Monday, November 30, 2009
Only Thing Rising Faster Than Demand For Government Debt Is Supply Of It
Governments benefit from 'teaser' rates. Wait 'til they come to an end...
There are so many breathtaking things going on around us we practically suffocate. Last week, three-month US Treasury-bills yielded all of 0.015% interest. Some yields were below zero. In effect, investors gave the government money. The government thanked them and promised to give them back less money three months later. How do you explain this strange transaction? Was there a full moon?
Moonlight on the week of November 6 must have been especially intense. Bids totaled a record $361 billion for just $86 billion worth of T- bills. This was $100 billion more than the peak set during the credit crisis a year ago. What? A third of a trillion dollars, per week, gives itself up to the hard labor of government service and asks for nothing in return? (more)
Food Stamp Use Soars, and Stigma Fades
With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children. It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.
Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare. (more)
Potential For Fed To Hyperinflate
always the question about what the Fed will do, more pressure on small and medium banks, municipal bond meltdown, bailouts cant go on indefinitely, looking at the banks, and recalling the French Revolution, the truth of fractional banking
The following information may be the most important we have ever published. One of our Intel sources, highly placed in banking circles, tells us that on 1/1/10 all banks that have received TARP funds have been informed by the Federal Reserve that they must further restrict any commercial lending. Loans have to be 75% collateralized, 50% of which has to be in cash, which is a compensating balance.
The Fed has to do one of two things: They either have to pull $1.5 trillion out of the system by June, which would collapse the economy, or face hyperinflation. This is why the Fed has instructed banks to inform them when and how much of the TARP funds they can return. At best they can expect $300 to $400 billion plus the $200 billion the Fed already has in hand. (more)
Professor advises underwater homeowners to walk away from mortgages
Go ahead. Break the chains. Stop paying on your mortgage if you owe more than the house is worth. And most important: Don't feel guilty about it. Don't think you're doing something morally wrong.
That's the incendiary core message of a new academic paper by Brent T. White, a University of Arizona law school professor, titled "Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis."
White contends that far more of the estimated 15 million U.S. homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages should stiff their lenders and take a hike.
Doing so, he suggests, could save some of them hundreds of thousands of dollars that they "have no reasonable prospect of recouping" in the years ahead. Plus the penalties are nowhere near as painful or long-lasting as they might assume, he says. (more)
That's the incendiary core message of a new academic paper by Brent T. White, a University of Arizona law school professor, titled "Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis."
White contends that far more of the estimated 15 million U.S. homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages should stiff their lenders and take a hike.
Doing so, he suggests, could save some of them hundreds of thousands of dollars that they "have no reasonable prospect of recouping" in the years ahead. Plus the penalties are nowhere near as painful or long-lasting as they might assume, he says. (more)
The Geopolitics Of The Dubai Debt Crisis: It's Iran vs. The United States
The role of Iran may be the most overlooked in the Dubai debt crisis.
Of all the states of the United Arab Emirates federation, Dubai has maintained the closest ties to Iran. Indeed, as international pressure has built on Iran over the past decade, Dubai has prospered from those ties. It provides critical banking and trade links for Iran, often serving as the go-between for European or Asian companies and financial firms that want to do business with Iran without violating international sanctions.
Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest member of the UAE and a close ally of the US, may be pressuring Dubai to limit its links to Iran. Indeed, this pressure may be behind statements coming from Abu Dhabi about offering "selective" support for Dubai. Companies or creditors thought to be too linked to Iran could find themselves shut out of any bailout. (more)
Of all the states of the United Arab Emirates federation, Dubai has maintained the closest ties to Iran. Indeed, as international pressure has built on Iran over the past decade, Dubai has prospered from those ties. It provides critical banking and trade links for Iran, often serving as the go-between for European or Asian companies and financial firms that want to do business with Iran without violating international sanctions.
Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest member of the UAE and a close ally of the US, may be pressuring Dubai to limit its links to Iran. Indeed, this pressure may be behind statements coming from Abu Dhabi about offering "selective" support for Dubai. Companies or creditors thought to be too linked to Iran could find themselves shut out of any bailout. (more)
South Africa’s golden age is coming to an end
The high cost of mining old mines and the scarcity of reserves as seen the once mighty South African gold mining industry fall from grace in recent years.
South Africa’s remaining gold reserves are less than half existing estimates and the cost of bringing the dwindling resource into production may be far more than its value, a new report has found.
An article in the South African Journal of Science has highlighted the plight of the country’s gold mining industry, which is afflicted by high costs, environmental damage, falling output and illicit mining. A formerly illustrious industry is in its death throes, according to Chris Hartnady, the report’s author, who predicts that the output of the main Witwatersrand goldfields could fall below 100 tonnes a year within a decade. (more)
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