Ekonomi, värt att veta.

[tomas]

The Independent reportern Robert Fisk (en som har lite "koll") som skapat en hel del "turbulens" med sina artiklar på sistone, tror nog att han har rätt i det han skriver/säger, iofs finns mycket starka intressen för att förhindra detta.

Robert Fisk on the Gulf 'ditching the dollar' in oil trade	DQ

The demise of the dollar,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html

The demise of the dollar
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
By Robert Fisk

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading.



Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars.

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.......mera

-Tomas

[tomas]

Lite mera trist, men eventuellt kanske mera "matnyttigt" än vad man hittar i våra media,

---

Bob Chapman en gammal räv som har järnkoll på verkligheten IMO,

Failed Economic Policies and Rising Unemployment in the United States of America,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15580

Failed Economic Policies and Rising Unemployment in the United States of America
by Bob Chapman

This past week the BLS released the September unemployment statistics and they worsened as usual, as America enjoys its recovery.

U-1–Those unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force was 5.4%.

U-2-Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the labor force was 6.8%.

U-3-Total unemployed, as a percentage of the civilian labor force, the official unemployment rate, 9.8%.

U-4-Discouraged workers 10.2%.

U-5-Total unemployed plus discharged workers, plus marginally attached workers 11.1%.

U-6-Total unemployed as a percent of the civilian labor force 17%.
 
If the birth/death ratio is removed, U-6 is in reality 21.3% total US unemployment. The estimate is that 824,000, more jobs may be extracted from the payroll count for the 12-months ended next March. Such a revision would be the biggest since 1991. The BLS is underestimating job losses deliberately and has been for a long time. That would mean September’s loss would be some 300,000 not 263,000.

Such a revision would put job losses not at 4.8 million but 5.6 million jobs.........mera

10,000 apply for 90 factory jobs,
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20091008/NEWS01/910080326/GE++10+000+applications+for+90+factory+jobs

10,000 apply for 90 factory jobs
By Jere Downs - October 8, 2009

In the latest sign of weakness in Louisville-area employment, about 10,000 people applied over three days for 90 jobs building washing machines at General Electric for about $27,000 per year and hefty benefits.

The jobs dangle medical, eye care, prescription and dental benefit packages, as well as pension, disability, tuition assistance and more, said GE spokeswoman Kim Freeman. And despite the recession, no union workers have been laid off from Appliance Park since the company negotiated lower wages with workers in 2005.......mera

Commercial Real Estate: The Shoe Dropped In California,
(företagsfastigheter, nästa stora i görningen)
http://www.businessinsider.com/commercial-real-estate-the-shoe-dropped-in-california-2009-10

---

Den eftersatta infrastrukturen, (trailer från history channel)

The Crumbling of America	DQ

Mera runt Robert Fisk och vad han skrev, från olika håll,

Oil no longed traded in Dollars? Deficit Spending, Printing, Monetizing Debt, The Dollars Demise	DQ

Gerald Celente - Economic Collapse	DQ

Max Keiser US Dollar is Finished	DQ

OCTOBER 09 ECONOMIC CRASH EXPECTED !!! GLOBAL RECOVERY NOT GONNA HAPPEN !!! BANK HOLIDAY	DQ

-Tomas

[tomas]

Lite om Neil Barofsky nya rapport om TARP och dess användning, (troubled asset relief fund)
(Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general to the Troubled Assets Relief Program)

---

Where Oh Where Has Our Little TARP Gone?	DQ

Wall Street Bailout	DQ

SIGTARP Neil Barofsky Discusses New Report with Wolf Blitzer	DQ

$23,7 Trillion är $23,7 Billioner på svenska,
http://www.google.se/#hl=sv&q=bloomberg+23.7+trillion

-Tomas

[tomas]

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/economy/story/77791.html

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Sunday, November 1, 2009

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman's failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion," said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who's proposed a massive overhaul of the nation's banks. "This is fraud and should be prosecuted."......mera

Goldman left foreign investors holding the subprime bag,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/economy/story/77844.html

Goldman left foreign investors holding the subprime bag

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, November 3, 2009

NEW YORK — Inside the thick Goldman Sachs investment circular were the details of a secret, $2 billion deal channeled through a Caribbean tax haven.

The Sept. 26, 2006, document offered sophisticated U.S. and European investors an opportunity to buy into a pool of supposedly high-grade bonds backed by residential, commercial and student loans. The transaction was registered through a shell company in the Cayman Islands.

Few of the potential investors knew it, but the ratings of many of the mortgage securities hid their true risks and, in some cases, Goldman's descriptions exaggerated their quality.

The Cayman offering — one of perhaps dozens made through the British territory — occurred as Goldman began to ditch the subprime mortgage business before the U.S. housing market collapsed under an avalanche of homeowner defaults.

In all, Goldman sold more than $57 billion in risky mortgage-backed securities during a 14-month period in 2006 and 2007, including nearly $39 billion issued from mortgages it purchased. Meanwhile, the firm peddled billions of dollars in complex deals, many of them tied to subprime mortgages, in the Caymans and other offshore locations.,,,,,mera

-Tomas

[tomas]

Kolla in den här videon,
Titta noga på Al Gore's ansiktsutryck när dom kommer till Enron's storskurk Ken Lay en bit in i videon,


Al Gores lies Exposed By Congress,
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=8499


Det som gäller för USA ekonomiskt när det gäller det som dom pratar om gäller också för Australien, Kanada och Europa, och som jag ser det borde man åtminstone kika på ClimateGate.
Om man nu bara använder den där gråklumpen för en sekund så kan man undra varför miljön skulle bli bättre genom att tvinga iväg den tillverkande industrin med stor arbetslöshet som följd till alla de delar som har sämre eller ingen lagstiftning alls på området för det blir helt klart konsekvensen av detta, varav en borde vara ökade utsläpp och nedsmutsning.

Finns lite att läsa om ClimateGate i den här tråden,
http://www.scooterforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,127.0.html


-Tomas

[tomas]

Huffingtonpost - EU, IMF Revolt: Greece, Iceland, Latvia May Lead the Way,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/eu-imf-revolt-greece-icel_b_389409.html

Bloomberg - Food Stamps Go to a Record 37.2 Million, USDA Says,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aXv9ILnj1fkM

Bloomberg - U.S. Foreclosures to Reach Record 3.9 Million in 2009,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20603037&sid=a6aLuu9zxbcM

CBS - U.S. National Debt Tops Debt Limit,
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/16/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5987341.shtml


-Tomas

[tomas]

Jim Rogers - UK in Big Trouble, Obama is an Economic Illiterate,
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=9397

---

America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6962632/America-slides-deeper-into-depression-as-Wall-Street-revels.html

America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 6:35PM GMT 10 Jan 2010


History repeating itself? President Obama has been accused by some economists of making the same mistakes policymakers in the US made in the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, pictured  Photo: AP  

December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began.

The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3pc. That is the one that matters.

Wall Street rallied. Bulls hope that weak jobs data will postpone monetary tightening: a silver lining in every catastrophe, or perhaps a further exhibit of market infantilism.

The home foreclosure guillotine usually drops a year or so after people lose their job, and exhaust their savings. The local sheriff will escort them out of the door, often with some sympathy –– just like the police in 1932, mostly Irish Catholics who tithed 1pc of their pay for soup kitchens.

Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over 300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody's Economy.com expects another 2.4m homes to go this year. Taken together, this looks awfully like Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath....mera

---

What Is The True Unemployment Number?
http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/blogs/investorcentric/2010/01/what-is-true-unemployment-number.html

What Is The True Unemployment Number?
Monday, January 11, 2010

The US Bureau of Labor reports an unchanged unemployment rate of 10% for December, but just how accurate is this number? When we add the pushed-aside category of unemployed people who have given up looking for work and the involuntary part-time workers to the equation we arrive at a much more realistic figure, and it’s not a pretty picture. See the following post from Expected Returns.

This is a very weak unemployment report as every important qualitative measure of unemployment showed further weakness. There is no recovery based on the data. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:...mera

---




-Tomas

[tomas]

Har inte skrivit i den här tråden på ett tag, inte för att det saknas "material" men bara för att det är rätt deprimerande.

Men här kommer en artikel i alla fall,
Bloomberg - Rigged-Market Theory Scores a Perfect Quarter,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=ax0kTsl0dBXw

I ämnet från en google sökning,
http://www.google.se/#hl=sv&source=hp&q=high+speed+trading

-Tomas

[tomas]

Ser rätt tufft ut.

Unemployment Benefits: The 99ers,

Unemployment Benefits: The 99ers	DQ

The REAL unemployment rate is 17.1%, 18.6% or 23% and rising. BLS makes 366,000 jobs disappear,
http://www.examiner.com/unemployment-in-rochester/the-real-unemployment-rate-is-17-1-18-6-or-23-and-rising-bls-makes-366-000-jobs-disappear

..........When both discouraged workers and the underemployed are considered in the unemployment rate, you end up with the U6 rate, or the “real” unemployment rate. That rate increased from 16.7% to 17.1% in September.........mera

7 banks closed in Fla., Ga., Ill., Kan., Ariz.
Regulators close 7 banks in Fla., Ga., Ill., Kan., Ariz.; 139 US bank failures this year,
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/7-banks-closed-in-Fla-Ga-Ill-apf-1135619637.html?x=0

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators on Friday shut down a total of seven banks in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas and Arizona, lifting to 139 the number of U.S. banks that have fallen this year as soured loans have mounted and the economy has sputtered.....mera


-Tomas

[tomas]

CNBC - Martin Weiss U.S. Ranks 33rd Out Of 47 Nations For Credit Risk,
(reklam i början)
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=1906604265

About 1 in 7 in U.S. Receive Food Stamps,
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/05/03/about-1-in-7-americans-receive-food-stamps/


-Tomas

[tomas]

Deppad?
Ingen uppmuntrande lyssning, så skippa detta.

----

En intressant "inlaga" om de nu pågående ekonomiska problemen i världen.
Är beredd att hålla med, och "rynka" nu inte på näsan åt RT som enligt min mening för vad den är värd efter att ägnat många timmar varje dag (under många år) åt vad som händer i världen så håller dom numera god klass och man hittar mycket info som inte återfinns någon annanstans.

Viss "upprepning" av innehåll mellan klippen, men väl värda att lyssna på alla tre.

Gerald Celente RT America - 03 November 2011

Gerald Celente - The Gary Null Show -2011.11.02

Gerald Celente - Talk Radio Europe, the evening show with Lisa Grant - 01 Nov 2011

Men våra Svenska media då?
Tja dom "faller" under kategorin som jag skrivit om här tidigare som jag ser det,
http://www.scooterforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,136.0.html

Som alltid, använd eget sunt förnuft.


-Tomas

[tomas]

Några biljoner dollar här och några biljoner där, snart talar vi om en hygglig "slant"


America's Next TARP Model - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,
(ett roligt klipp väl värt att se, om hur $700 miljarder blev $7700 miljarder)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-december-1-2011/america-s-next-tarp-model

Mera info om man är intresserad,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

Dvs, 7,7 ggr. bilden nedan omsatt i $100 sedlar
Referens personen i nedre västra hörnet.


(svenska biljon = trillion på engelska
svenska miljard = billion på engelska)


-Tomas

[tomas]

En liten ögonbryns höjare,

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1&src=twr

Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
By GREG SMITH
Published: March 14, 2012



TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.

Goldman Sachs lost 98% of Gaddafi's $1.3bn investment,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/31/goldman-sachs-libya-investment

Goldman Sachs lost 98% of Gaddafi's $1.3bn investment
Guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 May 2011 17.31 BST Tom Bawden

As compensation Goldman Sachs offered to turn Gaddafi into one of its top investors, the Wall Street Journal reports.


Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York. The bank invested Gadddafi's money to buy options in currencies and shares amid turmoil in the markets. Photograph Lucas Jackson/Reuters

A bitter rift has opened up between the world's most powerful bank and one of its most fearsome dictators after Goldman Sachs invested $1.3bn (£790m) of Colonel Gaddafi's money – and lost virtually all of it.

According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Goldman offered to make Gaddafi one of its biggest investors as compensation for losing 98% of the money the Wall Street firm invested on behalf of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA). This left the $53bn Gaddifi-controlled sovereign wealth fund, which elsewhere has stakes in companies such as Financial Times-owner Pearson and BP, with just $25.1m of the money it entrusted to Goldman.

The fund, which has soared in value in recent years on the back of Libya's growing oil wealth, was frozen by the EU and United Nations in February because of its close links with the Gaddafi family.

Under the terms of the proposed compensation deal, which was never consummated, LIA would have received $5bn worth of preferred Goldman shares, in return for a $3.7bn investment, allowing the fund to recoup its $1.3bn of losses.

Goldman lost the money – which it invested between January and June of 2008 in a range of options to buy currencies and shares at a future date for a stipulated price – after the collapse of Lehman Brothers panicked the markets and caused the underlying securities to crash in value.

The investments, in a basket of currencies and the shares of six energy, utility and banking companies including Citigroup, amounted to a bet on a rise in the underlying value of the assets. However, since their values plummeted they became virtually worthless.

In one of the most extraordinary examples of the fallout from the financial crisis Mustafa Zarti, then LIA's deputy chairman, summoned Goldman's North African chief, Youssef Kabbaj and some colleagues, to a meeting in July 2008 to discuss the losses. It is understood that Zarti was so angry he behaved "like a raging bull", cursing and threatening the Goldman staff to such an extent there are rumours the bank arranged for security to protect its staff until they left Libya the next day. The LIA went on to demand restitution and issued vague threats of legal action, the Wall Street Journal reported.

As relations between Goldman and Gaddafi became increasingly strained, the Wall Street firm made a total of three separate compensation offers to invest in the group on attractive terms between May and June of 2009, including the deal involving preferred shares. Another proposal would have given the LIA unsecured debt in Goldman, promising a stream of payments that would eventually have repaid the losses.

Over the next two years, discussions on these and a series of other compensation proposals were discussed by LIA and top-level Goldman staff – chairman Lloyd Blankfein, finance head David Viniar and European chief Michael Sherwood. However, they were unable to agree a solution and talks are thought to have eventually petered out last summer.

The other companies in which Goldman invested on behalf of the LIA were Italian bank UniCredit, Spanish bank Santander, German insurance group Allianz, the energy company Electricite de France and Eni, the Italian energy company.

LIA was set up in Tripoli in 2007. As of June last year, its other investments included $293m in 10 HSBC cash accounts, $110m invested in a private equity fund managed by Royal Bank of Scotland and $171m with JP Morgan Chase. About $19bn of LIA's deposits were held by Libyan and Middle Eastern banks, including the Central Bank of Libya, the Arab Banking Corporation and the British Arab Commercial Bank. Some $5.2bn of the fund was invested directly in shares and $3.4bn in bonds. Other company stakes included General Electric, Vivendi and Deutsche Telekom.

How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt,
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,676634,00.html

How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt


Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou speaking at a conference in January.

Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country's already bloated deficit.

Greeks aren't very welcome in the Rue Alphones Weicker in Luxembourg. It's home to Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office. The number crunchers there are deeply annoyed with Athens. Investigative reports state that important data "cannot be confirmed" or has been requested but "not received."

Creative accounting took priority when it came to totting up government debt.Since 1999, the Maastricht rules threaten to slap hefty fines on euro member countries that exceed the budget deficit limit of three percent of gross domestic product. Total government debt mustn't exceed 60 percent.

The Greeks have never managed to stick to the 60 percent debt limit, and they only adhered to the three percent deficit ceiling with the help of blatant balance sheet cosmetics. One time, gigantic military expenditures were left out, and another time billions in hospital debt. After recalculating the figures, the experts at Eurostat consistently came up with the same results: In truth, the deficit each year has been far greater than the three percent limit. In 2009, it exploded to over 12 percent.

Now, though, it looks like the Greek figure jugglers have been even more brazen than was previously thought. "Around 2002 in particular, various investment banks offered complex financial products with which governments could push part of their liabilities into the future," one insider recalled, adding that Mediterranean countries had snapped up such products.

Greece's debt managers agreed a huge deal with the savvy bankers of US investment bank Goldman Sachs at the start of 2002. The deal involved so-called cross-currency swaps in which government debt issued in dollars and yen was swapped for euro debt for a certain period -- to be exchanged back into the original currencies at a later date.

Fictional Exchange Rates

Such transactions are part of normal government refinancing. Europe's governments obtain funds from investors around the world by issuing bonds in yen, dollar or Swiss francs. But they need euros to pay their daily bills. Years later the bonds are repaid in the original foreign denominations.

But in the Greek case the US bankers devised a special kind of swap with fictional exchange rates. That enabled Greece to receive a far higher sum than the actual euro market value of 10 billion dollars or yen. In that way Goldman Sachs secretly arranged additional credit of up to $1 billion for the Greeks.

This credit disguised as a swap didn't show up in the Greek debt statistics. Eurostat's reporting rules don't comprehensively record transactions involving financial derivatives. "The Maastricht rules can be circumvented quite legally through swaps," says a German derivatives dealer.

In previous years, Italy used a similar trick to mask its true debt with the help of a different US bank. In 2002 the Greek deficit amounted to 1.2 percent of GDP. After Eurostat reviewed the data in September 2004, the ratio had to be revised up to 3.7 percent. According to today's records, it stands at 5.2 percent.

At some point Greece will have to pay up for its swap transactions, and that will impact its deficit. The bond maturities range between 10 and 15 years. Goldman Sachs charged a hefty commission for the deal and sold the swaps on to a Greek bank in 2005.

The bank declined to comment on the controversial deal. The Greek Finance Ministry did not respond to a written request for comment.

SEC Charges Goldman Sachs With Subprime Fraud (Updated),
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/04/sec_charges_goldman_sachs_with.html

SEC Charges Goldman Sachs With Subprime Fraud (Updated)
4/16/10 at 11:16 AM
By Jessica Pressler



This morning, the SEC filed securities-fraud charges against Goldman Sachs and a vice-president at the company, London-based Fabrice Tourre. In the complaint, they allege that in 2007, Tourre allowed hedge-funder John Paulson to structure a collateralized debt obligation called Abacus, made up of crappy subprime-mortgages securities he handpicked himself, and that the firm then turned around and marketed Abacus to its clients, without mentioning that Paulson had created the CDO specifically in order to buy credit-default insurance against it.

To aid in the deception, the suit alleges, Goldman brought in a firm called ACA Management, an independent company of the sort that firms hire to select assets for CDOs, and told them that Paulson was helping pick the securities because he was investing in the CDO, rather than betting against it. From the complaint:

Tourre allegedly knew of Paulson & Co.’s undisclosed short interest and role in the collateral selection process. In addition, he misled ACA into believing that Paulson & Co. invested approximately $200 million in the equity of ABACUS, indicating that Paulson & Co.’s interests in the collateral selection process were closely aligned with ACA’s interests. In reality, however, their interests were sharply conflicting.

Paulson, who has not been charged with anything, made billions of dollars off credit-default swaps when the housing market collapsed. According to the SEC, investors in ABACUS lost more than $1 billion on their side of the trade. “The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple,” said Robert Khuzami, director of the division of enforcement. Like the abacus itself.

Antagligen ett av de "finaste" och mest framgångsrika bolagen i avancerad "gam kapitalism" som står att finna idag.
Det som känns lite märkligt med avskedsbrevet ovan är att det ens publicerades.





-Tomas
 

[tomas]

Deprimerings varning på denna,
Lite ögonbrynshöjande utvecklingar på den monetära fronten i världen.

BRICS summit: Pacts signed to promote trade in local currencies,
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_brics-summit-pacts-signed-to-promote-trade-in-local-currencies_1668990

Russia And India Will Trade In Local Currencies In 3 Years,
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/321337/20120329/russia-india-brics-currency.htm

10 Reasons The Reign Of The Dollar Is About To End,
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-26/home/31239106_1_currency-international-trade-dollar

Det här är väl bakslaget mot den aggressiva framstöten som gjorts de senaste åren för global kontroll från väst.

Många tror att IMF och Världsbanken är "snälla", men som jag ser det så är inte så fallet, vad dom under lång tid pysslat med i ex.vis Afrika har nu flyttat hit till Europa med Grekland som parad exempel.

Så varför säger jag då det?

Om någon orkar se om eländet så är John Perkins en bra start, med intervjuer/föreläsning om tidigare aktiviteter nedan, postade tidigare en gång i den här tråden.

As Chief Economist at a major international consulting firm, John Perkins advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. He worked directly with heads of state and CEOs of major companies. His books on economics and geo-politics have sold more than 1 million copies, spent many months on the New York Times and other bestseller lists, and are published in over 30 languages.

John Perkins Part 1-3 at the VFP National Convention in Seattle, Washington, August 11, 2006,
Del 1),

John Perkins, Part 1 at the VFP National Convention

Del 2),

John Perkins, Part 2 at the VFP National Convention

Del 3),

John Perkins, Part 3 at the VFP National Convention

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6qSmNzuBaM

-Tomas