Banker-Controlled System is Fraudulent and the Cause of the Crisis

June 1, 2012

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | JUNE 1, 2012

It took almost 100 years for the globalists in control of the financial and banking systems to realize that their fraudulent debt-based scheme can no longer be utilized to exploit the people and the resources of the planet. Back in 1913, rubber barons and the global novelty decided that they were going to control the issuance and flow of money with a system that would perpetually maintain all nations of the world in debt with the supranational financial institutions founded by international private banking entities. These entities would create the money out of thin air, lend it to their slave, dependent nations for a juicy profit while ensuring that future generations would have to work all of their lives to pay them interests on the never ending debt.

Today, most main stream media omitted the annual Bilderberg meeting in Virginia, United States, but did make time to promote the fact that the same banking organizations that brought the global economy to a halt, are finally convinced that their model does not work anymore. It is important to understand that when they say it does not work, it implicitly means that they can’t keep on defrauding the world with it. What the main stream dinosaur media is not telling the people is that the current global mafia intends to implement a new system under which they will remain in control, but with more power and more enslavement. Both the heads of the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank have said that it is time to end the remaining nation-states and give way for a world financial organization that will dictate economic, environmental and financial policies, which will be indeed under the control of the same monopoly men.

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, labeled the current system imposed by central bankers themselves as “unsustainable” and once again blamed the governments of the nations that did not accept the bankers’ directives as responsible for the dire global economic and financial crisis. He said leaders have been slow to respond to the sovereign debt crisis, which was also manufactured by international banking institutions. “The configuration we had for 10 years, which was considered sustainable, has been shown now to be unsustainable unless further steps are undertaken,” said Draghi. He forgets to mention the fact that it was the bankers that created and sold derivatives and credit default swaps as the newest and trendiest forms of investment to later run away with the people’s money in the form of pension funds, retirement accounts, social security savings and so on. Another important detail left out by Draghi is that the globalization of the economy has served as a perfect platform to gain even more control.

After creating the problem, the bankers presented their rescue and austerity programs as a “solution” to kick start the economy, but as it turns out, it was all about the consolidation of indebted nations such as Iceland, Greece, and the new ones to come soon such as Spain, Portugal, France, the United States and Germany. Austerity came in the form of cuts to the entitlement programs upon which millions of people depend in those countries, and the rescues of international banks in the form of financial bailouts. As things stand today, the bankers were helped and the people were dumped. But trillions of dollars in financial rescue packages were not enough for the bankers. They wanted more. They wanted total control. Since their rescue programs did not render total control now they bankers are shifting to plan B, which includes the complete acquisition of other nation-states through a perpetual state of war that justifies their theft of natural resources and the centralization of all human activity.

After creating and selling the problem through continuous threats that warned about the complete collapse of the global financial system – a situation they sought and provoked — should governments choose not to bail the banks out, globalists like Herman Van Rompuy, Jean Claude Trichet and José Manuel Barroso tried to create panic so politicians would adopt the so-called austerity measures and illegally carried out the rescue of banks that were too large to go bankrupt. After bankers bet on toxic financial products which they knew would not stand a simple smell test, they ran away with 97 percent of investors’ money by risking people’s money in transactions that involved as little as 2 or 3 percent of their own cash.

Suddenly, the banks and their institutions are no longer capable of supporting the sand castles built over pillars of overconfidence, greed, hubris and financial degeneration. “Can the E.C.B. fill the vacuum left by lack of euro area governance?” he asked. “The answer is no.” Of course not. A new system is needed that allows the banks to operate with even less accountability and more liberty to continue taking risks by mortgaging the future of the working classes all around the world. Just as in the recent past, the bankers are warning that inaction, debt liquidation or more effective regulations would mean a generalized contagion of banks and economies which would happen more easily and rapidly due to the interconnectedness of the global economy. Banks are seeking complete deregulation and self governance, as supposed to accountability to governments. But it was precisely lack of regulation, malinvestment and self governance what allowed the bankers to do what they did, submit the world into a deep black hole of debt from which there is no way out.

The elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had successfully curbed the bankers’ hunger for risky business, triggered a chain of events that is still ongoing. Banks in need of rescues because supposedly are too big to fail, governments without cash to meet their obligations, pension funds whose coffers are empty, run-away financial corruption, toxic and artificial investment products, insane leveraging, you name it. “It was the largest transfer of money from the working classes to the richest people in human history,” says Russ Roberts, the host of Econtalk. “It was bad for Democracy and for Capitalism.” The solution, according to the bankers however, is to create an insurance fund, which will be paid for by taxpayers from around the world, to assure banks there will always be a rescue plan ready to pull them out of their risky investments. That will not only effectively create the financial incentive to further centralized economic power, but will also eliminate the natural free-market accountability process, the barrier not to bet more than you can possibly pay. A global financial fund will prompt bankers to risk even more, because they can count on a working class that will provide the fruit of their labor to bail them out whenever they need.

Allan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank in 2008 said in Congressional hearings that he did not know what had happened, that he thought the bankers were able to regulate themselves. He said he believed the banks had the ability to assess their own risk. And they did. That is why for every 100 dollars that banks malinvested, only three dollars or so were from their own money. The rest was money from governments, pension funds, savings accounts and so on. Greenspan was the man sitting on the golden chair of the Federal Reserve when the largest banking deregulation process took place under previous administrations, and he knew exactly the potential that such deregulation would create for financial institutions to run unchecked with zero need for accountability. Now that their system has been uncovered as fraudulent, the bankers are using more colorful analogies to describe the supposed threats that would emerge should governments decide not to surrender their sovereignty completely. The latest of those is that the debt crisis is a ’time bomb’. Bankers do not want to buy government debt back and so they are labeling that proposal as the trigger that will detonate the ‘time bomb’.

The initiative to make banks buy the debt back, would not be a solution to the sovereign debt crisis, though. In fact, it would actually perpetuate the debt-based system, because governments would be able to create more debt, which will result in a deeper crisis, as they will be unable to make bond payments. The banks will then be left holding the bag, an outcome usually reserved for the working classes. The ideal scenario would be that banks were forced to buy back the current debt, which they created in the first place, and governments adopted sane fiscal and monetary policies without creating more money out of thin air. Of course, the banks will not allow that to happen, because it will reduce their control over the financial system. Independent, debt-free governments that adopt responsible fiscal and monetary policies would eliminate the need for the current debt-based system, and therefore erase the control the bankers have amassed up until now. The liquidation of debt by letting banks and other institutions fail and go bankrupt would allow the world economic system to begin fresh and operate on a clean, disinfected environment, where artificially created economies would not exist anymore and countries would run their businesses based on existence of resources, production capacity, real gross domestic product, the balance of sales and purchases, bilateral and multilateral commercial negotiations and so on.

“The crisis we’re now in was caused by people taking excessively risky bets with other people’s money,” says Roberts. He adds that a good question to ask is why did people allow the banks to take such high leveraged bets with their money. It was like a poker game where the banks only risked about 3 percent of their own money, while investors took the fall with 96 or 97 percent of their money. But instead of being punished for taking those risks, the banks were rewarded by receiving bailouts. Although the mathematical calculations used by banks to assess market risk and asset value are considered to be fraudulent, they are still used to evaluate investment opportunities. But when those opportunities were shown to be just risky bets, based on fraudulent calculations, the banks were told it was fine, because governments had come to their rescue. They were allowed to sell liabilities as assets making people take very high risks in exchange for a promise to get a miniscule return, if any at all. “I think they believed the government would bail them out in the case of a downturn,” asserts Roberts. As he sees it, the markets are now governed by crony capitalists, and the crony part must be taken out before things can go back to real Capitalism.

Capitalism is a profit and loss system. The prospect of good returns is an incentive to take risk, and the losses are calls for prudence. When the incentive to be prudent is eliminated because there is a government, entity or Fund that will bail out a bank or a whole system, it destroys the financial system, and that is what happened in 2008. Governments, at the behest of the powerful banking cartel covered the risks taken by banking institutions and by doing so eliminated the need for prudence and responsibility.

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Decline of the United States of America: The Moral, Political and Economic Causes

September 10, 2011 1 Comment

by Rodrigue Tremblay
Global Research
September 7, 2011

“The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.” Montesquieu, (Charles Louis de Secondat)  (1689-1755)

“I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work.” Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), German politician and future German Chancellor, Mein Kampf, chap. 2, 1925

“I believe that God wants me to be president.”George W. Bush, American 43rd president, speech in Washington D.C., June 1, 2004

“This economy of ours is on a solid foundation.” George W. Bush, American 43rd president, January 4, 2008 (N.B.: the U.S. economy was about to enter into recession.)

“I believe that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators.” Sen. John McCain, March 20, 2003

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic?” Sarah Palin, American politician and former governor of Alaska, (admitting that her family used to get treatment in Canada’s single-payer health care system, despite having demonized such government-run programs as socialized medicine that will lead to death-panel-like rationing, March 6, 2010)

“The Lord says be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.” Michele Bachmann, Rep. of Minnesota and 2012 Republican presidential candidate, (on the question of submitting to the authority of her husband, 2006). Rep. Bachmann is also a graduate of Oral Roberts University.

“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”
The Bible (New Testament), 1 Timothy 2:11-12

“Think of the American economy as a large apartment block. A century ago—even 30 years ago—it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed. The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working. That broken elevator is what gets people down the most.” Lawrence Katz, Harvard University economist, 2010

The American economy is in the Doldrums, the American Political System is Dysfunctional and Paralyzed

Around the world, many are baffled by what’s happening to the United States. It seems that all at once the wheels are going off the cart. The American economy is in the doldrums, the American political system is dysfunctional and paralyzed, and a series of elective, far away foreign wars is ruining the country.

The U.S. economy used to be an engine of economic growth and the American political system used to be a well-oiled checks-and-balances machine that was geared toward progress and that could accommodate both leadership and compromise. Moreover, Americans can be proud that their constitution, at least on paper, is one of the best in the world, having been crafted by enlightened founders who believed in individual and democratic freedom.

In this short article, I will identify what I think to be the two major causes of America’s current decline. (I welcome comments.)

-The first cause is a moral one: it is related to the widespread corruption that permeates many institutions and sectors of the U.S. society, the most corrupt of them all being the political system and the corporate system. It is no accident that the epicenter where these two corrupt systems meet is at the Pentagon, an agency that reports upon reports picture as a cesspool of corruption.

The result of that widespread corruption is that the United States is now generating a sub-standard class of politicians to administer its affairs who are not the servants of the common good, but who rather serve happily the narrow money interests that finance them. The U.S. corporate elite, for the most part, has abandoned all loyalty to its country while it roams the world in order to make short-term profits at all costs and avoid paying taxes in its country of origin.

The result: wacky politicians and greedy business people are in charge.

The same can be said about the biased corporate media who have also abandoned all pretenses of neutrality and objectivity in informing the people and who have rather donned the mantle of unadulterated propaganda in order to cynically manipulate information and public opinion, to the delight of their money masters.

Things were never perfect in the past, but I would argue that the current level and scope of corruption in the U.S. society is unprecedented and is a root cause of the decline of the United States.

The second cause of American decline is more structural and more economic in nature. It is related to a widespread ignorance of the practical consequences of economic and financial globalization that began under the Nixon Republican administration (1969-1973) and which accelerated under the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) and of George H. Bush (1989-1993).

I shall tackle each of these causes separately.

I-  The U. S. has abandoned its Democratic Ideals and the Quality of its Politicians is Sub-Standard

Let’s talk first about the moral and political causes of American decline.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) once quipped that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”! Indeed, democracy is a very fragile political system that can sometimes fail the very people it is designed to serve. American president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) defined it as “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

But democracy is at its worst when an oligarchy takes control of a country’s institutions and imposes its agenda. Such is the case with today’s United States. Money interests, not the sovereign people, control the political system today; they control the corporate media system, they control the U.S. Supreme Court and much of the judicial system and, I would argue, they control a large chunk of the academic system.

The results are everywhere to be seen. The United States has reached levels of inequality in wealth and income that used to be seen only in some backyard third-world countries.

Another form of political corruption and of intellectual decay is the widespread refusal nowadays to abide by article VI of the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, article VI expressly stipulates that “no religious Test  shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” This would seem to me to be clear enough.

Some fifty years ago, in 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States, stating that his religious beliefs were his own personal affair and that, as an elected official for all the people, he was going to use his best judgment in his public decisions, and not be obligated to follow the diktats of any established religion, not even of his own, the Roman Catholic Church, nor its foreign Pope.

As an indication of how much the United States has regressed on the question of separation of Church and State, consider that a presidential candidate of the quality of Sen. John F. Kennedy would most likely not be elected to office today with such a stand of intellectual independence. Mind you, most of the Fathers of the U.S. Constitution could not be elected either, a clear indication that the United States has strayed away from its founding principles.

Consider what President James Madison (1751-1836) had to say about religion in politics: “The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State.” Do you really believe that President Madison could be elected today? Nowadays, in fact, religious zealots dominate the Republican party while some half of democrats think that a presidential candidate must have “strong religious beliefs” to be considered for public office. The only problem is that such a view is in direct conflict to what the U.S. Constitution says!

Mixing personal and official religion with democratic politics is a form of intellectual corruption. —It’s dynamite. If the United States continues in the same destructive direction that many theocratic Muslim countries have followed for centuries, with disastrous results, I would not hesitate to predict that the U. S. will self-destruct.

II- The Widespread Confusion Between What Works in an Open Economy as Compared with a Closed Economy

Let’s talk economics.

The U. S. economy, like most industrial economies, is an open economy. This means that goods and services can be exported and imported while facing a minimum of border taxes and other barriers to international trade. For a quarter of a century now, it has also meant that the U. S. economy is part of the economic globalization model. The latter goes much further than free trade: it means that corporations and banks can move their capital, technology and production plants around the world in search of the greatest profit and the best investment environment. I happen to believe that this globalization model has been pushed too far and has become a major cause of economic stagnation in the industrial economies.

When it comes to economic policies, what can work in a closed economy does not necessarily work in an open economy. Consider macroeconomic policies to stimulate a stagnant economy. In an open economy, keynesian-type stimulus policies of deficit government spending or of tax reduction do not work properly, essentially because stimulus policies of this type are the equivalent of heating a house in winter with the windows and doors wide open. The new deficit spending may help the world economy, since much of the new spending ends up abroad, but the domestic multiplier effect of such spending can be very low. This means that such an economic stimulus in an open economy may not be as effective in stimulating economic activity as hoped and, in some circumstances, it can do more harm than good.

Nevertheless, many politicians (and some economists!) cling to the old idea that lowering taxes for the rich when the government is in deficit or new non-infrastructure government deficit spending can stimulate the economy. This obviously does not work, at least not if the new deficit spending is not focused domestically. Spending deficit money in Afghanistan or in Iraq doesn’t much stimulate the U.S. economy!

What works in an open economy are policies geared toward changing relative prices in order to encourage domestic production and employment. First of all, a lowering of the real exchange rate can encourage net exports and stimulate domestic production and employment, provided the government does not sustain excessive domestic absorption through unproductive large deficits.

Another approach to skew relative prices in favor of domestic production and employment is to use the tax system accordingly. Presently, many American corporations are hardly taxed at all on their profits when they operate abroad. Some appropriate taxation of these profits can encourage repatriation of capital and support additional domestic investments. It may be argued that the American political system is not flexible enough to allow for the use of tax policies to encourage domestic production and employment. If so, this would be another indication that the current state of the political system in the U. S. is inimical to economic progress.

These are only a few examples of public policies that can have a positive impact on the functioning of the economy.

In general, and that will be my conclusion, I would say that it is in the interest of any country to avoid giving power to idiots, ignoramuses, incompetents, devious and delusional characters or to demagogues. If not, watch out. —More countries are destroyed by their own politicians than by foreign armies.

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. He is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics” at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

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As Society Breaks Down, People Beg for Tyranny

August 11, 2011

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
August 11, 2011

It’s been at least 15 years since I heard calls for people to wake up because the greatest crisis in humanity’s existence was rapidly approaching. Today, as I watch video and photos from London, and previously from Syria, Egypt, the United States and Lybia, I cannot help but think that those who sought to warn us were simply and plainly correct. Perhaps the most surprising fact is that those truth tellers, who were often identified as conspiracy theorists, told us how it would happen and as the break point got closer and closer, they were even able to predict different aspects of the fall with outstanding precision.

Who would have believed 15 years ago that the world would crumble to its knees and would beg for the implementation of tyrannical policies and regimes in order to bring back law and order? I certainly didn’t. Before I began studying history and current events, I thought society would be able to take care of itself and avoid disaster. But the latest video feeds from London and everywhere else clearly show that society is lost in the foggy alternative reality they were born into 50 or more years ago. The social engineers played their hand well and now have most of the population consuming itself in a web of self-degradation, death and perversion fed to us as the sexiest fad for almost half a century.

In England, polls show that upwards of 65 percent of people are now calling for the use of rubber bullets, water canyons, police abuse and other tyrannical practices because they are too afraid to organize with their neighbors and take care of the looters that are destroying decades-old family businesses, homes, cars, shoe and clothing stores and other property to get their hands on the latest electronics, jewelry and various valuable products by breaking windows, smashing store front doors and pulling citizens from the their cars to smash their heads on the streets. Instead, British people are now calling for a government sponsored Police State.

Notice that most of the places that are being affected by riots and unrest are sections of the society whose members are unarmed and who cannot defend themselves because their government, which cannot protect them 24/7, implemented regulations to ban the people’s right to be armed and to defend their properties and their families. London shows signs of the most recent confrontation between members of the government-dependent underclass and the hard-working middle class, just as the social engineers planned it. As governments cut spending in a failed attempt to fix deficits and reduce their debt, it is exactly the underclass that feels the pinch first. But instead of attacking government policies and the entities responsible for the financial collapse, this uneducated underclass takes it upon themselves to beat the daylights out of middle class folks who suffer from the bank-sponsored self-inflicted financial crisis.

The financial and political apartheid taking place in the world -where governments steal the people’s pension funds to invest them in fictitious financial products, banks get bailed-out as they charge interest rates and / or fees for people to keep money in their accounts, the government cuts social security and medical care spending, people’s paychecks and pension buy less food- will continue to increase social volatility not only in London or Greece, but in the Americas, Asia, Africa and everywhere else. The Social Experiment failed horribly. But then again, it was meant to fail. The divisions meant to occur in order to monopolize, control and conquer arrived right on time.

The underclass as well as the dumbed down middle-class that for centuries sucked off the system through government established dependence programs only woke up after finding themselves with no jobs, no pension, no savings and no future. They woke up from their eternal state of slavery because the bribery scheme known as welfare that the government used to hook them up is suddenly crashing down, and they have not safety net to fall onto. What do I mean by bribery scheme? In 2007, the richest country in the planet had at least 52.6 percent of the people receiving government aid of some sort: pensions, social security and so on.. One in five Americans held a government job or a job that depended on government spending. Around 19 million used food stamps and 2 million got subsidized housing. If that is not government bribery, I don’t know what is it. The social engineers made sure from the start that only two classes existed: the productive class and the parasitical class. Both the government and the dependent classes are equally violent towards those who produce and who support them throughout their lives.

But perhaps one of the most abhorrent aspects of the current societal collapse is that the social engineers point to the underclass and the working class as those responsible for the crisis. That’s right. They accuse the so-called “useless eaters” for their greed and for living beyond their means and hold them responsible for the crisis we now experience. Both the underclass and a large part of the middle class are in part responsible for their greed and decadence. But weren’t they born and bathed into a system that promoted and facilitated their greed, decadence and dependence? Of course they were. Should the underclass and the middle class then be held responsible for the now developing crisis because they were greedy and dependent? Of course not. But that is what the bankers, the social engineers want the dumbed down majority to think, and that is why tonight racial divides grow bigger in London, the United States, Africa and Asia. The underclass believes that the middle class are the ones responsible for the crisis because they are successful business owners and were able to take care of themselves and their families. In the meantime, the bankers who are responsible for both classes’ misery run rampant ripping people off around the world.

The people are to blame, say the bankers, because they want more services but don’t want to pay more taxes. Due to the fact millions have not bought the propaganda, the government is now playing the collectivist card. “There is no need to look for anyone to blame because we must now come together to solve our problems”. Neither the government nor the banks want the taxpayers to fully understand that these two entities are solely responsible for the current state of affairs. Governments have bribed citizens openly for at least a century in order to control them, therefore it is insane to believe that someone will buy the government and bank sponsored propaganda.

While millions of people lose their jobs, homes and lives because they cannot afford them, a few decadent scum bags consume themselves in fake tribalism, racism, theft and violence while the cowardly ones wait for the state to do something and beg for Martial Law and a Police State. Those who accepted the American-created culture of death, sex, thuggery, drug use, suicide and gang oriented behaviours are now acting as what they always dreamed to be: a bunch of disaffected slaves with no jobs or future that look up at rappers, singers, sports figures, electronics, alcohol and drugs to fulfill their empty lives. The world went from praising explorers, scientists, fire fighters, inventors and community leaders to worship ‘bling’ and Madison Avenue-created delusion.

Those who took advantage of a corrupt debt-based system to get their holiday vacation, car and house loans were shocked after the banks that own their livelihoods cut off lines of credit three years ago to put an end to the fantasy reality they were accustomed to for so many years. Those who foolishly believed that paying into the public pension system would guarantee them some devalued change to live the rest of their lives, even though many had warned of its non-existence, were not only fools, but also irreparable willful ignorants. They trusted their government so much to give them everything, that no room was left to think that the same State could one day decided to take it all away; which is what is happening now. So now, the most dependent members of society are blaming other citizens and not the banks and the governments for their misery. Why? Because blame is the base of Statism and the State has shown people well to accept the blame game when it favours the State. They are now begging the social engineers to put an end to their misery. Events like the riots in London and the United States are just the beginning of what is turning out to be a long summer and a coming long winter. Street violence, crime and government opposition will be used by the controllers to take away more of our rights. Government will use armies and violence against peaceful protesters before bringing out austerity and a more visible Police State, to crush people’s right to speak and arm to themselves, track social media, email accounts, and any other sign of dissent.

Now, this is what a broken down society looks like in the developed world. Can you imagine what will it look like in socialist or inherently paternalistic poor countries when austerity, hunger and deep misery gets there?

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Fed’s Massive Stimulus Had Little Impact: Greenspan

July 1, 2011

CNBC
June 30, 2011

The Federal Reserve’s massive stimulus program had little impact on the U.S. economy besides weakening the dollar and helping U.S. exports, Federal Reserve Governor Alan Greenspan told CNBC Thursday.

In a blunt critique of his successor, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Greenspan said the $2 trillion in quantative easing over the past two years had done little to loosen credit and boost the economy.

“There is no evidence that huge inflow of money into the system basically worked,” Greenspan said in a live interview.

“It obviously had some effect on the exchange rate and the exchange rate was a critical issue in export expansion,” he said. “Aside from that, I am ill-aware of anything that really worked. Not only QE2 but QE1.”

Greenspan’s comments came as the Fed ended the second installment of its bond-buying program, known as QE2, after spending $600 billion. There were no hints of any more monetary easing—or QE3—to come.

Greenspan said he “would be surprised if there was a QE3″  because it would “continue erosion of the dollar.”

The former Fed chairman himself has been widely criticized for the low-interest rate policy in the early and mid 2000s that many believe led to the 2008 credit crisis.

Bernanke, who took over for Greenspan in 2006, began implementing the quantitative easing program in 2009 in an attempt to unfreeze credit and prevent a collapse of the US financial system. The strategy has gotten mixed reviews so far.
On Greece, Greenspan a default is likely and will  ”affect the whole structure of profitability in the U.S.” because of this country’s large economic commitments to Europe, which holds Greek debt. Europe is also where “half the foreign [U.S.] affiliate earnings” are generated, he added.

“We can’t afford a significant drop in foreign affiliate earnings,” Greenspan said.

Greenspan was also pessimistic about the U.S. deficit talks, saying he didn’t think Congress would reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling by the Aug 2 deadline.

“We’re going to get up to Aug 2 and I think on that night, we are not going to have the issue solved,” he said.

If that happens, he said, the U.S. would have to continue paying debt holders or risk major damage in global financial markets. As a result, “we will default on everything else.”

He added: “At that point, I think we’ll all come to our senses.”

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Ireland Officially Seeks Aid from Europe

November 22, 2010

Spain will be the biggest bailout of all

Bloomberg

Ireland became the second euro country to seek a rescue as the cost of saving its banks threatened a rerun of the Greek debt crisis that destabilized the currency.

The euro erased gains and Irish bonds pared an early advance after Moody’s Investors Service said a “ multi-notch” downgrade in Ireland’s Aa2 credit rating was “most likely.” The prospect of January elections loomed as the Green Party said it would pull out of Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s coalition.

A package that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates may total 95 billion euros ($130 billion) failed to damp speculation that Portugal and Spain would need to tap the emergency fund set up by the European Union and International Monetary Fund after the Greece rescue.

“It probably won’t halt contagion. The sovereign crisis isn’t yet over,” said Sylvain Broyer, chief euro-region economist at Natixis in Frankfurt. “Ireland is in the middle of a difficult crisis.”

The aid, which Irish officials said as recently as Nov. 15 they didn’t need, marks the latest blow to an economy that more than doubled in the decade ending in 2006. The bursting of the real-estate bubble in 2008 plunged the country into a recession and brought its banks close to collapse. With Irish bond yields near a record high, policy makers are trying to keep the crisis from spreading.

Threat to Euro

“Clearly because of the size of their loan books, the huge risks they took, they became a threat not only to the state but to the” entire euro region, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan told Dublin-based RTE radio in an interview today. “The banks will be downsized to the real needs of the Irish economy” to “Irish consumers and Irish businesses. That has to be the primary focus of Irish banks.”

The euro slid 0.3 percent to $1.3633 at 1:30 p.m. in London. The yield on Irish 10-year notes fell 5 basis points to 8.30 percent after falling as low as 8.11 percent.

The U.K. and Sweden may contribute bilateral loans, the EU said in a statement. Lenihan declined to say how big the package will be, saying that it will be less than 100 billion euros. Goldman Sachs Chief European Economist Erik Nielsen said yesterday the government needs 65 billion euros to fund itself for the next three years and 30 billion euros for the banks.

Deficit, Banks

Talks will focus on the government’s deficit cutting plans and restructuring the banking system, the EU said in a statement. Cowen who spoke at the same press briefing as Lenihan, said the banks will be stress tested. Ireland nationalized Anglo Irish Bank Corp. in 2009 and is preparing to take a majority stake in Allied Irish Banks Plc, the second- largest bank.

Irish banks may get immediate capital injections, Matthew Elderfield, the country’s head of financial regulation, said in a speech today. The country’s two biggest lenders need at least 5 billion euros immediately, Ciaran Callaghan, an analyst with NCB Stockbrokers, wrote in a note to clients on Nov. 18.

The package for Ireland will total as much as 60 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 47 percent for Greece.

Cowen plans to announce the government’s four-year budget plan this week and said an agreement with the EU and the IMF will come “in the next few weeks.”

The Green Party said today it will quit the government after the budget is passed, leaving Cowen without a majority in parliament. Irish voters “feel misled” by the government, leader John Gormley said at a press conference in Dublin.

No ‘Bogeyman’

Irish officials initially resisted pressure from the EU to take any aid, saying they were fully funded until the middle of 2011. European leaders sought to head off contagion from Ireland and reduce pressure on the European Central Bank to prop up the country’s lenders by providing them with unlimited liquidity.

Cowen defended his reversal on the need for aid. “I don’t accept I’m the bogeyman,” he said. “Now circumstances have changed, we’ve changed our policies.”

The bailout follows two years of budget cuts that failed to restore market confidence as the cost of shoring up the financial industry soared.

Lenihan cancelled bond auctions for October and November and announced 6 billion euros of austerity measures for 2011 on Nov. 4 in a bid to restore investor confidence. Those efforts failed after German Chancellor Angela Merkel triggered an investor exodus by saying bondholders should foot some of the bill in any future bailout.

Irish Spread

The risk premium on Ireland’s 10-year debt over German bunds, Europe’s benchmark, fell to 523 basis points today. It widened to a record 652 basis points on Nov. 11, with the yield reaching a record 9.1 percent. In 2007, it cost Ireland less than Germany to borrow. Its 10-year spread then fell to as low as 77 basis points less than bunds. The ISEQ stock index has plunged 70 percent from its record in 2007.

Ireland will draw on the 750-billion-euro fund set up by the EU and IMF in May as part of the Greek bailout to protect the currency shared by 16 countries.

Yields on bonds of Spain and Portugal have jumped amid concern that fallout from Ireland would spread. The extra yield that investors demand to hold Portuguese 10-year bonds instead of German bunds climbed to a record 484 basis points on Nov. 11.

“Speculative actions against Portugal and Spain are not justified, though it can’t be excluded,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said today on RTL Luxembourg radio. “In a moment where financial markets have an excessive tendency to punish those countries that didn’t stick 100 percent to an orthodox consolidation, one can never exclude that similar things will happen.”

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