Denninger is calling for a boycott and we support it.
Tired of this sort of garbage – being punished for being responsible? Go withdraw all your money and business from the following institutions:
Bank of America
Wells Fargo/Wachovia
Citibank
JP Morgan/ChasePlace your business with a local community bank or credit union in their place. The “large banking industry” has effectively captured the regulatory and legislative apparatus of the United States to do their bidding, even when they screw up, instead of those costs being imposed on their shareholders and bondholders as it should be. You have no duty to support or tolerate this, and indeed, if you ever want to see it change, you must stop providing these firms with your dollars – your deposits – and your loan business.
Your money (deposits) will probably be safer in the hands of your local bank and definitely will be more supportive of your local economy, since the small banks are actually making a few loans…
This is from an email that has been forwarding around (the original has some great copyrighted cartoons of Dennis Cox)…
Curtis & Leroy saw an ad in the Starkville Daily News Newspaper in Starkville, MS. and bought a mule for $100.
The farmer agreed to deliver the mule the next day.
The next morning the farmer drove up and said, “Sorry, fellows, I have some bad news, the mule died last night.”
Curtis & Leroy replied, “Well, then just give us our money back.”
The farmer said, “Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.”
They said, “OK then, just bring us the dead mule.”
The farmer asked, “What in the world ya’ll gonna do with a dead mule?”
Curtis said, “We gonna raffle him off.”
The farmer said, “You can’t raffle off a dead mule!”
Leroy said, “We shore can! Heck, we don’t hafta tell nobody he’s dead!”
A couple of weeks later, the farmer ran into Curtis & Leroy at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store and asked.
“What’d you fellers ever do with that dead mule?”
They said,”We raffled him off like we said we wuz gonna do.”
Leroy said,”Shucks, we sold 500 tickets fer two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.”
The farmer said,”My Lord, didn’t anyone complain?”
Curtis said, “Well, the feller who won got upset. So we gave him his two dollars back.”
Curtis and Leroy now work for the government.
They’re overseeing the Bailout Program.
The banks are insolvent (dead), but the government is pretending they are not. The stock market is soaring as Goldman and other bankster co-conspirators with the government are “raffling off” a dead system to an unsuspecting public. But, will there only be one “raffle winner” who ends up disappointed and gets a refund in the end?
From Sky News:
It is a store that has always had the reputation for selling something a little different for those willing to splash their cash.
Anyone got a spare £248,000? Maybe head to Harrods… So despite enduring the worst recession in decades, shoppers to the luxury Knightsbridge shop Harrods can now buy “off the shelf” gold bars. The price of gold has soared in recent weeks as the dollar weakens, reaching another record high of US$1,063.60 an ounce on Thursday…Chris Hall, head of Harrods Gold Bullion, said: “The financial environment has kindled a new demand for physical gold amongst private investors in Britain.
But, as Business Week points out, you don’t get a really good deal at Harrods:
But as any serious shopper knows, don’t expect a bargain at Harrods. The store says its premium on Krugerrand gold coins is currently set 11% above spot price—more than twice the average mark-up already paid by retail investors using typical U.S. and European coin dealers.
And it is also possible that the price of gold has peaked for now – when the “shoeshine boy” is giving tips…
Give Robert Reich the credit he deserves, he’ll tell it like he sees it. From Breit Bart TV – the death panels are not very far off:
A recent article in the WSJ talks of “China Nurtur[ing] Futures Markets in Bid to Sway Commodity Prices“:
Chinese leaders are concerned that their nation’s enormous economic expansion is becoming an excuse for foreign suppliers to inflate commodity costs. So, they hope to use their three futures exchanges to fight back.
Government officials say the country is positioning its futures markets to be major players in setting world prices for metal, energy and farm commodities. By letting the world know how much its companies and investors think goods are worth, China hopes to be less at the mercy of markets elsewhere.
Its easy to see why China would want to protect itself from recent large fluctuations in commodity (mainly oil) prices, when they spent $180 billion importing oil last year. They won’t have a very easy time doing it, however. China is still a communist government and they do not have a legal system in place to support futures contracts. None of them would be enforceable. There is also a huge policy bias towards large state-owned enterprises like China Oil. The Shanghai Futures Exchange won’t be an open, competitive, and effective market until small players in the exchange can get equal rights. The authoritarian Chinese Government policy makers (dictators) only allow the economy cake to grow on the condition that the largest piece is received by their friends in high positions at giant state-owned enterprises.
Unfortunately, just as the Chinese economy is manipulated by a small group of people, the US (and world) economy is manipulated in the same manner by the FED and entities like Goldman Sachs. China should be setting it’s sites on getting rid of Goldman Sachs instead of setting up its own pitiful exchanges. There is not much of a link between the HUGE fluctuations in oil prices and China’s steady increase in demand for oil (and other commodities). The true culprit and beneficiary behind these things is (government sponsored) Goldman Sachs. GS manipulated who would be rescued by with its immense amount of government cronies in Washington, successfully killing off its competitors, and then rode the energy curve up and down gaining huge rewards in the mean time.
If China’s goal is control and manipulate the biggest economy in the world (it is), all it has to do is take a look at the US’s Federal Reserve. We do it much better here in the states! We set up an authoritarian entity, claim that its “private” and separate from any form of oversight, then let it freely give out trillions of tax payer dollars to support whatever manipulative policy it desires! All without any of its skeletons coming back to haunt any elected officials.
It seems that President Obama has the world in the palm of his hand. He has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based on his “vision”. Keep in mind that nominations for the award were due only 11 days after his inauguration (Feb 1st). The Nobel committee commented:
[We gave] special importance to Obama’s vision of and work (*12 days of work?!) for a world without nuclear weapons…Of course there will be criticism, because he hasn’t achieved his goals yet. It will take time, but this is a support.
Miss America’s vision of the world is much more Utopian than President Obama’s. On the grounds of her excellent “vision” for the future, and the fact that she definitely needs some “support” in achieving it, she should have received the Peace Prize (and the money) instead.
At the end of a long post in which the point is also correctly made that the US has ZERO ability to unilaterally “devalue” its currency, Mish puts very well the idea that other currencies must fall too:
A watched pot may boil, but it’s not likely to explode, especially when everyone watching the pot expects an explosion any second. Indeed, it would be fitting if the Ridiculous Hype Over Secret Oil Meetings, helped form a bottom on the US dollar. Yet, it’s easy to see that a financial crisis is brewing. Somewhere, something is going to blow sky high, but from where I sit, it’s as likely to be in the Yen, the Swiss Franc, the British Pound, or something no one is watching at all as opposed to the US dollar specifically.
We agree. In crisis, the dollar will still likely be a safe haven. Everyone now agrees the dollar is doomed. We will be the contrarian. The US is exporting its monetary inflation and there are some big creditors who don’t want to be paid back with dollars of lesser value.
The IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers released U.S. Internet advertising stats today for the first half of 2009 showing a a 5.3% decline from the same period in 2008. Search continues to take nearly half of all Internet advertising, with 47% of the total ($5.1 billion). Display ads, classified listings, lead generation and email took 34%, 10%, 7% and 1%, respectively. In 2008, search only took 44% of total online advertising revenue, so maybe Google’s future for the rest of the year isn’t so bleak.
Retail advertisers represented the largest category of spending, at 20%. Telecom (16%), Leisure Travel (6%), Financial Services (12%), Automotive (11%), Computing (10%), Consumer Packaged Goods/Food Products (6%), Entertainment (4%) and Media (4%) made up most of the rest.
The full report can be seen below:
The NYT reports:
The inspector general who oversees the government’s bailout of the banking system is criticizing the Treasury Department for some misleading public statements last fall and raising the possibility that it had unfairly disbursed money to the biggest banks.
Is it just misleading or plain ole lying?
Former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., for instance, said on Oct. 14 that the banks were “healthy,” and that they accepted the money for “the good of the U.S. economy.” The banks, he said, would be better able to increase their lending to consumers and businesses. In truth, regulators were concerned about the health of several banks that received that first bailout, the inspector general writes.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said “signs of economic recovery are “stronger” and have appeared “sooner” than expected”. Is he telling the truth this time? Don’t bet on it!
Timid Tim said yesterday (ht Mish) that the Treasury would wait until next year to make any suggestions about a change to bank capital requirements:
“We’re not going to set the number now because the world is a little fragile; people aren’t willing to take enough risk now, and we don’t want to do anything that would push people to delever,” Geithner said to Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace at an event in Washington hosted by the Atlantic magazine in partnership with the Aspen Institute and the Newseum. “We’ll have the agreement on the numbers, but it won’t happen until next year; in the absence of fragility.”
“we don’t want to do anything that would push people to delever”… that is the greatest fear of the government: that the aggregate level of debt will fall and with it, the general price level. They will do anything to prevent it. Should we believe they have such power? For example, can government helicopters raining money from the sky really prevent it? What-if the recipients of this “manna from heaven” pay their existing debts off with their new-found windfall? Will offsetting a shrinking private debt level with government debt prevent it? Or, just raise the probability of default of one obligor or the other (or both)? Somehow, we have come to place way too much faith in the ability of the same government institutions that got us into this mess…
