Insurance Woes and Whines

Insurance firms feel profit pinch
Industry giants blame roiling markets, high loonie for dampening fourth-quarter earnings and outlook

Sez the headline. But the reality is that it has less to do with the loonie, and more about their investments in the U.S. including of course their exposure to the sub-prime credit mess. Ah the joys of global capitalism. The reason that banks want to merge of course is to compete for positions in the global financial markets, that is the U.S. market. And this is what happens when they do.....

Manulife is Canada's largest insurer. Approximately 64 per cent of its earnings are generated in the United States and Asia. Smaller rival Sun Life faces a similar predicament with about 52 per cent of its earnings originating from the U.S., U.K. and Asia.

For the October-December quarter, Sun Life reported earnings of $555 million or 97 cents per share. That compared with net income of $545 million or 94 cents per share for the same period in 2006. "This quarter was also marked by significant market turbulence," McKenney said.

Chief executive Donald Stewart said that volatility would likely affect the industry's outlook in the near term. Echoing those sentiments, Manulife CEO Dominic D'Alessandro suggested that "unsettled markets" would likely affect wealth businesses.

Sun Life also disclosed it has $84 million in direct exposure and $961 million in indirect exposure to monoline bond insurers. Those companies, which provide insurance against default in securitized debt, have become a source of worry because certain firms have had their credit ratings downgraded.

Chief investment officer Jim Anderson said Sun Life's direct exposure to monolines is with two insurers that are "AAA rated with a stable outlook." Its indirect exposure is to insurers with "investment grade" ratings, adding most of its exposure is in the U.K.

Insurance companies used to be the most risk adverse and conservative of financial institutions. However with the shift to globalization of the marketplace in the eighties and nineties from production to FIRE (financial services, insurance, real estate,) this all changed. A renewed financial market dominated the market, as it once had prior to WWI, the result of this financial exuberance, and shift from investment in production to investment in investment instruments bailed out New York and London from their Reagan/Thatcher excesses and declines. In doing so insurance companies as well as the banks and other financial businesses exposed themselves to the dangers of the balloon and bust market. Chickens, home, roost.

Just as people meet and authorize someone from among their own number to take specific action on their behalf, so commodities must meet to authorize a single commodity to confer full or partial citizenship in the world of commodities. The act of exchange is the occasion for such a meeting of commodities. The social activity of commodities on the market is to capitalist society what collective intelligence is to a socialist society. The consciousness of the bourgeois world is concentrated in the market report. It is only after the successful completion of the exchange that the individual can have any insight into the process as a whole, or any guarantee that his product has satisfied a social need, as well as the incentive to begin his production anew. The object which is thus authorized by the common action of commodities to express the value of all other commodities is – money. The authority of this particular commodity develops along with the development of the exchange of commodities.

Finance Capital, Hilferding 1910

SEE:

Lenin Was Right

Petro Dollars Bail Out The CITI

Bank Smack Down

U.S. Economy Entering Twilight Zone

Lenin's State Monopoly Capitalism

40 Years Later; The Society of the Spectacle

Commodity Fetish a Definition

State Capitalism in the USSR

Plutocrats Rule

The Right To Be Greedy

Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism

It's the Labour Theory of Value, stupid

China: The Truimph of State Capitalism

Deconstructing Hayek

Social Insecurity- The Phony Pension Crisis


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taylorism,fordism, NEP, state capitalism, state monopoly capitalism, monopoly capitalism,

liberalism, state, Anarcho-Capitalism, libertarian, Von Mises,anarchism,, gold bug,, gold,, Albert J. Nock,
Bemjamin Tucker, Liberty, libertarian, anarchism, invdidualist-anarchist, Rothbard, Austrian School of Economics, mutualism,
homes, mortgages, housing, bubble, US, economy, Canada, sub-prime mortgage, Wall Street, crash, recession,
China, Greenspan, correction, capitalism, Rothbard, Keynes, Galbraith, stocks, markets, capitalism

Petro Dollars Bail Out The CITI

And here is more news from Dubai Investments Inc. Petro-Dollars from the middle east bail out the sub prime victims of U.S. excess.No not the mortgage holders or home owners, but the greedy capitalists. They can always expect to get bailed out if not by the Federal Reserve than the Oil Reserves in the Middle East.

And who is going raise the specter of American Security interests over this Wall Street take over? Why no-one, well perhaps Lou Dobbs. This is globalization in action. Just what it's proponents predicted, but not as they expected.

Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, will receive a $7.5 billion cash infusion from Abu Dhabi to replenish capital after record mortgage losses.

Citigroup rose 5.7 percent in German trading after acting Chief Executive Officer Win Bischoff said in a statement late yesterday that Abu Dhabi Investment Authority will help ``strengthen our capital base.''

Abu Dhabi will buy securities that convert into stock and yield 11 percent a year, almost double the interest Citigroup offers bond investors, underscoring the New York-based company's need for cash. Citigroup's fourth-quarter profit will be reduced by as much as $7 billion because of losses from subprime mortgages, which led to the departure of CEO Charles O. ``Chuck'' Prince III and a 45 percent slump in the company's stock.

``Clearly, Citi has a problem with capital adequacy after the subprime crisis,'' said Giyas Gokkent, head of research at National Bank of Abu Dhabi PJSC, Abu Dhabi's biggest bank by market value. ``ADIA has seen an opportunity to get cheaply into a blue-chip stock.''

With the purchase of a 4.9 percent stake, Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate in the United Arab Emirates, would rank as Citigroup's largest shareholder ahead of Los Angeles-based Capital Group Cos. and Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Depleted Capital

The investment follows purchases by U.A.E. fund Dubai International Capital LLC in companies including London-based HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank by market value, and New York-based hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management LLC. In Abu Dhabi, state-backed Mubadala Development Co. agreed to buy 7.5 percent of Washington-based buyout firm Carlyle Group. ADIA also owns a stake in Leon Black's New York-based buyout firm Apollo Management LP.

While Joe and Jane Consumer in America get no relief, which only will mean even more American retailers will go crash this shopping season as they desperately drop their prices as fast as the U.S. dollar's decline. It is a season full of desperation.

Holiday shoppers spending carefully
Deep discounts lure, but analysts wary

Discounted sweaters, laptops and personal GPS navigation systems drew large crowds during the Thanksgiving shopping weekend, according to several early surveys, but customers also appeared to temper their spending amid concerns over the economy.

Despite positive signs over the weekend, analysts cautioned yesterday that retailers must keep enticing customers with bargains to sustain momentum through the end of the year. Several retailers and economists say this holiday shopping season could be the worst in five years, in part because of the slumping housing market and higher energy costs.

Retail Desperation on Display in Early Hours

Upbeat holiday shopper traffic on Black Friday may prove short lived


Wall St little changed as investors track retail sales

The lackluster start of trading followed a market rally Friday as big retailers unveiled hefty discounts to lure shoppers into the nation's malls.

"So long as consumer spending keeps rising, the economy will stay out of recession," said Dick Green, an analyst at Briefing.com.

Other analysts said retail sales so far appeared to have been relatively robust over the weekend despite a housing market slump and a related credit crunch.

Banking giant Citigroup is meanwhile planning its second round of "large-scale" layoffs in less than 12 months, according to a report by the CNBC business television channel which cited people with knowledge of the matter.

SEE

Bank Smack Down

9/11

U.S. Economy Entering Twilight Zone

tags
homes, mortgages, housing, bubble, US, economy, CITI, sub-prime mortgage, Wall Street, crash, recession,
China, Greenspan, correction, capitalism, stocks, markets, capitalism
US dollar, oil, Islamic Banking, US, economy, petro-dollars, trade deficit, Imperialism, OMX,
NYPorts, Lou Dobbs, UAE, Dubai, Dubai Ports, MGM,

9/11

Not September 11, 2001 but November 9, 2007 which can also be written 9/11.

The day the U.S. stock market crashed from its current consumer credit crisis.

Stocks fell for a third session on Friday after a disappointing outlook from Qualcomm Inc triggered more weakness in technology shares and helped send the Nasdaq down to its biggest weekly point loss since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

I just thought the coincidence of the dates was one of those interesting occult significators that occurs as part of the psychology of the market. A market in a recession that many dare not admit is happening.

Adding to the negative tone, Fannie Mae , the largest source of mortgage financing in the United States, posted a third-quarter net loss that was double its loss from a year ago. Its shares ended the session down 1.6 percent at $49.00, after earlier dropping 10.6 percent to a fresh 52-week low at $44.54.

And Wachovia Corp , the fourth-largest U.S. bank, shook up financial markets some more by reporting a potential $1.7 billion loss on mortgage-related debt. Wachovia's stock fell more than 5 percent to a 52-week low at $38.05, but then rebounded to finish the day up 0.9 percent at $40.65.

And while Wall Street will continue its daily boom and bust cycle it is now part of global stock market, one which means that crashes occur not just on the street but around the globe as we witnessed with the bank crash last month in England.

The Economist cites various phenomena that are contributing to converging global markets. Among them: reduced controls on capital, a larger number of cross-border listings, and multinational mergers.

In just the past few months alone, some of the world's biggest stock exchanges have announced agreements or mergers to integrate trading systems. Back in April, NYSE Group merged with European market Euronext to create what is now NYSE Euronext. The European Union's internal market commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, said that the NYSE/Euronext union marks the beginning of stock market mergers and "at some point we will see moves toward a common pool of liquidity."

Furthermore, many companies are listed in multiple global markets in order to gain access to foreign capital. Just as some foreign companies appear on U.S. exchanges -- like GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK), Novartis (NYSE: NVS), and CNOOC (NYSE: CEO) -- U.S. companies such as IBM (NYSE: IBM), Home Depot (NYSE: HD), and General Electric (NYSE: GE) are listed on the Frankfurt and London exchanges.

Finally, a few major international mergers have taken place in the past five years, including Alcatel-Lucent and Arcelor Mittal. The effects of such unions increase global market correlation because the newly formed companies are known in multiple countries and generate revenues in multiple markets.

CIBC joins the writedown parade
Bank will take a $463-million hit in fourth quarter on its exposure to U.S. mortgage market

The credit crunch, which has been hammering the largest U.S. financial institutions, is increasingly taking its toll on Canadian banks.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce yesterday said it will take a $463-million fourth-quarter charge on its exposure to the U.S. mortgage market, bringing its total writedowns to the market to $753-million in the past six months.

In other developments late yesterday, Bank of Montreal's shares fell almost 5 per cent - much of that decline in the final hours of trading - as that bank contends with its exposure to structured investment vehicles, or SIVs. And Royal Bank of Canada's stock closed yesterday near its 52-week low.

In the sector at large, tens of billions of dollars have already dropped off the banking system's balance sheets, and the dominoes continue to fall.

It is America's Main Street, which has kept the U.S. economy going on cheap credit and the resulting consumption, is now drowning in the quicksand of rising rates, personal bankruptcies and foreclosures. Whose impact will continue through out 2008.

And both the pro-business types and the left agree that the American financial markets have an addiction to being bailed out.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Board acted "like a bartender" in lowering interest rates and its actions are contributing to a stock market bubble in the U.S., Marc Faber, the Hong Kong-based publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, said.

"Each time you bail out, it becomes bigger and bigger, and the credit problems become much, much larger," said Faber, managing director of Marc Faber Ltd. The Fed "feeds its customers with booze, and when they get totally drunk and are about to fall off their chairs, the bartender gives them more booze to keep them going. One day, it will lead to the ultimate breakdown."

"The best for the system would be if a major player would go bust," Faber said. "Then there would be an example for investors and for the players, the Wall Street establishment, the banks, to be more prudent."

As most people now realize, the mortgage industry is on life-support. Many of the ways that the banks were generating profits have vanished overnight. The “securitization” of debt (mortgages, car loans, credit card debt etc) has ground to a halt. What had been a booming multi-billion dollar per-year business is now a dwindling part of the banks’ revenues. Investors are steering clear of anything even remotely associated to real estate.

Bloomberg News ran a story last week which sheds more light on the jam the banks now find themselves in:

Banks shut out of the market for short-term loans are finding salvation in a government lending program set up to revive housing during the Great Depression. Countrywide Financial Corp., Washington Mutual Inc., Hudson City Bancorp Inc. and hundreds of other lenders borrowed a record $163 billion from the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks in August and September as interest rates on asset-backed commercial paper rose as high as 5.6 percent. The government-sponsored companies were able to make loans at about 4.9 percent, saving the private banks about $1 billion in annual interest.

Is it possible that anyone with a pulse and a minimal ability to reason couldn’t see the inherent problems of building a financial edifice on the prospect that millions of first-time homeowners with bad credit history and no collateral would pay off there mortgages in a timely and responsible manner?

No. It is not possible. The real reason that the subprime swindle mushroomed into an economy-busting monster is that the markets are no longer policed by any agency that believes in intervention. The pervasive “free market” ideology rejects the notion of supervision or oversight, and as a result, the markets have become increasingly opaque and unresponsive to rules that may assure their continued credibility or even their ability to function properly.

The “supply side” avatars of deregulation have transformed the world’s most vital and prosperous markets into a huckster’s shell-game. All regulatory accountability has vanished along with trillions of dollars in foreign investment. What’s left is a flea-market for dodgy loans, dubious over-leveraged equities and “securitized” Triple A-rated garbage.

U.S. Financial business is crying for state intervention while their political cronies in the Republican party deny their citizens universal health-care, child care, pharma-care, and secure pensions because that smacks of socialism. But socialism for the rich is okay.

See:

Bank Smack Down

Purdy Crawford Rescues the Market

Sub Prime Exploitation

Canadian Banks and The Great Depression

Wall Street Deja Vu

Housing Crash the New S&L Crisis

US Housing Market Crash

Tags
asset-backed commercial paper ,, UK
homes, mortgages, housing, housing bubble, US, economy, 9?11, sub-prime mortgage, Wall Street, crash, recession,

Bank Smack Down

It was a Canadian female financial wonk working for CIBC who brought down America's biggest bank.

Woman behind US banking rumble

CIBC World Markets analyst Meredith Whitney, an outspoken television pundit who is married to a professional wrestler, delivered a body slam to the U.S. banking sector this week that has sent stocks reeling in markets around the world.

The champion stock-picker even talks a bit like Rowdy Roddy Piper.

"No one had the moxie to put in print, what I put in print," Ms. Whitney said yesterday.

She had earlier hit Citigroup with a downgrade when it was already hurting from weak profits.

"Is Citigroup's dividend safe?" she demanded in a tough report that followed a 57% drop in third-quarter earnings at the world's largest bank.

Pro Wrestling of course was a popular blue collar sport in Canada well
before it became big entertainment in the U.S. Take that.

And so she was subjected to the macho American male egos in their marketplace, no uppity woman and a Canuck at that will tell them the Emperor has no clothes. Not when they keep cheering on the fiction that nothing is wrong in their market.

CIBC analyst got death threats on Citigroup - report

Meanwhile the CEO of Citigroup leaves the bank with the booty while the U.S. market crashes.

Citi Watch: A Princely Sum for CEO’s Exit?

Perhaps he will take it out with a wheelbarrow like they did in Germany way back when.



As Jim in San Marcos who blogs as The Great Depression of 2006, writes;

Economic Turpitude

Banks, hedge funds and what ever are taking billions of dollars in loan loss provisions. I have been suggesting for over a year, that a lot of this money may be coming from our retirement funds. Think about it. If your wife buys a new fur coat with your paycheck, now you can’t pay the rent, that is obvious very fast. If the wife turned a trick with the old geezer down stairs and bought the coat, you are stuck wondering how she did it. The reason I suggest Retirement funds, is that the losses suffered so far appear to affect no one. But bear in mind, retirement income funds deal with the future. Most people are not ready to retire so these funds should have plenty of time to recover losses (keep quiet, keep your job). The write downs are massive. Nobody even blinks an eye. What’s a 10 billion dollar loss? The perspective is beyond comprehension. This money has to be coming from somewhere. Whoever’s money it is, they don’t seem to need it--yet.

The money supply worldwide seems to be contracting. Usually this would imply a rise in interest rates. That doesn’t seem to be happening. Commodities are increasing in value, which could be an inflation indicator. If reserves are being added to the banking system, then this could explain why rates are not rising (using a truck is cheaper than a helicopter).

A lot of the new earned money entering into the economy is not being used to create new jobs, its being “invested” in financial instruments. Workers are not creating new product, investors are placing side bets on the financial markets. The profit is gone from home building industry. Investment in rental property is a losing enterprise. Consumption seems to be tapering off. Home remodeling appears to have hit the skids. Starbucks seems to be doing OK, you have to draw the line somewhere.

Interest rates are dropping but you can't force people to borrow money unless there is some sort of return (like a house appreciating at 20% a year). That would explain why the stock market as well as the commodity’s markets are still in play. Cramer the other night was forecasting Google at $750. Everything is still going up. The stock market had a little hiccup on Friday. Nothing to worry about, Google kept on ticking just like a Timex watch. Of course it can’t be a bubble, bubbles don’t get that big!

You have a bunch of banks forming a consortium to bail out the CDO and SIV holders . They are creating a new financial instrument called a "USA," which is short for “Up in Smoke Assets.” It ought to be a hot item if they can figure out a way to package it. It’s kind of like selling invisible goldfish. Give the buyer one or two extra for free, so he thinks he’s getting a real bargain and sell him some invisible fish food to boot.

The economy’s current condition reminds me of the embezzler and a millionaire taking a vacation at the same resort. The embezzler knows whose money he is spending. The millionaire has no idea that he is broke, but hey, everyone is having fun. Are we broke yet?

It's All Good

The Wall Street Journal came out with an article on write downs tied to mortgage debt Saturday. Their bar graph (left) displays about 20.7 billion in 3rd quarter losses. Washington Mutual with 1 billion of charges this quarter didn't even make the list. The amount shown for the Bear Sterns doesn't really reflect what happened when this mess started (BS had a 1.6 billion hedge fund bankruptcy). Of course Amaranth is long forgotten.

The above chart is mixing brokerage houses with banks. So these write offs or what ever, could be coming from several different places, bad housing loans, credit card debt and hedge fund investments. Don't worry everything is "contained." Yea, right!


Here's a list of the top world banks. The banks in the top picture seem to have a handle on projected losses if you compare their net holdings (left) to declared write downs (top). But this is just third quarter losses. So do we multiply this by four to come up with a yearly total? It sounds logically conservative and nightmarish. [Note: Morgan Stanley in the top pic and JP Morgan Chase in the one at the left are not the same company, the first is a brokerage house and the latter is a bank, they were one entity at one time]

HSBC wrote off 11 billion in March, Citibank plans to announce earnings October 15 and refers to earnings as "abysmal" in their news release last week. Two banks not saying much are Bank America, and JP Morgan. It could be an eye opener when they report quarterly earnings.

Now mix in 2.46 trillion dollars of credit card debt. Here is list of the top ten issuers of general purpose credit cards:

1. Bank of America
2. J P Morgan Chase
3. Citigroup
4. American Express
5. Capital One
6. Discover Card
7. HSBC
8. Washington Mutual
9. Wells Fargo
10.U S Bancorp


The puzzle is starting to come together. We know who the players are. Citigroup made all three lists, which doesn't sound too good. They might have company, if Bank of America and J P Morgan "measure up" in the next week or two when they announce earnings. The real problem is the three month time frame this mess transpired in. How can we believe that things are now OK?

The stock market is still going up, go figure. I guess you could call it herd (heard) mentality. Follow your favorite stock commentator over the cliff.

Good to see some American's are realizing that all those folks on the 24/7 Business News channels are wearing rose coloured glasses to go along with their ruby slippers. Of course these Market Wizards belong in the land of Oz.

'It will be a garden variety recession'
Economic Times, India -
US consumption, which is now a record 72% of US GDP, has nowhere to go but down and that has raised the risk of recession in the US and the potential impact ...

Morgan Stanley exec: US recession likely BusinessWeek

BBC NEWS | Special Reports | global credit crunch

For shaky economy, oil spike is irritant
Housing, credit messes -- now this?

But $100-a-barrel oil and possible higher gasoline prices would come at a bad time for the U.S. economy. As an economic force, analysts said, higher oil prices alone would not be enough to cause severe economic damage. Yet on top of other major economic concerns -- a brutal housing correction, troubled financial markets and hard-hit banks -- they could be the catalyst for a possible recession.

Recession symptoms near fever level

Scott Badesch of the United Way is used to seeing people in need. Usually, it is the homeless or the poor who tap the services of Palm Beach County's leading community fund.

But these days, Badesch notices something different.

"We're seeing more and more of the middle class falling into these situations. The demand in our shelters and in our emergency food pantries has never been as great as it is," said Badesch, chief executive of the United Way of Palm Beach County.

Ken Rappaport, a Boca Raton bankruptcy lawyer, also sees people in financial distress.

But when Rappaport received 250 applications for a $10-an-hour receptionist job in his office, that's when the area's economic troubles hit home. Many of the applicants were real estate and mortgage brokers used to sky-high salaries.

"That's scary," Rappaport said. "And that was the thing that brought me to the conclusion: I don't care what anybody says, we are in a recession."

Let's hope women are wrong

Women will be pleasantly surprised if we're not all dining at soup kitchens soon. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll asked people whether it's likely the economy will go into recession in the coming year, and women of all sorts were much more likely than their male counterparts to think that it will. Among people with household income under $40,000, for instance, 78 percent of women expect a recession, vs. 44 percent of men. There's a similar gap between college-educated women and men, 71 percent vs. 54 percent. Among Democrats, 82 percent of women and 64 percent of men expect a recession; among Republicans, the gap is 67 percent vs. 54 percent. Overall, 73 percent of women and 56 percent of men foresee a recession in the coming year.

See:

Fred Thompson WYSIWYG

U.S. Economy Entering Twilight Zone

Sub Prime Exploitation

The Cost of War

America's Debt Economy

Tags

, liberalism, state, Anarcho-Capitalism, libertarian, Von Mises,anarchism,, gold bug,, gold,, Albert J. Nock,
Bemjamin Tucker, Liberty, libertarian, anarchism, invdidualist-anarchist, Rothbard, Austrian School of Economics, mutualism,
homes, mortgages, housing, bubble, US, economy, Canada, sub-prime mortgage, Wall Street, crash, recession,
China, Greenspan, correction, capitalism, Rothbard, Keynes, Galbraith, stocks, markets, capitalism

America's Debt Economy

America's boom economy is a debt economy, based on consumer credit thus consumer debt. Americans have financed the boom by mortgaging their homes. Even free market, gold bug, libertarians get it.

When a society is stable and prosperous, you can cast your lot along with everyone else and prosper along with your neighbours. That was the situation in the United States and Europe after WWII. Almost everyone became richer.

But since the mid-70s…it has been harder. In America, for example, hourly wages of working men have gone nowhere. And since the money in which wages are paid has been cut loose from gold, it is hard to know what anything is really worth…hard to keep track of what you have…and hard to hold onto it. The dollar, for example, lost half its purchasing power during the short time when Alan Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve.

More recently, the bubble economy of the 21st century has been rewarding certain groups of elite traders and financial mavens, while punishing the average person with higher debt - personal, mortgage, and governmental. Soon, average investors will be hit hard too…and average homeowners…and average consumers.

Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning Australia

And gosh who is carrying America's debt? Why China of course. And if they cash in their chips well......

“China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars,” said He Fan, an official at China’s Academy for Social Sciences. He wasn’t exactly speaking for the government. But he was clearly articulating what’s on everyone’s mind. “Such a big sum,” he continued, “of which a considerable portion is in US Treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency.” But…?

“Russia, Switzerland, and several other countries have reduced their dollar holdings. China is unlikely to follow suit…as long as the yuan’s exchange rate is stable against the dollar. The Chinese Central bank will be forced to sell dollars once the yuan appreciated dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.”

Well then, there you have it. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has pushed China to allow the yuan to appreciate, driven by nationalist and protectionist sentiments in the US Senate. China knows the US Congress is keen to act, and blame the foreigner in an election year for American economic woes. Its well-timed reminder of the leverage it has over the dollar is a warning to the Americans to be careful what they ask for.

Yes, it sure looks like China has announced to America what it has known all along. Its investment in US Treasuries, and the support that offers both to the American dollar and the American consumer, were always driven by what was best for China. And what’s best for China now? Well, we don’t know for sure. But buying the US dollar doesn’t seem look a good idea for anyone right now. Selling it, on the other hand, or trading it for tangible assets…that seems like a much better idea.

Will America be sent to debtors prison?

Or just face foreclosure from their global competitor and lender of first choice.


SEE:

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

Wall Street Deja Vu

Housing Crash the New S&L Crisis

Turning Lead into Gold

Goldbug

Petro Dollars and U.S. Debt

Housing Bubble



Tags

, liberalism, state, Anarcho-Capitalism, libertarian, Von Mises,anarchism,, gold bug,, gold,, Albert J. Nock,
Bemjamin Tucker, Liberty, libertarian, anarchism, invdidualist-anarchist, Rothbard, Austrian School of Economics, mutualism,
homes, mortgages, housing, bubble, US, economy, Canada, sub-prime mortgage, Wall Street, crash, recession,
China, Greenspan, correction, capitalism, Rothbard, Keynes, Galbraith, stocks, markets, capitalism