Free Republic

Shortly after Brittney Griner landed in Texas early Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said more prisoner exchanges are possible between the two countries. Putin said “everything is possible” when asked about future swaps, noting that “compromises have been found” to clear the exchange of the WNBA star for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout. “We aren’t refusing to continue this work in the future,” the Russian strongman added after a summit in Kyrgyzstan. “Whether this could set stage for a dialogue with the U.S. is a separate issue,” the leader said. “We didn’t set the task to move from those talks...

In a time when many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, President Joe Biden is ensuring that terrorist-sponsoring regimes stay well-funded. Biden made a commitment to provide hundeds of millions in taxpayer dollars to the Palestinians at a meeting with Palestinian authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on his Israel trip while reaffirming his commitment to the “two-state solution.” “Now, as president of the United States, my commitment to that goal of a two-state solution has not changed in all these years,” he said. “Two states along the 1967 lines were mutually agreed. The swaps remain the best way to achieve...

Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) has warned against any further prisoner swaps with terrorist groups in return for captive citizens. Speaking at a "Meet The Press" interview, Erdan stated that Israel must do everything in its power to free the two Israeli civilians currently held hostage by Hamas in Gaza - 26-year-old Avraham (Avera) Meginsu, and a still-unidentified Arab-Israeli resident of the Negev. However, Erdan warned that past experience has clearly demonstrated that acceding to Hamas's exaggerated demands to release scores of convicted terrorists from prison in exchange would be a grave mistake. "To free terrorists, in light of...

Bayit Yehudi chairman and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett dismissed on Tuesday the possibility of swapping land with the Palestinians for peace or security. The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations "have only brought us terror," Bennett said at an Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference. He further warned that the establishment of an independent Palestinian state under any future peace deal will lead to terror. The Palestinian children who were born at the time the 1993 Oslo accord was agreed upon are now 21 and have grown up on incitement, he said. "No piece of paper will change this." Bennett turned...

European governments must rapidly commit to fiscal union or a partial break-up of the euro to prevent a "fundamental erosion" in demand for the region's debt, Pimco, the world's biggest bond investor, has warned. "They can't continue to muddle through," said Andrew Balls, who runs Pimco's European investments. "They'll either have to signal their position or you'll get a continued disengagement by investors from the eurozone." The stark assessment comes ahead of a gathering of European leaders in Brussels that has been billed as a summit that cannot afford to fail. A crisis that began in Greece almost two years...

Jim Sinclair’s Commentary on the article that follows. If called on to perform they will fail. It is that simple. It is the essence of the OTC derivative. They work if no one calls on them to work. It has always been so. [End Comment] [Article Begins] The European sovereign debt crisis stands as the latest in a long line of similar crises. Argentina in 2001. Russia in 1998. Mexico in 1994. The list goes back into history. Debt crises are about as natural as earthquakes, but this time there is something different — and possibly more dangerous. The European...

"The Federal Reserve, amid persistent worries about Europe's sovereign debt crisis, last week quietly approved the extension of a crisis-lending program that allows the European Central Bank to tap the U.S. for dollars, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said. The Fed's dollar-lending agreements with the ECB—as well as the central banks of England, Canada, Japan and Switzerland—were scheduled to expire Aug. 1. The Fed and other central banks haven't yet disclosed renewal of the agreements, known as swap lines..."

A day after the Senate passed its version of a sweeping financial overhaul bill, the banking industry fired a warning shot at Washington -- and anyone looking to buy a house -- that rules restricting banks' use of derivatives may crimp an already vulnerable housing recovery. Strongly hinting that average Joes could become collateral damage as a result of Congress' hard-line approach to regulating banks, Wall Street warned that the cost of home ownership could surge as a result of rules that prevent banks from using a form of derivatives called swaps, which help banks hedge against interest-rate risk and...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Open Market Commitee authorized Monday the reopening of a dollar swap facility with the Bank of Japan, the Fed announced Monday. The program is similar to the arrangements established yesterday by the Fed and a group of five central banks including the European Central Bank to make sure that European banks have access to dollars if needed. The swap lines were authorized by the Federal Open Market Committee through Jan. 2011.

...While the Federal Reserve may say these swap lines are necessary "to help improve liquidity conditions in U.S. dollar funding markets and to prevent the spread of strains to other markets and financial centers", NIA recognizes that this is nothing more than another transfer of wealth from the American middle class to bankers around the world through inflation. This program was originally enacted in 2008 when the Federal Reserve loaned $582.8 billion to foreign central banks without any disclosure of which central banks got the money. NIA believes it is unconstitutional for the Federal Reserve to make loans to foreign...

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managed $15 billion of bond sales for Greece after arranging a currency swap that allowed the government to hide the extent of its deficit. more at link.

Verbotten. story here.

That's a video that everyone that cares about the future of this nation should watch carefully. It's Democratic Rep Alan Grayson from Florida grilling Fed Chairman Bernanke about something called "liquidity swaps". Ask one thousand people what a liqudity swap is and I doubt more than one will have heard of it. All one thousand will have no experience trading them. That's because a "liquidity swap" is something only central bankers trade. That should scare everyone.

So is that it? Is the downturn over? After bouncing off of 6500, or more than half its peak value, and with Citigroup briefly breaking $1, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has rallied back more than 1200 points. So, is it safe to go back in the water? Best to figure out what went wrong first -- what I like to call a bear-raid extraordinaire.The Dow clearly got a boost from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's new and improved plan, announced on Monday, to rid our banks of those nasty toxic assets. The idea is to form a "Public-Private Investment Fund"...

Credit-default-swap traders may need a shorter leash. LIQUIDATION. A GOOD SOAKING. PLENTY OF TEARS. It is real wet out there in the markets. Given all the known big-picture reasons for this drenching, does it makes sense to continue enabling the folks who make and sell umbrellas to force it to rain at will? The people with a stake in umbrella prices who are able to trigger a downpour are the traders who bid up credit-default swaps on individual companies, whether they own their debt or not, and short the stock. In combination, these actions feed signals into the market that...

<p>The U.S. government rescued giant insurer American International Group in part because its collapse would dramatically hurt European banks, a senior Democratic lawmaker said on Thursday.</p> <p>The U.S. government has bailed out AIG three times since Sept. 16 and committed about $180 billion to keep the insurer alive and doing business.</p>

Any honest assessment must include the role that credit-default swaps have played in this mess: it’s the elephant in the room, the $30 trillion market that people do not want to talk about. C.D.S.’s have already figured prominently in taxpayer bailouts. The $150 billion rescue of the American International Group, for example, came about because of swaps the insurer had written on mortgage securities. And the $100 billion taxpayer backstop handed to Bank of America on Jan. 16 had a good bit to do with soured credit-default swaps that the bank inherited when it acquired Merrill Lynch. “Credit-default swaps written...

Federal Reserve Board data show that: _ More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions. _ Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year. _ Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

Abstract: Five of the world's richest hedge fund managers, including George Soros, the man who the broke the Bank of England, have been called to account by US politicians for their role in the collapse of the global financial system. The quintet – including John Paulson, who made $3.7bn (£2.49bn) last year betting against the US mortgage market – were grilled over their roles in buying unregulated derivatives products, which some politicians believe contributed to the financial markets' meltdown. The men, who each earned more than $1bn each last year, were called to account by Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, who...

Reforms are defusing the danger in the credit-default swap market. AS THE GLOBAL CREDIT CRISIS GRINDS ON WITHOUT seeming relief, worries grow that a mishap in the once obscure credit-default swap market could trigger an even more lethal financial meltdown. ..... It's easy to understand why credit-default swaps, which have been called financial weapons of mass destruction, can engender hysteria. These quasi-insurance policies allow buyers to insure all manner of debt instruments, including corporate and sovereign-nation bonds, various bond indexes and securitizations, against any credit losses from defaults. Demand for them grew explosively during the past decade's credit boom. According...