The Thailand expat forum for Travel, Lifestyle and Fun.

mad_dog · 29-06-2007, 11:48 PM

Pension plans linked to bogus hedge funds are now a major issue for the American economy. However as much as I despise the entity that is America it has the most robust economy in the world. Its mixture of economic liberalism and barrel of a gun imperialism garantees its success.

kerux · 30-06-2007, 06:13 AM

The Worldwide Crack Up Boom, According to Ludwig Von Mises

Housing's 'softened much more than is being reported'

O.C. real estate consultant John Burns says: "The housing market has softened much more than is being reported. We have been advising our retainer clients for more than one year about misleading national sales information, both with the Existing Home Sales and New Home Sales data. We are now going public with our concerns because we are concerned that policy makers are relying on national data to conclude that the housing market correction has not been severe."

OCRegister blog: Lansner on Real Estate - post: Housing's 'softened much more than is being reported'

The latest data on housing sales showed that the inventory of unsold homes climbed to 4.4 million in May, yet another record. The current inventory would be more than a full year of housing sales in the mid-nineties, before the housing bubble began to take off. There is also a record inventory of new homes for sale. Economists usually expect that excess supply leads to a drop in prices, and in this case, there is a considerable excess supply of houses.

Will Your House Do the NASDAQ Meltdown?

Savings rate hits 47-year low

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story...4790%2C00.html

Strongest economy in the world?

sabang · 30-06-2007, 01:52 PM

In terms of wealth disparity, the UK resembles the US more and more. There is an increasing trend of middle class resentment in the UK that I am not sure existes in the US. But it is ironic that so many middle class Brit's, affluent on paper and probably considered rich in most countries, actually have very little disposable income. No wonder so many of them are seeing the light and moving overseas, leaving the Urban poor, working classes and the Rich to enjoy the English climate.

This from The Guardian-
The death of deference

When the Mail trains its guns on the super-rich, you can see how widely resentment has spread

John Harris
Saturday June 30, 2007
The Guardian

By mid morning, the newsstands made for a strange spectacle. Quoting the private equity king and Gordon Brown confidant Ronald Cohen, the Daily Mail's splash was "Wealth divide 'could lead to rioting'". Soon enough, the London Evening Standard was turning up the volume: "Super-rich pay no income tax", said its front page, straplined, "Revealed: how loopholes rob Britain of £2bn".
At the luxurious end of the magazine racks, meanwhile, there lay more intrigue. In Tatler, editor Geordie Greig wrote a three-page polemic bemoaning what he called the superclass, "overtaking you in the race for the best schools, [and] overpaying for the house you presumed was yours". And another rabble-rousing flourish: "That old sense of living in a country where fair play and an honest day's work led people to feel they could get what they strove for has been destroyed by dizzying extremes in wealth." To the barricades then, Jocasta!
One could fantasise about the arrival of social democracy in the Kensington offices of Associated Newspapers or in the polo fields of the home counties, but let's be sensible. In both cases, just below the surface lurks a sniffy xenophobia related to that ugly part of white London's collective psyche that used to bubble up in hostile murmurings about "rich Arabs" and reflective of the idea that wealth in non-British hands makes for unedifying scenes. Russians in particular are routinely portrayed as being venal and vulgar; the kind of people who, to quote a Tatler anecdote, will pay £145m for a £95m yacht with a grunt of "I like it and I wannit". Moreover, whatever your nationality, to be female and moneyed is to run the risk of real hatred. In late 2006, for instance, a piece in the Mail focused on "the obscenely lavish lifestyles of the women married to the City's new super-rich", pouring forth its ire under the lovely headline "So rich you want to slap them".
That said, strip out the prejudice and you can make out something more interesting - and perhaps politically seismic. The Mail, I would wager, is running pieces on the super-rich not only to channel the very metropolitan fury of its staff but also because they chime with economic resentments felt in middle England, and not just among the middle classes. There, millions are uneasy about an unresolved contradiction of the Thatcher legacy: the letting loose of a no-holds-barred City culture and the spread of popular affluence were always going to collide. Put another way, if the Mail's property-owning democracy includes both hedge fund player and plumber, hadn't they better be seen to play by the same rules?
The former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore last week made his own contribution to the brouhaha, concluding that ensuring the super-rich pay their way via the tax system was not a sensible option, but encouraging them to ape the philanthropy of the 19th century nobility might be. "It is interesting," he said, "that the Victorian lower middle classes started to christen their children with the names of the great English aristocratic families - Stanley, Russell, Howard, Percy." Doing so, he claimed, was a matter of the kind of "respect and social aspiration" that would be reawakened if the rich made a few more charitable donations. "It would be a sign that our modern aristocracy of wealth was succeeding if people started calling their children Cohen, Branson, Green or Buffini," said Moore.
Who wouldn't smirk at that kind of guff? Moore's "respect and social aspiration" is what most of us would identify as dull deference - at an all-time low, thankfully, and threatened with extinction by an upward-focused egalitarianism that few saw coming. john.harris[at]guardian.co.uk

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The death of deference

kerux · 01-07-2007, 05:48 AM

BIS warns of Great Depression dangers from credit spree

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Last Updated: 9:02am BST 25/06/2007

The Bank for International Settlements, the world's most prestigious financial body, has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fuelled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy more vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump than generally understood.

Money | Telegraph

Milkman · 10-08-2007, 07:05 AM

Something may be brewing.

Quote:

Widening Credit Squeeze?

With the home-mortgage crunch roiling stock markets, economists are beginning to worry about America’s credit-card debt.

By Susanna Schrobsdorff
Newsweek
Updated: 1:03 p.m. PT Aug 9, 2007

Aug. 9, 2007 - Kristin Schantz, a 26-year-old manager for a human-resources company in Kenosha, Wis., got some unpleasant news in the mail last week. In a form letter, Capital One told her the interest rate on her credit card was about to almost double—she’d been bumped up from a fixed 8.9 percent rate to a "variable rate that equals the prime rate plus 6.9 percent"—or about 15.8 percent. Schantz, who says she’s “never late with payments,” is irate. The letter blamed rising interest rates across the economy for the decision.

For now, consumers can dump Capital One and move their balances to other credit cards with better rates—as Schantz has done. But because Capital One is the largest independent issuer of credit cards, its move may signal that similar rate increases are on the way from other credit-card providers. “It could definitely be a harbinger of things to come,” says Aaron Smith, a senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “They may have assumed more risk than other companies—but I would be very surprised if it was an isolated move.”
That raises an important question: is Cap One’s rate increase the start of a widening credit squeeze? If so, it would be a direct result of the home-mortgage crunch, currently roiling financial markets worldwide. “We’re not in the same world as we were five or six months ago,” says Keith Leggett, senior economist at the American Bankers Association. “There is a growing risk aversion among market participants.”

As home prices across the United States have stagnated or fallen and consumers have tapped out the equity in their homes, banks have gotten more cautious about lending and have tightened their standards for new mortgages and home-equity loans. As a result, more Americans are shifting debt onto credit cards. This week, the Federal Reserve said non-real estate consumer-credit usage rose at about twice the rate than economists had predicted for June. And revolving credit usage (which includes credit-card debt) was up by 8.7 percent at an annual rate for the month. That boost helped bring total consumer credit, both revolving and not revolving (like auto loans), to a record $2.459 trillion.

Entire & Link: Is Economy Facing Widening Credit Squeeze? - Newsweek Business - MSNBC.com

mrsquirrel · 10-08-2007, 07:55 AM

Quote:

Mortgage concerns hit US markets

Traders are trying to work out if the current problems will continue

US shares have tumbled amid fears that problems in the mortgage market may prompt a global credit crunch. The main Dow Jones index fell 387.18 points, or 2.8%, to 13,270.68. The S&P shed 3% and the Nasdaq lost 2.2%.
European indexes had slumped earlier after BNP Paribas froze three funds saying the market for some of the assets they contained had disappeared.
At the same time, the European Central Bank said it was pumping money into the banking market to boost liquidity.
There also were reports that the US Federal Reserve was doing something similar to ensure that there was enough cash available for banks to use.
Analysts said that the markets would remain volatile in the near future.
"Markets are taking this latest news seriously with the risk appetite on the back foot," said David Corbell, analyst at IFR Markets.
Spreading out
The latest trigger for the slump was the announcement by BNP Paribas that it was suspending the three investment funds worth 2bn euros (£1.35bn) because of problems with the US sub-prime mortgage sector.
Sub-prime lenders offer loans to consumers with a poor credit history.

You're looking at the foundation of a marketplace that has imploded somewhat

Steve Goldman, Weeden & Co

In recent months, the number of loan defaults has increased because of higher interest rates, raising concerns that the wobble in the housing market will affect other parts of the economy and then start hurting other nations.
The worry is that should banks make losses then it would hurt their earnings and their profitability making them less willing to fund the takeovers and buyouts that have underpinned much of the stock markets' recent gains.
The recent collapse of American Home Mortgage, the 10th largest lender in the US, has intensified those concerns.
"You're looking at the foundation of a marketplace that has imploded somewhat," said Steve Goldman, an analyst at Weeden & Co.
Tighter times
At the same time, banks have suddenly started charging significantly more for the money they lend to each other, signalling that they are looking to limit their risks, analysts said.
In response, the European Central Bank (ECB) said on Thursday that it had pumped 95bn euros into the eurozone banking market to allay fears about a credit crunch and lack of liquidity.

The conditions for the marketplace working through these issues are good

President George W Bush

The move represented the ECB's single largest intervention in the banking sector since the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001.
Calling it a "fine-tuning operation", the ECB made the money in the form of loans, an offer taken up by 49 banks and other financial institutions.
In the US, the Federal Reserve, also was reported to have taken similar action, pumping about $24bn (£12bn) into the US banking system.
Analysts said that a credit crunch - when it becomes harder for banks, companies and consumers to get access to loans and cash to run their operations - was a serious occurrence that could lead to a recession.
Soothing words?
The declines in the US markets came despite attempts by President George W Bush to calm market fears.
Speaking after a meeting with his top economic advisers, President Bush acknowledged there had been "disquiet" on Wall Street over the housing slump.
But President Bush said he believed the markets were set for a "soft landing".
President Bush said he expected the markets to focus increasingly on the underlying health of the global economy and robust US prospects.
"The underpinnings of our economy are strong," he said, adding that second-quarter growth had been strong, while both inflation and unemployment remained low.
"So the conditions for the marketplace working through these issues are good. My hope is that the market, if it functions normally, will be able to yield a soft landing."

BBC NEWS | Business | Mortgage concerns hit US markets

BBC

Quote:

Last Updated: Monday, 6 August 2007, 23:12 GMT 00:12 UK

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version
US lender on brink of bankruptcy

American Home says it was the tenth biggest retail mortgage lender

US lender American Home Mortgage has filed for bankruptcy, after laying off the majority of its staff last week. The demise of one of the country's largest independent home loan providers is the latest case of a business suffering from the US housing slump.
Despite these worries, Wall Street rallied on Monday with leading share indices closing up sharply.
The benchmark Dow Jones industrial average closed up 286.87 points, or 2.1%, at 13,468.78.
Market volatility
The strong gains reflected continued volatility on the markets, the Dow Jones having fallen by a similar amount on Friday.
American Home Mortgage's woes are the lastest to afflict the mortgage investment market.
Earlier this year the firm had over seven thousand employees, but by Friday only 750 staff remained.
Repeated interest rate rises have pushed up loan repayments, leading to a rise in defaults and hitting mortgage lenders hard.
While the sub-prime market - the sector that caters for the riskiest borrowers - has been the most obvious to suffer from defaults, it is not alone.
American Home Mortgage offered loans that were categorised between prime and sub-prime.
It also provided the less common mortgage with adjustable interest rates. Most US mortgages have fixed rates.
As the firm files Chapter 11 proceedings - the US process to seek bankruptcy protection - Deutsche Bank, Wilmington Trust and JP Morgan Chase are American Home Mortgage's three largest creditors.

BBC NEWS | Business | US lender on brink of bankruptcy

Thormaturge · 19-08-2007, 05:12 PM

Creating jobs by devaluing the Dollar isn't good long-term economics. I recall Sterling being just 1.4 to the $ 1 just few years ago, now it is above $ 2.00 For those who don't understand the implications of this, it makes exports cheaper and imports more expensive, so yes it will create more American jobs, but where does this policy end? Will GWB be prepared to allow the Dollar to become worthless?

Ultimately GWB has turned the whole country into a garage sale. American businesses and other assets which once cost, say, GBP 10,million to buy can now be bought for GBP 7, million with this devaluation. When enough American business has been bought up on the cheap it will be in the interests of the foreign owners to revaulue the currency and let the American people suffer. It will be painful to watch but Treasury bonds might be a good investment just before Hilary takes office next year.

raycarey · 20-08-2007, 01:15 PM

and wasn't it just a few months ago that GWB was touting the 'ownership economy'....why weren't his advisors aware that these 'owners' were in no position to 'own' a mortgage?

or were they, and they just didn't care because it made a good slogan?

sabang · 20-08-2007, 01:55 PM

GWB has turned the worlds biggest creditor nation, under Clinton, into the worlds biggest debtor.
He has presided over a period of unprecedented USD weakness.
Corporate & political corruption scandals thrown in for good measure.
Lost more senior administration people than anyone I can remember.
Small matter of a Lost War.
America's stock has diminished, worldwide.

I obviously underestimated the power of the Presidency.

Now here's the Rub- the people that stick up for him call themselves Conservative.

AntRobertson · 20-08-2007, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sabang

Now here's the Rub- the people that stick up for him call themselves Conservative

And have no sense of irony in professing a fear of a over-spending welfare state under a Democrat Govt.

raycarey · 20-08-2007, 02:18 PM

there are two ways to run the US govt....with taxes or debt.

republicans prefer to pass along the cost to their children.

Milkman · 21-08-2007, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Average Incomes Fell for Most in 2000-5

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: August 21, 2007
Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data shows.

While incomes have been on the rise since 2002, the average income in 2005 was $55,238, still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, analysis of new tax statistics show.
The combined income of all Americans in 2005 was slightly larger than it was in 2000, but because more people were dividing up the national income pie, the average remained smaller. Total adjusted gross income in 2005 was $7.43 trillion, up 3.1 percent from 2000 and 5.8 percent from 2004.

Total income listed on tax returns grew every year after World War II, with a single one-year exception, until 2001, making the five-year period of lower average incomes and four years of lower total incomes a new experience for the majority of Americans born since 1945.

Link and Entire: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/bu...in&oref=slogin

Milkman · 28-08-2007, 03:48 AM

Things are looking up. More hiring in the West. Check out these plumb positions.

Quote:

Want a job? Go West, where ads unanswered

Record low unemployment has created tough conditions for businesses

Ellen Wznick / AP file
John Francis, who owns the McDonald’s in Sidney, Mont., said he tried advertising in the local newspaper and even offered up to $10 an hour to compete with higher-paying oil field jobs. Yet the only calls were from other business owners upset they would have to raise wages, too.

Updated: 3:27 p.m. PT Aug 24, 2007

HELENA, Mont. - The owner of a fast food joint in Montana’s booming oil patch found himself outsourcing the drive-thru window to a Texas telemarketing firm, not because it’s cheaper but because he can’t find workers.

Record low unemployment across parts of the West has created tough working conditions for business owners, who in places are being forced to boost wages or be creative to fill their jobs.

John Francis, who owns the McDonald’s in Sidney, Mont., said he tried advertising in the local newspaper and even offered up to $10 an hour to compete with higher-paying oil field jobs. Yet the only calls were from other business owners upset they would have to raise wages, too. Of course, Francis’ current employees also wanted a pay hike

Entire & Link: Want a job? Go West, where ads unanswered - Stocks & Economy - MSNBC.com

kerux · 01-09-2007, 09:58 AM

What a joke this thread is now.

Leading accountancy firm H&R Block revealed huge losses at its up-for-sale mortgage arm, Option One, and said it was considering a halt on new loans. Reporting a quarterly loss of $302m (£150m), Mark Ernst, chief executive, said: "The loan originations market is in the midst of the most severe dislocation it has seen in years, maybe the most severe since the 1930s."

Leading lender likens US credit crisis to Great Depression | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, in his first public remarks in six weeks, said the central bank will do what's needed to prevent this month's credit market rout from undoing the six-year expansion.

Bernanke Prepared To 'Act' To Stem Credit-Rout

Bush said he will let the Federal Housing Administration, [i.e. the US taxpayer] which insures mortgages for low- and middle-income borrowers, guarantee loans for delinquent borrowers, allowing them to avoid foreclosure and refinance at more favorable rates.

``The market got all excited that Bush will save the world, but the reality is that there are a lot of problems in housing he's not prepared to solve at the moment,'' said Camilla Sutton, co-head of currency strategy at Scotia Capital Inc. in Toronto.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

kerux · 01-09-2007, 10:07 AM

The new currency when the dollar collapses:

Milkman · 13-09-2007, 12:59 AM

Quote:

U.S. incomes lag home values

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
The Associated Press

CHRIS CARLSON / AP
Shawn Talbot bought a condo in Santee, Calif., for $431,000 in 2005. With housing prices tumbling in Southern California, her dream of trading up to a single-family home is in jeopardy.

WASHINGTON — Shawn Talbot and Gerry Woodruff were hoping to stay in their new condominium for about three years before trading up to a single-family home in suburban San Diego.
They paid $431,000 for the three-story condo in 2005 — a hefty price in most markets.
But with home values soaring in Southern California, they figured that it wouldn't take long to build enough equity for a down payment in one of the most expensive housing markets in the nation.
Then housing prices started to tumble, and the dream was in jeopardy.
"I'm not sure we will ever be able to afford a single-family home in San Diego," said Talbot, who works for a trade association.
Much of the nation is in a housing slump, and an Associated Press analysis of new census data provides insight into why: Since 1990, homeowners have faced a growing gap between their incomes and the price of their homes.

Entire: Business & Technology | U.S. incomes lag home values | Seattle Times Newspaper

Quote:

Health-insurance costs up 78 percent in 6 years

By Tony Pugh
McClatchy Newspapers

PREV of NEXT

WASHINGTON — The increasing cost of health insurance is putting coverage out of reach for many small to midsize companies and their workers, even though the rise in premiums this year was the lowest increase since 1999, according to a national survey of employers.
The 6.1 percent increase marked the fourth straight year premium growth has slowed for employer-sponsored coverage, according to the annual survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.
But the news offered little solace to workers, whose wages rose an average of 3.7 percent this year as inflation went up 2.6 percent, the survey said.
Since 2001, family-coverage premiums have jumped 78 percent, while wages have increased 19 percent and inflation 17 percent.
Kaiser says between 1 million and 2 million people join the ranks of the uninsured every year.
In addition, the survey found that among firms offering coverage, 45 percent were very or somewhat likely to increase employees' share of premium costs next year, 37 percent were likely to increase deductibles, 42 percent would probably increase cost-sharing for doctor's-office visits and 41 percent would probably require employees to pay more for prescription drugs.
The rising cost of health insurance has spawned a steady decline in the number of firms that offer it, a rise in the number of uninsured Americans and a generation of workers whose earnings can't keep pace with the cost of coverage.
"The gap between premiums and wages is widening and is actually at its widest point since 2001. That's why people are really feeling the pain," said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser foundation, a nonprofit educational group.
Altman said the modest slowdown in premium growth is likely the result of high profits for insurance companies, solid hospital revenue, lack of expensive new blockbuster drugs and reduced medical spending resulting from greater cost-shifting to patients.
He said history suggests the slower growth of premiums isn't likely to last. "Since we've done little or nothing as a country to deal with the underlying drivers behind rising health-care costs, there's absolutely no reason to believe that these somewhat slower rates of increase are permanent. The really bad news is that we should expect at some point the rate of increases to return again to even higher numbers."
The average cost for family coverage in 2007 is $12,106, up from $11,480 last year. That's more than a year's salary for a full-time minimum-wage earner and about the cost of an economy car, Altman said.
Individual coverage averages $4,479, compared with $4,242 in 2006.

About 60 percent of employers offered health insurance in 2007, similar to 61 percent in 2006, but lower than the 69 percent in 2000.

That decline is driven mostly by smaller firms with three to 199 workers. Among firms with three to nine workers, 45 percent offered health coverage in 2007, compared with 57 percent in 2000. Offer rates among employers with up to 199 workers have fallen from 68 percent in 2000 to 59 percent this year.
While employers pay the bulk of insurance costs, the share paid by covered workers in 2007 was about the same as in previous years: 28 percent for family plans and 16 percent for individual coverage. On average, covered workers pay about $3,281 a year for family insurance and about $694 annually for single coverage.
The survey, released each year as workers begin open enrollment in health plans, is widely considered the nation's best measure of employer-based coverage. It's based on telephone interviews conducted from January to May with officials from more than 3,000 public and private employers. The overall response rate was 49 percent.
About 79 percent of workers are eligible for health benefits at work, and of those, about 82 percent enroll.
But some aren't eligible, due to mandatory waiting periods and other requirements. Ocean Gold Seafoods in Westport, Grays Harbor County, requires its 500 employees to work a minimum of 500 hours per quarter in three of the last four quarters to qualify for health insurance. That leaves about 425 employees, mostly seasonal fisherman, without insurance, said company Vice President Richard Carroll.

Even the company's 75 full-time employees with health insurance have seen their benefits trimmed while their co-pays and deductibles have increased, Carroll said.
Material from The Associated Press and Gannett News Service is included in this report.

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

29-06-2007, 11:48 PM	#521 (permalink)
mad_dog Elite Member Last Online: Today 07:30 PM Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 4,466	Pension plans linked to bogus hedge funds are now a major issue for the American economy. However as much as I despise the entity that is America it has the most robust economy in the world. Its mixture of economic liberalism and barrel of a gun imperialism garantees its success. __________________ They champion falsehood, support the butcher against the victim, the oppressor against the innocent child. May God mete them the punishment they deserve

30-06-2007, 06:13 AM	#522 (permalink)
kerux Suspended from Issues Last Online: 16-09-2007 08:25 AM Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Padded Cell Next to Zundel Posts: 1,510	The Worldwide Crack Up Boom, According to Ludwig Von Mises Housing's 'softened much more than is being reported' O.C. real estate consultant John Burns says: "The housing market has softened much more than is being reported. We have been advising our retainer clients for more than one year about misleading national sales information, both with the Existing Home Sales and New Home Sales data. We are now going public with our concerns because we are concerned that policy makers are relying on national data to conclude that the housing market correction has not been severe." OCRegister blog: Lansner on Real Estate - post: Housing's 'softened much more than is being reported' The latest data on housing sales showed that the inventory of unsold homes climbed to 4.4 million in May, yet another record. The current inventory would be more than a full year of housing sales in the mid-nineties, before the housing bubble began to take off. There is also a record inventory of new homes for sale. Economists usually expect that excess supply leads to a drop in prices, and in this case, there is a considerable excess supply of houses. Will Your House Do the NASDAQ Meltdown? Savings rate hits 47-year low http://business.guardian.co.uk/story...4790%2C00.html Strongest economy in the world? __________________ Please, no more greens and what ever you do, don't throw me in that briar patch. To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

30-06-2007, 01:52 PM	#523 (permalink)
sabang Watching the Wheels Last Online: Today 08:13 PM Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: east of Pattaya Posts: 8,301	In terms of wealth disparity, the UK resembles the US more and more. There is an increasing trend of middle class resentment in the UK that I am not sure existes in the US. But it is ironic that so many middle class Brit's, affluent on paper and probably considered rich in most countries, actually have very little disposable income. No wonder so many of them are seeing the light and moving overseas, leaving the Urban poor, working classes and the Rich to enjoy the English climate. This from The Guardian- The death of deference When the Mail trains its guns on the super-rich, you can see how widely resentment has spread John Harris Saturday June 30, 2007 The Guardian By mid morning, the newsstands made for a strange spectacle. Quoting the private equity king and Gordon Brown confidant Ronald Cohen, the Daily Mail's splash was "Wealth divide 'could lead to rioting'". Soon enough, the London Evening Standard was turning up the volume: "Super-rich pay no income tax", said its front page, straplined, "Revealed: how loopholes rob Britain of £2bn". At the luxurious end of the magazine racks, meanwhile, there lay more intrigue. In Tatler, editor Geordie Greig wrote a three-page polemic bemoaning what he called the superclass, "overtaking you in the race for the best schools, [and] overpaying for the house you presumed was yours". And another rabble-rousing flourish: "That old sense of living in a country where fair play and an honest day's work led people to feel they could get what they strove for has been destroyed by dizzying extremes in wealth." To the barricades then, Jocasta! One could fantasise about the arrival of social democracy in the Kensington offices of Associated Newspapers or in the polo fields of the home counties, but let's be sensible. In both cases, just below the surface lurks a sniffy xenophobia related to that ugly part of white London's collective psyche that used to bubble up in hostile murmurings about "rich Arabs" and reflective of the idea that wealth in non-British hands makes for unedifying scenes. Russians in particular are routinely portrayed as being venal and vulgar; the kind of people who, to quote a Tatler anecdote, will pay £145m for a £95m yacht with a grunt of "I like it and I wannit". Moreover, whatever your nationality, to be female and moneyed is to run the risk of real hatred. In late 2006, for instance, a piece in the Mail focused on "the obscenely lavish lifestyles of the women married to the City's new super-rich", pouring forth its ire under the lovely headline "So rich you want to slap them". That said, strip out the prejudice and you can make out something more interesting - and perhaps politically seismic. The Mail, I would wager, is running pieces on the super-rich not only to channel the very metropolitan fury of its staff but also because they chime with economic resentments felt in middle England, and not just among the middle classes. There, millions are uneasy about an unresolved contradiction of the Thatcher legacy: the letting loose of a no-holds-barred City culture and the spread of popular affluence were always going to collide. Put another way, if the Mail's property-owning democracy includes both hedge fund player and plumber, hadn't they better be seen to play by the same rules? The former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore last week made his own contribution to the brouhaha, concluding that ensuring the super-rich pay their way via the tax system was not a sensible option, but encouraging them to ape the philanthropy of the 19th century nobility might be. "It is interesting," he said, "that the Victorian lower middle classes started to christen their children with the names of the great English aristocratic families - Stanley, Russell, Howard, Percy." Doing so, he claimed, was a matter of the kind of "respect and social aspiration" that would be reawakened if the rich made a few more charitable donations. "It would be a sign that our modern aristocracy of wealth was succeeding if people started calling their children Cohen, Branson, Green or Buffini," said Moore. Who wouldn't smirk at that kind of guff? Moore's "respect and social aspiration" is what most of us would identify as dull deference - at an all-time low, thankfully, and threatened with extinction by an upward-focused egalitarianism that few saw coming. john.harris[at]guardian.co.uk Guardian Unlimited \| Comment is free \| The death of deference __________________ To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

01-09-2007, 09:58 AM	#534 (permalink)
kerux Suspended from Issues Last Online: 16-09-2007 08:25 AM Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Padded Cell Next to Zundel Posts: 1,510	What a joke this thread is now. Leading accountancy firm H&R Block revealed huge losses at its up-for-sale mortgage arm, Option One, and said it was considering a halt on new loans. Reporting a quarterly loss of $302m (£150m), Mark Ernst, chief executive, said: "The loan originations market is in the midst of the most severe dislocation it has seen in years, maybe the most severe since the 1930s." Leading lender likens US credit crisis to Great Depression \| Special reports \| Guardian Unlimited Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, in his first public remarks in six weeks, said the central bank will do what's needed to prevent this month's credit market rout from undoing the six-year expansion. Bernanke Prepared To 'Act' To Stem Credit-Rout Bush said he will let the Federal Housing Administration, [i.e. the US taxpayer] which insures mortgages for low- and middle-income borrowers, guarantee loans for delinquent borrowers, allowing them to avoid foreclosure and refinance at more favorable rates. ``The market got all excited that Bush will save the world, but the reality is that there are a lot of problems in housing he's not prepared to solve at the moment,'' said Camilla Sutton, co-head of currency strategy at Scotia Capital Inc. in Toronto. Bloomberg.com: Worldwide Last edited by kerux : 01-09-2007 at 10:06 AM.

01-07-2007, 05:48 AM	#524 (permalink)
kerux Suspended from Issues Last Online: 16-09-2007 08:25 AM Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Padded Cell Next to Zundel Posts: 1,510	BIS warns of Great Depression dangers from credit spree By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Last Updated: 9:02am BST 25/06/2007 The Bank for International Settlements, the world's most prestigious financial body, has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fuelled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy more vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump than generally understood. Money \| Telegraph

19-08-2007, 05:12 PM	#527 (permalink)
Thormaturge Elite Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Thailand Posts: 2,185	Creating jobs by devaluing the Dollar isn't good long-term economics. I recall Sterling being just 1.4 to the $ 1 just few years ago, now it is above $ 2.00 For those who don't understand the implications of this, it makes exports cheaper and imports more expensive, so yes it will create more American jobs, but where does this policy end? Will GWB be prepared to allow the Dollar to become worthless? Ultimately GWB has turned the whole country into a garage sale. American businesses and other assets which once cost, say, GBP 10,million to buy can now be bought for GBP 7, million with this devaluation. When enough American business has been bought up on the cheap it will be in the interests of the foreign owners to revaulue the currency and let the American people suffer. It will be painful to watch but Treasury bonds might be a good investment just before Hilary takes office next year.

20-08-2007, 01:15 PM	#528 (permalink)
raycarey texpat's sexual obsession Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: deleting posts in issues Posts: 5,499	and wasn't it just a few months ago that GWB was touting the 'ownership economy'....why weren't his advisors aware that these 'owners' were in no position to 'own' a mortgage? or were they, and they just didn't care because it made a good slogan?

20-08-2007, 01:55 PM	#529 (permalink)
sabang Watching the Wheels Last Online: Today 08:13 PM Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: east of Pattaya Posts: 8,301	GWB has turned the worlds biggest creditor nation, under Clinton, into the worlds biggest debtor. He has presided over a period of unprecedented USD weakness. Corporate & political corruption scandals thrown in for good measure. Lost more senior administration people than anyone I can remember. Small matter of a Lost War. America's stock has diminished, worldwide. I obviously underestimated the power of the Presidency. Now here's the Rub- the people that stick up for him call themselves Conservative.

20-08-2007, 02:18 PM	#531 (permalink)
raycarey texpat's sexual obsession Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: deleting posts in issues Posts: 5,499	there are two ways to run the US govt....with taxes or debt. republicans prefer to pass along the cost to their children.

01-09-2007, 10:07 AM	#535 (permalink)
kerux Suspended from Issues Last Online: 16-09-2007 08:25 AM Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Padded Cell Next to Zundel Posts: 1,510	The new currency when the dollar collapses: