Economy
Related: About this forumSTOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 19 September 2012
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Wednesday, 19 September 2012[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 18 September 2012
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 18 September 2012
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Dow Jones 13,564.64 +11.54 (0.09%)
[font color=red]S&P 500 1,459.32 -1.87 (-0.13%)
Nasdaq 3,177.80 -0.87 (-0.03%)
[font color=red]10 Year 1.81% +0.02 (1.12%)
30 Year 3.01% +0.01 (0.33%) [font color=black]
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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and I hope this finishes his political career and he retires to a lawn chair to yell at the kids to get off his lawn.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Do they give out purple hearts for this?
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)State Officials Scrutinize Deposit-and-Loan Business of Pittsburgh Store Owner...State banking officials want to put the freeze on the owner of an ice-cream parlor who opened a community-bank alternative that pays interest in the form of gift cards for ice cream, waffles and coffee. Ethan Clay, 31 years old, opened Whalebone Café Bank seven months ago in his shop, Oh Yeah!, a year and a half after he was hit with $1,600 in overdraft fees from a local bank where his account was overdrawn by a series of checks.
Mr. Clay says he wants to offer an alternative banking experience, and has accepted small deposits and made small loans. He claims he isn't subject to banking rules because his operation is a gift-card savings account.
"It's a strange case, we don't have the authority to go close an ice-cream store," said Ed Novak, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Banking. "But we are going to do something. You can't mess with people's money."
OH, THE IRONY!
Mr. Clay's ice-cream-bank novelty is drawing attention at a time when people, irritated over banking fees and overdraft penalties, are increasingly looking to alternatives to traditional banking...Mr. Clay said customers who make deposits earn interest in the form of "exclamation dollars." A $100 deposit is worth $5.50 a month that can be spent on ice cream, waffles and coffee in his store. It works out to be a straight 5.5% monthly interest rate, he said.
THAT'S AN ANNUAL 66% RETURN ON INVESTMENT, I BELIEVE, ALTHOUGH THE COST TO THE ICE CREAM BUSINESS WOULD BE LESS. IN TERMS OF CALORIES, THAT'S A REALLY STEEP PAIN TO THE SAVER, THOUGH....
Whalebone Café Bank also loans money. Two weeks ago, Ryan Howard, a 33-year-old designer and photographer who occasionally works for Mr. Clay, said he needed $510 to attend a therapy workshop. He borrowed the money from Whalebone Café Bank, and is paying the money back at $60 a month, and will be charged $25 for the loan...Mr. Clay said he has $550 from depositors and has loaned $1,700, an amount that includes some of his own seed money. "My goal is to get to $100,000 in deposits by Dec. 21," he said. "This is the prototype, but I hope to become the neighborhood bank."
SO, FOR A 9 MONTH LOAN, HE'S PAYING $25. ON $510. THAT SEEMS A RATHER HIGH RATE OF INTEREST....BUT I NEVER COULD CALCULATE THAT STUFF OUT...WHICH EXPLAINS WHY I DON'T BORROW.
HE IS PERFECTLY WITHIN HIS RIGHTS TO RUN A PRIVATE BANK, HOWEVER, ACCORDING TO THE ARTICLE...FASCINATING BUSINESS, MUST READ!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Goldman Sachs Group Inc has named senior trading executive Harvey Schwartz to replace David Viniar as chief financial officer, the latest in a series of executive shuffles as the investment bank prepares for a change in top management. Schwartz, 48, is among a small group of executives who are considered potential candidates to take over as chief executive when Lloyd Blankfein eventually steps down.
When Schwartz starts his new job at the end of January, he will replace the longest-serving CFO on Wall Street.
"He is incredibly qualified for the position," said Jason Graybill, a senior managing director at Carret Asset Management, which owns Goldman bonds. "These banks are not in the go-go growth modes they were in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s."
"It's a merit-based promotion and sort of a next-generation promotion," said a Goldman source who knows the top executives at the firm. "Harvey's definitely on the short list of people who could be CEO one day," said the source, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
JUST MAYBE A LITTLE TOO YOUNG (AND PERHAPS A LITTLE TOO POOR FOR THE JOB? MEANING, WILLING TO CUT CORNERS TO ENRICH HIMSELF?) DOES A 48 YEAR OLD HAVE ENOUGH EXPERIENCE IN LIVING TO DO A JOB OF SUCH RESPONSIBILITY?
ESPECIALLY IN A PLACE WITHOUT THE KIND OF REGULATION TO KEEP THE MANAGERS IN LINE....
Blankfein's eventual departure as CEO has been a subject of speculation for months. Over the past year, Goldman has been cutting staff to manage costs while moving younger bankers and traders into senior roles.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Last edited Wed Sep 19, 2012, 06:14 AM - Edit history (1)
There's a lot of value to a person and to society in knowing when to cut one's losses.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...$12.8 trillion...Thats the amount Better Markets estimates the 2008 financial crisis cost Americans.
At first blush, the cost of such a colossal crisis seems incalculable. Myriad factors are involved, including such things as the toll of unemployment and lost wages, losses in the stock market and corporate earnings, declining home values, the depletion of retirement savings, and decreased consumer spending.
So Better Markets took a different approach: Instead of trying to calculate the numerous individual costs in different parts of the economy, it looked at the highest level of all economic activityU.S. gross domestic product. First, Better Markets took estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to calculate actual losses. Thats the difference between the potential GDP the U.S. would have generated without the financial crisis and the actual GDP already created or currently projected to be created. Those actual losses total $7.6 trillion from 2008 to 2018. Then Better Markets tried to take into account the fact that actual GDP would have been even lower if the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve hadnt taken extraordinary measures, such as enormous bailouts of such companies as American International Group (AIG), Citigroup (C), and Bank of America (BAC).
To calculate these avoided losses, Better Markets updated a 2010 estimate (pdf) by Alan Blinder, an economist at Princeton University, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics (MCO), and determined that fiscal and monetary policies prevented $5.2 trillion in losses from 2008 to 2012, when the Blinder/Zandi exercise ends. So if one adds $7.6 trillion of actual losses and $5.2 trillion in avoided losses, theres an estimated grand total of $12.8 trillion in costs for the crisis.
With its tally, Better Markets is hoping to ensure that Americansespecially the politicians and bureaucrats in Washingtonwill remain attuned to how searing the Lehman collapse and all that followed truly was. As Wall Street complains about the costs of new regulations, Better Markets study is a reminder of the losses that come with a crisis. Only a full accounting of the costs will provide the basis and motivation to take the proper actions to reduce the likelihood that the American people will have to suffer from another financial collapse and economic crisis, the report says.
YEAH, SURE. AS IF THESE OVER-PAID PIRATES WOULD CARE...THEY GOT THEIRS, AND THE REST OF US GOT SHAFTED.
I THINK THE COSTS WERE EASILY TEN TIMES THEIR ESTIMATE, WHEN YOU TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE DEATHS AND BLIGHTED FUTURES THIS LITTLE ECONOMIC CONVULSION CAUSED.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...There are some damning revelations in this book, and overall its not a flattering portrait of key Obama administration officials like SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami, Department of Justice honchos Eric Holder (who once worked at the same law firm, Covington and Burling, as Connaughton) and Lanny Breuer, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
Most damningly, Connaughton writes about something he calls "The Blob," a kind of catchall term describing an oozy pile of Hill insiders who are all incestuously interconnected, sometimes by financial or political ties, sometimes by marriage, sometimes by all three. And what Connaughton and Kaufman found is that taking on Wall Street even with the aim of imposing simple, logical fixes often inspired immediate hostile responses from The Blob; youd never know where it was coming from.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/a-rare-look-at-why-the-government-wont-fight-wall-street-20120918#ixzz26uY3xp9p
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)How frustrating to be Senator Kaufman and want to do the right things to get regulations passed, only to be stopped by the BLOB. No wonder he did not want to run again.
mother earth
(6,002 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)I having either an out-of-body, or an out-of-mind experience.
The grandpuppy is here, and I don't know why. I can't remember saying he could come. Maybe my mouth is running off without me?
And there were patches of frost on the roofs this morning! There are no peaches in the farmer's market any more! There was no cauliflower, still. Fewer than half the vendors were there, and almost no customers.
I'm not ready! Summer can't end now, just when the temperatures were getting tolerable!
I did start sorting through wardrobes--deciding to do a good winnowing this year. Stuff accumulates to the point where I can get rid of things bought out of necessity for SOMETHING, ANYTHING because I've finally got enough of styles that I like....
Oh, well. Onwards, if not upwards.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Analysts said the move would stop the yen from rising, which should help Japan's exporters
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has extended its asset purchasing programme by 10 trillion yen ($126bn; £78bn), following similar moves by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.
The move, aimed at boosting the economy, increases the overall size of the stimulus programme to 80tn yen.
Although the increase had been anticipated by some analysts, many were surprised by the size of it.
Finance Minister Jun Azumi said the BoJ "took more action than we anticipated".
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Let the madness continue. Everybody do the Twist! Just like Chubby Bernanke says.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Fedex said that customers were choosing to send goods overland to save money
Global shipping service company Fedex has cut its full-year profit forecast, warning that the global economy is continuing to weaken.
The company, whose earnings are widely watched because of the number of countries it does business in said its net income for the first quarter had fallen 1% on last year to $459m.
Fedex said it expected annual profits to be about 10% lower than expected.
Customers are moving business from air to slower and less expensive routes.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Workers from all sectors will soon see part of their pay packet diverted to pension saving
The number of people actively paying into a workplace pension scheme dropped for a third consecutive year in 2011, official figures show.
Some 8.2 million people were active members of pension schemes at work, down from 8.3 million the previous year, the Office for National Statistics said (ONS).
The fall came from a dip in membership in the private sector.
However, the figures are expected to pick up as a new pension policy starts.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Especially when some prick, like Mitt Romney is going to come along and steal it anyway?
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)FedEx CEO: I'm Amused Watching Observers 'Completely Underestimate' What The Export Slowdown Is Doing To China
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Earlier today, FedEx reported weak guidance on slowing global growth. Its stock ended down about 3%, and the transport stocks were generally big laggards.
Because FedEx is considered to be such a bellweather for economic activity, its earnings are closely watched by a broad range of folks, not just FedEx investors.
In that light, the comments by CEO Fred Smith on the company's call are fascinating (via Cullen Roche).
First is his comment about the global economic situation: global trade is in a very rare position of growing slower than GDP:
...fundamentally, what's happening is that exports around the world have contracted, and the policy choices in Europe and the United States and China are having an effect on global trade. Global trade has grown faster than GDP, except for the 2000, 2001 meltdown and 2008 and 2009, for 25 years. And over the last few months, that has not been the case. So that's what's really going on, is that exports and trade have gone down at a faster rate than GDP has.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/fedex-ceo-on-china-2012-9#ixzz26uvNhWHi
xchrom
(108,903 posts)With the Bank of Japan announcing a new round of asset purchases early this morning, it's safe to say you'll hear a lot about "currency wars" again.
That term was first coined back in September 2010 by Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega, in reference to countries trying to weaken their currencies to boost exports.
Well all the conditions are now in place.
You have the ECB, the Fed, and the BoJ now easing.
You have global trade slowing (as the CEO of FedEx said yesterday).
And you have Guido Mantega back in the news, blasting QE3.
Currency Wars are back.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/currency-wars-are-back-2012-9#ixzz26uw0HdJb
xchrom
(108,903 posts)***SNIP
On top of slowing sales, however, many companies appear to be finding it harder to actually get paid for the sales, which adds to the cash crunch. The chart below from Macquarie last week shows that the cash conversion cycle is now at the highest level in many years, and so is working capital (defined as receivable + inventory payables).
Macquarie:
total working capital (inventory plus receivables less payables) has more than doubled between December 2009 and June 2012 for the 2558 companies in our sample of data. In absolute terms, there is now the equivalent of almost RMB4trn tied up in operational leverage equivalent to 46% of sales.
Practically this means that the cash conversion cycle of new sales has extended by 73% from 97 days (roughly 3 months) at the end of 2009 to 167 days at the end of June 2012.
Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AlsosprachAnalyst/full/~3/Ob7Z756S_L4/china-corporate-cash-crunch.html#ixzz26ux7uJEE
xchrom
(108,903 posts)A two-story brick house in Detroit sold for $47,214 last month, two years after U.S. Bank seized it in a foreclosure. For the home, with blue-striped awnings and white shutters, it was the fourth owner since December, when investor Buy Right Properties LLC purchased it for $3,383.
Real estate values in some Detroit neighborhoods are surging as the states automobile industry recuperates and investors flip bank-seized properties. Home prices gained 7.2 percent in July from a year earlier, the citys biggest jump in more than a dozen years, according to mortgage-data firm FNC Inc. In comparison, an index of prices in the nations largest 100 cities increased 0.6 percent in the same period.
The combination of the auto industry comeback and the home market hitting bottom is pretty powerful, said Robert Dorsey, FNCs chief data officer, from his office in Oxford, Mississippi. Theyve been going to round-the-clock shifts in some of the auto plants, and that translates into housing demand for a city that was as low as you can go.
Private-equity firms and other investors are snapping up foreclosed homes, helping to buoy prices in areas where values plunged during the recession, such as Southern California, Arizona and Florida. The hardest-hit regions are leading a nationwide housing recovery being fueled by a tight supply of homes and Federal Reserve efforts to keep mortgage rates low.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I was born there, but it's not ready to inhabit...
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Worker Sean Smith nails down sheathing on the second floor of a home being built in Peoria, Illinois, on Aug. 15, 2012.
New housing construction rose in August, boosted by the strongest pace of single-family home starts in more than two years that shows an improving U.S. real estate market.
Beginning construction climbed 2.3 percent to a 750,000 annual rate, less than forecast and restrained by a drop in the building of apartments, from a revised 733,000 annual pace in July, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate of 85 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 767,000. Building permits cooled.
Mortgage rates near all-time lows and cheaper properties are driving sales at companies like Toll Brothers Inc. (TOL) and propelling construction, one of the economys few sources of strength. Tighter credit standards and unemployment above 8 percent for the last three years are hurdles for the industry.
Affordability is actually quite favorable right now -- that would be a combination of prices as well as mortgage rates, Jim OSullivan, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics Ltd. in Valhalla, New York, said before the report. Theres a lot of room for housing to go up over the next few years.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Renee Haugerud, founder and chief investment officer of Galtere, has led her New York-based hedge fund to gains with a spring bet on corn futures.
For three excruciating weeks in May, Renee Haugerud, the founder of New York hedge fund Galtere Ltd., agonized that her wager on corn was a massive mistake.
She had started buying in March, when futures contracts averaged about $5.59 a bushel, expecting steady to rising demand from ethanol refiners and feedlots to boost prices. Instead, on May 10, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported record planting and forecast a bumper crop. Prices began a 12 percent slide for the month. Other hedge funds bailed.
Haugerud, 57, the daughter of a part-time farmer, fought the temptation to join the crowd, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue. Instead, she and her team got to work. They rechecked past corn yields and plowed through ethanol production and export numbers to reconfirm their calculation of strong demand for a so-so crop.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency bolstered their case in April when it raised the limit for ethanol in gasoline to 15 percent from 10 percent for cars made after 2001, later aiding the buying Haugerud had forecast. As for supply, Haugerud thought the USDA was overoptimistic in its harvest prediction. If farmers were planting in amounts not seen since 1937, her farm upbringing and commodities experience told her they were tapping marginal land. This all didnt add up to a corn bonanza.
Our research said that, at best, we were going to get an average yield, she says. The market was pricing in perfection.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Sustainability is still in its Wild West phase, as companies struggle to identify what information they should freely divulge about their environmental and social performance and corporate governance ("ESG" . A cottage industry of sustainability consultants has sprouted up to help companies identify the transparency measures that will make them more trusted, respectable and successful in the long term.
Below is an imaginary memo from a made-up consultancy that was recently obtained by Bloomberg.com Sustainability News:
TO: [NAMES REDACTED, COMPANY NAME REDACTED]
FROM: Arthur Billingreen, Trendy Advice Partners, LLC
SUBJECT: Sustainability reporting advice
Institutional investors, governments and nongovernmental organizations have raised their expectations about how much non-financial information companies should disclose as material to investors. They now recommend "a lot."
*** i have a suspicion about what this means -- but i don't really understand it.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)DOW +0.2%
NASDAQ +0.2%
Roland99
(53,342 posts)* U.S. housing starts up 2.3% in August to 750,000
* Single-family permits at highest level since 2010
* August home permits dip to 803,000 from 811,000
* July starts revised down to 733,000 from 746,000
* Housing starts 29% higher compared to one year ago
xchrom
(108,903 posts)so weird.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)* US NAR SAYS 22 PCT OF U.S. AUG EXISTING HOME SALES WERE DISTRESSED SALES VERSUS 24 PCT IN JULY
* US AUG EXISTING HOME SALES +7.8 PCT VS JULY +2.3 PCT (PREV +2.3 PCT)-NAR
* US AUG EXISTING HOME SALES 4.82 MLN UNIT ANNUAL RATE, HIGHEST SINCE MAY 2010 (CONS 4.55 MLN) VS JULY 4.47 MLN (PREV 4.47 MLN)-NAR
xchrom
(108,903 posts)India, the second-biggest producer of rice, wheat and sugar, is the most vulnerable among the worlds leading industrial and emerging economies to future water stress, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.
India exhibits the most worrying trends among the Group of 20 nations with the resource hovering dangerously near extreme scarcity levels by 2030, HSBC said in a report today that forecast the groups water consumption against supply.
The worst U.S. drought in a half-century drove corn and soybeans to records in August. Agriculture is the biggest consumer of water and India, the most dependent on farming among the G-20 nations, uses 25 percent of all water consumed globally by the industry, HSBC found.
Companies are unlikely today to disclose information on local water scarcity that can affect farms, plants and operations, it said. Investors will increasingly demand more disclosure to assess potential disruption to earnings, it said.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Of the almost infinite possibilities suggested by the technique of putting something between two chunks of bread, one Edwardian great stands top-hat, head and shoulders above the rest
You'll need your choice of crusty loaf, a couple of good steaks - these are rib-eyes - roughly the same shape in plan as the loaf, 500g of mushrooms and 200g of shallots
Slice off the top quarter of the loaf, hook out most of the crumb and save for breadcrumbs
Cut your shallots and mushrooms into fine dice and put about 75g of butter into the pan. I got lucky and had a similar quantity of bone marrow left over in the fridge
***you gotta see the slide show -- the sandwich gets smashed like a panini over night -- looks delish!
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)time for brunch!
xchrom
(108,903 posts)i'ma gonna have to try that.
westerebus
(2,976 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)With Spain yet to request financial help,and Greece battling to make cuts, which way will Europe's debt crisis proceed? Photograph: Wu Wei/xh/Xinhua Press/Corbis
14.06bst More details on the potential sale of the Greek consulate in London have emerged, via our friends at the Daily Telegraph.
The DT's Matthew Sparkes flags up that the 10,000 square foot consular residence, situated in London's Holland Park, is being offered for sale by estate agents March & Parsons (can't find it on their website yet tho)
This Google map shows where it is located (the Greek embassy is across the road):
13.24bst Greek cuts talks continue
More in from Greece on the ongoing battle (for it is nothing less) to locate 11.9bn in spending cuts.
Our correspondent Helena Smith reports that the government has announced that prime minister Antonis Samaras will meet his two coalition partners Thursday afternoon.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)Teachers protest against new austerity measures. Unions have called a general strike for 26 September. Photograph: Simela Pantzartzi/EPA
The ailing Greek economy is on the verge of a 1930s-style Great Depression, as the Athens government predicted a 25% fall in GDP by 2014, putting intense pressure on the EU to relax the terms on the country's 130bn (£105bn) bailout package
The finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, said a decline in tax revenues and spiralling unemployment will deepen the country's four-year recession, which critics of the EU's stance said could lead to a recession as long and deep as America's pre-war decline.
Stournaras, who is locked in negotiations over the terms of a second bailout, fears that efforts to revive the Greek economy will be undermined by a draconian austerity programme, early debt repayments and high interest rates on its loans.
"The cumulative reduction (of gross domestic product) since 2008 is just under 20% and is expected to reach 25% by 2014," he told a GreekChinese business forum in Athens.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)9/19/12 Deposit Flight From Europe Banks Eroding Common Currency
An accelerating flight of deposits from banks in four European countries is jeopardizing the renewal of economic growth and undermining a main tenet of the common currency: an integrated financial system.
A total of 326 billion euros ($425 billion) was pulled from banks in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece in the 12 months ended July 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The plight of Irish and Greek lenders, which were bleeding cash in 2010, spread to Spain and Portugal last year.
The flight of deposits from the four countries coincides with an increase of about 300 billion euros at lenders in seven nations considered the core of the euro zone, including Germany and France, almost matching the outflow. Thats leading to a fragmentation of credit and a two-tiered banking system blocking economic recovery and blunting European Central Bank policy in the third year of a sovereign-debt crisis.
Capital flight is leading to the disintegration of the euro zone and divergence between the periphery and the core, said Alberto Gallo, the London-based head of European credit research at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. Companies pay 1 to 2 percentage points more to borrow in the periphery. You cant get growth to resume with such divergence.
more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-18/deposit-flight-from-europe-banks-eroding-common-currency.html
per Karl Denninger...
This is the stuff that a currency crisis and bank panics are made of.
This is a big deal as it means that the banking system has had its capital destroyed and replaced with printed credit.
Exactly where the point is that revulsion occurs and the banks and governments related to this collapse is unknowable, but that it will eventually happen if this continues is not speculative at all. It will, just as night follows day.
Everyone wants to pretend that the EU banking system is in "good shape." The truth is something else entirely; leverage ratios are completely out of whack and now to add insult to injury we have capital being replaced with printed credit.
This is a dynamically-unstable system that requires very little to go completely out of control.
http://market-ticker.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=211712
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The whole thing is nuts and getting worse.