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Old 02-28-2009, 04:23 PM   #26
NorthernSanctuary
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Arsonists Torch Berlin Porsches, BMWs on Economic Woe (Update1)
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By Brett Neely

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...gzo&refer=home

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn’t find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed. Police told her the 35,000- euro ($45,000) car had been torched.

“They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood,” said Klostermann. “The engine was completely destroyed.”

The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30 percent of the total for 2008. The latest to go up in flames was a Porsche, on Feb. 14, two days after a Mercedes was set alight in a public car park.

While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars -- symbols of German wealth and power.

A group calling itself BMW -- the initials stand for Movement for Militant Resistance in German -- has claimed responsibility for several attacks in left-wing magazines and Web sites, police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said.

One-third of the incidents are classed as “political,” prompting officers to assign a special unit to investigate, Schodrowski said. No arrests have been made. Schodrowski attributed the arson to “a protest against the world economy and rising rents.”

‘Quick to Attack’

German unemployment began to rise last November after almost three years of declines. Deutsche Bank AG Chief Economist Norbert Walter predicts the German economy, Europe’s biggest, may shrink by more than 5 percent this year.

The worst recession since World War II is fueling anger among youths across Europe who “perceive their future as rather precarious,” said Margit Mayer, a politics professor at Berlin’s Free University.

“Whether you look at the Berlin events or these anarchist groups in other European cities and countries, they are all making reference to the deepening economic crisis and how the various governments are dealing with them,” said Mayer, a specialist in urban social and protest movements.

Some groups are “very quick to attack whoever they can make out as responsible for having robbed them of decent life prospects,” according to Mayer.

The Berlin car burnings have been concentrated in up-and- coming neighborhoods such as Prenzlauer Berg, where Klostermann’s car was destroyed in May.

‘Don’t Move in Here’

There, new housing and building redevelopments are pushing out the squatter scene that flourished after East and West Berlin were reunited in 1990, said Andrej Holm, a sociologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt who has studied the change.

Rents that were about half the city average 10 years ago are now about 40 percent above the average, and the car attacks are an attempt to drive wealthy newcomers away, Holm said.

“It means: ‘rich people, don’t move in here -- your cars will be trashed, we don’t want you here’,” he said.

Representatives from Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Daimler AG, the maker of Mercedes, and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG declined to comment on the attacks. Daimler spokeswoman Ute von Fellberg said the matter was about security in Berlin.

Berlin Matter

“This is not a matter for the producer, rather it’s a matter for the city of Berlin,” BMW spokesman Alexander Bilgeri said today in a phone interview.

While Prenzlauer Berg and other central neighborhoods such as Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are thriving, at least in parts, Berlin as a whole remains Germany’s “subsidy capital” almost 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, said Tobias Just, a real-estate economist with Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. Unemployment, at 14.1 percent in February, is almost double the national average.

Oliver Kappelle, who moved with his wife and two children to Friedrichshain, is unfazed by the perceived threat.

One night last month, Kappelle came across a “heap of junk that used to be a Porsche the night before,” he said. “I was just relieved that he didn’t park in the empty space behind me.”

Baader-Meinhof

Berlin has a history of political protest, with anarchist demonstrators regularly clashing with police on the streets of Kreuzberg during May 1 marches. Kreuzberg, which abutted the Berlin Wall, is represented in parliament by the Green Party’s Hans-Christian Stroebele, a former lawyer who defended members of the Baader-Meinhof gang in court.

Likewise, arson attacks on cars are not new: a Web site, “Burning Cars,” was set up to track the incidents in May 2007, one month before a summit in the northern German resort of Heiligendamm of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. There have been 290 attacks on cars since then, among them 55 Mercedes and 29 BMWs damaged or destroyed by fire, the site records.

“I wouldn’t advise someone to park their Porsche on the street” in Kreuzberg, Berlin police commissioner Dieter Glietsch told the Taz newspaper in June last year.

As the frequency of attacks increases, Klostermann, a company manager who has lived in Prenzlauer Berg for 12 years, remains unbowed.

“I would never want to be regarded as someone who can be driven out of a place where I enjoy living,” she said.
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Old 02-28-2009, 05:52 PM   #27
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Hah! It's the same bloody pattern since the 70s!
Admittedly, Germany is a state of such decadence it's hard to not be aggravated by all the blitz and glamour combined with such utter ignorance, but one should think that we at least figured that burning other persons property won't get you anywhere else either.

Funny, nonetheless, and i can't say I'm against it completely as long as nobody is harmed. The question is if it will stay like that.
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Old 03-03-2009, 12:07 AM   #28
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Global Economic Crisis Worsens
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Global Economic Crisis Worsens, Threatens World With Global Depression; U.S. Economy In Free Fall

The world financial system is now undergoing a global economic crisis of staggering proportions.

The root cause of the economic and financial crisis was the United States mortgage market selling sub-prime mortgages to large numbers of consumers with inadequate incomes.

These mortgages were bundled into securitized paper investments, and sold by Wall Street to major financial institutions across the globe.



When the mortgages became non-performing, these securitized assets were transformed into toxic acid, infecting the entire worldwide financial system. The ensuing global economic and financial crisis has destroyed trust in banks and borrowers in all the major economies of the world. Depositors are withdrawing their money from uninsured and even insured accounts. Coinciding with this massive run on the world’s banks, these financial institutions are no longer lending capital to each other, reflected in the rising LIBOR short term inter-bank loan rates.

Capital is fleeing, and the global credit crunch ensuing has frozen the arteries of a global economy based on easy, cheap credit. As corporations are being denied normal flows of credit, a massive global economic crisis is transforming the financial meltdown on Wall Street into an economic disaster on Main Street. This evolving global and financial crisis and credit crunch will afflict developed and developing economies, leading to massive unemployment, demand destruction and price deflation among many pivotal asset classes


The attempts by the Federal Reserve Bank and Treasury Department in the United States to inject liquidity into the credit market, along with intervention by central banks in many other developed economies, is proving ineffective in responding to the global economic crisis. A growing number of economists are speculating that the global economic crisis will lead to a worldwide recession of such intensity, it may rival the Great Depression of the 1930’s in its calamitous economic devastation.

http://www.GlobalEconomicCrisis.com/
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Old 03-04-2009, 07:41 PM   #29
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Quote

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=alsJZqIFuN3k

Bair Says Insurance Fund Could Be Insolvent This Year (Update1)

By Alison Vekshin

March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the fund it uses to protect customer deposits at U.S. banks could dry up amid a surge in bank failures, as she responded to an industry outcry against new fees approved by the agency.

“Without these assessments, the deposit insurance fund could become insolvent this year,” Bair wrote in a March 2 letter to the industry. U.S. community banks plan to flood the FDIC with about 5,000 letters in protest of the fees, according to a trade group.

“A large number” of bank failures may occur through 2010 because of “rapidly deteriorating economic conditions,” Bair said in the letter. “Without substantial amounts of additional assessment revenue in the near future, current projections indicate that the fund balance will approach zero or even become negative.”

The FDIC last week approved a one-time “emergency” fee and other assessment increases on the industry to rebuild a fund to repay customers for deposits of as much as $250,000 when a bank fails. The fees, opposed by the industry, may generate $27 billion this year after the fund fell to $18.9 billion in the fourth quarter from $34.6 billion in the previous period, the FDIC said.

The fund, which lost $33.5 billion in 2008, was drained by 25 bank failures last year. Sixteen banks have failed so far this year, further straining the fund.

Angry Bankers

Smaller banks are outraged over the one-time fee, which could wipe out 50 percent to 100 percent of a bank’s 2009 earnings, Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

“I’ve never seen emotions like this,” said Fine, adding that he’s received more than 1,000 e-mails and telephone messages from angry bankers.

“The FDIC realizes that these assessments are a significant expense, particularly during a financial crisis and recession when bank earnings are under pressure,” Bair wrote. “We did not want to impose large assessments when the industry and economy are struggling. We searched for alternatives but found none better.”

The agency, which has released the change for 30 days of public comment, could modify the assessment to shift the burden to the large banks “that caused this train wreck,” Fine said. “Community bankers are feeling like they are paying for the incompetence and greed of Wall Street,” he said.

Legal Constraints

Bair dismissed that suggestion.

“For risk-based assessments, our statute restricts us from discriminating against an institution because of size,” Bair wrote.

The deposit insurance fund won’t dry up because the government can get funds from the industry and congressional appropriations, and borrow from the Treasury, Chip MacDonald, a partner specializing in financial services at law firm Jones Day, said today in a telephone interview.

“As a depositor, I am not worried in the least,” MacDonald said. “No one is going to let the FDIC go without any money.”

Consumers should watch this issue closely, said Edmund Mierzwinski, consumer program director at U.S. PIRG, a Boston- based consumer-watchdog group.

“I wouldn’t take their money out of the bank yet,” Mierzwinski said. “If the FDIC is saying that there is this serious problem, then we should all be concerned. I think there is a chance the FDIC is going to have to ask taxpayers for money in the future.”

No Taxpayer Funds

Bair rejected arguments that the agency should use government aid to rebuild the fund. The FDIC has authority to tap a $30 billion line of credit at the Treasury Department and legislation pending in Congress would boost the amount to $100 billion.

“Banks, not taxpayers, are expected to fund the system,” Bair said. Asking for taxpayer support “could paint all banks with the ‘bailout’ brush.”

The FDIC “will revise the interim rule, if appropriate, in light of the comments received,” the agency said in a Federal Register notice.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Vekshin in Washington at avekshin@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: March 4, 2009 14:17 EST
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Old 03-05-2009, 10:59 PM   #30
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DEUTSCHE SEES RISK OF US GDP FALLING 10% IN Q1 !!!
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Deutsche sees risk of U.S. GDP falling 10 pct in Q1
Wed Mar 4, 2009 11:51am EST
NEW YORK, March 4 (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank predicted there are risks that the U.S. economy could contract by as much as 10 percent in the first quarter, given the relentless wave of dismal economic data being reported in early 2009.

Deutsche Bank U.S. economists Joseph LaVorgna and Carl Riccadonna expect first-quarter Gross Domestic Products to shrink by 8 percent, steeper than the 6.2 percent fall in the fourth quarter.

"However, the risks are skewed heavily on the downside, so we would not be surprised after revisions, if output end up being down closer to minus 10 percent," they wrote in a research note released on Wednesday.

While retail sales showed a surprise increase in January, news from other categories like business investment and inventories has suggested further economic deterioration since late 2008, according to LaVorgna and Riccadonna.

"We believe there is strong likelihood that growth will be significantly weaker this quarter," they wrote.

They forecast growth to return in the fourth quarter, roughly plus 1 percent, following a 2.8 percent drop in the second quarter and a flat reading in the third quarter.

However, even with a boost from the federal stimulus package, there is a chance that growth may not return in the second half of the year, they caution. (Reporting by Richard Leong, ; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio)

http://www.reuters.com/article/marke...40189320090304
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Old 03-07-2009, 02:11 AM   #31
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

GERALD CELENTE ~ The GREATEST Depression Underway
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Celente is one of the MOST ACCURATE. Read it and weep.


The Greatest Depression Under Way

http://www.rense.com/general85/gdep.htm
Gerald Celente
3-3-9


KINGSTON, NY, 2, March 2009 - "The Greatest Depression" that The Trends Research Institute forecast, well before Wall Street or Washington would acknowledge recession, is upon us.

The global financial markets are collapsing.

All the pundit's cautious predictions and business media's hopeful expectations at the New Year for an economic turn around and imminent market bottom were dead wrong. There will be no turn around in the second quarter of 2009 or 2010 or 2011 America and much of the world has entered "The Greatest Depression."

The global financial system, built on endless supplies of cheap money, rampant speculation, fraud, greed, and delusion is terminally ill and will not be coaxed into remission by stimulus packages nor restored to health by government buyouts and bailouts.

Today, the MSCI World Index of stocks in 23 developed nations fell 4.9 percent to 713.75, the lowest closing level since March 2003, and its Emerging Markets Index slid 5 percent. The Dow followed, plunging 300 points, closing below 7,000 for the first time since 1997.

There is no stock market bottom in sight. The only figure that can be forecast with confidence is that the Dow won't reach zero!

As the crisis worsens, governments will take draconian measures to prevent total economic collapse and public panic. We have cautioned the likelihood of such measures before. But the rapidity and severity of the economic unraveling now demands immediate attention.

Expect massive bank failures, runs on banks, and bank holidays. Even if deposits are FDIC insured, quick access to money is by no means assured. At minimum, have reserves on hand for emergencies.

Trendpost: When the ship is sinking there are very few options: Life boats, life rafts, life preservers and for the late to act, possibly a few pieces of floating debris to cling to.

We are trend forecasters, not certified financial advisors legally empowered to provide such advice. Although gold prices declined today some $15 to $925 per ounce, we forecast that gold will be one of the few life saving investments that will continue to increase in value, reaching $2,000 per ounce and beyond.
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Old 03-07-2009, 02:26 AM   #32
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Pictures of California homeless from German paper
http://www1.vg.no/bildespesial/show/spesial.php?id=6716

More and more people homeless because of the economy .

Poor homeless americans setting up more and more tents , remember the tentcamps after the great depression in the 30's .

well i said it gonna be california ...yes i did on a thread.

its like this all over now i think ? and more it will be like this .

Having the 'Terminator' as Governor makes so much sense now....


and then thers the madmax sceario when all the prisoners come out .

Releasing 58,000 prisoners early
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuH2l...eature=related

Grocery Stores Begin to Close in California and all over
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJCda...eature=related

Peter Schiff on California
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDJJqbNsoBs
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Old 03-08-2009, 07:20 AM   #33
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news...ifornia2239009
Bread Lines Seen in
California
Last Edited: Saturday, 07 Mar 2009, 1:34 PM EST
Created On: Saturday, 07 Mar 2009, 1:33 PM EST

By ANTHONY BARTKEWICZ, MyFox National
- Many say a depression doesn't have to be great, that the economy can sink into a milder depression. The Salvation Army says it's happening now, and in San Diego County, people are standing in line outside a Salvation Army waiting for donated bread.

Salvation Army director of communications Suzi Woodruff Lacey said they are seeing people from all walks of life: "white collar, blue collar, people who have lost their jobs, people who are in danger of losing their homes."

Bread lines were regularly seen in the 1930s during the Great Depression, when unemployment peaked at more than 25 percent and the stock market lost 90 percent of its value. Today, California's unemployment rate hit 8.4 percent.
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Old 03-08-2009, 02:25 PM   #34
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Financial Apocalpse
http://market-ticker.org/archives/85...All-Of-It.html
What's Dead (Short Answer: All Of It)The Market Ticker
Thursday, March 5. 2009
Posted by Karl Denninger in Editorial at 09:57
What's Dead (Short Answer: All Of It)
Just so you have a short list of what's at stake if Washington DC doesn't change policy here and now (which means before the collapse in equities comes, which could start as soon as today, if the indicators I watch have any validity at all. For what its worth, those indicators are painting a picture of the Apocalypse that I simply can't believe, and they're showing it as an imminent event - like perhaps today imminent.)

All pension funds, private and public, are done. If you are receiving one, you won't be. If you think you will in the future, you won't be. PBGC will fail as well. Pension funds will be forced to start eating their "seed corn" within the next 12 months and once that begins there is no way to recover.
All annuities will be defaulted to the state insurance protection (if any) on them. The state insurance funds will be bankrupted and unable to be replenished. Essentially, all annuities are toast. Expect zero, be ecstatic if you do better. All insurance companies with material exposure to these obligations will go bankrupt, without exception. Some of these firms are dangerously close to this happening right here and now; the rest will die within the next 6-12 months. If you have other insured interests with these firms, be prepared to pay a LOT more with a new company that can't earn anything off investments, and if you have a claim in process at the time it happens, it won't get paid. The probability of you getting "boned" on any transaction with an insurance company is extremely high - I rate this risk in excess of 90%.
The FDIC will be unable to cover bank failure obligations. They will attempt to do more of what they're doing now (raising insurance rates and doing special assessments) but will fail; the current path has no chance of success. Congress will backstop them (because they must lest shotguns come out) with disastrous results. In short, FDIC backstops will take precedence even over Social Security and Medicare.
Government debt costs will ramp. This warning has already been issued and is being ignored by President Obama. When (not if) it happens debt-based Federal Funding will disappear. This leads to....
Tax receipts are cratering and will continue to. I expect total tax receipts to fall to under $1 trillion within the next 12 months. Combined with the impossibility of continued debt issue (rollover will only remain possible at the short duration Treasury has committed to over the last ten years if they cease new issue) a 66% cut in the Federal Budget will become necessary. This will require a complete repudiation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, a 50% cut in the military budget and a 50% across-the-board cut in all other federal programs. That will likely get close.
Tax-deferred accounts will be seized to fund rollovers of Treasury debt at essentially zero coupon (interest). If you have a 401k, or what's left of it, or an IRA, consider it locked up in Treasuries; it's not yours any more. Count on this happening - it is essentially a certainty.
Any firm with debt outstanding is currently presumed dead as the street presumption is that they have lied in some way. Expect at least 20% of the S&P 500 to fail within 12 months as a consequence of the complete and total lockup of all credit markets which The Fed will be unable to unlock or backstop. This will in turn lead to....
The unemployed will have 5-10 million in direct layoffs added within the next 12 months. Collateral damage (suppliers, customers, etc) will add at least another 5-10 million workers to that, perhaps double that many. U-3 (official unemployment rate) will go beyond 15%, U-6 (broad form) will reach 30%.
Civil unrest will break out before the end of the year. The Military and Guard will be called up to try to stop it. They won't be able to. Big cities are at risk of becoming a free-fire death zone. If you live in one, figure out how you can get out and live somewhere else if you detect signs that yours is starting to go "feral"; witness New Orleans after Katrina for how fast, and how bad, it can get.
The good news is that this process will clear The Bezzle out of the system.

The bad news is that you won't have a job, pension, annuity, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and, quite possibly, your life.

It really is that bleak folks, and it all goes back to Washington DC being unwilling to lock up the crooks, putting the market in the role it has always played - that of truth-finder, no matter how destructive that process is.

Only immediate action from Washington DC, taking the market's place, can stop this, and as I get ready to hit "send" I see the market rolling over again, now down more than 3% and flashing "crash imminent" warnings. You may be reading this too late for it to matter.
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Old 03-16-2009, 11:53 AM   #35
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

MARKETWATCH FIRST TAKE
Global trade collapsing
Commentary: U.S. exports falling at 49% pace as customers fade away

By MarketWatch
Last update: 12:37 p.m. EDT March 13, 2009Comments: 27
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- For a while, some analysts held out hope that the rest of the world would be spared the devastation of the collapse of the great American credit bubble. The global economy had de-coupled, they said. America's problems were her own.
No one is saying that any more.
In fact, the latest evidence shows that global trade flows are plunging at an alarming rate.
The Commerce Department reported that the volume of U.S. imports from abroad fell 4.6% in January while exports declined 8.6%, the most since the monthly trade figures were first collected in 1992. See full story.
Over the past five months since the credit crunch intensified, real exports have plunged at a 49% annual rate, while real imports have fallen at a 30% pace.
The pace of the decline is unprecedented in modern times, economists say. "We doubt even during the Great Depression that trade collapsed with such ferocity," said David Greenlaw, an economist for Morgan Stanley.
The Great Recession, as the IMF calls it, has severed a crucial link in the global economy. U.S. consumer spending has been the main engine of growth for the whole world, but that spending was based largely on phantom gains in asset prices that were inflated by that cheap money from abroad that has now been disrupted.
The profits that foreign producers made from selling to America, in turn, created millions of jobs in places such as China, Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. That was then: China reported its exports plunged 25% in February compared with a year earlier.
Those jobs are disappearing, sparking a great reverse migration back to rural China, the Philippines and South Asia. In China, an estimated 20 million workers have lost their jobs. It's not just the American economy that needs to adjust to the new reality. The rest of the world will have to re-examine just where growth comes from.
Ultimately, the global economy may find a road to more balanced growth. Economies from Germany to China may need to rely less on U.S. consumers and more on their own.
Wherever the road leads, the process will be wrenching and drawn out.
[URL="http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Global-trade-collapsing-forcing-everyone/story.aspx?guid={5E877CF4-8D66-46A2-A144-3EE1FF6F6C37}"]
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Old 03-16-2009, 09:44 PM   #36
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Great thread. Thank you all. Awakening seems to be a continuous learning proccess!
Keep communicating. I will keep databasing and sharing!
UL
W
PS: ulw means (Unconditional Love Wayne)
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Old 03-17-2009, 11:29 PM   #37
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Great thread. Thank you all. Awakening seems to be a continuous learning proccess!
Keep communicating. I will keep databasing and sharing!
UL
W
PS: ulw means (Unconditional Love Wayne)


Glad you enjoy the posts, Wayne. Here's another one:

EMPLOYEE AT AIG FINANCIAL DIV. SAYS "IT'S GOING TO BLOWUP"!
Quote


Why does his reinforce my theory that there will be many, many , more bailouts needed to save AIG:

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

AIG Employees Not Too Happy With Persistent Death Threats

Posted by Tyler Durden at 1:01 PM

Interesting summation of the AIG populist anger from an employee's point of view. AIG's Financial Products office at 50 Danbury Road, in Wilton, CT is not a happy place. Inside "death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all." And as more employees leave(as soon as the bonus hits their bank account of course) and join the witness protection program, and nobody who understands the complexity of AIG FP's trades remains, the outcome can only be a horrendous one:

"It's going to blow up," said a senior Financial Products manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. "I have a horrible, horrible, horrible feeling that this is going to end badly."

When you have insiders telling you they are bracing for armageddon, it kinda takes away from the President's and Bernanke's message that all is well and that America will be back to its merry uberleveraged ways by the end of 2009 at the latest.

But back to the compensation issue. Apparently the recent anger at AIG bonuses should not be news:

Beginning in the first quarter of 2008, AIG disclosed the plan to offer retention awards at Financial Products. The unit had already begun to hemorrhage money, a problem that would later grow exponentially. The unit's executives, fearing they might lose valuable employees in the tumultuous months to come, successfully negotiated more than $400 million for their workers, to be paid this month and again next year.

At the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which has directly overseen AIG since its federal takeover in September, officials have studied the possibility of rescinding or delaying the bonuses. They even brought in outside lawyers for advice. The conclusion: If the bonuses weren't paid, the AIG staffers would be able to sue the company and probably would win, not just what they were owed but also punitive damages that would make the ultimate cost perhaps two to three times as high as the bonuses themselves.

Who exactly did they negotiate with, and why were Tim Geithner, the Treasury and all those screaming for AIG execs to commit seppuku not notified? Could this have to do with the fact that nobody really knows what is going on in the economy in general and in AIG in particular, until the New York Times or some other media outlet brings the problem to the front page? This is an appalling state of the information flow at Too Big To Fail institutions. Are we going to read that some financial neutron bomb has gone off at Goldman or Met Life on Page 6? This form of reactive information populism is great for politicians' ratings but terminal for any pretense of stability in the financial system. In the meantime, another 11 execs have resigned in the past few minutes, leaving likely a janitor and a chimp to supervise AIG's nuclear briefcase. In fact, here is the distribution of bonuses and departures (hat tip Paul Kedrosky):

* The top recipient received more than $6.4 million;
* The top seven bonus recipients received more than $4 million each;
* The top ten bonus recipients received a combined $42 million;
* 22 individuals received bonuses of $2 million or more, and combined they received more than $72 million;
* 73 individuals received bonuses of $1 million or more;
* Eleven of the individuals who received "retention" bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received $4.6 million.

Zero Hedge still icannot fathom how the SEC did not regulate Joseph Cassano's activities much more closely, especially as he already had a criminal record, as ZH posted previously.

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/0...appy-with.html
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Old 03-18-2009, 12:35 AM   #38
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

MARC FABER PREDICTS MARKET CRASH AFTER JUNE
Quote


Treasurys Are 'Disaster Waiting to Happen': Dr. Doom

CNBC.com
| 17 Mar 2009 | 05:49 AM ET

The Federal Reserve has no option but to start buying Treasurys as the government's needs for financing are huge, but the government bond market is a disaster in the making, Marc Faber, editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, told CNBC.


Federal Reserve policymakers start a two-day meeting on Tuesday, weighing options on how to spur lending to help cash-strapped consumers kickstart the economy.

Economists expect them to leave rates at zero and look to other ways of boosting liquidity, such as buying government bonds – a measure which has already been taken by the Bank of England.


"Well I think other central banks have done it already around the world but basically what it amounts to is money printing and in fact I don't think that it will help the bond market at all in the long run," Faber told CNBC's Martin Soong.

The yield on the 30-year Treasurys touched a low of 2.51 percent last year in December but now it is back up at 3.77 percent, he said.

"Yields have already backed up pretty substantially and I tell you, I think the US government bond market is a disaster waiting to happen for the simple reason that the requirements of the government to cover its fiscal deficit will be very, very high," Faber said.

"The Federal Reserve will have to buy Treasurys, otherwise yields will go up substantially," he said, adding that as their reserves were dwindling, foreign investors were likely to scale down their purchases.


But there will be a time when the Federal Reserve will have to increase interest rates to fight inflation, and it will be reluctant to do so because the cost of servicing government debt will rise substantially.

"So we'll go into high inflation rates one day," Faber said.

The stock market is likely to continue its bounce at least for a while, but the outlook is bleak, he added.

"I think we may still have a rally (in the S&P) until about the end of April and probably then a total collapse in the second half of the year sometimes, when it becomes clear that the economy is a total disaster," Faber said.
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Old 03-24-2009, 06:51 PM   #39
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Gerald Celente latest forcast is for total economic collapse by year's end, employment will triple, real estate collapse, food riots:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2qDW...layer_embedded
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Old 05-15-2009, 04:18 PM   #40
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

"The Worst Is Yet to Come": If You're Not Petrified, You're Not Paying Attention
Quote


[http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker...asset=&ccode=]


"The Worst Is Yet to Come": If You're Not Petrified, You're Not Paying Attention
Posted May 15, 2009 09:31am EDT by Aaron Task in Investing, Recession, Banking, Autos, Housing
Related: ^DJI, ^GSPC, DDR, XLF, GM, RWR
The green shoots story took a bit of hit this week between data on April retail sales, weekly jobless claims and foreclosures. But the whole concept of the economy finding its footing was "preposterous" to begin with, says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates.
"We're in a complete mess and the consumer is smart enough to know it," says Davidowitz, whose firm does consulting for the retail industry. "If the consumer isn't petrified, he or she is a damn fool."

Davidowitz, who is nothing if not opinionated (and colorful), paints a very grim picture: "The worst is yet to come with consumers and banks," he says. "This country is going into a 10-year decline. Living standards will never be the same."

This outlook is based on the following main points:

With the unemployment rate rising into double digits - and that's not counting the millions of "underemployed" Americans - consumers are hitting the breaks, which is having a huge impact, given consumer spending accounts for about 70% of economic activity.
Rising unemployment and the $8 trillion negative wealth effect of housing mean more Americans will default on not just mortgages but student loans and auto loans and credit card debt.
More consumer loan defaults will hit banks, which are also threatened by what Davidowitz calls a "depression" in commercial real estate, noting the recent bankruptcy of General Growth Properties and distressed sales by Developers Diversified and other REITs.
As for all the hullabaloo about the stress tests, he says they were a sham and part of a "con game to get private money to finance these institutions because [Treasury] can't get more money from Congress. It's the ‘greater fool' theory."

"We're now in Barack Obama's world where money goes into the most inefficient parts of the economy and we're bailing everyone out," says Daviowitz, who opposes bailouts for financials and automakers alike. "The bailout money is in the sewer and gone."
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Old 05-17-2009, 12:04 PM   #41
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

I'm not scared, I couldn't give a feck
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Old 05-17-2009, 12:56 PM   #42
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

I'm concerned not petrified. If you bought the bridge you have to live with the consequences. I never bought the bridge.
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Old 05-17-2009, 01:05 PM   #43
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Quote:
Originally Posted by NorthernSantuary View Post

"The Worst Is Yet to Come": If You're Not Petrified, You're Not Paying Attention

[http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker...asset=&ccode=]
In his radio talk of May 15, 2009, Alan Watt talks about the fact that the military expects and is preparing for 30 years of rioting, worldwide, starting in about a year's time...

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Old 06-01-2009, 06:07 PM   #44
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Big Collapse Could Be Very Near
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com...very-near.html

the Economic Policy Journal
posted by Robert Wenzel at 5:56 PM, Sunday May 31

The Federal Reserve appears to be increasingly nervous about the long term bond market. This is serious. How panicked are they? After leaking a story on Friday, they are back at it on Sunday.

The Federal Reserve leaked to CNBC's Steve Liesman on Friday that they weren't targeting long rates. Why such a leak? Probably because the Fed did not want to appear impotent in controlling the long rate. So they put out the word through Liesman that they weren't targetting the long rate. Can you imagine what would happen to the markets if it sensed long rates were beyond the control of the Fed?

The Fed can of course print money to buy up every Treasury bond in existence, but the inflationary ramifications would be Zimbabwe like, and crush the dollar on international currency markets. Are we near the phase where all hell breaks loose? I have never even answered, maybe, to this question before. It's always been, "no." Now it's maybe.

What really has me spooked is another article out this afternoon (on a Sunday) that Drudge has even picked up. It's a Reuters story by Alister Bull. The headline: Federal Reserve puzzled by yield curve steepening.

snip

The end of the current financial system, as we know it, maybe eminent. If you would have asked me even two weeks ago if collapse was imminent, I would have said it was highly unlikely, now I am saying it is possible. Bernanke may be able to patch things up short-term, if he is lucky, but long term the U.S. financial structure is in serious trouble. There is just too much Treasury debt that needs to be raised. An international panic out of Treasury securities, even a slow controlled panic, means the Fed will be the major buyer. This will ultimately mean record inflation.

And keep this in mind, we have never seen a collapse of a currency like the dollar. Even the Wiemar inflation can not serve as an example. Since the dollar is the reserve currency of most of the world, a panic out of the dollar means more dollars will return to the U.S, shores than any country has ever experienced.

Other countries have had collapsed currencies, but never in the history of world of finance has so much currency been held outside a country of issue that could come flying back, almost on a moments notice. If the panic out of the dollar starts, even if Bernanke stops printing money (unlikely), all the dollars flying back into the U.S. could cause a huge price inflation all on its own.
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Old 06-21-2009, 02:39 AM   #45
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

leap report: US s**** within 4 months:
The monthly report from Leap2020... only available in french for now...

http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-36-est...009_a3341.html

Basically, the US and the UK are toasted by the end of october. They won't be able to pay... meaning default... but as another article pointed out... they may be able to slow the collapse by buying US bonds with US banks money... meaning taxpayers money.

Here how it works...

Banks in trouble = need bailouts (now at about 14 trillion$) = dollar collapsing, big deficit, unable to fund it = buy US bonds with bailout money = taxpayers money buying US bonds.

It's only a trick... but it may work for a few weeks... but it will end up with the same result... defauting. IMO the only to stop that and to avoid complete collapse of the US into a third world nation is to audit the FED, put the criminals in jail and RIGHT NOW put a HONEST PRESIDENT in office... so unless there's a real revolution, the US will collapse within a year maximum.

Continuing with the LEAP report...

The US will be hit by 3 main waves, and 10 others of less importance... they will hit almost all at once. Inflation will be back up... hyperinflation... if the FED doesn't rise rates, the economy is screwed, and if they do, the economy is screwed.

Banks and government will see how they are bankrupt by the end of summer... putting us even worse than last year... (Keynes was full of it as Autrian economists know) The stock market will crash again before october. Millions of people will lose everything they've got and won't be able to find a job for a few years... Can you imagine having no job for 4 years?

Anyway, it's not pretty, as all of us here except a few saw, and it's starting this summer. Within 4 months, we gonna see a lot of it.

After all, the report from the state department that stated that they sent billions of $$ to foreign embassies so they could buy local currency to last at least for a year might be true... and the report stated that they had until the end of the year to buy the currencies.

Maybe, like RAND suggested a few months earlier, a world war could pull us out of it... but in this day and age... a world war will be nuclear. RAND corporation suggested China or Russia. North Korea and Iran were too small according to them... maybe if they start a war with North Korea, Iran and Syria at the same time?
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Old 06-21-2009, 07:53 AM   #46
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

Yadda Yadda Yadda.

Nothing's going to happen.
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Old 06-21-2009, 01:44 PM   #47
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

We'll see. I continue to have the best year ever--economically, spiritually, and opportunity-wise.
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Old 06-21-2009, 02:30 PM   #48
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Quote:
...Maybe, like RAND suggested a few months earlier, a world war could pull us out of it...
This makes me sick.
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Old 06-22-2009, 04:15 AM   #49
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

We'll see. I continue to have the best year ever--economically, spiritually, and opportunity-wise.

The general outlook doesn't necessarily apply to specific cases. In fact there is a belief that different like-minded groups will separate out, so the people like you are actually doing very well. I myself am in the same position, but need to quit my secure job to start building a RZ community soon. If you can see your path, then follow it and everything will work out as intended.
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Old 06-22-2009, 08:06 AM   #50
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Default Re: 2009: Worst economic collapse ever

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Originally Posted by NorthernSantuary View Post

... If you can see your path, then follow it and everything will work out as intended...
What about the path the powers that be have planned for us regarding being chipped robots with no civil liberties?
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