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Posts Tagged ‘U.S. Economy’

Wall Streets Biggest Con Game

Why is Wall St. at war to keep financial innovation secret, hidden, and without public transparency? Why is Wall Street spending millions on lobbyists to kill financial-regulation reforms?

Because Wall Street rakes in tens of billions of dollars annually from their financial innovations, gambling in the shadowy $670 trillion global derivatives market. And Wall Street does not want government, investors or competitors digging into their “financial weapons of mass destruction,” as Buffett calls them.

Remember, financial innovation is just a Wall Street code word. Translated it simply means derivatives and other proprietary secrets like the high-frequency trading algorithms used by their quants.

Yes, Wall Street wants you to believe that financial innovations also help Main Street, but that’s just Wall Street lobbyist propaganda to mislead the public, regulators and legislators. Remember when Washington proposed standardized mortgages as a way to help consumers? Wall Street attacked, spending millions to kill it.

Wall Street has no interest in helping Main Street. Time magazine’s Justin Fox, author of “The Myth of the Rational Market,” said it best in his “Curious Capitalist” column.

Most so-called financial innovations are “just new ways to fleece customers or hide risk, and all major financial crises have been associated with some financial innovation.” Even credit-card innovations are used against customers as marketing tools to increase fees. The truth is: Wall Street’s greed-driven financial innovations fuel our bubble/meltdown cycles in many ways.

Last Years Economic Meltdown was Just an Appetizer of Things to Come

The crisis the world went through is just an appetizer for a future one because the weaknesses that created it have not been addressed, Marc Faber, author and publisher of the Gloom, Doom and Boom Report, told CNBC Friday.

“It’s a total and complete disaster and the crisis we had is just the appetizer to the big total breakdown of financial markets and of governments in five or 10 years time when the whole system goes bust,” Faber told “Worldwide Exchange.”

The Banks and Federal Reserve Are Hiding $47 Trillion in Toxic Derivatives

There’s this nagging question that just keeps coming back to me about the bailouts to all the ‘surviving’ Banks and especially Goldman Sachs, since they haven’t missed a beat. I keep asking, how the hell did they do this?

Most of the increase in our federal deficit this past year is specifically due to bailing out all the banks and their Wall Street pals, (with our money)while trying to save what is left of our tanking economy that they nearly destroyed.

So when I think about Goldman Sachs raking in $3.44 billion bucks in profits this quarter alone, while the US deficit went over a $1 trillion dollars for the first time in the nation’s history, (and appears to now be heading towards doubling that figure in before the budget year is out,) I keep going back to Goldman Sachs and the other 100 ‘secret banks’ the Federal Reserve doled out money to.  It wasn’t just our ‘$700 Billion’ that is in play here.

But since we cannot get any answers from the Federal Reserve, some of this information must be gleaned by the likes of us little old taxpayers who bailed their asses out.

In case you haven’t seen the OCC Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives for 2009, I think you might be interested in seeing exactly what is being hidden off the balance sheets that most American are not aware of…..try $47 Trillion dollars of derivatives backed by the government or rotting in some toxic pool that nobody wants anyone to know about, or more important wants you to know about.

I mean, it’s not like ‘we’ the people get a copy of the OCC report in the mail lodged between our National Geographic and Vanity Fair Magazines…… even if we are the ones that bailed all the crooks and liars out.

Nahhh, we gotta go looking for that little piece of information.  Here it is if you want to take a look at it.

http://www.occ.gov

U.S. Economy Could Recover Much Sooner Than Expected

You’ve heard all the gloom and doom about this recession. Now here’s some good news: the economic recovery could happen much sooner—and be much stronger—than anyone thought possible. 

Though the latest economic data is still giving a mixed picture, a small but growing group of economists is disputing the idea that the recession will drag on for months and that the rebound will be as weak as those following the the 1991 and 2001 downturns.

Even the Federal Reserve is signaling some optimism. After its regular two-day policy meeting ended on Wednesday, the central bank said that weakness in in the economy appeared to be slowing.

Berkshire Hathaway Guru, Warren Buffett says U.S. Economy is in Shambles

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) (BRKb.N), Warren Buffett’s insurance and investment company, barely broke even in the fourth quarter because of losses on derivatives contracts tied to the stock market.

Profit fell 96 percent, the fifth straight quarterly decline, and Berkshire’s net worth tumbled $10.9 billion in the year’s final three months. Net worth per share fell 9.6 percent in 2008, only the second decline since Buffett began running Berkshire in 1965. It fell 6.2 percent in 2001.

In his eagerly anticipated annual letter to Berkshire shareholders, Buffett also offered a gloomy economic outlook, saying “the economy will be in shambles throughout 2009 — and for that matter, probably well beyond.”

Still, despite what he called “paralyzing fear” resulting from the credit crisis and falling housing and stock prices, he remained optimistic about American resilience, and praised government efforts to avoid a “cataclysmic” breakdown in the financial system.

Gasoline Prices Continue Fall

NEW YORK, Aug. 10 (UPI) — Retail gasoline prices have fallen for the 24th straight day, a AAA survey of gas station sales showed.The national average price for a gallon of regular gas are down more than 7 percent from the record high of $4.114 on July 16, CNNMoney.com reported Sunday.

Even with gas prices falling, Friday’s national average price is more than $1 higher than it was a year ago.

In Alaska, the state with the highest prices, drivers pay an average of $4.63 a gallon, the AAA study found. Oklahoma and Missouri have the lowest gas prices, at $3.58 a gallon.

Diesel, meanwhile, is up nearly 55 percent from last year’s levels. The national average price for diesel fuel fell Sunday to $4.557 a gallon.

The AAA study is based on data from credit card swipes at 85,000 U.S. fuel stations.