October 2008 archive

Sarah Palin A Political Disaster Area

Where’s Brownie?  

U.S. Investing $250 Billion in Banks

 

By MARK LANDLER

Published: October 13, 2008  

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department, in its boldest move yet, is expected to announce a plan on Tuesday to invest up to $250 billion in banks, according to officials. The United States is also expected to guarantee new debt issued by banks for three years – a measure meant to encourage the banks to resume lending to one another and to customers, officials said.

And the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will offer an unlimited guarantee on bank deposits in accounts that do not bear interest – typically those of businesses – bringing the United States in line with several European countries, which have adopted such blanket guarantees.

London and Asian markets continue world-wide rally of shares after bailouts

 

From Times Online

October 14, 2008

Leo Lewis in Tokyo, Suzy Jagger in New York, Francis Elliott and Gráinne Gilmore

London and Asian markets continued the world-wide rally of shares today after governments committed trillions of dollars to stop collapse of the financial system – with America set to unveil its bailout plan in a few hours.

The FTSE 100 share index posted a 4 per cent rise in early trading today after Japanese dealing floors led the way in Asia, unleashing an unprecedented frenzy of buying to post the Nikkei’s biggest one-day gain.

France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, India, South Korea, Japan and Qatar all took measures to guarantee deposits or improve bank liquidity.

USA

At least 1 dead, more than 10,000 acres burned in two San Fernando Valley fires

Governor declares a state of emergency. A fire in Porter Ranch has scorched more than 5,000 acres and 19 homes. The Marek fire near Lake View Terrace has burned 5,300 acres.

  By Julie Cart,, Ari B. Bloomekatz and Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

October 14, 2008  

With treacherous Santa Ana winds as their bellows, twin wildfires raced through populated canyons, forests and brushlands on the northern fringes of the San Fernando Valley, claiming at least one life and 49 structures, and prompting authorities to suggest a hair-raising, worst-case scenario — that one of the blazes, which began near Porter Ranch, could burn all the way to the Pacific Ocean about 15 miles away.

“This fire has the potential to move from where it is now . . . perhaps as far as Pacific Coast Highway,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Michael Freeman said Monday afternoon as he assessed what he called “a design for disaster.” Freeman said winds of up to 60 mph were expected to push the fire down through canyons at least through this morning.

Original article, by Pat Buchanan, via antiwar.com:

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers.”

So Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised Herbert Hoover in the Great Crash of ’29.

Hoover did. And the nation liquidated him – and the Republicans.

Cross posted at kos

I wasn’t going to write this because I didn’t want to jeopardize anyone else any more than I already have.

You are all at risk! And it is all my fault! So Please forgive me.

I wasn’t entirely truthful and now you are in danger!

You are all doomed…..and it is because I am here that you are doomed.

Kai, over at Zuky, has a post up, Time to Throw the Traders Out the Temple (Part 1) wherein he opines about our most recent economic catastrophe:

Every action that the US government is currently undertaking to supposedly “rescue” our economy has more theatrical effect than structural impact. The bailouts, the debt buyouts, the interest rate cuts, all appear designed to artificially prop up certain nosediving assets and mildly encourage a loosening of credit markets without substantially addressing or mitigating the immediate or eventual social costs of financial meltdown.

……

Most trades these days don’t even involve stocks or bonds, but derivatives, which are contracts establishing conditions and rules for the buying and/or selling of stocks, bonds, or other derivatives. For example, a common derivative would be a stock option; which, say, gives me the right to buy GimongoCorp stock at $5 per share by a certain date; and if GimongoCorp stock hits $10 per share by that date, I get to double my money by executing the option. But here’s where it starts getting funky: the option contract itself can be assigned a current dollar value according to market conditions (using a tricky little piece of calculus known as the Black-Scholes model) and traded on that basis. So for the most part, investment banks have ended up trading not merely stocks and bonds but derivatives of derivatives of derivatives of…and so on. The result is an impenetrable layer of multi-dimensional mathematical abstraction between the allocation of physical resources (i.e. actual societal investment) and the free-market mechanisms which steer that allocation, the proverbial invisible hand.

…….

The most tangible asset that a US citizen can “own” is a plot of land with a house on it. The single biggest historical driver in the accumulation of US wealth has been the theft, redistribution, and subsequent inheritance of real estate. From plantations to Indian reservations, from the Homestead Act to post-Civil War ethnic cleansings, from Jim Crow redlining to the covert racism of modern mortgage practices, the dominant culture has worked tirelessly to build multi-generational economic structures that enrich and advantage white communities while obstructing and disrupting the accumulation of wealth by communities of color. I don’t have to explain to readers here how African Americans and Native Americans and other people of color have waged long and bloody battles to knock down many obstacles. The Fair Housing Act, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and the Community Reinvestment Act all marked legal victories in anti-racist struggle; yet we all know that it takes more than legislation to reform centuries of racist cultural practice. Nevertheless, over the years many people of color succeeded in beating the odds, managing to acquire and defend real estate holdings, building thriving families and communities in largely hostile environments.

Open Thread Away!

…at the direction of unrepentant terrorist Bill Acorn, Buddhist Democratic candidate Barack O’Leary, who is not eligible to run for President on account of the fact that his birth certificate says he was born in Europe, instructed a voter registration group known as Filbert to conspire with the Iraqi government to give risky loans to black people, which has caused the nihilistic practice of the U.S. government bailing out Walmart, which is especially bad when you consider the fact that Tony Rezko, who is currently in prison for letting gay men and women get married in Kenya, is trying to force them to unionize, a practice that maverick Sarah Palin said “No, thank you” to as mayor of Alabama when she wasn’t steadfastly monitoring whether or not Vladimir Preston was or was not rearing his head out from Mexico, which we need to build a wall around, because the mostest importantest thing to the U.S. Americans is who is going to pick our orange juice for $50 an hour, which we can’t do on account of the fact that Raila Odinga wants to tax not just the RICH, but the Sexual Education Class for kindergartners, which is why YOU MUST VOTE for What’s-His-Name, who ABSOULTELY AND COMPLETELY has a plan to catch Harry Pelosi, and whom Republicans only nominated because the rest of their candidates were total ball-sacks.