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CapitalAccount uploaded a new video
(1 day ago)
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A US lawmaker is repo...
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A US lawmaker is reportedly planning to introduce the "Sound Dollar Act" early next month. This is legislation that would move the federal reserve from its dual mandate of maintaining price stability (which is anathema to the dollar debasement that it creates through its massive money printing operations) and keeping unemployment low (which it has failed to do...curious...) to just promoting price stability. Hmmm...what would that mean for the Fed's unofficial mandate of trashing the dollar?
And Turkey, the fastest growing economy after China, is being penalized in the credit markets for failing to promote consumer savings, according to bloomberg. What? You mean savings matter!! That's amazing...ummm not to us it isn't. You can't have economic growth without savings, because you can't have investment without capital. Capital comes form savings, and growth comes from investment, but its shocking how many people think money "grows on tress." Can you blame them, when we have a serial money printer at the Federal Reserve, pushing us all into serfdom and neo-feudalism with a policy of perpetual bailouts and zero percent interest rates? Oligarchy here we come!
Finally, with central bank policies of the fed and ECB amounting to --trash for cash -- as economist David McWilliams puts it with his "Punk Economics: Lesson 2," turning "water into wine." These perpetual bailouts are nothing other than an institutional form of wealth transfer. They are nothing but wealth extraction, moving money from the bottom of society, to the top. The money changers. The banksters. The feudal lords. The money chieftains. Call them what you will. They are kleptocrats, and using compounding interest in order to pound society back into the feudal period of landless serfdom.
We speak with our guest, famed trends forecaster Gerald Celente about Greece, the global banking kleptocracy and the attempt by financial oligarchies to occupy the world using paper derivatives index to nothing but wealth extraction.
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CapitalAccount uploaded a new video
(2 days ago)
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The EU catches on tha...
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The EU catches on that the Eurozone is facing recession while greece is still the gum on everyone's shoe. The European Commision in its latest projections forecasts a 0.3 percent contraction with Greece leading the way...but it now expects countries such as spain and italy to contract too - which is different from its last forecasts. But Greece is still the whipping boy for the northern europeans and the press in general. With Greece's parliament approving the bond swap, some people say that this won't be enough, that we need a full default. Just look at Greece's GDP numbers, its unemployment numbers, its industrial output and its household and corporate credit...its all off the charts...falling off the charts that is. So why are the projections so rosy, like those in the TROIKA's debt sustainability document that we broke down earlier this week, something that our next guest knows about all to well - he kicks the crap out of mainstream analysis for a living. He has been warning that Greece is headed towards default for two years now, and for anyone billing this latest Greek deal as a "solution," Kung--Fu analyst Reggie Middleton is here to Karate--chop the accounting shenanigans masking the real story. He's here to tell us why more than default, the word of the day on everyone's mind should be CONTAGION. Why? Well, lots of reasons, one of which his the human nature reality, as Reggie Middleton puts it, that once Greece defaults and does not get absolutely obliterated, other nations will wonder why they should suffer through extreme austerity measures while Greece defaults and gets to start over without paying back its debt. If you were Portugal, Ireland, Spain, etc. why would you ever pay back all this debt if you knew that you could default and get away with it? It's the prisoner's dilemma except in an EU straight jacket...
Meanwhile, as Europe confronts the potential of recession and the contagion of a banking flue, the prime piece of regulation being touted in the US known as "the Volcker Rule," which is supposed to stop banks from proprietary trading, or trading for their own accounts with customer money, is being fought tooth an nail by not just US banks but foreign ones too. According to critics including members of Occupy the SEC, there are many ways banks can get around the spirit of the law because of loopholes in the several-hundred-page rule proposal. Nonetheless Wall Street has been lobbying against the rule throughout the process. And some foreign governments have recently been coming out against it. In an editorial in the Financial Times, the finance ministers of Britain and Japan write, "both our governments have expressed concerns about the "Volcker Rule". They cite "unintended consequences," and one they name is this: "there is an exemption for trading in US government securities but not other sovereigns, so it could reduce liquidity in non-US sovereign markets, making it more difficult, costlier and riskier for countries to issue and distribute debt." Now regarding that argument itself, Paul Volcker wrote in the Financial Times it's basically a joke, saying banks in Europe, Japan, and Canada should be able to pick up the slack. But why have these foreign governments joined US banks in the fight against the Volcker Rule now? Well take a look at these revelations from Bloomberg: "US banks pushed regulators to widen proposed restrictions on trading and hedge-fund ownership by foreign firms, then encouraged governments around the world to complain about the rule's reach." Bloomberg cites several sources who say that last year banks including JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley lobbied the Fed and regulators to apply the Volcker Rule regulation more broadly to companies based outside the US. Then, they sent papers to Washington embassies of foreign governments, meeting with officials, warning them their sovereign debt prices would suffer if these regulations were applied.
And lastly, we just have to cover this, because Demetri Kofinas is a big knicks fan who has been suffering during this Linsanity period as he cannot go to a single game being that he is stuck in the nation's capital, far away from the big apple. It appears now that Nike is looking towards basketball sensation Jeremy Lin as a way to "open the door" into the chinese market. Charlie Denson, president of the Nike brand, told the Financial Times that the world's biggest sporting goods maker by sales was already exploring ways to profit from its most unexpected celebrity in China. "No question. We're developing plans as we speak," he said. "The fact he's experiencing the kind of success he's having now is a very, very pleasant surprise for us." Nike, however, declined to comment on rumors that it was working on a Lin signature shoe.
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CapitalAccount uploaded a new video
(2 days ago)
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As Europe confronts t...
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As Europe confronts the potential of recession and the contagion of a banking flue, the prime piece of regulation being touted in the US known as "the Volcker Rule," which is supposed to stop banks from proprietary trading, or trading for their own accounts with customer money, is being fought tooth an nail by not just US banks but foreign ones too. According to critics including members of Occupy the SEC, there are many ways banks can get around the spirit of the law because of loopholes in the several-hundred-page rule proposal. Nonetheless Wall Street has been lobbying against the rule throughout the process. And some foreign governments have recently been coming out against it. In an editorial in the Financial Times, the finance ministers of Britain and Japan write, "both our governments have expressed concerns about the "Volcker Rule". They cite "unintended consequences," and one they name is this: "there is an exemption for trading in US government securities but not other sovereigns, so it could reduce liquidity in non-US sovereign markets, making it more difficult, costlier and riskier for countries to issue and distribute debt." Now regarding that argument itself, Paul Volcker wrote in the Financial Times it's basically a joke, saying banks in Europe, Japan, and Canada should be able to pick up the slack. But why have these foreign governments joined US banks in the fight against the Volcker Rule now? Well take a look at these revelations from Bloomberg: "US banks pushed regulators to widen proposed restrictions on trading and hedge-fund ownership by foreign firms, then encouraged governments around the world to complain about the rule's reach." Bloomberg cites several sources who say that last year banks including JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley lobbied the Fed and regulators to apply the Volcker Rule regulation more broadly to companies based outside the US. Then, they sent papers to Washington embassies of foreign governments, meeting with officials, warning them their sovereign debt prices would suffer if these regulations were applied.
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CapitalAccount uploaded a new video
(3 days ago)
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Well-known analyst Me...
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Well-known analyst Merideth Whitney says the middle class is being "De-Banked" in her view, due to new regulations that go "too far in the other direction" in regulating wall street. But is this really true, or do the new regulations just punish the little guys or the yet-to-be (and maybe never become-at-all financial start-ups) financial services firms at the expense of the big boys on wall street? And speaking of the big boys of wall street, how exactly have they been doing on the latest piece of regulation meant to end proprietary trading by these firms from destabilizing the global financial markets and the global economy? We speak, of course, about the Volker Rule, which is Washington's attempt to "roll back" some of risky practices embraced by wall-street after the end of Glass-Steagal in the late 90's. Now, this is just one piece of regulation, but it is a start in a long battle to protect the vast majority of economic participants from having the reckless behavior and risky positions of these too-big-to-fail banks from destroying their financial futures. We speak to two members of "Occupy the SEC" - Alexis Goldstein and Caitlin Kline -- who have been working hard to protect you and me from the watering-down efforts that go on behind closed doors once bills have been passed and move back to the agencies to get "fleshed out." We will ask them about the market-making loopholes (remember, Lloyd Blankfein used this excuse when answering questions about conflicting interests during the financial crisis), hedging, covered funds, Super 23A and much much more.
Also, in the EU, even though bailout is a naughty word they too haven't found a way to deal with their banking system crisis without one: a bailout. Reuters reports that the EU is struggling to get new financial rules on the books. Why is the transatlantic banking monster so hard to defeat after all? And speaking of the transatlantic connection, the Greek government is racing to meet bailout demands being made by the troika. The country is still in trouble -- fitch has cut the country's credit rating to junk, one notch above default. We've heard recent calls to postpone elections and bring in technocratic governments. Looking at history we can see where interest rates went from being priced by the market to being priced by central bankers...are we seeing the same thing now with democracy -- where elections are being phased out and decisions are being taken out of the hands of the citizenry entirely and placed into the lap of unelected technocrats? We'll explain our theory when Demetri Kofinas joins us later in the show.
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CapitalAccount uploaded a new video
(4 days ago)
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Greece has a bailout ...
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Greece has a bailout agreement, but does the country have a chance at growing it's way out of debt as the Troika and Greek politicians continue to claim? A look at a debt sustainability assessment document leaked to the Financial Times from inside these negotiations shows that even the best-case projections used to justify the bailout don't even meet the minimum threshold publicly demanded by the IMF. The baseline scenarios, which are so rosy that it's hard not to laugh when looking at the numbers, have Greece returning to positive economic growth within two years, and an end to the recession by next year. Who is making these projection, and what basis is there in reality for them? Lauren speaks to Capital Account producer Demetri Kofinas, who says that the numbers are a total farce, and that no one has any clue what the Greek economy will look like in a year, let alone over the next two decades, which is what this document attempts to asses.
And the US state department hosts the first global business conference. Looks like even Hilary Clinton is a job recruiter these days. At the same time Barack Obama is strolling around the country touting his big jobs initiatives, picking Boeing as the perfect example of what's right with US manufacturing and job creation. Well, not to rain on your parade Mr. Obama, but if Boeing is such a great example of manufacturing, why on earth is the "air capital of the world," Wichita Kansas, losing jobs from...you guest it, Boeing? Lucky for us, we have labour journalist extraordinaire Mike Elk in studio to give us the answers. He just got back from Wichita with a full report.
And one of the most recognizable works of art in western society, "The Scream" goes on sale and is expected to fetch 80 million dollars. An apocalyptic depiction of raw human anxiety and anguish amidst bloody sky -- this this a reflection of social mood? Well, on a day that the dow broke 13,000 it may be hard to tell.
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haha...