsolable and there is a lot of talk of 1929. In a city so reliant on the financial sector, it is hard to find people who aren’t worried that the banking crisis will trickle down and hit the “little guy” like them; if not taking their job, at least shattering the value of their home. And yet, as the entrepreneurial bunch outside Lehmans illustrated far better than the platitudes coming from John McCain and Barack Obama, Americans are not ones to see a glass half empty.

They don’t tend to stay on the floor too long after they’ve had a kicking. It’s a gritty, ruthlessly pragmatic, sometimes - like the man in the Lehman T-shirt - purely self-interested resilience that is rooted in the country’s can-do psyche and centuries-old belief in self-help. And rooted, too, in America’s belief in itself. Those philosophical ideas of American exceptionalism and the United States’s Manifest Destiny - as the Puritans were first to outline it, that God created America as a “city on the hill” to provide an example to others - smack of chauvinism. But they certainly don’t hurt when a country needs to pull through a gloomy patch.

Of course, that sunny, ingrained optimism that America’s detractors like to dismiss as simple naivety has particular benefits in a crisis that is largely about confidence. Americans just cannot stay downhearted for long; it’s not in their DNA. A CNN presenter summed up that positive spirit yesterday as she introduced a segment on “the financial challenges out there and what folks are doing to meet them”. Weaned on generations of Hollywood disaster movies, in which over-dressed Americans run screaming and helpless from every crisis, foreigners tend to dismiss the real ones as pampered and complacent - missing the gene that governs coping with adversity. It might be true that Americans have grown too attached to an easy lifestyle, but they certainly don’t shrink from a challenge.

Many have written off the US car industry as doomed to extinction because of its reliance on big, gas-guzzling vehicles at a time of soaring petrol prices. And yet, to huge applause, General Motors failed to live down to expectations this week when it unveiled the Volt, a radical new type of electric car that can do 40 miles on one battery charge. Just like in the world wars, Americans have come rather late to the “green revolution”, but - as in 1942, when Sherman tanks rolled off the supply ships in their thousands - they tend to make a difference when they set their minds to something.

(well now hang on there. the sherman tank wasn’t a match for the tiger tank as I’ve read history. but we had the fuel to run ours and the numbers.)

Every week, some West Coast technology company or East Coast laboratory comes up with an ingenious energy-efficient, planet-saving idea that no one in Europe - with its head start - seemed to have thought of. And, it being America, and the green economy being one of the country’s fastest-growing sectors, you can be fairly sure that the bright idea will make it on to the market. Academics have talked in the past of America’s “Promethean creativity” and you can see it now in the way that the country’s creative juices are being channelled into getting through this financial mess. Where there’s a buck to be made, the average American won’t hesitate to make it. This creed may have helped get the country into its current financial problems, but one cannot help feeling it may help get it out of it too.

“If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” sang Sinatra in New York, New York. The supreme self-confidence - the sheer puffed-out chestiness of a conviction no doubt shared by the rest of the city - always made me cringe. But it doesn’t stop it being largely true and, as New Yorkers take the vanguard in an American economic fightback on which we all depend, it’s also oddly reassuring.

http://tinyurl.com/3z2t4p

   Wednesday - September 10, 2008

Secret investments reveal China’s stealthy advance into UK.  Should Brits be worried?

Secret investments reveal China’s stealthy advance into UK Plc

The Chinese central bank, one of the most secretive in the world, is amassing shares in many of Britain’s blue-chip companies.
Malcolm Moore in Shanghai and Mark Kleinman in London report

It was a bitterly cold January day in Beijing, and events at home meant Gordon Brown was entitled to believe the chill would endure. The crisis engulfing Northern Rock, the mortgage lender which months earlier had been forced to seek emergency funding from the Bank of England, would soon need to be resolved; and as far as the media was concerned, Brown was being poorly served by the fact that Sir Richard Branson, one of a clutch of private-sector bidders for the bank, was spending the trip to the Chinese capital in close proximity to him.
# Revealed: Chinese bank’s £9bn raid on British shares

But for the beleaguered Prime Minister, it was not all bad news. As he toured Beijing, taking in the still unfinished Bird’s Nest stadium, Brown was anxious to emphasize what little upside he had to grasp: Britain’s burgeoning trade links with the Middle Kingdom.

“The greatest benefit to China is that we, Britain, will continue to oppose protectionist forces and will remain the foremost advocates of the openness in the world economy, essential not only to China’s prosperity but to the world’s,” he said.

“The biggest benefit to Britain is that we strengthen our place as the destination of choice for Chinese business and Chinese investment. I hope to see Britain benefiting from a large share of investment from China’s £1bn sovereign wealth fund.”

Brown may have been confused about the numbers (the fund in question was capitalised with about $200bn of the country’s vast foreign exchange reserves when it launched last year), but the sentiment was clear: Britain was wide open to Chinese investment.

Little did Brown know how right he was. Since his January visit, when the FTSE100 opened 2008 at 6456.9, Britain’s blue-chip index has fallen nearly 19 per cent to close last Friday at 5,240.7. And while many investors, spooked by the deepening economic gloom in Britain and abroad, have taken fright from equities, Beijing has been piling in.

In total, investment entities either controlled by or affiliated to the Chinese government now own stakes in at least half of the FTSE100, and probably considerably more. 

(FTSE-100, Brit stock market)

An analysis by The Sunday Telegraph reveals today that the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, owns shares in many of Britain’s household corporate names, including Cadbury, HSBC, the London Stock Exchange, Marks & Spencer and Tesco.

These previously secret investments are in addition to known stakes in BG Group and Drax Group, the energy companies, and Legal & General, Old Mutual and Prudential, the insurers.

In total, the stakes held by the People’s Bank are valued at about £9bn, according to the share prices of the companies concerned last week.

Many of the shareholdings are held through nominee accounts registered in locations including Hong Kong and are technically held by State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), the body which sits within the central bank and has the responsibility of managing the forex reserves accumulated from China’s decades-long exports boom.

A number of other FTSE100 companies say privately they believe the People’s Bank of China to be an investor but have not established the paper trail which leads to the shares’ ultimate owners. Smiths Group, the FTSE100 engineering firm, was this weekend trying to establish with the assistance of JP Morgan, the investment bank, the provenance of a small shareholding believed to be owned by the Chinese government.

Even allowing for the investments which can be established, however, China’s central bank is now a common name among the ranks of ‘institutional’ investors, like the giant pension funds, fund managers and hedge funds, which litter the FTSE.

At £9bn, SAFE is now thought to rank among the top 25 investors in the London stock market, underlining China’s status as a global economic powerhouse

Such ownership of British stocks is nothing new, even among the investment bodies of Middle Eastern and Asian economies which in recent times have become known as sovereign wealth funds.

The Kuwait Investment Authority, for example, has been an investor in BP since the 1980s, while the two principal investment funds of the Singaporean government have become major shareholders in companies including British Land and Standard Chartered.

I have added below just a few of the comments posted by readers of The Telegraph. 

I’ll gladly welcome the Chinese, after all, their food tastes better
Posted by Aaron Powell on September 10, 2008 10:34 AM

In my professional opinion, it’s about time that an eastern country began to call the shots, especially one as industrious as China.

The dominance of the west is fading and politicians and economists alike are beginning to realize the overcasting shadow of China’s rise to power.

Clearly, it’s time for the baton to be handed to China, their country boasts a rich heritage and sooner or later, the nationalists in their government will be ruthless in elevating China to a level superseding what any previous superpower would have dreamed of.
Posted by Anthony Liu on September 10, 2008 10:25 AM

Prudent farm workers saving their cash while the Land owner gets lazy and complacent ? What a lot of nonsense. The Chinese are rich for the same reason that Britain became rich in the halcyon days: through the use of SLAVE labor. You can never compete with that.
Still, if a little pilates at lunch time keeps them all content, who am I to comment.
Posted by Matt on September 10, 2008 10:21 AM

The British, of all countries, shouldn’t fear foreign investment, as the British are the 2nd largest foreign investors in the world. Indeed, many a mining company making billions off the Chinese economic boom is British owned.

Being such an integral part of the globilised economy is what has given the UK its much famed 60 quarters of growth. Long may that continue!
Posted by Cuthbert on September 10, 2008 5:30 AM

you don’t get it people, I’m of Asian descent and have traveled extensively in Asia and know first hand how vengeful and vindictive the Chinese are. they are still looking for payback for Britain controlling china all those colonial years ago. if you don’t stop them now they will eventually enslave your little island. this is dead serious and no joke.
Posted by Rex on September 10, 2008 4:00 AM

This article’s headline and main gist smacks of either ignorance or prejudice. The list just simply indicates a very diverse portfolio, with small percentage holdings in each. Why should you ALWAYS perceive China’s investments as suspect? Just because it’s officially ‘communist’ and thus a potential ‘enemy’ with ‘evil intentions’? Shame on the Daily Telegraph for persisting in such ideological crusades.
If anything, the very fact that China’s private and public sectors are embracing money and capitalism should be great news to all. Once they have a stack in the Capitalist world, they will be further from their self-proclaimed ‘communism/socialism’, and be more integrated into the international framework.
Perhaps, the reason why China’s central bank is dabbling in such investments is that unlike other more skilful and experienced international players, they are still new to the CLEVER idea of forming a separate investment company, which other countries’ governments have done?
Posted by Edwin Heng on September 7, 2008 7:18 AM

http://tinyurl.com/6ndc53

   Tuesday - August 19, 2008

Dollar surge will not stop America feeling the effects of a global crunch.

Hold on ter yer ats me buckeroos. We’re in fer a bumpy ride.

Not that I really fully understand all this stuff to be honest.  I have to have it explained to me half the time.  So ok, 3/4s of the time.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 11:07pm BST 17/08/2008

Two alerts landed on my desk this weekend from the elite markets team at Goldman Sachs. One was entitled “The Dollar Has Bottomed!”. Those betting on an imminent disintegration of American economic and political power may have to wait another cycle. Rival hegemons are falling like ninepins.

The US dollar index hit an all-time low in March. It crept slowly upwards in the early summer before smashing through layers of resistance over the past month.

The surge against sterling, the euro, the Swiss franc and the Australian dollar is one of the most spectacular currency shifts in half a century. “Something fundamental has changed,” said the bank. Indeed.

US industry is now super-competitive, if small. Mid East funds are drawing up shopping lists of Wall Street takeover targets. Airbus and Volkswagen are shifting plant to America to escape crushing labour costs.

US exports have risen 22pc over the past year, outstripping Chinese growth. The US non-oil trade deficit has shrunk by two fifths since 2002. It is now running at $300bn a year. This is 2.1pc of GDP.

The other note advised clients to “Take Profit on Globalization Basket”, especially on Eastern Europe currencies. Goldman Sachs has quietly dropped its talk of $200 oil. Even Russia’s petro-rouble is now deemed suspect.

The twin missives more or less sum up the dramatic change in mood sweeping financial markets since it became evident that the entire bloc of rich OECD countries has succumbed to the delayed effects of the credit crisis.

Japan contracted by 0.6pc in the second quarter, Germany by 0.5pc, France and Italy by 0.3pc. Spain recalled the cabinet last week for an emergency summit. New Zealand and Denmark are in recession. Iceland contracted at a catastrophic 3.7pc in the second quarter.

“The whole decoupling thesis has started to come apart at the seams,” said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. “Canada is frozen over. We have Arctic conditions in Sweden, and the UK is falling off the white cliffs of Dover.”

The UK economy is not my brief, but I see that hedge funds are circulating a report from the US guru Jeremy Grantham predicting a very bad end to Gordon Brown’s debt experiment.

“The UK housing event is probably second only to the Japanese 1990 land bubble in the Real Estate Bubble Hall of Fame. UK house prices could easily decline 50pc from the peak, and at that lower level they would still be higher than they were in 1997 as a multiple of income,” he said.

“If prices go all the way back to trend, and history says that is extremely likely, then the UK financial system will need some serious bail-outs and the global ripples will be substantial.”

For months the exchange markets ignored this impending train crash, just as they ignored the property bust in Europe’s Latin Bloc, or the little detail that UBS alone had just lost the equivalent of 8pc of Switzerland’s GDP. All they cared about in the currency pits was the interest rate gap: US low, Europe high.

Now the paradigm has flipped. The Fed may have been right after all to slash rates to 2pc. The European Central Bank may have panicked by tightening in July. Note that the elder Swiss National Bank did not do anything so rash.

Bulls now believe America is turning the corner. Financial stocks are up 20pc since early July. Some “monoline” bond insurers have risen 1,200pc in a month as fears of Götterdämmerung give way to sheer intoxicating relief, and a “short-squeeze”. Such are bear-trap rallies.

Regrettably, I remain beset by gloom. The US fiscal stimulus package that kept spending afloat in the second quarter is running out fast. There is nothing yet to replace it. The export boom cannot keep adding juice as the global crunch hits. My fear is that the US will tip into a second, deeper leg of the downturn, setting off a wave of savage job cuts. This will start to feel more like a real depression.

The futures market is pricing a 33pc fall in US house prices from peak to trough, based on the Case-Shiller index. Banks have not come close to writing off implied losses on this scale.

Daniel Alpert from Westwood Capital predicts that a mere 28pc fall would alone lead to a $5.4 trillion haircut in US household wealth, and leave lenders nursing $1.25 trillion in losses. So far they have confessed to less than $500bn.

Meredith Whitney, the Oppenheimer’s bank Cassandra, predicts a gruesome 40pc fall in prices. If so, expect prime borrowers facing negative equity to start throwing in the towel en masse. “I do not think we are near the end of writedowns. I continue to see capital levels going lower, and stocks going lower,” she said.

So no, this painful ordeal is far from over. We are not witnessing a dollar rally so much as a collapse in European and commodity currencies. The race to the bottom has begun in earnest.

http://tinyurl.com/5fnwpz

OK so should I be buying dollars or pounds?  Hey ... you watch this.  Any slump and the Qs (QQQQ) drop, right?  BUY and hold till the next earning season and sell.  I think.  Buy hi and sell lo. No, that doesn’t look right. There a tax advantage in that?
Been one of those days today. All day long. Puter problems and lightheaded from the searches and the pounding on keys. Might help if I actually knew what I was doing.

   Saturday - August 02, 2008

IMMIGRATION ANYONE?

with h/t to barb for sending me this and Drew who told me where the embed was.  Missed it cause it looked greyed out. Anyway, some of you folks may have seen this already.  For those who haven’t, watch it ....  and boy oh boy do the Brits know about this sort of thing.

The quality isn’t perfect but the sound is all ya need.

The following comment is from Drew

A local hospital has forced itself into bankruptcy because they were bleeding money from all the illegals using the place. They might re-open as a private special treatment center, but as a hospital they’re gone. They will also open a non-emergency emergency room, ie a clinic, for all the pore, starvin, and illegals.

   Saturday - June 28, 2008

Heinz mayonnaise advert with two men kissing (freekin GAK)

Just what the hell were these ppl thinking?
And the photo published in all the papers are disgusting.  GAK, indeed.  Story is from The Daily Mail

Heinz mayonnaise advert with two men kissing set to become most complained of the year
By Paul Revoir Last updated at 8:52 AM on 24th June 2008

A mayonnaise advert showing two men kissing has been withdrawn after it led to more than 200 complaints.

Heinz confirmed last night that it had withdrawn the television commercial for its Deli Mayo following ‘consumer feedback’.

The ad was launched a week ago yesterday and had been due to run for five weeks.

Heinz said it was no longer aired after last Friday.

Nigel Dickie, of Heinz UK, said: ‘It is our policy to listen to consumers. We recognise that some consumers raised concerns over the content of the ad and this prompted our decision to withdraw it.

‘The advertisement, part of a short-run campaign, was intended to be humorous and we apologise to anyone who felt offended.’

The advertising watchdog has yet to confirm if it will investigate the Heinz commercial, one of the most complained about commercials this year.

Viewers said it was ‘offensive’, ‘inappropriate’ and ‘unsuitable to be seen by children’, while some parents were angry that they had been forced to explain same-sex relationships to their youngsters who asked them about the ad.

The commercial shows a family scene with a young boy and girl getting ready to go to school.

They refer to a man making sandwiches in the kitchen as ‘mum’.

He is dressed like a delicatessen worker and has a New York accent.

Their father enters the kitchen, grabs a sandwich and says to the man: ‘See you tonight, love’.

The ‘mum’ then shouts back ‘Hey, ain’t you forgetting something’, before the two men kiss.

‘Mum’ then tells him: ‘Love you. Straight home from work sweetcheeks.’

It finishes with the slogan: ‘Heinz Deli Mayo – Mayo with a New York Deli flavour.’
http://tinyurl.com/4mp6r8

   Monday - June 16, 2008

Fuel shortages spread as tanker drivers’ strike, gas stations running dry.

Due to past and VERY bitter experiences with unions, I am not too quick to defend them and simply wish they’d go away.
But ... I’m not 100% certain they are to blame for this crises.  More research needed to refute or back up what I’m hearing, so will not make personal comments on this topic.

In our area, there are gas petrol stations with signs out saying that the pumps aren’t working. In other words, they haven’t anything to sell anymore as ppl topped up just before the strike or just after it started.  So far no lines as there isn’t anything to line up for in some areas.

Fuel shortages spread as tanker drivers’ strike enters fourth day
By David Millward, Transport Editor
Last Updated: 3:44PM BST 16/06/2008

Motorists are facing increasing fuel shortages with queuing spreading to several parts of the country as the strike by Shell’s tanker drivers entered its fourth day.

Fuel rationing was imposed by some garages in the South West, while drivers were facing difficulties filling up in parts of Wales, Worcestershire and in the South East.

Alarmingly Shell was not the only retailer to see its pumps running dry. Esso’s garage in Barry, south Wales, was completely out of fuel.

There were long queues reported at the service station at Junction 30 of the M5 near Exeter. 

According to the AA there was also confusion with some garages running out of diesel, while others were unable to supply unleaded petrol.

Elsewhere, a garage in the Gorton area of Manchester has raised prices by 14 pence a litre, charging motorists 129.9 pence for unleaded.

Its prices were on a par with half a dozen remote forecourts on Shetland and the Isle of Wight, which have traditionally charged far more than the national average.

“The impact of the strike is really being felt today particularly in Wales and the South West. In some localised areas motorists are struggling to find fuel,” said Edmund King, the AA’s president.

In the South West the fuel situation was described as “dire” by Ray Holloway, president of the Petrol Retailers Association.

This led several independent retailers to impose limits as low as £10 as they wait for new stocks to arrive, according to the UK Petroleum Industry Association.

“It’s been happening at rural areas,” said a spokesman. “Supplies have been getting quite low away from major centres like Truro.”

The problem had been caused by picketing at a Plymouth refinery which meant that supplies were not only being blocked to Shell forecourts, but other garages were getting embroiled in the dispute.

According to the latest Government figures 647 garages – including 249 Shell outlets – have either run dry completely or had to turn away motorists looking for diesel or petrol.

That number is expected to rise today as the strike by 641 drivers hits home.

Next weekend could be even worse unless a deal is reached between the drivers’ union, Unite and the Shell’s contractors: Hoyer UK and Suckling Transport.

The two sides have restarted talks raising hopes that the dispute, in which the union has submitted a 13 per cent pay claim, could be settled before the next four-day walkout on Friday.

If agreement is not reached, there are fears that next weekend could be even more difficult because of an overtime ban which will run between the walkouts.

http://tinyurl.com/3l82f3

   Thursday - June 12, 2008

FUEL SHORTAGE AND HI-PRICES?  HAS A CERTAIN RING TO IT, SOMETHING FAMILIAR.

Petrol protests go global
By Fiona Govan, Madrid Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:07AM BST 12/06/2008
Protests over rising fuel prices have spread across the globe.

Spanish authorities got tough as the trucker strike entered its third day, deploying riot police to lift blockades at the border with France and clear roads around the capital.

With supplies unable to get through the country was gradually brought to its knees as petrol pumps ran dry and supermarket shelves emptied.

Car manufacturing plants warned that if the stoppage continues the entire industry and its daily production of 13,000 vehicles will grind to a halt because parts for assembly are not reaching factories.

But unions representing self-employed lorry drivers rejected a government package to help the industry and vowed to continue nationwide protests over rising fuel prices.

Two protesters died – one in Spain and another in neighbouring Portugal – as they tried to stop traffic crossing the pickets lines.

Protests were also staged elsewhere in Europe and across Asia. Around 50,000 Polish lorry drivers held one-hour protests across the country although without blocking roads, the organisers said.

And Dutch truckers announced plans to block roads at 18 points across the country for 30 minutes on Thursday.

In Thailand truck drivers voted to begin strikes next week and block roads to the capital with 400,000 lorries unless the government helps them pay for soaring fuel costs.

While in Hong Kong about 500 minibuses, lorries, garbage trucks and coaches staged a go-slow protest, crippling traffic in a demonstration calling for fuel taxes to be scrapped.

Communists burned tyres and blocked roads in parts of eastern India angered by fuel price rises but elsewhere in the country calls for strikes were largely ignored.

In South Korea truckers voted to strike on Monday, ignoring a $10.2 billion (£5 billion) government aid package designed to cushion the impact of soaring fuel prices.

http://tinyurl.com/58n8cs

   Thursday - June 05, 2008

Today’s economics lesson

So, who’s making the ‘windfall’ profits?

   Friday - May 30, 2008

Stimulus checks not stimulating

Here is a somewhat informative article from the Houston Chronicle. Amid all the factoids on consumer spending, consumer confidence, etc, was this throwaway line that got me just a bit angry.

The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, which excludes food and fuel costs, slowed in April, today’s Commerce report showed.

Emphasis added.

I wonder how the inflation number would change if those food and fuel costs were included? Why is this their preferred measure of inflation? I measure inflation by how much the price of things go up during a specified time period, especially food and fuel costs!

I’m a bit peeved. Maybe someone here can explain this to me.

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