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9153. Marc-Albert - 9/28/2008 2:40:17 PM Mr Lee said they were sailing through choppy waters about two miles off the coast of Venezuela when he saw a battered, unmarked fishing boat speeding towards them.
As they approached, one of the five men aboard fired a shot at him but he still decided to ram them and try to get away.
It was only after a second shot whistled past his head that....
Shot and stabbed: The hero dog who helped round-the-world couple fight pirates of the Caribbean
9154. Marc-Albert - 9/28/2008 3:09:25 PM Nearly 10 years after the election of Mr Chavez:
Higher homicide rate in Venezuela than in Colombia. A reversal of the situation in 2000.
The government has stopped publishing crime figures, but last year the UN said that per capita there were more deaths from guns than anywhere else in the world.
Airships to tackle Caracas crime
9155. jexster - 9/29/2008 2:01:57 AM Russia Today: Russian Warships Head for Venezuela
9156. jexster - 9/29/2008 2:08:15 AM I am surprised that the slimy judaizer Sarkozy didn't send the Charles de Gaulle to join the Ruskies in Aruba.
Sneak attack
The bastards know Sarah's guarding the Bering Straits 9157. marjoribanks - 9/29/2008 7:28:12 AM John Gray at the Guardian puts it exactly the way I would have:
The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan's technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars programme were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different. The Iraq War and the credit bubble have fatally undermined America's economic primacy. The US will continue to be the world's largest economy for a while longer, but it will be the new rising powers that, once the crisis is over, buy up what remains intact in the wreckage of America's financial system.
I can scarcely believe how the American papers are glossing over what has occurred in the last two weeks, instead seizing at obfuscatory words like "bailout." In fact, what we are seeing is the dismantling of the heart of the American capitalist system, and a kind of acknowledgement that the model itself (certainly the model that has run for nigh on 30 years) is broken, and must be replaced.
I read the bare bone outlines of this plan that has been verbally agreed upon, and it feels like my head is going to explode. The landscape it anticipates is totally unrecognizable, inconceivable. The whole high finance apparatus of the US has gone down the drain in the span of a few short weeks. 9158. alistairconnor - 9/29/2008 2:09:35 PM Dr Pangloss (a.k.a. Pseudoerasmus) is still talking about business as usual in the best of all possible worlds. Apparently the US didn't need no stinkin' investment banks after all. 9159. jexster - 9/29/2008 4:47:54 PM I can't believe they don't see the Franco-Russian plot right at our doorstep but then again, the American people fell for Sarah Palin if only for a couple of weeks 9160. marjoribanks - 9/29/2008 6:58:51 PM Dr Pangloss (a.k.a. Pseudoerasmus) is still talking about business as usual in the best of all possible worlds.
Is he now? That's mildly interesting. I suppose his eyes are on the macroeconomic (global) picture, which is fine and dandy but small consolation to the American taxpayer.
Moving back to the nitty-gritty of the real world, I suggest a look at the analyses of NYU's Nouriel Roubini, the brilliant economist who has been consistently (and amazingly presciently) right about this debacle from the first.
You can check the blog here : http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/
9161. marjoribanks - 9/29/2008 6:59:46 PM But here are some relevant excerpts from an article he has in today's Guardian. I am fighting the urge to post it in very, very large flashing neon font, because is getting genuinely scary that the media (and public opinion) is just so lost on this:
the claim by the Fed and Treasury that spending $700bn of public money is the best way to recapitalise banks has absolutely no factual basis or justification. It is a total rip-off that will mostly benefit – at a huge expense for the US taxpayer – the common and preferred shareholders and even the unsecured creditors of the banks.
Even the late addition of some conditions is a fig leaf of dubious value, as they are totally vague and fuzzy.
With $700bn of public cash the pockets of reckless bankers and investors have been made fatter under the fake argument that bailing out Wall Street was necessary to rescue Main Street from a severe recession. The rescue could have been achieved with a cheaper and better use of public money.
Indeed, neither does the plan address the need to recapitalise those financial institutions. This could have been done via public injections of preferred shares into these firms; via required matching injections of tier one capital by current shareholders to make sure that such shareholders take first-tier loss; via suspension of dividends payments or via a an unsecured debt-for-equity swap.
All these actions would have implied much lower fiscal costs, and they would have been cheaper and shared the burden of responsibility more equitably.
For example if the private sector had done its fair share, only $350bn of public money would have been required; and of this $350bn, half could have taken the form of purchase of bad assets and the other half should have taken the form of injection of public capital in these financial institutions.
So instead of purchasing (most likely at an excessive price) $700bn of toxic assets, the government could have achieved the same result, or better, by spending only $175bn in the direct purchase of toxic assets.
And even after the government bail-out, banks that have not yet provisioned for such losses and writedowns will be even more undercapitalised than before. So this plan does not even achieve its basic objective.
The treasury plan also does not explicitly include an HOLC-style programme to reduce the debt burden of the distressed household sector. Without such a component, the debt overhang of the household sector will continue to depress consumption spending and will exacerbate the current economic recession.
9162. marjoribanks - 9/29/2008 6:59:58 PM
Thus, the treasury plan is a disgrace: a bail-out of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.
It is pathetic that Congress did not consult any of the many professional economists that have presented – many on the RGE Monitor Finance blog forum – alternative plans that were more fair and efficient.
This is again a case of privatising the gains and socialising the losses; a bail-out and socialism for the rich, the well-connected and Wall Street. And it is a scandal that even Congressional Democrats have fallen for this treasury scam that does little to help millions of distressed, debt-saddled home-owners.
Meanwhile, the NYTimes is peddling the idea that taxpayers might actualy make a profit out of the deal! What a joke. 9163. marjoribanks - 9/29/2008 7:47:17 PM Can it get worse? Unfortunately, my friends, we are seeing it get much worse right before our eyes (the Dow is down nearly 300 points already today!), and it looks like this 700 (alleged) billion plan isn't going to make any difference. Can it be that the very soul of free-market capitalism has died in this month of October, 2008?
Roubini again:
When a nuclear option of a monster $700 billion rescue plan is not even able to rally stock markets (as they are all in free fall today) you know this is a global crisis of confidence in the financial system. We were literally close to a total meltdown of the system on Wednesday (and Thursday morning) two weeks ago when the $85 b bailout of AIG led to a 5% fall in US stock markets (instead of a rally). Then the US authorities went for the nuclear option of the $700 billion plan as a way to avoid the meltdown together with bans on short sales, a guarantee of money market funds and an injection of over $300 billion in the financial system. Now the prospect of this plan passing (but there is some lingering deal risk the votes in the House are not certain) -as well as the other massive policy actions taken to stop short selling “speculation” and support interbank markets and money market funds - is not sufficient to make the markets rally as there is a generalized loss of confidence in financial markets and in financial institutions that no policy action seem to be able to control.
The next step of this panic could become the mother of all bank runs, i.e. a run on the trillion dollar plus of the cross border short-term interbank liabilities of the US banking and financial system as foreign banks as starting to worry about the safety of their liquid exposures to US financial institutions; such a silent cross border bank run has already started as foreign banks are worried about the solvency of US banks and are starting to reduce their exposure. And if this run accelerates - as it may now - a total meltdown of the US financial system could occur. We are thus now in a generalized panic mode and back to the risk of a systemic meltdown of the entire financial system. And US and foreign policy authorities seem to be clueless about what needs to be done next. Maybe they should today start with a coordinated 100 bps reduction in policy rates in all the major economies in the world to show that they are starting to seriously recognize and address this rapidly worsening financial crisis.
9164. jexster - 9/29/2008 8:49:53 PM Let Europe FAIL! 9165. jexster - 9/30/2008 2:14:19 AM Guardian: US Vote Throws World Markets N2 Turmoil 9166. jexster - 9/30/2008 3:08:32 AM Americans are SO provincial and self absorbed that they NEVER see the larger picture or the danger
1. Sarkozy welcomes Chavez
2. Russia sends squadron to Venezuela
3. SPANISH financial giant Santander buys belly up brit bank Bradford and Bingley
Now how does that fit your worldwide Spanish conspiracy Mandrake??? 9167. jexster - 9/30/2008 4:21:30 AM Wall Street crisis spreads through Europe's banks
Governments forced to bail out banks as turmoil widens 9168. wonkers2 - 9/30/2008 4:38:09 AM Cap'n Dirty sez "Grab yer ass!" 9169. marjoribanks - 9/30/2008 7:01:35 AM Signs of change:
1) My daily newspaper here - I live in a (very) small city in a (very) small state in the subcontinent - carries a front-page article recommending that locals pounce on real estate bargains in the USA and points out that two-bedroom apartments in decent neighborhoods in a half-dozen pleasant Yank cities are far cheaper (sometimes less than 1/3 the price) than here.
2) I advise a publishing house that is franchisee of a major global brand. Today, we got offered the mother ship! And it was easily affordable! And we sat around talking about it seriously for two hours, and turned it down because no one wants to move! And I'm the oldest on this team by three years! What the fuck is happening?
The world has just turned on its head in the span of less than three weeks, totally to the advantage of the younger generations in India and China.
All I can say is Holy Shit. 9170. alistairconnor - 9/30/2008 10:58:12 AM Hang in there a few more weeks... they'll come back cap in hand at a cheaper price... that's the plan eh?
It's an ill wind etc. 9171. alistairconnor - 9/30/2008 11:10:11 AM So, is this a localised US meltdown, or the start of a global depression?
Is the drop in the price of oil a realistic measure of medium-term drop in global demand, or simply the result of panicked speculators dumping contracts?
Is the real economy of the US seriously harmed by the meltdown? Or is it just financial parasites getting blown away?
The reason I am pessimistic about US economic prospects in the medium term, and uncertain about world prospects, is that this is, surely, the moment when the US has to come to terms with the fact that it has indeed been living beyond its means. Hugely profitable investment banks and an army of rich Wall Street traders were the equivalent of the millions of people who used their houses as ATMs. Fundamentally unsustainable, pumped up with foreign loans. 9172. marjoribanks - 9/30/2008 1:08:32 PM AC,
Those are solid, fundamental questions.
I am also pessimistic about American economic prospects in the medium term, partly for the reasons you state, and partly because Paulson and Co. are clearly handling this crisis with an eye to get back to status quo (when everything was presumably hunky dory) rather than building a new framework. It is an ideological, psychological barrier (see House vote yesterday) and that does not bode well at all for the Yank taxpayer who will undoubtedly shoulder a burden far greater than the numbers being tossed around now.
Is the real economy harmed? Of course it is. I'd say we're pretty damn perilously close to a run on the dollar, for example. If I were a betting man any more (which I am not, thankfully) today my money would be on the odds that it will happen, and then we're going to see a nosedive into a full-blown recession. No one wants to see it, but can it be avoided with these chumps taking flamboyant stances on "socialism" etc?
But naturally the global picture is much more mixed. From my seat in a surging economy, in an exploding marketplace, it looks like there will be clear winners, and many of them are right here next to me. But the losers will inevitably multiply also, I would not want to be a European central banker right now...it's going to be white-knuckle stuff now, and likely for a few years.
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