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Syndicate
The financial hangover continues:
Private equity firms and many nonfinancial companies were able to borrow on easy terms until the credit crisis hit in 2007, but not until 2012 does the long-delayed reckoning begin for a series of leveraged buyouts and other deals that preceded the crisis.
That is because the record number of bonds and loans that were issued to finance those transactions typically come due in five to seven years, said Diane Vazza, head of global fixed-income research at Standard & Poor’s.
In addition, she said, many companies whose debt matured in 2009 and 2010 have been able to extend their loans, but the extra breathing room is only adding to the bill for 2012 and after.
The result is a potential financial doomsday, or what bond analysts call a maturity wall. From $21 billion due this year, junk bonds are set to mature at a rate of $155 billion in 2012, $212 billion in 2013 and $338 billion in 2014.
Nouriel Roubini is being depressing again - and probably also right -
At the end of the day, resolving private-sector leverage problems by fully socializing private losses and releveraging the public sector is risky. At best, taxes will eventually be raised and spending cut, with a negative effect on growth. At worst, the outcome may be direct capital levies (default) or indirect ones (inflation).
Unsustainable private-debt problems must be resolved by defaults, debt reductions and conversion of debt into equity. If, instead, private debts are excessively socialized, the advanced economies will face a grim future: serious sustainability problems with their public, private and foreign debt, together with crippled prospects for economic growth.
China's central bank won't decide yuan's fate CCP central planners to continue with interventionist policies in currency and banking and targeting 8% economic growth
Hipsters on food stamps! (and not just ironically)
I guess people on this program can't win - they either get bashed for buying chips and pop or for buying organic vegetables and artisanal cheese.
The Greek debt crisis signals a new stage in class conflict
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/euro-m17.shtml
Quote: Within this international context, it is patently obvious that the most powerful global banking institutions have strategically singled out Greece to set an example for the entire European working class. With its small economy—just over 2 percent of the European Union (EU)—and high indebtedness, it was an ideal target.
China - the national version of the movie "Speed"
Because China lacks the social safety net of the developed world, unemployed people aren’t just inconvenienced by the loss of their jobs, they starve; and hungry people don’t complain, they riot and cause political unrest.
Remember the 1994 movie “Speed”? A young cop (Keanu Reeves) had to save passengers on a bus that would explode if its speed dropped below 50 m.p.h. Well, China is like that bus with 1.3 billion people aboard. If the Communist Party can’t keep the economy growing at a fast clip, the result will be catastrophic.
I hope nobody is the national version of "Speed 2", because that's just horrible to contemplate.
They aren't too worried about speed in democratic capitalist India. Two million slum children die every year as India booms Save the Children says state-run health system is failing to give skilled care to poor
China and India have it all wrong with having too much state-run socialized medicine. And the CCP should be looking for P3 partnerships in building 30,000 new hospitals and clinics across the country.
I sometimes find western news reports of soaring economic growth in those countries to be confusing at best. China seems to be a special cause of upset among our neoliberal think tankers.
China doesn't really have a comprehensive socialized medicine program anymore. People living places they officially aren't supposed to (and that's many millions of people) don't have access and those who do have to pay large fees. The government is addressing this but it's not changed yet.
China speeds up healthcare reform
I think China will have some form of universal health care before Americans do. Meanwhile the conveyer belt of death in democratic capitalist India has no off button.
Euro Crisis: Latvia and the PIGS
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18144
"The very future of the EU is being torn asunder as the rich members turn their backs on the poor. The iron law of capitalism -- the strong protect their own interests at the expense of the weak, is once again being played out. Squeeze the worker. Communist propaganda you might say but unfotunately true...In other words, the entire western world is insolvent and each country is facing its own day of reckoning, starting, appropriately enough, with Greece, the home of western civilization.."
The Next Big Bank Bailout is on the Way
Banksters holding out for another bailout or just looser regulations in order to hide losses?
"should be looking for P3 partnerships in building 30,000 new hospitals and clinics across the country."
sarcasm, i hope
Absolutely
Because with PPPees we get less for more. The Chinese, too, could have a $130 billion dollar infrastructure deficit if they followed the advice of our neoliberal bananas in Manyanada
Zero Point of Systemic Collapse
http://www.countercurrents.org/hedges190310.htm
"Alexander Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the Czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it. 'We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.' All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it.
This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort."
Obama: Inside Man for the Greatest Heist in History
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-inside-man-greatest-he...
"Barack Obama is the Great Facilitator of Wall Street's desperate efforts to loot itself out of oblivion..
When the US government makes available to Wall Street $23.7 Trillion, it has essentially transferred the faith and credit of the American State to the financial sector. That is the swallowing of the American state.."
Are Americans [and Canadians] Too Broken by Corporate Power to Resist?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25069.htm
'We need to take a lok at what forces in society are preventing people from being able to resist tyranny and dehumanization..'
Doesn't look good.
Searching For Jobs - Just How Bad Is It?
Is It Time For Law Abiding American Citizens to Stop Paying Their Taxes and Start a New Government?
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18431
"The evidence is now overwhelming that the US government has facilitated the theft of trillions of dollars of national wealth and 99% of the US population no longer has political representation.."
Maybe it can work though? It is a mysterious and complex financial system, and we - experts or dummies like me - really don't seem to have a handle on how it all works.
Conjecture: The US government "printed, borrowed, or otherwise found" $21 Trillion, and the world's 5000 wealthiest people have another $10 Trillion or so, and the rest of the upper class has that much again, plus the masses have their coin jars worth another $1 trillion.
If that is more or less true, then the world has about $50 Trillion in currency and that currency floats around, and it might get hung up sometimes in credit bubbles, but wherever it is needed there are ways to get it there now. Maybe we can take heart in what happened in the 2008 - 2010 credit crisis.
That is not to say there are not bad things with the financial system - there is terrible inequity, and the labour market is akin to slavery in a lot of places, and there is much needless suffering that could be eliminated with changes to the financial system but simple greed keeps it from happening. So we have work to do but I don't think we need to feel too much fear of the whole thing collapsing anytime soon... if we can get through that next credit bubble in 2012...
More Toxic Paper: Another Stealth Bailout
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18475
"It looks like investors in securitizations will be swapping underwater real estate for govt-insured paper...I think the scam here is just to provide some cover so the hedge funds and other high net worth individuals can trade their low grade paper for Triple AAA mortgages insured by the FHA at the taxpayers expense..
So the cutthroat speculators and bunko artists who fleeced us all with their dogshit subprimes, have returned for another dip at the public trough.."
The Global Economic Crisis: Riots, Rebellion and Revolution
When Empire Hits Home, Part 3
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
As nations of the world are thrown into a debt crisis, the likes of which have never been seen before, harsh fiscal ‘austerity’ measures will be undertaken in a flawed attempt to service the debts. The result will be the elimination of the middle class. When the middle class is absorbed into the labour class – the lower class – and lose their social, political, and economic foundations, they will riot, rebel, and revolt.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18529
- you may find a read of this helpful in getting a bit of a grip on the basics - things the media never talk about, things few people understand about the root of the whole problem - What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html
Nearly lost my grip on breakfast after the opening line.
- I'd be curious as to why ....
Unfortunately, siamdave, the answer would be graphic, icky, and beyond the scope of this already-too-long thread. I suggest you start a new thread if the answer and discussion are important to you.
Closing for length.