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Sunday, October 12, 2008 |
As long as Europe keeps limping after the US, the crisis will hit Europe much harder than it will affect the US.
Bloomberg: "Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world's financial markets while they 'rewrite the rules of international finance'."
Of course, this will not happen. So prepare for a total crash.
Reuters: "The White House on Friday dismissed suggestions that U.S. markets would be suspended so international financial rules could be rewritten amid the turmoil that has gripped markets for weeks."
LATimes: "It's not just giant banks on the brink these days: Losses are clobbering nonprofit credit unions that have strayed from their conservative heritage or whose members have been pulled into economic downdrafts.
With rising unemployment compounding the effect of tumbling home prices, more than a third of California's 485 federally insured credit unions lost money in the first half of this year, and three were seized by regulators."
America is jumping into the abyss and Europe will follow obediently. I bet the recent bail-out has just disappeared without a trace of anything positive. It was simply a writing off of some billions here and there, leaving a huge gap to fill yet.
NYTimes: "George Soros, the prominent financier, avoids using the financial contracts known as derivatives 'because we don't really understand how they work'. Felix G. Rohatyn, the investment banker who saved New York from financial catastrophe in the 1970s, described derivatives as potential 'hydrogen bombs'.
And Warren E. Buffett presciently observed five years ago that derivatives were 'financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal'.
Over the years, Mr. Greenspan helped enable an ambitious American experiment in letting market forces run free. Now, the nation is confronting the consequences.
Derivatives were created to soften - or in the argot of Wall Street, 'hedge' - investment losses. For example, some of the contracts protect debt holders against losses on mortgage securities. (Their name comes from the fact that their value 'derives' from underlying assets like stocks, bonds and commodities.) Many individuals own a common derivative: the insurance contract on their homes.
On a grander scale, such contracts allow financial services firms and corporations to take more complex risks that they might otherwise avoid - for example, issuing more mortgages or corporate debt. And the contracts can be traded, further limiting risk but also increasing the number of parties exposed if problems occur."
The financial market will suspend itself.
IHT: "IMF warns of meltdown."
11:04:01 AM 
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TimesOnline: "Omer Goldman, daughter of a former Mossad chief, tells why she prefers jail to the military draft.
Omer Goldman is a pretty girl, slender as a model. Never still, very restless, she is filled with anxiety by the expected loss of her freedom. For months before she refused to be drafted into the Israel Defence Forces, she went to a psychologist every week to prepare for what was to come: incarceration in a cell in a military prison.
I met her several times last month in an apartment with other girls who are conscientious objectors. Together they would hand out flyers against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza at the gates of a high school like the one she left a year ago.
On her last day of freedom as a civilian, I saw her at the gates of the intake base to which she had received orders to report for induction into a two-year stint with the defence forces, like every Israeli girl. She had come to refuse the draft, to be tried and to be imprisoned immediately."
10:47:50 AM
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ICH: "Ten years ago, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter and the leading strategist in the United States, published his book 'The Great Chessboard'. More or less 'How to remain the superpower dominating the world'. He explained, with the brutal frankness of someone no longer in official position, that Washington must absolutely weaken its rivals : Russia and China, but also Europe and Japan, and prevent them from allying with each other. Divide and rule.
Today, what is the balance sheet from George Bush using Brzezinski' criteria ? Has he managed to weaken the great power rivals ? We would say : fairly well as concerns Japan, fairly well (for the moment) as concerns Europe, but badly as concerns Russia and very badly as concerns China.
Globally, Bush has provoked so much resistance that United States' domination has been weakened. The business interests that had brought him to power - armaments, oil, automobiles, defence, pharmaceutical companies - have seen that Bush's wars have not brought great profits, or new areas for exploitation. In fact, they have cost more than they have gained. And the Bush administration has been shown up as being a small, restricted circle whose members thought a lot about filling their own pockets but who were incable of tactical finesse and genuine long-term vision.
Five NATO generals prepare a world government ...
In January 2008, five former NATO generals presented a preparatory document for the NATO summit meeting at Bucharest. Their proposals reflect a terrifying tendency. And what gives weight to their document is that, up until recently, all of them held very high positions. General John Shalikashvili was US Chief of Staff and Commander in Chief of NATO in Europe, General Klaus Naumann ran the German army and was president of the military committe of NATO in Europe, General Henk van den Breemen was chief of the Dutch Chief of Staff and Admiral Jacques Lanxade held the same post in France, while Lord Inge ran the General Staff and was also Chief of the Defence Staff of Great Britain. This is just the big shots - and very aggressive they are too, as we shall see.
The aim of the Five is in fact to use military means to maintain the gap between the rich and the poor. Anyone who doubts this should read, on page 92 : 'The objectives of our strategy are to preserve the peace, our values, economic liberalism and stability.'"
Forget about peace, NATO is all about war, remember Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's brutal war. They are planning a world dictatorship. The globalisation project has been shown a failure, and the only way to maintain it is by military force. The recent secret agreement between NATO and the UN shows what they are up to. The present financial crisis is not going to help peace at all. Economic liberalism has just gone bankrupt, so the only way to preserve it is by forceful means. NATO is in essence an undemocratic, even fascist institution, because it denies countries their sovereign rights and denies the citizens their human rights. NATO is about power, in favour of the corporations, not people.
10:42:48 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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