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When the Borrowers Stop Borrowing By Bill Bonner 11/09/09 Beunos Aires, Argentina – The Dow moved up 17 points on Friday, leaving it above the 10,000 mark. Gold rose too – it is at a new record high, only $5 below $1,100.(The DJIA closed today up 203 points) According to the news reports, the US economy is ‘growing’ again. Yes, that’s the official storyline. But wait, what kind of growth is this? David Rosenberg: “All we can say is that if the overwhelming consensus is correct that the recession is behind us, then what we have on our hands is...

"For it is impossible for any one to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows." -- Epictetus In a little-known book entitled Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance written in 2007 a year before the global financial meltdown, Harvard professor Rawi Abdelal tells how it was French socialists, not Wall Street or the U.S. Treasury or credit rating firms (S&P, Moody’s, etc.), that liberalized global finance. The only problem with this book is that it is not one of the many books on the financial meltdown that follows the successful pop journalistic formula of demonizing greedy financial...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. and the global economy will experience massive deflationary forces through 2012, said Nouriel Roubini, economist at New York University, Wednesday. At a conference, Roubini said that although easy monetary policies have fueled another asset bubble, the deflationary forces coming from industrial overcapacity, falling labor costs and a still damaged financial system will prevail over the next two years.

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- China's manufacturing expanded for the eighth straight month in October and forward-looking indicators pointed to a further pick-up underway, according to a government index released Sunday.The data adds up to a picture of an economy that's on track for acceleration in the October-to-December period, marking the third-straight quarterly pick up. The Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) rose to 55.2 in October from 54.3 in September, the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said in a release. A gauge of export orders rose to 54.5 from 53.3, the sixth straight month of gains. General orders notched a similar...

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday that Russia is considering selling gold on world markets to cash in on high prices as the government faces its first budget deficit in a decade.Kudrin's remarks follow a report last week that the Gokhran precious metals depository was planning to sell up to 50 metric tons, or 1.6 million ounces, of gold in London by the end of the year. With gold prices reaching record highs of over $1,000 per ounce, the sale could bring Russia some $1.7 billion.The finance minister gave no details Wednesday in remarks to journalists carried by state news...

Drawing striking comparisons between the Japanese economy in 1988 and the American economy today, a new book by an author who predicted the current crisis warns it's going to get much worse before it gets better. Vox Day, a WND columnist, asserts in "The Return of the Great Depression," by WND Books, the U.S. is only now entering the early stages of the Second Great Depression. Day presents a fact-rich case, rooted in economic history and time-tested theory, in which he concludes that an economic contraction of very large proportions is presently developing. But he contends that "due to a...

Note: The following text is a quote: Home • Briefing Room • Speeches & Remarks The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release October 23, 2009 Remarks by the President Challenging Americans to Lead the Global Economy in Clean Energy Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts 12:44 P.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Please, have a seat. Thank you. Thank you, MIT. (Applause.) I am -- I am hugely honored to be here. It's always been a dream of mine to visit the most prestigious school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Applause.) Hold on a second --...

Spain Jobless Rate Stays At 17.9% Spain's unemployment rate is the highest in the EU Spain's unemployment rate has remained at 17.9% in the third quarter, the highest in the European Union. The number of jobless now stands at 4.1 million, the country's statistics agency said. The Spanish unemployment rate had risen for the previous eight quarters after its construction and debt-fuelled economic boom ended suddenly. Separately, a survey showed German business confidence rose for a seventh consecutive month in October. [snip]Posted last week: Spain Tips Into Depression

.... Busting up the banking trusts is essential for the following reasons: -It eliminates the too-big-to-fail issue, which puts entire economies at risk. -Excessively large banks destroy democracies, like the United States, through inordinate influence on policy, politicians and regulators. -Oligopolies and monopolies are economically inefficient and charge excessive fees, earn excessive profits and pay excessive salaries and bonuses. -Oligopolies and monopolies don't innovate because they don't have to. -Oligopolies and monopolies are risky because they indulge in groupthink mistakes that are too large for economies and the business community to bear. -Oligopolies and monopolies fossilize markets by dealing with...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ___________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release October 23, 2009 White House Announces Global Technology and Innovation Fund During his speech in Cairo on June 4, the President announced that the United States would "launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries." As the latest step in delivering on this commitment, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation announced this week a call for proposals for a Global Technology and Innovation Fund. This fund will help catalyze and facilitate private sector investments that promote...

Container Trade in TEUs* 2009 Year-to-Date*TEUs: 20-foot equivalent units or 20-foot-long cargo container **Preliminary estimate   Loaded Inbound Loaded Outbound Empties Total Containers January 200,588 88,510 110,197 399,295 February 149,299 92,781 75,962 318,042 March 186,450 117,674 70,007 374,131 April 199,051 112,976 96,678 408,705 May 208,591 121,064 89,900 419,555 June 206,358 114,107 92,882 413,347 July 221,719 108,420 102,874 433,013 August 249,920 130,623 112,796 493,339 September 224,924 109,337 106,103 440,364 October November December Year-to-Date 1,846,900 995,492 857,399 3,699,791 YTD % Change -23.8% -26.3% -24.2% -24.6%

Major institutions should be broken up if necessary, Greenlight manager says NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Greenlight Capital manager David Einhorn said Monday that his hedge-fund firm is betting on the possibility of a major currency collapse and a surge in interest rates, citing ballooning government deficits in some of the world's most developed countries.The hedge-fund manager, who warned about Lehman Brothers' frailty before it collapsed last year, also said financial institutions that are deemed as "too big to fail," such as Citigroup Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!c/quotes/nls/c (C 4.57, -0.02, -0.38%) , should be broken up. ReutersDavid Einhorn of Greenlight Capital. Greenlight has...

This global recession will turn into a "full-blown depression," Nicu Harajchi, CEO of N1 Asset Management, said Friday, adding that global stimulus hasn't come down to Main Street. Wall Street is making money, while consumers aren't, Harajchi told CNBC. "We have seen the G20 coming out with cross border capital injections of $5 trillion this year… But a lot of this money hasn't really come down to Main Street," he said. "When it comes down to corporate America, corporate Europe or even in Asia, in Japan, we are not seeing Main Street making any money," he said. "Consumers are losing...

On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change expert, gave a presentation at Bethel College in St. Paul, MN in which he issued a dire warning regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty which is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009. .. Video 4:11 min

Note: The following text is a quote: Remarks by Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden at the 78th Interpol General Assembly SINGAPORE ~ Monday, October 12, 2009 In Bucharest, a little over a year ago, my predecessor U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Mark Filip, joined by the Romanian Prosecutor General, announced criminal charges in a case that was emblematic of the evolution of transnational organized crime. That case charged that a racketeering enterprise in Romania joined forces with other criminals around the world -- including street gangs in Los Angeles -- to use the Internet to defraud thousands of people and...

The number of laid up containerships increased 10.4 per cent in a fortnight, according to the latest Alphaliner survey, which showed 568 ships were idle, aggregating 1.35 million TEU as of October 12 from the 548 idle vessels, totalling 1.29 million TEU, noted two weeks earlier. The Paris-based agency said laid up fleet is now the biggest ever. Apart from ships in the 1,000-TEU - 2,000 TEU range (7,500-TEU plus sized ships lay-up rate remained steady), all sizes showed increases in idling during the two-week period. Alphaliner also reported that the raft of service cutbacks by major carriers had an...

Trade wars could break out. Overexposed banks might collapse. And that's just for starters

Coordinated international action helped save the world from the financial crisis that erupted last year, former President George W. Bush said Wednesday. "We intervened early, we intervened aggressively and we intervened together," Bush told the World Knowledge Forum, an annual conference sponsored by a South Korean business newspaper. Bush added that it remains unknown what would have happened had action not been taken. "I believe because of close coordination and the willingness to act in the face of financial danger that the interjection of capital into the financial system helped save our economies," Bush said.

S&P: Dubai Is Nearly Out Of Cash Joe WeisenthalOct. 11, 2009, 12:07 PM Don't assume that the economic comeback means Dubai is out of the woods. Holders of its debt may be in trouble, unless the Emirate can raise more money. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An analyst at credit rating firm Standard & Poor's says Dubai has "insufficient" funds to pay back billions of dollars worth of debt coming due, putting added pressure on the city-state to raise additional cash. Farouk Soussa, S&P's head of Middle East government ratings, said Sunday that the sheikdom has about $4 billion...

Rumors are flying that secret meetings are taking place between Arab states, China, Russia, Japan and France, to dump the dollar and replace the U.S. currency’s role in the pricing of oil. The dollar fell against the euro, yen and Swiss franc, while gold hit new highs of $1,041 an ounce. Is there any truth to the rumors that the dollar is being replaced by a basket of foreign currencies, and what will be the impact your investments and the U.S. economy?

Bright, eager—and unwanted. While unemployment is ravaging just about every part of the global workforce, the most enduring harm is being done to young people who can't grab onto the first rung of the career ladder. Affected are a range of young people, from high school dropouts, to college grads, newly minted lawyers and MBAs across the developed world from Britain to Japan. One indication: In the U.S., the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds climbed to more than 18%, from 13% a year ago. For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep, long-lasting, potentially creating a...

"What the Fed is likely to do is kill the dollar and eventually partner with the IMF, which as become the de facto global central banking institution. The IMF will fund global growth through Special Drawing Rights. The trick will be for the dollar to slowly die as the Special Drawing Rights gradually play a more and more central role in the growth of the world economy. A perfect correlation of the dollar fall and the Special Drawing Rights rise is not likely, so there will be a very difficult transition period when the United States is essentially a country...

The sharp fall in the US dollar is giving ammunition to the critics of the Obama administration and fuelling broader concerns about the erosion of America’s reserve currency status. Republican politicians have highlighted the dollar’s slide as evidence of waning US power. On Wednesday, Sarah Palin, the Republican former vice-presidential candidate, added her voice to those who have expressed concern over the consequences of rising US indebtedness and dependence on foreign oil. “We can see the effect of this in the price of gold, which hit a record high today in response to fears about the weakened dollar,” she wrote...

<p>1 - Based on GDP, “the recession is over, we’re back to a world of growth”</p> <p>2 - But, “the jobs picture is continuing to deteriorate. The recession may be over, but the bad times are nowhere near over.”</p> <p>3 - “This could be bad. Financial crises tend to produce prolonged hits to growth…and this is the mother of all synchronized financial crises so we almost certainly have a long, long slog before we’re fully recovered.”</p>

“A year ago,” said law professor Ross Buckley on Australia’s ABC News last week, “nobody wanted to know the International Monetary Fund. Now it’s the organiser for the international stimulus package which has been sold as a stimulus package for poor countries.” The IMF may have catapulted to a more exalted status than that. According to Jim Rickards, director of market intelligence for scientific consulting firm Omnis, the unannounced purpose of last week’s G20 Summit in Pittsburgh was that “the IMF is being anointed as the global central bank.” Rickards said in a CNBC interview on September 25 that the...

LONDON (Reuters) - Gold surged to a record high above $1,040 per ounce on Tuesday, with buying fueled by dollar weakness after a report, later denied, that Gulf Arab states were considering abandoning the U.S. currency for oil trade. Both spot gold prices and U.S. gold futures have benefited from a convergence of factors including the dollar's decline, technical buying momentum and worries about potential inflation as central banks struggle to emerge from unprecedented fiscal stimulus measures. "In an environment where interest rates are virtually zero, the incremental cost of moving into gold is nil. It stands to reason for...

Greenback fell further after the G-7 would not come to the rescue. The Group of Seven will let the dollar fall. The heated climate before the Istanbul meeting led some to expect global policymakers to take a stand, but despite the strong tone, Andrew Wilkinson, senior market analyst at Interactive Brokers, said it was short on action. "It invites investors to test the dollar's lines of resistance in order to see what response, if any, might be forthcoming in the event of a further fall in the value of the dollar," Wilkinson said. The dollar's loss of value over the...

ARAB STATES LAUNCH SECRET MOVES WITH CHINA, RUSSIA, FRANCE TO STOP USING DOLLAR FOR OIL TRADING... DEVELOPING...

The United States has been hollowed out. It no longer manufactures goods. Once the factory of the world, the U.S. now manufactures debt. The high wage manufacturing jobs have been out-sourced to low wage economies. The demise of U.S. manufacturing is at the core of the decline of America, its chronic trade deficits and growing international indebtedness. It makes the world’s savers reluctant to be exposed to the U.S. dollar.There is one problem with this widely held view: It is factually wrong.The value of U.S. manufacturing output in real terms (adjusted for inflation) was a little more than $3 trillion...

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - The United States is the most admired country globally thanks largely to the star power of President Barack Obama and his administration, according to a new poll. He believes that during the previous administration of George W. Bush the United States suffered in the world ranking with its unpopular foreign policies but since Obama was elected, and despite the recent economic turmoil, the country's status has risen globally. "There is no other explanation," Anholt said in an interview, referring to the impact of Obama.

<p>US economic power is declining as a result of the financial crisis, the head of the World Bank has said.</p> <p>"One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," said World Bank president Robert Zoellick.</p>

We Are Certainly in a Deflationary Economic State Oct 02, 2009 - 07:20 AM By: Mike_Shedlock Fueled by overcapacity, shrinking credit, reduced corporate spending and falling consumer demand, Deflation is taking root in global economies. Consumer prices fell at their fastest clip ever last month in Japan, which has been fighting a losing war against deflation for much of the past two decades. Germany, Europe's biggest economy, has now suffered through four consecutive months of sliding prices, and the rest of the region that uses the euro is not faring much better. That deflation should be such a threat may...

The left is poised to win the general election and buck a European trend of backing centre-right political parties Athenians sipping cappuccino freddo applaud as Athina Dretta, a parliamentary candidate with the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, arrives on a motorcycle to make a 15-minute speech at the “Face Place” café. But beyond the brightly lit café strip, empty shops displaying “for rent” signs and stalled construction projects give the Neo Iraklio suburb a depressed look. “Greece was booming until last year. Now we face recession and anxiety about the future. Will our kids be able to find jobs?” asks Mrs Dretta,...

Exceeding unemployed carrier controlled fleet for first time The fleet of idled container ships controlled by charter ship-owners reached a record high in September and exceeds the number of unemployed vessels controlled and operated by ocean carriers for the first time. The non-operating owner fleet without work has risen to 654,000 20-foot equivalent units as ocean carriers shrink their capacity and return chartered ships to their owners when they come off hire, according to Alphaliner, the Paris-based container shipping consultancy. The carrier-controlled idle fleet stood at 643,000 TEUs and has fallen below the non-operating owners unemployed fleet for the first...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ___________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release September 25, 2009 The following fact sheets outline the outcomes of the Pittsburgh Summit hosted by President Obama on September 24th and 25th. FACT SHEETS The Pittsburgh Summit: Key Accomplishments LINK Creating a 21st Century International Economic Architecture LINK Framework for Strong, Sustainable, and Balanced Growth LINK Bold and Coordinated Actions from Crisis to Recovery LINK Partnering on Food Security LINK Acting on our Global Energy and Climate Change Challenges LINK Support for the Most Vulnerable LINK

The Group of 20 is set to become the premier coordinating body on global economic issues, reflecting a new world economic order in which emerging market countries like China are much more relevant, according to a draft communique. Leaders of the G20 developed and developing nations also agreed to make the International Monetary Fund more representative by increasing the voting power of countries that have long been under-represented in the world financial body,

Great Recession Transforms The Workplace Most enduring change may be the permanent loss of millions of jobs Rusty Meador, Development Manager for Plantation Building Corp., arrives on a job site and begins making calls to check on the status of several tasks Thursday in Wilmington, N.C. Going to work may never be the same again. The Great Recession has reshaped the American workplace and work force in ways that will last years, if not longer. The work force is graying as college graduates can't find jobs, young workers get laid off and older workers delay retirement. People in white-collar jobs...

For over 50 years, one party ruled Japan virtually uninterrupted. During that time, Japan remained a loyal ally and supporter of U.S. policy. This month, a historic event took place. Japan has new leadership. In a landslide victory, a new party has done the seemingly impossible. A new freshman class of leaders now governs the Land of the Rising Sun. The effects are already rippling across the Pacific toward America. Yukio Hatoyama is Japan’s new leader. He officially took office last Wednesday, and he is already threatening to split with the United States. Hatoyama blames America for the global economic...

The global financial crisis has affected the registration of Muslims wishing to travel to Mecca, Saud Arabia, for the annual pilgrimage, the National Hajj Mission has confirmed. According to the Hajj Mission of the Muslim Council of Tanzania (Bakwata), at least 2,500 Muslims would have been allowed to visit the Arabian Gulf nation for the annual pilgrimage this year, but the allocated figure for Tanzania could not be reached due to economic downturn shocks. Speaking to The Citizen over the phone from Zanzibar yesterday, the acting chairman of the Tanzania Hajj Mission, Sheikh Khalid Mohamed, travel agents are worried that...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has declared that the recession is over. Addison Wiggin, executive publisher of Agora Financial, isn’t buying it. In an interview with Dan Mangru of Newsmax TV, Wiggin said that the recent economic data, such as GDP and retail sales, don’t tell the whole picture. “It’s fictitious growth. It’s government stimulus making its way through the economy. But we don’t see any real recovery at the moment.” Watch the Exclusive Interview with Newsmax TV's Dan Mangru — Click Here Now! Although the administration has spent more than $19 trillion dollars on bailouts, Wiggin still says that...

Private credit is contracting on both sides of the Atlantic. The M3 money data is flashing early warning signals of a deflation crisis next year in nearly half the world economy. Emergency schemes that have propped up spending are being withdrawn, gently or otherwise. Unemployment benefits have masked social hardship unto now but these are starting to expire with cliff-edge effects.The jobless army in Spain will be reduced to €100 a week; in Estonia to €15. Whoever wins today's elections in Germany will face the reckoning so deftly dodged before. Kurzarbeit, that subsidises firms not to fire workers, is running...

PITTSBURGH — World leaders on Friday issued sweeping promises to fix a malfunctioning global economic system in hopes of heading off future financial meltdowns. President Barack Obama said actions taken so far "brought the global economy back from the brink.""We leave here today confident and united," Obama said at the conclusion of a two-day gathering of the world's 20 top economies to deal with the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The leaders agreed to keep stimulus plans, which include government spending and low interest rates, generally in place in their respective countries for now to avoid derailing still-fragile recoveries....

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again ### The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a...

One of the world's largest banks is bidding farewell to the U.S. dollar – just as the dollar faces intense scrutiny at today's G-20 summit and the United Nations announces it wants a new global reserve currency replacement. "The dollar looks awfully like sterling after the First World War," David Bloom, HSBC currency chief, told London's Telegraph. "The whole picture of risk-reward for emerging market currencies has changed. It is not so much that they have risen to our standards, it is that we have fallen to theirs. It used to be that sovereign risk was mainly an emerging market...

No Full Recovery Until 2015, Says The IMFThe world’s leading economies will have to wait until 2015 or later for growth to return to normal rates, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned. By Edmund Conway Published: 8:41PM BST 22 Sep 2009 The warning, contained in a pre-released chapter of its World Economic Outlook, undermines hopes among economists that the UK is poised for full recovery. The IMF said that past experience, based on 88 banking crises over the past four decades, showed that economies tend to sacrifice around 10pc of their economic output, and take a significant number of...

U.S. to push for new economic world order at G20 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will urge world leaders this week to launch a new push in November to rebalance the world economy, but there are doubts national governments will bow to external advice. A document outlining the U.S. position ahead of the September 24-25 Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh said exporters, which include China, Germany and Japan, should consume more, while debtors like the United States ought to boost savings. "The world will face anemic growth if adjustments in one part of the global economy are not...

....Barack Obama said on Sunday he would push world leaders this week for a reshaping of the global economy in response to the deepest financial crisis in decades. ...Obama said the U.S. economy was recovering, even if unemployment remained high, and now was the time to rebalance the global economy after decades of U.S. over-consumption

Cannot post per FR rules. Link only. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNRS9zQAgnBQ

At the end of this past July, one of the largest ports in America, Long Beach, reported that the 20% year-over-year cargo business decline is among the sharpest since the Great Depression. This is not a trend specific to Long Beach. “It’s phenomenal how much things fell away even since December,” said Paul Bingham, managing director of global trade and transportation for IHS Global Insight, the business research firm that monitors North America’s biggest ports for the National Retail Federation. As of September 4, 2009, shadowstats.com reported that unemployment in the US is now near 21% and is showing no...

The Chinese – and soon Middle East interests – are preparing to buy up oil resources in North America even as "green" interests threaten to short-circuit U.S. access to the same energy, according to a report from Joseph Farah......" While the U.S. State Department has issued a permit for a multibillion-dollar pipeline to carry crude oil from Canada's tar sands to U.S. refineries, environmental groups are threatening to impede its construction. Some are trying to delay the project for years by putting it in the middle of the court system. Meanwhile, the Chinese are in the process of spending billions...