Archive for the 'Collapse' Category
Government Motors: Obama Orders U.S. to Buy 17,600 New Cars by June 1
April 10th, 2009Via: Bloomberg: President Barack Obama said the government is speeding up its purchase of 17,600 new American- made cars for the government fleet by June 1. The purchases from General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. are being made from the $787 billion stimulus package “to increase demand for American auto companies during […]
GM Pensions May Be ‘Garbage’ With $16 Billion at Risk
April 10th, 2009Via: Bloomberg: Den Black, a retired General Motors Corp. engineering executive, says he’s worried and angry. The government-supported automaker is going bankrupt, he says, and he’s sure some of his retirement pay will go down with it. “This is going to wreck us,” said Black, 62, speaking of GM retirees. “These pledges from our companies […]
Fed Says Plan Now to Avert Inflation
April 10th, 2009HAHAHA. Good luck with that. Via: Reuters: The United States economy will skid more deeply into recession in coming months, Federal Reserve policy-makers warned on Thursday, but it is time to start planning how to wind down spending to avert an inflationary surge. The president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, Thomas Hoenig, said […]
Weak Pound Heaps Food Price Inflation on Poorest Households
April 9th, 2009Via: Independent: The collapse of the pound on the foreign exchanges is keeping food price inflation at painful levels, with the heaviest impact falling on poorer households and pensioners. The British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents most major shop chains, reported yesterday a 9 per cent rise in the price of food in the shops […]
Kevin Phillips: Inflation Ahead
April 9th, 2009Via: Reuters: An author who saw the global financial crisis coming fears the next bubble will come in the form of inflation and has little confidence U.S. President Barack Obama’s team is up to the challenge ahead. “The Democrats have replaced the Republicans as the big benefactors to the financial community,” said Kevin Phillips, author […]
Useless Currencies of the World Unite!
April 7th, 2009Via: Daughty: My brain went into some kind of weird spasm when Zhou Xiaochaun, head of the People’s Bank of China, went on record as saying that he doesn’t trust the dollar to be the world’s reserve currency anymore, and wants, instead of gold, the International Monetary Fund to expand the supply of Special Drawing […]
Geithner Wrong, Crap Assets Correctly Priced, Say Harvard And Princeton Professors
April 6th, 2009Just in case your Captain Obvious file needs some padding. Via: Clusterstock: The government’s official view that toxic assets are incorrectly priced due to illiquidity “fire sales” is wrong, a new study by Harvard and Princeton finance professors suggests. You can read the whole paper by Harvard’s Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford and Princeton’s Jakub […]
Pawnbroker Opens in Square Mile as City Workers Hock Their Rolexes
April 6th, 2009For the first time in nearly a century… Via: Guardian: It’s usually sovereign rings and chunky gold chains that get pushed under the counter window for a pawnbroker to inspect but at Nikolas Michael the items are far grander. Not far from the gilded towers that house the London bases of discredited institutions such as […]
Hundreds of Thousands of Jobless Americans About to Exhaust Their Unemployment Benefits
April 6th, 2009Via: AP: In the coming weeks and months, hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment benefits, just when it’s never been harder to find a job. Congress extended unemployment aid twice last year, allowing people to draw a total of up to 59 weeks of benefits. Now, as the recession drags on, […]
Bill Moyers with William K. Black
April 5th, 2009Via: PBS: BILL MOYERS: Is it possible that these complex instruments were deliberately created so swindlers could exploit them? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, absolutely. This stuff, the exotic stuff that you’re talking about was created out of things like liars’ loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad. And now it was getting triple-A ratings. […]
