Showing posts with label banks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label banks. Show all posts
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Only Poor People Can Be Allowed to Fail
The corrupt financial establishment of our day are a bunch of idiot scum.
From FDL
By: Arthur Fullerton Tuesday July 19, 2011 6:13 am
Reading Lawrence Summers in the Financial Times yesterday I came across this statement as his third principle of dealing with the Euro crisis:
“there must be a clear commitment that, whatever else happens, no big financial institution in any country will be allowed to fail.”
And so we have a clear unambiguous statement of the principle of socialism for the rich and powerful, and capitalism, red in tooth and claw, for the poor. Notice that too big to fail has now gone global. Over the past 24 hours this has been sitting out there with no push back or comment from the media. Is it simply an accepted fact that governments around the world — including our own — will now maintain a system where no large financial institution — no matter how corrupt or incompetent — will be allowed to fail?
This while the same financial and political elites demand that all social safety nets be sacrificed on the pagan altar of the Free Market?
Trying to create a world financial system where “no big financial institution in any country will be allowed to fail” is an unsustainable act of hubris and is itself doomed to failure. Doing so while simultaneously casting the poor adrift is shameful.
From FDL
By: Arthur Fullerton Tuesday July 19, 2011 6:13 am
Reading Lawrence Summers in the Financial Times yesterday I came across this statement as his third principle of dealing with the Euro crisis:
“there must be a clear commitment that, whatever else happens, no big financial institution in any country will be allowed to fail.”
And so we have a clear unambiguous statement of the principle of socialism for the rich and powerful, and capitalism, red in tooth and claw, for the poor. Notice that too big to fail has now gone global. Over the past 24 hours this has been sitting out there with no push back or comment from the media. Is it simply an accepted fact that governments around the world — including our own — will now maintain a system where no large financial institution — no matter how corrupt or incompetent — will be allowed to fail?
This while the same financial and political elites demand that all social safety nets be sacrificed on the pagan altar of the Free Market?
Trying to create a world financial system where “no big financial institution in any country will be allowed to fail” is an unsustainable act of hubris and is itself doomed to failure. Doing so while simultaneously casting the poor adrift is shameful.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Iceland Proves Ireland Did ‘Wrong Things’ Sacrificing Taxpayers
From Bloomberg
Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- On his second day as head of Iceland’s third-largest bank, Arni Tomasson faced a crisis: The firm he had been asked by regulators to run was out of cash.
It was Oct. 8, 2008, at the height of the global financial meltdown, and Iceland’s bank assets in the U.K. had been frozen, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its March issue. Customers flocked to branches of Tomasson’s Glitnir Banki hf to withdraw money, even though the government had guaranteed their deposits. By the end of the day, the vaults were empty, says Tomasson, recalling the drama two years later.
The only way Glitnir and other lenders could avoid a panic the next morning was to get more cash, which they were having trouble doing. A container of crisp kronur sat on the tarmac at Reykjavik’s airport awaiting payment, Tomasson says. The British company that printed the bills, De La Rue Plc, was demanding sterling, and the central bank couldn’t access its U.K. account.
“Everybody was panicked -- depositors, creditors, banks around the world,” Tomasson says. “The effort by all of us at the time was to make sure life could go on as normal.”
Tomasson, 55, got the cash he needed that night after the central bank managed to open an emergency line of credit with a European lender. Now, he’s sitting in an office in Reykjavik, handling about $24 billion of claims by creditors as life in Iceland’s capital returns to normal.
Unlike other nations, including the U.S. and Ireland, which injected billions of dollars of capital into their financial institutions to keep them afloat, Iceland placed its biggest lenders in receivership. It chose not to protect creditors of the country’s banks, whose assets had ballooned to $209 billion, 11 times gross domestic product.
Krona Devaluation
The crisis almost sank the country. The krona lost 58 percent of its value by the end of November 2008, inflation spiked to 19 percent in January 2009 and GDP contracted by 7 percent that year. Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde resigned after nationwide protests. With the economy projected to grow 3 percent this year, Iceland’s decision to let the banks fail is looking smart -- and may prove to be a model for others...
Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- On his second day as head of Iceland’s third-largest bank, Arni Tomasson faced a crisis: The firm he had been asked by regulators to run was out of cash.
It was Oct. 8, 2008, at the height of the global financial meltdown, and Iceland’s bank assets in the U.K. had been frozen, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its March issue. Customers flocked to branches of Tomasson’s Glitnir Banki hf to withdraw money, even though the government had guaranteed their deposits. By the end of the day, the vaults were empty, says Tomasson, recalling the drama two years later.
The only way Glitnir and other lenders could avoid a panic the next morning was to get more cash, which they were having trouble doing. A container of crisp kronur sat on the tarmac at Reykjavik’s airport awaiting payment, Tomasson says. The British company that printed the bills, De La Rue Plc, was demanding sterling, and the central bank couldn’t access its U.K. account.
“Everybody was panicked -- depositors, creditors, banks around the world,” Tomasson says. “The effort by all of us at the time was to make sure life could go on as normal.”
Tomasson, 55, got the cash he needed that night after the central bank managed to open an emergency line of credit with a European lender. Now, he’s sitting in an office in Reykjavik, handling about $24 billion of claims by creditors as life in Iceland’s capital returns to normal.
Unlike other nations, including the U.S. and Ireland, which injected billions of dollars of capital into their financial institutions to keep them afloat, Iceland placed its biggest lenders in receivership. It chose not to protect creditors of the country’s banks, whose assets had ballooned to $209 billion, 11 times gross domestic product.
Krona Devaluation
The crisis almost sank the country. The krona lost 58 percent of its value by the end of November 2008, inflation spiked to 19 percent in January 2009 and GDP contracted by 7 percent that year. Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde resigned after nationwide protests. With the economy projected to grow 3 percent this year, Iceland’s decision to let the banks fail is looking smart -- and may prove to be a model for others...
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Banks And Wikileaks
From The New York Times.
...Visa, MasterCard and PayPal announced in the past few weeks that they would not process any transaction intended for WikiLeaks. Earlier this month, Bank of America decided to join the group, arguing that WikiLeaks may be doing things that are “inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.”
The Federal Reserve, the banking regulator, allows this. Like other companies, banks can choose whom they do business with. Refusing to open an account for some undesirable entity is seen as reasonable risk management. The government even requires banks to keep an eye out for some shady businesses — like drug dealing and money laundering — and refuse to do business with those who engage in them.
But a bank’s ability to block payments to a legal entity raises a troubling prospect. A handful of big banks could potentially bar any organization they disliked from the payments system, essentially cutting them off from the world economy...
...Visa, MasterCard and PayPal announced in the past few weeks that they would not process any transaction intended for WikiLeaks. Earlier this month, Bank of America decided to join the group, arguing that WikiLeaks may be doing things that are “inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.”
The Federal Reserve, the banking regulator, allows this. Like other companies, banks can choose whom they do business with. Refusing to open an account for some undesirable entity is seen as reasonable risk management. The government even requires banks to keep an eye out for some shady businesses — like drug dealing and money laundering — and refuse to do business with those who engage in them.
But a bank’s ability to block payments to a legal entity raises a troubling prospect. A handful of big banks could potentially bar any organization they disliked from the payments system, essentially cutting them off from the world economy...
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