jeudi 18 août 2011

Notes

zero hedge

Création monétaire, bill buckler parle de l'audit de la fed.

The “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” has just produced the first ever “audit” of the US central bank. It reveals that in the period between December 2007 and July 2010, the Fed parcelled out $US 16.1 TRILLION in emergency loans to financial entities all over the world. Almost half of this - a total of $US 7.75 TRILLION - was loaned to four US banks. They were Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and the Bank of America. In July 2010 (the cut off date for this “audit”), total US stock market capitalisation was $US 15 TRILLION. The Fed provided about half of that.

This inflationary explosion is unprecedented in any era. It represents the biggest ever effort to rescue a debt-based system from the ravages caused by its own debt issuing excesses. It has, at best, provided a “remission” for global paper markets. The cost has been devastating for REAL economies everywhere.
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Charles Hugh Smith
We can clear up much of the purposeful obfuscation by asking: exactly what tragedy befalls Europe if all the sovereign debt in the EU was wiped off the books? The one and only "tragedy" would be the destruction of the "too big to fail" banks, not just in Europe but around the world. As the big European banks imploded, then their inability to service their counterparty obligations on various derivatives to other big banks would topple those lenders.

While the political vassals call that possibility a catastrophe, it would actually spell freedom for Europe's 500 million debt serfs. From the lofty heights of the Manor House, then the loss of enormously concentrated power and wealth is indeed a catastrophe for the Lords and their political lackeys. But for the debt-serfs facing generations of servitude for nothing, then the destruction of the banks would be the glorious lifting of tyranny.
Just as a refresher, here is a definition of kleptocracy:

Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, from the Ancient Greek for "thief" and "rule," is a term applied to a government subject to control fraud that takes advantage of governmental corruption to extend the personal wealth and political power of government officials and the ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats), via the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service. The term means "rule by thieves".
At its heart, the euro currency was ultimately a Grand Arbitrage for the big European banks: they could loan essentially unlimited sums to citizens and sovereign member-states in a stable currency, and be guaranteed that they would be repaid in that same currency regardless of the weaknesses of the debtors.

That was a very sweet deal, an essentially risk-free license to generate monumental profits, all backstopped/guaranteed by the EU and ECB.

In the old, horribly risky system of independent states and currencies, any bank foolish enough to loan vast sums to weak states and its citizenry would soon find the currency in which their loans were paid would weaken to the point that even if the loans were repaid in full, their losses would be crushing.
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Jamie Diamond, most arrogant welfare queen ever
This bailout never ended. “In effect, we nationalized the biggest banks years ago,” Mr. Allison said. “We implicitly guaranteed them. The taxpayers are still the ultimate owners of the risk in those banks — they just don’t get equity returns for that ownership.”
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The Eurodollar Missing Link: Explaining The QE2-Related Cash Surge In US-Based Foreign Banks

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Quaintance And Brodsky On "Change We Can Belive In" Or The Coming "Monetary" Revolution
Analyse agressive.
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Washington décrit similarité du forçage de main entre TARP et debt ceiling. Shock doctrine, top 1%.
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Zero Hedge défend l'idée que les $600 du QE2 sont passées dans le funding de banques étrangères. Un de leur cheval de bataille.
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Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform

It's The Debt, Dummy

I think charts tell a story that allows you to disregard the lies
being spewed by those in power. Below are four charts that tell the
truth about our current predicament. The first is from http://www.mybudget360.com/.
The austerity and debt reduction storyline being sold by the MSM is a
crock. The total amount of mortgage debt outstanding peaked at $14.6
trillion in 2008. The total amount of consumer debt (credit cards, auto
loans, student, boats) outstanding peaked at $2.6 trillion in 2008.
Today, mortgage debt outstanding stands at $13.8 trillion, while
consumer debt stands at $2.4 trillion. Therefore, total consumer debt
has declined by $1 trillion in the last three years. The MSM and talking
heads use this data to declare that consumers have been paying down
debt. This is a complete and utter falsehood. The banks have written off
more than $1 trillion, which the American taxpayer has unwittingly
reimbursed them for. Consumers have not deleveraged. They have taken on
more debt since 2008.
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Dettes russes et américaines...

(repris de ZH)

Oh, and, for those asking, here is US debt/GDP.

Vieux médias...

(lire le rectificatif à la fin du post)

Pauvre Monde... Toujours aussi pathétique.

Vous avez peut-être lu le papier d'Harald Hau dans Le Monde ("Une Europe qui fait cadeau de 200 milliards à ses riches") qui critique sévèrement la servilité des politiques européens envers les banquiers.

La version originale en anglais comprenait une attaque frontale contre la presse française (c'est un bien grand nom pour ce qu'elle est devenue comme vous allez le voir). (pour des raisons de clarté j'ai placé l'intertitre au sommet alors qu'il était au milieu des deux paragraphes repris - pas d'intertitre dans le monde)

Why are the French not at the barricades over the structure of the Greek bailout?

This should be problematic in a country like France which has been fighting bitterly over the so-called “impôt sur la fortune” (a wealth tax on the rich). This latter wealth tax amounts to a mere €4 billion annually in state revenue.

This is a difficult question. Self-censorship by the mainstream French media might play a role, which – mostly left-leaning – does not want to provide ammunition to Eurosceptics like Marine le Pen before next year’s presidential elections. But even in France it will not remain unnoticed that almost all of the public funds go to creditors and hardly benefit the ordinary Greek citizen.

Cela a été tout simplement supprimé de la version du Monde. Pravda Style. Pauvre petit Monde, piqué et incapable d'encaisser ne serait-ce qu'une légère attaque comme celle-ci? Vivement que la marque de ce journal soit tellement abîmée qu'il ne se trouve plus aucun financier imbécile pour leur apporter des fonds en pure perte et acheter leur discours (inepte au demeurant).

C'est la seule chose substantielle que je trouve caviardée mais je n'ai pas fait une comparaison ligne à ligne.

Rectificatif: Un ami m'a signalé que le texte avait été traduit de l'allemand et pas de l'anglais. J'ai donc fait une erreur en disant que l' "original" était en anglais. J'ai surtout trouvé une version en allemand et elle ne comprend pas les deux paragraphes que je reproche au monde d'avoir caviardés. Alors Le Monde est-il "off the hook"? Pas exactement car si on va sur le site de l'auteur, on voit qu'il a linké uniquement vers la version en anglais d'eurovox que je considère donc comme la version originale. Qui plus est, la version allemande ne semble avoir été publiée par aucune publication connue (je ne l'ai trouvée que sous la forme d'un pdf "stand alone" hébergé par ce qui semble être une université à Hambourg et qui n'indique pas non plus de publication connue). Pourquoi dans ces conditions Le Monde a-t-il choisi de traduire cette version? On peut se le demander. Il n'en demeure pas moins que le post aurait-été écrit différemment si j'étais d'abord allé voir la version allemande. Mais quoi qu'il en soit, je ne pense pas qu'il y ait un manque de traducteur anglais-français au monde et il n'y a qu'une version du texte référencée sur le site d'Harald Hau: la version anglaise. Et vu la "trace internet" laissée par la version allemande, j'irais même jusqu'à qualifier cette dernière d'obscure. L'hypothèse de la bonne foi du monde ne peut en tout cas pas en principe être écartée même si je laisse au lecteur le soin d'apprécier si les paragraphes en question rejaillissaient positivement sur Le Monde.