Debt Rattle June 20 2015

 

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  • #21753

    DPC Elks Temple (Eureka Club), Rochester, NY 1908 • Greek Debt Crisis Is The Iraq War Of Finance (AEP) • A Pressing Question For Ireland Before Monday
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 20 2015]

    #21758
    phil harris
    Participant

    A very good idea for TAE to be in Athens and contributing.

    Amazing to read Ambrose EP saying it pretty much word for word – right wing or “Burkean conservative” or whatever.

    EU was a good idea as a way back from WWII, but what a mess we face. With more than a little American help, EU failed to take up the opportunity with Russia in the early 90s.and then failed again in Balkans. We cannot just blame the Americans though: Europe can’t deal with Ukraine, the results of the financial crisis, refugees, youth unemployment, or as Ambrose puts it this “Iraq War of Finance”.

    Give what we can!

    #21760
    pietro
    Participant

    the “left” of which I have been a lifelong member is dropping the ball here Syryza & Podemos may be the way forward I hope so ther has to be a way forward w/o environmental or financial catastrophe off topic has Ilargi seen these photos?
    https://russia-insider.com/en/culture/tsars-photographer-and-his-amazing-contribution-russian-history/ri8140

    #21761
    Raleigh
    Participant

    Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty and Obama’s legacy:

    “Beneath progressive pretentions, Barack Obama the national political phenomenon has never been anything other than a tool of the United States’ corporate and financial ruling class. Obama rose to power in Washington with remarkable, record-setting financial backing from Wall Street and K Street election investors. Those elites are not in the business or promoting or tolerating politicians who seek to challenge the nation’s dominant domestic and imperial hierarchies and doctrines. “It’s not always clear what Obama’s financial backers want,” the progressive journalist Ken Silverstein noted in a Harpers’ Magazine report titled “Obama, Inc.” in the fall of 2006, “but it seems safe to conclude that his campaign contributors are not interested merely in clean government and political reform…On condition of anonymity,” Silverstein added, “one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn’t see him as a ‘player.’ The lobbyist added: ‘What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?’” […]

    That’s the depressing reality of the world capitalist system. In the short-term, however, let us appreciate the final crumbling of the myth of a progressive Barack Obama phenomenon and presidency. The myth is perishing in the icy waters of neoliberal calculation – kind of like the Wicked Witch of the West who screamed “I’m Melting, I’m Melting” as Dorothy doused her with a bucket of water near the end of The Wizard of Oz. What a pathetic but predictable finish for Obama: a president elected in the name of progressive “hope” and “change” seeking to “leave behind a positive legacy” by pushing a noxiously authoritarian and eco-cidal “free trade” measure on behalf of the nation’s unelected dictatorship of money over and against public opinion and the common good.”

    “Progressive” Obama: He’s Melting, He’s Melting

    I only hope he melts, then circles the drain, then drops.

    #21762
    Raleigh
    Participant

    The courts ruled on AIG’s lawsuit against United States of America. The judge found at page 54 of his ruling that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s “taking of 79.9 percent equity ownership and voting control of AIG constituted an illegal exaction under the Fifth Amendment. The Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Banks possessed the authority in a time of crisis to make emergency loans to distressed entities such as AIG, but they did not have the legal right to become the owner of AIG. In the Federal Reserve’s history of making hundreds of emergency loans to commercial entities, the loan to AIG represents the only instance in which the Federal Reserve has demanded equity ownership and voting control. There is no law permitting the Federal Reserve to take over a company and run its business in the commercial world as consideration for a loan.

    Prior to 1932, the Federal Reserve Banks generally could lend only to banks that
    were members of the Federal Reserve System. In 1932, Congress recognized that, in a financial crisis, solvent but illiquid companies may require emergency assistance. Congress enacted Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act, which authorized the Federal Reserve to issue loans to any “individual, partnership, or corporation” in the “unusual and exigent circumstances” where the borrower was unable to secure adequate credit from private sources, but had sufficient assets to secure the loan.”

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/06/aig-bailout-trial-judge-rebukes-fed-for-overstepping-its-powers-but-awards-no-damages.html#comment-2459906

    The judge did not award damages because he said that, had the Federal Reserve Bank not stepped in, AIG would have been bankrupt anyway, its shares worth zero. (Of course, bailing out AIG was really only a backdoor bailout for the Wall Street Banks, to save their butts). But I have a feeling that this is not over, that Hank Greenberg will be back, because if you look at page 45 of the judge’s ruling, you will see what AIG was charged in interest (12%) versus Morgan Stanley (2.5 – 3%). There was also huge pressure on AIG’s board to accept what the Federal Reserve wanted done, and it’s debatable whether the shares would have gone to zero.

    Interesting case. Goldman and others get off virtually scot-free while AIG gets put through the wringer.

    #21764
    Raleigh
    Participant

    The above decision is interesting as well because the judge sets out what caused the crisis. A comment I read said:

    “Haven’t read the entire decision, but if it’s allowed to stand, I wonder if this ruling isn’t also another shot across the bow in effectively saying “Buh Bye!” to the Fed’s independence and sovereign immunity? If so, that could open Pandora’s box, since almost by definition there are economic winners and losers in the wake of nearly all the Fed’s monetary actions and policy decisions, not just its loans to terminally distressed SIFIs and the terms of those loans.

    For example, why should individual Fed officials be allowed, through over six years of Zero interest rate monetary policy, to select economic winners and losers between the largest banks and wealthiest segment of society versus savers, or those who buy stocks vs. those who short stocks, or those who take particular derivatives positions or buy long-term U.S. Treasury bonds versus those who don’t or who take the opposite side of those trades?”

    He’s right. With the Fed picking winners, I wondered why a class lawsuit couldn’t be commenced against the United States government to reimburse the “losers”. That might put an end to their manipulation. I hope some smart lawyers out there do this.

    #21783
    Dr. Diablo
    Participant

    “We need the stabilizing capacity of the European Union”

    Hahahahahaha! You mean the European Union that is causing riots in every nation in the EU? The one that has now inspired a great number of secessionist movements, collapsing their nations? That EU?

    Speaking of, when was Europe ever a stabilizing influence in the first place? Old Europe did a lot of things, both good and bad, but they were generally messy, multilateral, and often a bit meddling to the periphery Ischinger frets over. That’s not the same adjective-group you might use to describe a thing that is “stabilizing.”

    PS, Pope might look deeper to how exponential growth on a finite planet is incompatible with ecology and Global Warming. It’s more the point. And why after thousands of years of solid state, then hundreds of years of growth without exponents, we suddenly must have either this exponential growth or collapse.

    #21793
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    @ diablo

    You are certainly living up to expectations – a complete jerkoff, but then you always appeared to self pleasure.

    Please list for us the riots you imagine happening all across Europe, if you can. Sure there have been a lot of protests, people assembling to state their grievances to their governments but seldom in a state of riot. Your limited experience and incapacity to adequately use the language may be where the fault lays. You are ignorant.

    Your opinion about European stability reveals a profound ignorance coupled with an insipid lack of respect for what others have actually accomplished. About 500 millions of peoples live a far better life than you and your spawn will ever enjoy and damned few of them are living in a police state, surveilled at every moment, every communication over public means recorded, a record of where they are at any given time available to their owners and herders. You are that stupid that you think that is fine.

    And learning the Pope about exponential growth, my how audacious, you who if statistics lend light are barely capable of balancing a checkbook every month, one of the few things your country is capable of leading the world in – innumeracy.

    All you are capable of is rattling the letters on your keyboard. Yes you are that stupid.

    #21814
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    @ Formerly T-Bear

    Yes; it’s very interesting how the views, with no experience or juxtaposition of geography, are so freely flowing forth, from the provincialism of the North American proletariate.
    I often witness the same, when expositions regarding Asia, are spouted in sycophantic unison from westerners, not familiar with said geography or cultures.
    There is no cure for it, I think…
    Cheers

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