Grand Theft Economics
Charlie Weston
Independent.ie
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:18 EST
At least 77,500 households are in arrears on their mortgages and rent payments.
This is more than twice previous estimates of the numbers of people struggling to keep a roof over their heads. It is a clear sign that the country is now gripped by a mortgage and rental crisis, experts said.
Also, one in five households are struggling to pay credit card bills, credit union loans and overdrafts. Higher-income families are more likely to owe money to credit card companies and to be overdrawn.
The major study of incomes and living standards by the Central Statistics Office indicates that thousands of homeowners and those who rent are so deep in debt that many are at risk of losing their homes.
The frightening figures underscore the mortgage misery in the country and stress the need for a rescue scheme for heavily indebted families, mortgage experts said.
Frank Tang and Jan Harvey
Reuters
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:08 EST
© Reuters//Ilya Naymushin
An employee takes gold ingots to be weighed in a room for final weighing and packaging at the Krastsvetmet plant in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk November 16, 2009
Gold rose to a record high above $1,150 an ounce on Wednesday as stronger-than-expected U.S. consumer prices and a steadily weakening dollar stirred inflation fears.
Market sentiment also improved after news that billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson is launching a new gold fund, including $250 million of his own personal investment.
Doubts about a nascent economic recovery and worries about the consequence of unprecedented quantitative easing also increased gold's appeal as a safe haven.
"There is a lurking concern in the background that still exists," said Bill O'Neill, partner at LOGIC Advisors, noting that investors were worried about the vulnerability of banks and the financial system.
Jim Puzzanghera
Los Angeles Times
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:44 EST
A House committee voted Wednesday to give the government extraordinary new power to break up large financial firms that pose a potential risk to the economy.
The proposal by Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski (D-Pa.) would allow regulators to break up such big companies before their failure becomes imminent. It goes beyond the powers requested by the Obama administration to seize large firms on the brink of failure should their collapse threaten to damage the wider financial system.
"I recognize this is extraordinary power. Hopefully it will never have to be used," Kanjorski said. It would be used only if other regulatory measures did not reduce the potential threat of "huge, megalopolis-like" companies failing, he said.
Comment: Is this a government take over, or a parachute for those financial entities who have spent up free tax dollars? Too big to fail still seems to be in effect.
Melly Alazraki
bloggingstocks.com
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:34 EST
© Unknown
French bank Société Générale has advised clients to be ready for a possible "global economic collapse" over the next two years,
The Telegraph reports.
In a 68-page report titled "Worst-Case Debt Scenario," SocGen explains that the rescue packages over the past year have merely transferred private liabilities onto government shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems. Debt levels, public or private, are too high as a share of GDP. The deleveraging process will take years.
SocGen says that under the bear-case scenario, the dollar would continue to decline and global equities would retest the March lows. Property prices would slide again and oil prices would fall back to $50 in 2010. Public debt would explode within two years, with worldwide state debt reaching $45 trillion. Further, the aging population will make it harder to erode debt through growth. As for the U.S., it could take nine years to reduce debt/income ratios to the safe levels of the 1980s.
John Galt
Shenandoah Blog
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:50 EST
The following story is a potential fictional time line for the day the dollar died. I hope not to instill fear or loathing but to give everyone some perspective on a POSSIBLE outcome which does not really take much of a reach to come to any conclusion. Despite popular belief and promises from those who wish to rob you of your savings and investments, the collapse of the dollar might just be an event measured in hours, not days as their control is not what it seems.....
* * * * * *
Mike was less than an hour from home in Minnesota after dropping his load off in Fargo but knew he needed to top his tank off this Sunday evening to insure his rig would make it home. He pulled into the Petro Truck Stop just outside of Fargo and hopped out of the cab into the bitter twenty below temperatures which he could not believe had already hit at ten o'clock at night. He slid his fuel card into the pump waiting for the next prompt when the "SEE ATTENDANT" message flashed in the screen. He blustered, figured it was another card problem and whipped out his Master Card and slid it in after the pump reset and again the "SEE ATTENDANT" message flashed up. "What the hell is going on?" he thought to himself as he wandered into the long line of drivers boisterously yelling at managers and clerks alike.
Agence France-Presse
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:10 EST
A grand jury in the southeastern state of Atlanta indicted eight people Tuesday in a credit card fraud ring that stole nine million dollars in 280 cities around the world, the Justice Department said.
Five of the indicted are Estonians. One of them, the suspected mastermind of the scheme, is in prison in Estonia awaiting extradition to the United States, the department said.
One is Russian and another is Moldovan; the nationality of the eighth has not been disclosed.
Alan Wheatley and Simon Rabinovitch
canada.com
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00 EST
The imperative of greater global currency stability means the world can no longer rely, as it has done since the end of the gold standard, on a currency issued by a single country, the head of the IMF said on Tuesday.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, restated his view that a new global currency might evolve out of the Special Drawing Right, the Fund's in-house unit of account.
"That probably has to be a basket," Strauss-Kahn said of the eventual replacement for the dollar. "In a globalised world there is no domestic solution," he told a forum
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:18 EST
© Reuters
A bullet train speeding past Mount Fuji in Fuji city, west of Tokyo, Japan
Explosion of debt: Japan's public debt could reach as much as 270pc of GDP in the next two years.
In a report entitled "Worst-case debt scenario", the bank's asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.
Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of "deleveraging", for years.
"As yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse," said the 68-page report, headed by asset chief Daniel Fermon. It is an exploration of the dangers, not a forecast.
Under the French bank's "Bear Case" scenario, the dollar would slide further and global equities would retest the March lows. Property prices would tumble again. Oil would fall back to $50 in 2010.
Associated Press
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:43 EST
Des Moines, Iowa - A study says the poorest Iowans paid nearly double the percentage of their income in taxes than the wealthiest paid, a gap the authors argue underscores the need to reform Iowa's tax system.
The study by the Child and Family Policy Center showed that Iowa families making less than $20,000 annually paid roughly 11 percent of their income in state and local taxes. Earners averaging nearly $1 million paid 7.4 percent in taxes, but that was reduced to 6 percent because federal tax payments are deductible when calculating state tax liability.
Wichita Business Journal
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:39 EST
Workplace morale is flagging in some offices. In a study, 23 percent of 2,900 polled workers said their current organization's employee morale is low.
The CareerBuilder survey indicated that 40 percent of those polled said they have had difficulty staying motivated at work in the last year and 24 percent do not feel loyal to their current employer.
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