Infowars.com
February 22, 2010
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/ron-paul-suspend-the-income-tax-for-3-4-years/
High-stakes duel between Rep. Paul and Bernanke intensifies
Silla Brush
The Hill
December 9, 2009
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Rep. Ron Paul and Ben Bernanke are locked in a clash of titans.
Paul, the 74-year-old House libertarian from Texas with the high-pitched voice, has fought for decades to kill off the Federal Reserve.
Bernanke, the mild-mannered ex-Princeton professor and chairman of the bank, is waging a high-stakes battle for the Fed’s reputation. And he’s doing everything possible to knock out Paul.
The fight is still in the early rounds. But with the full House expected to vote this week to give government auditors more power to scrutinize the Fed, Paul has the upper hand.
The Senate is a much more difficult round for Paul, though a similar stew of liberal and conservative support is starting to simmer in the upper chamber behind the Republican’s wonky auditing measure.
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/high-stakes-duel-between-rep-paul-and-bernanke-intensifies/
Sen. Sanders Attempts to Block Fed Mob Boss Second Term
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
December 3, 2009
Let’s thank Bernie Sanders, Vermont Independent, for blocking for now the re-confirmation of Ben Bernanke to the Federal Reserve.
Sanders talks about removing Fed kingpin Bernanke.
At the same time, we need to correct Sanders’ critique of the Fed.
“The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interest of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few,” Sanders wrote in a statement. “What American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy.”
Sander also said the Fed could have averted the financial crisis but failed to perform its “core responsibility” and because of this it’s time for Bernanke to go.
In fact, the Fed is performing its “core responsibility.”
Mr. Sanders apparently believes the Federal Reserve is part of the government when in fact it is a bankster criminal organization masquerading as a federal agency. The Fed is not federal. It has no reserves. It is not a bank. It was created in 1913 by agents of J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and European bankers to take over the U.S. money supply and monopolize the banking system.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Our current economic problems are directly related to the fact the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, and the IMF are allowed to create money out of thin air and create global inflation. Like the corrupt government of Zimbabwe, these criminal organizations create funny money out of nothing. It is a parlor trick accomplished by entering numbers in a computer.
Sanders blames the Bush administration for the economic crisis. It does not matter if a Republican or Democrat is in office. Federal Reserve monetary policy remains the same no matter who the front man in the White House is. Partisan politics and blaming the last seat-warmer will not solve anything.
“The current Globalist Financial Crisis is a Financial False Flag operation. It is a controlled collapse of the globalist economic system, engineered by an international war crimes racketeering organization. The globalist financial system is being intentionally destabilized,” writes Alfred Lambremont Webre.
In response to their engineered collapse — and depressions are now scientifically created, as Lindbergh rightly noted after the creation of the Federal Reserve — the banksters and their political minions are demanding world government and a global banking cartel to “regulate” (dominate) the world economy.
Tossing Bernanke out on his ear will not save us from this globalist financial false flag operation. Stalling Bernanke’s re-anointment will not slow down the scam.
Only an audit and eventual abolition of the Federal Reserve will save us from the banksters and their criminal scheme. Open the Fed’s books will allow us to identify the criminals, arrest them, and put them on trial for economic crimes against humanity.
Sanders and other members of Congress opposed to the bankers need to correctly identify and expose the banksters and their grand scale heist of the global economy.
It does not matter if Bernanke is re-installed on the Federal Reserve throne. It does not matter if his re-nomination is delayed a couple hours or a few days.
The Fed needs to be abolished — and sooner before later if we are going to prevent a total collapse of the economy, the imposition of a dictatorial world government, and the installation of world-wide serfdom and a high-tech slave and surveillance grid.
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/sen-sanders-attempts-to-block-fed-mob-boss-second-term/
Potential For Fed To Hyperinflate
Bob Chapman
The International Forecaster
November 29, 2009
The following information may be the most important we have ever published. One of our Intel sources, highly placed in banking circles, tells us that on 1/1/10 all banks that have received TARP funds have been informed by the Federal Reserve that they must further restrict any commercial lending. Loans have to be 75% collateralized, 50% of which has to be in cash, which is a compensating balance.
The Fed has to do one of two things: They either have to pull $1.5 trillion out of the system by June, which would collapse the economy, or face hyperinflation. This is why the Fed has instructed banks to inform them when and how much of the TARP funds they can return. At best they can expect $300 to $400 billion plus the $200 billion the Fed already has in hand.
We believe the Fed will opt for letting the system run into hyperinflation. All signs tell us they cannot risk allowing the undertow of deflation to take over the economy. The system cannot stand such a withdrawal of funds. They also must depend on assistance from Congress in supplying a second stimulus plan. That would probably be $400 to $800 billion. A lack of such funding would send the economy and the stock market into a tailspin. Even with such funding the economy cannot expect any growth to speak of and at best a sideways movement for perhaps a year.
We have been told that the FDIC not only is $8.2 billion in the hole, but they have secretly borrowed an additional $80 billion from the Treasury. We have also been told that the FDIC is lying about the banks in trouble. The number in eminent danger are not 552, but a massive 2,035. The cost of bailing these banks out would be $800 billion to $1 trillion. That means 2,500 could be closed in 2010. Now get this, the FDIC is going to be collapsed before the end of 2010, which means no more deposit insurance. This follows the 9/18/09 end of government guarantees on money market funds. Both will force deposits into US government bonds and agency bonds in an attempt to save the system.
This will strip small and medium-sized banks and force them into shutting down or being absorbed. This means you have to get your money out of banks, especially CDs. We repeat get your cash values out of life insurance policies and annuities. They are invested 80% in stocks and 20% in bonds. Keep only enough money in banks for three months of operating expenses, six months for businesses.
Major and semi-major banks are being told to obtain secure storage for new currency-dollars. They expect official devaluation by the end of the year.
We do not know what the exchange rate will be, but as we have stated previously we expect three old dollars to be traded for one new dollar. The alternative is gold and silver coins and shares. For those with substantial sums that do not want to be in gold and silver related assets completely you can use Canadian and Swiss Treasuries. If you need brokers for these investments we can supply them.
The Fed also expects a meltdown in the bond market, especially in municipals. Public services will be cut drastically leading to increased crime and social problems, not to mention the psychological trauma that our country will experience. Already 50% of homes in hard hit urban areas are under water, nationwide more than 25%. That means you have to be out of bonds as well, especially municipals.
As you can see, the Illuminist program is going to come quicker than we anticipated. That in part is because they have had to expedite their program, due to exposure in the IF, other publications and especially via talk ratio and the Internet. There is no doubt we have the elitists on the run.
We are reaching the masses. On TalkStreamLive.com we were on the Rumor Mill this past week and out of 50 talk radio programs we were 5th behind, Rush, Hannity, Dr. Laura and we were tied with Beck. On the Sovereign Economist on Wednesday night we were 5th behind Beck and Savage and ahead of Hannity. Both these programs are not well known and the Sovereign Economist is only about a month old. It shows you what you can do if you work hard enough at it.
The latest favorable events we are told are the seeds of recovery. The green-shoots of spring are to be harvested before winter sets in. We are skeptical of the strength and duration of such a recovery.
The underlying problems are still not being addressed. The US government and the Fed cannot bail out banking, Wall Street, insurance and government indefinitely via monetization. Impaired corporations, no matter what their size, have to be allowed to fail. Stimulus cannot be used indefinitely. Both have to be reigned in, because the longer this charade continues the worse the final outcome is going to be. As we predicted six year’s ago, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and FHA are the wards of American taxpayers, as is AIG. All their financial conditions worsen every day. They have again been insuring subprime mortgages by the thousands and when they begin to reset next year, we will be back to 60% failure rates. Even government admits already they’ll see 20% failure rates. This, so that housing inventory can be cut from 11-1/2-months inventory to 7-months, again in order to bail out the lenders at the expense of taxpayers. Government and the Fed have no exit plans for these sinking ships, particularly Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie and FHA, never mind their meddling in the economy guaranteeing everything is sight. Benito Mussolini would be very proud of what they have done.
Then we have those on Wall Street, banking and corporate America who believe they are doing God’s work by looting the American public making outrageous profits by in part using taxpayer funds, and allotting themselves disgraceful bonuses as unemployment hovers at 22.2%. Haven’t these people heard of the French Revolution? Their arrogance has no bounds. The credit crisis hasn’t ended; the Fed has extended it by throwing money at problems. We have a mortgage market that is worse than it was a year ago, only kept from sinking by a tax credit 3% down. As a result now we have more than $1 trillion of new mortgage failures on the way.
Our monetary base has more than doubled. Interest rates will probably stay where they are for 18 months or more and we even have a dollar carry trade. The 2009 fiscal budget deficit was $1.5 trillion and 2010 will be worse. Government is not cutting expenses. They are increasing expenses.
In addition making matters worse corruption is flourishing via the incestuous revolving door between Wall Street, the Treasury, in a multiplicity of other appointments and with the Fed. Is it any wonder 75% of Americans want the Fed audited and investigated. That said, the present set of circumstances cannot be allowed to go on indefinitely. We cannot keep insurance, Wall Street and banking on life support forever. Not when we finance two occupations and an ongoing war, never mind our unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security, etc. most all of these problems are being financed by debt to be paid by our great, great grandchildren. We just created $12.7 trillion for bailouts and the Inspector General tells us we are presently on the hook for $23.7 trillion. What happens if all the recipients need another $20 trillion?
The situation is still dire and the solution is temporary and unworkable and Washington and New York are well aware of this. The game will play out over the next few years. In the meantime the dollar will move lower and inflation, gold and silver higher.
Economics is not complex; it is very simple. Professors and economists would like to have you believe it is complicated when in fact they make it opaque, so you cannot understand it. The same is true with banking. In normal times through the century’s bankers using the fractional banking system usually lent 8 times their assets, or deposits. It was only until recently that the privately owned Federal Reserve told banks within the system to lend 40 times assets or more in order to accommodate the system.
All this is to cover to confuse and hide the truth of fractional banking. Bankers’ indebt borrowers with money they made up out of thin air. Debt is enslavement by the bankers upon the people by buying almost everyone off. In the final analysis banking is a fraud unless money is interest free. The Fed, and all the other banks are a fraud.
The game as we know it today began in 1694 when the Rothschild’s formed the privately owned Bank of England and the production of bank notes began and circulated along with sterling silver coins. The end result has been that the bankers own the world. The system today is based on confidence and trust, something that has been worn thin. A reflection of the loss of trust and confidence is that 75% to 80% of Americans want HR1207 and S604 passed by Congress, so that the Fed can be audited and investigated. The public no longer trusts the Fed and the banks. As a result the con game may well be coming to an end. Fifty years ago we and a handful of other conservative warriors set out to inform the public of the giant scam that the Fed really was. It has been a long hard road. Gary Allen and Alan Stang are gone and of the originals all that are left are G. Edward Griffin, Stan Monteith, Anthony Hilder and us. During our lifetimes we now probably will see the end of the Fed. Because the people have finally been awakened. It was a long hard battle that may soon come to fruition.
The final step will be the termination of the Federal Reserve and its monopoly on financial theft. Unfortunately it will mean the demise of the only financial system we have known for 315 years. We do not know as yet what the new system will be like, but the con game is over and most of the world’s inhabitants are broke. The debt that is owed simply cannot be repaid. Japan, the US, the UK and Europe will be the first to go followed by most of the rest of the world.
You ask who will be the big winners? Gold and silver of course. Just as we have been telling you they would for 9-1/2 years, since gold was $252.00 and silver $3.80. Look at the gains for those who listened. And, we still have a long, long way to go to preserve our wealth. Over all those years the gold suppression cartel fought to hold down gold prices by selling gold, using derivatives and futures and in collaboration with good producers such as Barrick Gold and others. Hopefully HR3996 (HR-1207) will now pass unchanged and we can take a look at what the Fed and the Treasury were doing and who aided them.
What we are witnessing in the US and world economy is the result of the greed of central banks to make as much money as possible before they have to collapse the system to bring about World Government.
Manufacturing activity in the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s district improved in November.
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/potential-for-fed-to-hyperinflate/
Audit the Fed: Bernanke and the Bankers Are Running Scared
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
November 28, 2009
Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve mob boss, is running scared. He is deathly afraid an audit of his criminal organization.
“These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States,” Bernanke wrote in the CIA’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Post.
Bernanke penned his tribute to central banking and globalism prior to his scheduled testimony before a Senate panel on his renomination to serve a second four-year term as Fed mob boss.
Bankster tool Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, tried to derail an effort to audit the Fed but failed. A proposal to audit the Fed’s monetary policy deliberations won a committee vote recently over Frank’s objections.
In his Mockingbird media editorial, Bernanke “conceded the Fed had missed some of the riskiest behavior in the lead up to the crisis. But he said the Fed had helped avoid an even more damaging economic meltdown and has stepped up its policing of the financial system.”
In fact, the Fed was specifically designed to create financial crises. It was all plotted in 1910 when minions of J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, the Rothschilds and Warburgs met on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. In 1913, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank was created as a direct result of that secret meeting. Said Congressman Charles Lindbergh on the midnight passage of the Federal Reserve Act: “From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.”
In order to scientifically create an economic depression, the Fed prompted irresponsible speculation by expanding the money supply sixty-two percent between 1923 and 1929. The so-called Great Depression followed. This depression “was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence,” declared Congressman Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking Committee. “The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all.”
In March of 1929, Paul Warburg issued a tip that the scientifically created crash was coming. Before it did, John D. Rockefeller, Bernard Baruch, Joseph P. Kennedy, and other banksters got out of the market.
A few years later, the banksters and their minions met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and plotted the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The purpose of these two criminal organizations was to set-up a global Federal Reserve system and wage economic warfare on billions of people. The weapon they used was debt and the loss of sovereignty that follows.
In 1971, then president Nixon fit one of the last pieces into the puzzle — he signed an executive order declaring that the United States no longer had to redeem its paper dollars for gold. It was a great day for the banksters and the global elite. The gold standard ensured predictability and regularity in the economy and the banksters wanted to put an end to that. For the bankers, order and control is realized out of chaos and misery.
Fast-forward to the present day. Bernanke’s Fed has meticulously sabotaged the economy in order to create a crisis in classic Hegelian fashion. The corporate media tells us the crisis is the result of ineptitude and mismanagement at the Federal Reserve. Au contraire. Like the Great Depression, the even Greater Depression now on the horizon was scientifically created.
The Fed is the primary instrument the bankers are now using to destroy the middle class, hand over all public assets and resources to them, implement a crushing austerity, usher in a new era of global corporatist feudalism and build a sprawling planet-wide slave plantation based on China’s totalitarian model.
It is the ultimate dream of the banking cartel. It will be used as the foundation to build world government. Destroying the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is only the beginning.
Bernanke knows Ron Paul and the audit the Fed movement are extremely dangerous. That’s why he is pushing this facile “oops” theory. In order to fix things, the Fed will use its “knowledge of complex financial institutions” in order to supervise them, he writes in his Mockingbird editorial. Allowing audits of Federal Reserve monetary policy would increase the perceived influence of Congress on interest rate decisions, he says.
No, it would lay bare the criminality of the Federal Reserve. Maybe Bernanke is worried he will be obliged to wear an orange jumpsuit in the wake of an audit.
As for Congress, Bernanke needs to read Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Congress shall have exclusive power to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof,” not a criminal cartel of monopoly men who dream of a prison planet.
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/audit-the-fed-bernanke-and-the-bankers-are-running-scared/
Bernanke the Dollar-Destroyer and the Coming Stock Market Crash
Bob Chapman
The International Forecaster
September 21, 2009
To borrow from an old joke about politicians, we ask our subscribers if they know how to tell when Helicopter Ben Bernanke, the current Fed Head, is lying. Answer: Whenever his lips are moving. Now we hear from the Dollar-Destroyer that our recession has technically ended (heaven forbid that we should call our current Fed-caused calamity a depression, which is what it has been since Obama took office) . So we guess that we should take his word for it, seeing that every call he has made during his short tenure as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board has been 100% wrong.
Surely you’re joking, Mr. Bernanke!!! Apparently, we are just supposed to ignore our tanking dollar, rising unemployment, ever-weakening consumer spending (which only accounts for 70% of our GDP), a moribund real estate market, trillions in losses lying dormant in the zombie bank mark-to-model scam, not to mention all the off-the-books losses in derivatives pawned off on bank customers after Glass-Steagall was repealed as well as a glowing, smoking Quadrillion Dollar Derivative Death Star waiting to go supernova to the tune of tens of trillions in losses that will vaporize the entire world banking system thanks to the total deregulation of OTC derivatives courtesy of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. Then there are the ongoing multi-trillion dollar money siphons in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of banks, including all the “anointed” legacy banks, that are buried in derivatives and about to fail, a bankrupt Social Security System, a totally naked FDIC, a Fed printing trillions of dollars out of thin air, in secret, without any accountability, and future multi-trillion dollar budget deficits being incurred to keep a totally comatose economy on artificial, taxpayer-sponsored life support. If that sounds like the end of a recession to the people on planet earth, then beam us up Scotty, we’re on a planet full of psychopaths suffering from hallucinations and delusions of grandeur. Oh, and Scotty, make sure you remember to beam our gold and silver up with us. We’re certainly going to need it the next time we come back to Planet Earth for an exploratory visit to see if the collective, ongoing phantasmagoric, mushroom-induced hallucinations of its inhabitants have finally run their course.
Note that open interest for the USDX, after rising to a little over 41,000, which is above average, has suddenly collapsed to below 34,000 as of 9/16/09. The dollar is no longer being defended because the Illuminist cabal plans to take the stock markets up to a blow off interim top around Dow 10,000 to 10,500 with a final short-covering rally either this week, or perhaps the middle of next month, as general stock market options expire. They will then attempt to orchestrate a major stock market correction, which is now long expected and long overdue, just as gold and silver really start to take off.
The only question is, how long and how high will they try to take the stock markets before the long awaited correction is allowed to occur as the PPT withdraws its support. The answer, as usual, will be determined by the gold and silver markets, and the strength of their now ongoing rallies. If the rallies in gold and silver get out of hand as hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians jump on the gold and silver bandwagons while China reneges on its losses in OTC gold and silver shorts, you can count on a major stock market correction immediately. Another tip off will be a large jump in open interest for USDX futures contracts again, this time probably to well above the 50,000 level. This will be the dollar’s and treasury’s last hurrah as the Illuminati will be immediately forced to recommence the stock rally or face the defeat of any and all of their proposed legislation on Goldman Sachs’ “cap and trade” scam, on the Obama-Kennedy-Kavorkian Euthanasia Plan and on the military expenditures for Afghanistan. After citizens watch their pensions and mutual funds nose-dive toward oblivion for a second time, they will immediately decide that they can’t afford to spend another penny. Crashing stock markets beyond a 50% correction would thoroughly discredit Obama’s Stimulus Pork Plan and would also put crushing pressure on the Fed. Unless the stock markets recover quickly, the sheople will scream for the Fed’s blood and the Audit the Fed bill will become a foregone conclusion.
A stock market crash will make people downright venomous toward this cabal of middle class pauper-makers. The Illuminati are now caught between a rock and hard place. If they don’t crash the stock markets, the tanking dollar and treasuries will be toast and gold and silver will rip them a new one and expose their mishandling of our money supply and our economy. If they crash the stock markets to put an obstruction in the path of gold and silver, they risk political annihilation, legislative suicide and an audit of the Fed, which will be followed by a hue and cry for its termination when everyone finds out how thoroughly they have been screwed for the past 95+ years. Their options are weak and few. All they can do is play the obstructionist with bogus delay tactics, but in the end they will get buried.
If they fail to take gold and silver down low enough to cover, a distinct possibility, the cartel’s shorts will get vaporized, and gold and silver will go on a moon-shot. They are now fighting the combined populations of China, India, Japan, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Germany and most of Western Europe, as well as the governments of Germany, China (especially the region of Hong Kong) and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, whose gold they have stolen, leased or encumbered. These nations, who foolishly entrusted their bullion to the US Illuminist cabal, have been left exposed as sitting ducks for a hyperinflationary supernova. These countries are hopping mad about this, and all they have on their minds now is self-preservation and vengeance. Due to the ongoing financial debacles and bailouts going on globally, and the profligate policies of central banks worldwide that are causing fiat currencies everywhere to lose ground against gold, people will be looking to precious metals for an alternative to paper assets denominated in fiat currencies.
We would highly suggest that Buck-Busting Ben Bernanke and the twelve Presidents of the regional Federal Reserve Banks make arrangements for the international banking cabal’s version of The Last Supper. We hear through the grapevine that an “Upper Room” is available in the US Capitol Building. You can bet Ben will be running for his helicopter before the crucifixion gets under way! Obama and the twelve members of the Federal Open Market Committee can then do a repeat performance (but without Ben who will be long gone in his helicopter). You can bet Obama will be headed for Air Force One for a one-way trip to Kenya, or Indonesia, or wherever the heck he really comes from! Where is the Border Patrol and ICE when you need them to remove an illegal alien!?
Friday September 18th is the day our government will no longer guarantee money market funds. In anticipation of this event professionals have been moving funds out of these vehicles; some 15% over the past month. What the administration, and particularly the Treasury want to do is try to get those funds directly into Treasuries and into banks. From our point of view neither are safe, nor are credit unions. Those funds should move into gold and silver related assets and for those who must have currency liquidity, those funds should go into Canadian and Swiss Treasuries to profit from the continued fall in the US dollar. You must get your money out of banks, US government debt and anything connected with the US stock and bond markets. The exception being gold and silver shares. All major American banks, which hold 70% of deposits, are broke and so is the FDIC. You have no insurance unless you are willing to accept $0.30 on the dollar. You must be out of all these vehicles. The money market funds are loaded with suspect corporate debt never mind Treasury debt. We recommended Swiss and Canadian Treasuries some time ago. The dollar has fallen and all these thousands of investors have made money. Get out of money market funds. Already 1/3rd of these funds have had their NAV’s below a dollar since 7/07. They are still holding some very risky paper. Almost 40% is in CD’s of foreign banks, 10% in short-term corporate paper and over 12% in medium-term corporate paper. About 68% is in taxable non-government funds. You will see a great decline in money market fund assets as holders foolishly transfer the funds into FDIC-insured accounts, CD’s and Treasury instruments of one form or another. The only real safe place to go is to gold and silver related assets and if you must Canadian and Swiss Treasuries.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Commercial paper rose $16.1 billion; asset backed CP rose $18.1 billion versus $6.2 billion the previous week. ABCP outstanding was $501.5 billion versus $483.5 billion the prior week. Unsecured financial CP issuance fell $9.7 billion versus $6.2 billion.
Capital from foreign sources was $612 billion in 2007 and $675 billion in 2008. This year in May it was -$54.6 billion; -$57 billion in June, -$56.8 in July and -$97.5 billion in August.
Capital is leaving at an accelerating rate. This means interest rates should be raised. The Fed is monetizing and in all likelihood that will increase and that will lead to a currency crisis. The Fed has said it will ease quantitative easing, but if it does the stock and bond market will fall. If they increase there will be a currency crisis. There is now no question the dollar is being sacrificed. The idea is to allow it to fall incrementally and as slowly as possible.
We have continued to state the Amero will not replace the dollar and that it is and has been a false issue. The dollar will be replaced by another dollar in either 2010, 2011 or 2012. As we explained in early May when the dollar was 89.5 on the USDX, that this was the top. Next stop by the end of October would be 71.18, or at least by yearend. After that comes 40 to 55 and then an official devaluation and default; as all currencies and debt would be dealt with at a special meeting involving all countries.
Debt in the banking system is going to be absorbed by the Fed. Almost all major banks are bankrupt. That is why you do not want to have much money in banks and no CD’s; cash value life policies or annuities. Next year we will witness a second round of debt write offs and a crisis in the derivative market. If the Fed doesn’t monetize the debt the system will collapse, but then again there may be no Fed if HR1207 becomes law. Every problem would then lie in the lap of the Treasury. The American financial system is unsustainable and our foreign wars and occupations will come to a close in 2010 or 2011. The cost will no longer be sustainable. The US stock and bond markets will fall and you will not want to own any US government obligations. It could be that the role-played by the Fed, if the Fed is replaced, could in part be played by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. Due to the Fed’s absorption of bad assets it could be that the Fed will self-destruct in the process of being legislatively being eliminated. Recovery of the US economy would then depend economically on tariffs on goods and services to bring manufacturing back to America.
A CBS News blogger named Declan McCullagh seized on the documents, which CEI obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, and said: “The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.” He added: “At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.”
The Bank Implode-o-meter: Wells Fargo’s Commercial Portfolio is a ticking time bomb.
In order to sort through the disaster that is Wells Fargo’s commercial loan portfolio, the bank has hired help from outside experts to pour over the books… and they are shocked with what they are seeing. Not only do the bank’s outstanding commercial loans collectively exceed the property values to which they are attached, but derivative trades leftover from its acquisition of Wachovia are creating another set of problems for the already beleaguered San Francisco-based megabank, Wachovia, which Wells purchased last fall as it teetered on the brink of collapse, was so desperate to increase revenue in the last few years of its existence that it underwrote loans with shoddy standards and paid off traders to take them off their books.
According to sources currently working out these loans at Wells Fargo and confirmed by Dan Alpert of Westwood Capital, when selling tranches of commercial mortgage-backed securities below the super senior tranche, Wachovia promised to pay the buyer’s risk premium by writing credit default swap contracts against these subordinate bonds. Should the junior tranches eventually default, then the bank is on the hook.
For the past 14 years, the gap between the two measures has grown persistently, with operating earnings topping GAAP earnings by an average of $2.47 a share per quarter.
When using a 10-year trailing average of earnings to erase cyclical gyrations, operating earnings are nearly 24% higher than GAAP earnings, the highest ever.
It isn’t clear why the difference has grown so wide. One inescapable conclusion is that, since 1995, either by happy accident or accounting shenanigans, one-time losses have grown more quickly than one- time gains, elevating the operating earnings that Wall Street watches.
The investment implications are many. For one thing, two earnings measures produce two market valuations. The S&P 500 trades at 21 times the past 10 years’ GAAP earnings and 17 times operating earnings. Neither is exactly cheap, but one is much pricier than the other.
Japan urges talks on US military base Japan considers revision of a deal with the US to relocate a military base to be a top diplomatic priority, Tokyo’s newly appointed foreign minister has told the Financial Times, waving aside concerns that reopening the agreement could undermine the alliance between the countries.
The declaration by Katsuya Okada, a senior member of Japan’s ruling Democratic Party (DPJ), highlights the international implications of the party’s determination to set a more independent diplomatic agenda. GQ excerpts Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor by ex-Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer:
We wrote speeches nearly every time the stock market flipped. Meanwhile, the White House seemed to have ceded all of its authority on economic matters to the secretive secretary of the treasury…(In the weeks that followed, Paulson changed his spending priorities two or three times. Incredibly, he’d been given the power to do with that money virtually anything he pleased. All thanks to a president who didn’t understand his proposal and a Congress that didn’t stop to think….)
Chris had just come from a secret meeting in the Oval Office, and without so much as a hello he announced: “Well, the economy is about to completely collapse.”
You mean the stock market?” I asked.
“No, I mean the entire U.S. economy,” he replied. As in, capitalism. As in, hide your money in your mattress.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, had sketched out a dire scenario. And Chris said we’d have to write a speech for the president announcing his “bold” plan to deal with the crisis. (The president loved the word bold.) The plan… Basically, it could be summed up as: Give me hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and then trust me to do the right thing…In some cases, in fact, Secretary Paulson wanted to pay more than the securities were likely worth in order to put more money into the markets as soon as possible. This was not how the president’s proposal had been advertised to the public or the Congress. It wasn’t that the president didn’t understand what his administration wanted to do. It was that the treasury secretary didn’t seem to know, changed his mind, had misled the president, or some combination of the three.
When White House press secretary Dana Perino was told that 77 percent of the country thought we were on the wrong track, she said what I was thinking: “Who on earth is in the other 23 percent?” I knew who they were—the same people supporting the John McCain campaign. Me? I figured there was no way in hell any Republican would vote for that guy. John McCain, the temperamental media darling, had spent most of the past eight years running against the Republican Party and the president—Republicans on Capitol Hill and at the White House hated him. Choosing John McCain as our standard-bearer would be the height of self-delusion.
He [Bush] paused for a minute. I could see him thinking maybe he shouldn’t say it, but he couldn’t resist. “If bullshit was currency,” he said straight-faced, “Joe Biden would be a billionaire.” Everyone in the room burst out laughing.
The latest propaganda on quantitative easing and reining it in reaches us. Evidentially the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh later this month will put together a roadmap outlining how to reverse previous stimulation of world economics. If that happens the world financial structure will collapse. They know that just as well as we do. The IMF wants the G-20 to coordinate the unwinding of these efforts. Of course, the players all know inflation is on the way and they want to make people think they are going to do something about it. Even the Fed says it is ending quantitative easing at the end of the fiscal year on 9/31/09. We know that cannot be true with the Treasury issuing $2 trillion in bonds in this coming fiscal year.
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/bernanke-the-dollar-destroyer-and-the-coming-stock-market-crash/
Ron Paul: End the Fed, Save the Dollar
Brian Beers
CNBC
September 17, 2009
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
“Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve,” writes Texas Congressman Ron Paul in his latest book hitting shelves this week, titled “End the Fed.”
“It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and middle class.”
Paul makes the case that the Fed is the main culprit responsible for the current economic mess the country faces through the destructive policies of cheap credit and excessive money printing.
“Prosperity can never be achieved by cheap credit,” says Paul. “If that were so, no one would have to work for a living. Inflated prices only deceive one into believing that real wealth has been created.”
The Federal Reserve, created in 1913, has been acting as the main central bank of the United States for nearly one hundred years. Many Americans are either not sure or not interested in what role the Fed plays in managing the economy. “The economic crisis has changed everything,” writes Congressman Paul.
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/ron-paul-end-the-fed-save-the-dollar/
Obama Pushes Banker Takeover Plan at Federal Hall
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
September 14, 2009
Obama delivered one of his famous teleprompter speeches today at Federal Hall in New York on the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers scam. It was a cynical move, considering Obama spoke from the building where the country’s founders once argued over how much the government should control the national economy. Federal Hall also served as the first capitol of the United States of America.
“President Obama came to Wall Street to chastise executives and to urge Congress to pass tougher regulation of the bankers and brokers whom he blamed for the crisis in the financial markets a year ago,” reports the Christian Science Monitor. Obama said the United States needs “strong rules of the road to guard against the kind of systemic risks we have seen.”
It was a wink and a nod speech, considering the sort of people Obama supposedly lectured now run his administration. Geithner, Summers, Clinton, Mitchell, Holbrooke, Volcker, Rice, James, Haass — on and on, ad infinitum, these are Federal Reserve, CFR, Trilateral Commission, and Bilderberg members, bureaucratic minions of the private and international bankster cartel.
In fact, as Judge Napolitano notes in the video below, if the proposals Obama soft sold to the American people today are implemented, it will amount to a final coup d’état by the banksters and their technocrats and enforcers at the Federal Reserve, the unconstitutional and privately held bankster Mafia operation that masquerades as a government agency. It will install a dictatorial regulatory power by the international bankers over entire U.S. economy — right down to the local grocer and the hot dog vendor on the corner. It will require you to ask permission for the most mundane and routine of financial transactions. It will control your life down to the smallest detail.
“President Obama’s plan to give the privately-owned and unaccountable Federal Reserve complete regulatory oversight across the entire U.S. economy, which is likely to be enacted before the end of the year, will officially herald the beginning of a new form of government in the United States – an ultra-powerful banking dictatorship controlled by a small gaggle of shadowy and corrupt elitists,” Paul Joseph and Steve Watson wrote for Prison Planet on June 18 of this year.
As the Watson brothers and Judge Napolitano note, the new rules will give the Fed the unchallenged authority to “regulate” any company activity it believes may threaten the economy and the markets — that is to say, all who would threaten the monopoly men with independent an unregulated financial activity. Even the Los Angeles Times admitted the Obama Federal Reserve takeover bill would effectively grant the clout required to seize and take over any company.
Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin Robert Auerbach pointed out the obvious earlier this year: “The Federal Reserve has massive conflicts of interest that make it ill suited for its present regulatory functions and certainly for an expanded regulatory reach. The officials leading the Fed today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the bankers they regulate. Bank regulation begins at its 12 district Federal Reserve Banks, each governed by a nine-member board of directors, two-thirds of whom are elected by the bankers in the district.”
“The government is ready to hand over everything to a monolithic private corporation and a gaggle of bastard banker offspring, that have gobbled up an amount close to the entire GDP of the country in taxpayers’ money and figuratively stuck the middle finger up regarding questions over where that money has gone,” the Watsons conclude. “It can be no more apparent than at this time that legislation to audit, repeal and eventually end the Federal Reserve, must be supported by Americans if they want to see their children and their grandchildren grow up without indentured debt and entrenched servitude to a fascistic marriage of private banks and hugely inflated government.”
It remains to be seen if Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed legislation will be enacted. It has powerful foes arrayed against it – and a growing number of people steadfastly behind it. Enemies of the audit will attempt to push Obama’s plan through Congress and establish a complete private banker dictatorship over the economy and sideline the legislation.
Obama’s appearance at Federal Hall — the site of George Washington’s inauguration and where nine of the 13 colonies met to draft a message to King George III, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, claiming entitlement to the same rights as the residents of Britain and protesting the colonies’ “taxation without representation” — is particularly obscene and criminal.
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/obama-pushes-banker-takeover-plan-at-federal-hall/
A Review of “End the Fed” by Ron Paul
Charles Scaliger
New American
September 14, 2009
“The entire federal government,” laments Congressman Ron Paul in his newest book, End the Fed, “is one giant toxic asset at the moment. It certainly has no business telling the private sector how to run its affairs. It is in worse financial shape than all the companies in the private sector put together.”
Hard words, but Congressman Paul knows whereof he speaks. It was Ron Paul, unique among congressmen for his understanding of how a free-market economy is supposed to work, who warned repeatedly of the coming economic calamity. It was Ron Paul, too, who warned both the Bush and Obama administrations that attempts by the government to bail out failing corporations with taxpayer dollars and passing massive stimulus packages would only make things worse. And it has been Ron Paul who has warned of disastrous long-term consequences of the inflationary activities of the Ben Bernanke-led Federal Reserve.
Congressman Paul’s concerns about the Federal Reserve are nothing new. The gynecologist-turned-eleven-term congressman from Texas has spent a long political career promoting liberty and limited constitutional government as the American Founders understood them and exposing the mischief at the Federal Reserve. With the unexpected success of his presidential campaign and his recent best-selling manifesto on liberty, Dr. Paul’s uncompromising, consistent, and thoroughly principled stances on limited, constitutionally legitimate government are well known around the world. Now, thanks to End the Fed, his views on paper money, fractional-reserve banking, and the Federal Reserve and its manipulation of the money supply are summarized for a mass readership. Under a single cover and on just 212 readable pages are assembled philosophical, economic, and constitutional arguments for abolishing the Federal Reserve, a succinct history of banking, and a number of fascinating recollections and snippets of telling dialogue between Dr. Paul and various chairmen of the Fed as far back as Paul Volcker.
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/a-review-of-end-the-fed-by-ron-paul/
More Financial Bubbles Ahead?
Bob Chapman
The International Forecaster
September 14, 2009
Almost all important, pertinent data reflects continued weakness in the economy, especially retail sales and unemployment.
There are small signs of inflation in spite of bogus government figures. In the flight to quality we see stronger gold, silver and commodities despite heavy market manipulation by the government.
After more then two years of government and Fed intervention in the economy, only banks, Wall Street and insurance companies have been bailed out. The first part of the Stimulus package was unsuccessful, because the funds were not spent, they were used to eliminate debt. We do not think the next stimulus wave will be any more successful. The economy should now move sideways for a year with slight GDP gains and a slowing in job losses. There will be no dramatic changes unless banks start lending in a bigger way or there is another $2 trillion stimulus package.
Interest rates have moved slightly lower as the Fed’s intervention drives bonds up and yields lower. That will end early next year as demands for funds from both the private sector and government increases. Global capital has not expanded to meet those needs. Fed monetization of $500 billion is what foreign central banks are using to buy our Treasuries. Eventually the adverse effects of excess money and credit creation and budget deficits will take their toll. Commodity prices are already reflecting a flight to quality and gold and silver are attempting to make new highs. Wall Street and Washington tell us there is no inflation. If that were so why would gold and silver be acting in such a manner? The answer is flight to quality. There are no solid currencies left in the world to compete with gold, the only real money. This past week government repulsed breakout attempts by both gold and silver, but no matter what they do they will be eventually overwhelmed as more and more gold and silver will become the destination for hot money. The hedge against prolonged recession is in place and will be augmented soon by growing inflation. A double barreled dynamic.
We currently have bubbles in both the stock market and Treasury market, both created by the Fed. Any reappearance of inflation will very negatively affect both markets. When these markets break, which they eventually must, you will again see horror among investors and many more bankruptcies. The increase of M3 by 14% for ten years has to be worked out of the system and it will be. Destabilizing is on its way. Just be patient. This depression in many respects is already worse than the 1930s and it will continue to deteriorate. There is no chance we will see sound money anytime soon. We are a minimum of ten years away from any kind of recovery and probably much more.
The Treasury has a 10-year auction with bid to cover of 2.77% to 1, which is very good. The question is were the buyers acting for the Fed?
Our president has asked the Senate to raise the short-term federal debt limit to $12.1 trillion.
For fiscal year 2009 the Harvard endowment lost 27% and Yale lost 30%.
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For centuries and 50 years ago when we began this journey through life, the most important investment criterion was to preserve wealth, and it still is. Due to bouts of inflation the investment attitudes have changed somewhat. Some, even college endowments and pension funds have been playing the leverage game and not very successfully. The investment horizon is now measured monthly not over a span of years. As a result, results are not plus in double digits, but minus, as you can see from last year’s results. Even the mighty Swiss succumbed to using 70 times deposits. Even today after two years of market downside, the US and Europeans are still holding leverage of 45 times deposits, which is insanity.
Due to the terrible damage done to the financial system for years wealth preservation is first and foremost in investment. The dollar is crashing, the market and bonds are overpriced, even commodities have peaked after a major rally, banks are failing and fear abounds.
You say you’d like to sleep at night and not have to worry about your wealth; well there is a way to accomplish that. Buy gold and silver related assets. After ten years gold has finally broken out over $1,000 an ounce, a signal that phase 2 of 3 or 4 phases has begun. Gold could reach anywhere from $1,200 to $1,700 an ounce before the year is over. If you buy gold and silver coins or bullion, take delivery and store them in your safe at home. At this stage of the gold and silver bull market anchor your portfolio with 3 or 4 of the strongest producing mining companies and exploration shares. In the 1977 to 1981 period some of the leveraged speculative shares went from $0.35 to $55.00 and that could well happen again. In today’s markets this is how you preserve your wealth.
Get out of the stock and bond markets except for gold and silver shares. Terminate cash value life insurance policies and annuities; they invest in the stock market. Although mutual life companies have to invest in bonds. If you have to have some of your assets in cash, own treasuries from Canada, Switzerland or Norway. We are embarking on one of the most unusual times in investing history. Only 10 to 15 percent of investors will participate, the rest will lose 60 to 90 percent of their assets, their wealth. Don’t you be one of those losers. Don’t forget the elitists cannot print gold and gold is debt free. For 6,000 years it has been the only real currency. Gold and silver’s fundamentals are overwhelming. The supply is limited and production is falling and will continue to fall for years to come. Governmental and central bank debt is increasing exponentially and that is destroying the value of all currencies versus gold. Major nations are now aggressive major gold buyers. Gold and silver are going higher. Do not miss the opportunity to protect your wealth and perhaps to become very wealthy.
Our estimate of real unemployment, U6 minus the Birth/Death ratio, is 21% or 30 million people unemployed or employed part-time. If you include dependents that affects some 100 of 300 million Americans. In part as a result, yoy there has been 126,000 bankruptcies up 34%. That 9.7% unemployment just doesn’t tell the entire story. We continue to see energy and commodity inflation, which translates into higher prices, which are aggravated by lower wages. About a year from now, in the absence of further stimulus or increased bank lending, unemployment will rise to over 30%. That will lead to major economic, financial and social problems the likes of which no modern economy has ever seen. Residential and commercial real estate have 20 to 30 percent downside left depending on the market region and 25%, soon to be 50%, of US mortgages are currently underwater and 50% of mortgages will be in negative equity within a year. That is when Americans will finally realize their country is bankrupt. The FDIC and mortgage lenders are broke along with 50% of the population. Over the next three years between 3,200 and 4,200 banks will go under and the Fed will create $23 to $60 trillion to bail out the mess. Either that or your savings deposits will go up in smoke. We have $1.3 quadrillion in derivatives to be settled. If only 5% fail the financial system collapses. Banks are still leveraged 5 times deposits and carrying massive losses on their books.
Despite the government gobblygook initial jobless claims have worsened.
Foreclosure filings in August stayed near July’s record highs. Filings fell 1% mom and were up 18% yoy. One in every 357 US households with homes got a foreclosure filing in august.
Commercial paper expanded for a 4th straight week for the first time since December. CP rose $11.3 billion to $1.174 trillion outstanding. ABS CP out rose $6.2 billion after rising by $19.5 billion the prior week. Unsecured financial issuance rose by $6.2 billion after falling $11.3 billion the previous week.
The government sold $12 billion worth of 30-year bonds. The bid-to-cover was 2.82 to 1, above the average of 2.38 over the last four reopenings. Foreigners bought 46.4% of the sale, above the average of 40.9%.
Many the times we went to the Tavern on the Green, a very high-class restaurant in NYC. On Thursday they filed bankruptcy.
If Bernanke increases the Fed’s debt monetization scheme of $300B that is scheduled to end in October, the Chinese and Mr. Market will be very unhappy. The dollar will tank further; gold, oil and commodities should surge. This action should actually force bonds lower.
If Bernanke refrains from further debt monetization, US dealers will be holding the bag and the short-term outlook for bonds would be negative.
Bernanke will soon be forced to choose between saving the dollar and bonds or stocks.
An Associated Press-GfK poll says that public disapproval of President Barack Obama’s handling of health care has jumped to 52 percent. The same survey shows that 49 percent now disapprove of his overall performance as president. In July, just 42 percent disapproved of how he was handling his job.
The number of people crossing the northern and southern land borders into the USA has dropped sharply since a passport requirement began June 1.
Businesses in tourism-dependent border communities blame the policy for making a bad year worse.
At Martin’s Fantasy Island, an amusement park in Grand Island, N.Y., about 10 minutes from the Canadian border, “our Canadian business is way off,” spokesman Mike McGuire says. Nearly one-third fewer Canadian families of four have come for discounted “Canadian Wednesdays” compared with last year, he says. He blames the recession, a soggy summer and the passport rule.
Household incomes decreased in 2008, the first full year of the recession, and the poverty rate rose to the highest since 1997, government data showed.
The median household income fell 3.6 percent to $50,303, snapping three years of increases, the Census Bureau said today in its annual report on incomes, poverty and health insurance. The poverty rate climbed to 13.2 percent from 12.5 percent. The number of people living in poverty rose to 39.8 million last year, an increase of 2.6 million from 2007.
The U.S. trade deficit widened in July and imports gained by a record 4.7 percent, signaling a revival of commerce as the global recession eased.
The gap between imports and exports grew 16 percent, the most in more than a decade, to $32 billion from a revised $27.5 billion in June that was larger than previously estimated, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. In another sign the U.S. slump may be ending, a Labor Department report showed jobless claims last week fell to the lowest level since July.
Imports outpaced a 2.2 percent gain in exports as businesses replenished stockpiles of goods including pharmaceuticals, toys and televisions in anticipation of rising consumer demand, while automakers boosted purchases of parts and machinery. The export gain reflected renewed demand for U.S.-made goods among trade partners such as Mexico and Japan.
“Credibly” privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance companies seized by U.S. regulators last year, may be too difficult given the precedent set by the Treasury Department’s financial assistance, according to a Government Accountability Office analysis.
“The financial markets likely would continue to perceive that the federal government would provide substantial financial support to the enterprises, if privatized as largely intact entities, in a financial emergency,” the GAO said in a report today from Washington. “Consequently, such privatized entities may continue to derive financial benefits, such as lowered borrowing costs, resulting from the markets’ perceptions.”
The Treasury today reiterated that the government intends to make recommendations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac next year. The companies, which own or guarantee about $5.4 trillion of U.S. residential debt and have accounted for about 70 percent of all new home loans this year, would need a “potentially lengthy transition” given their size, the GAO said.
The number of Americans filing first-time claims for jobless benefits dropped last week to the lowest level since July, a sign the labor market is deteriorating at a slower pace.
Applications fell by 26,000 to 550,000 in the week ended Sept. 5, lower than economists forecast, from a revised 576,000 the week before, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance declined to the lowest level since April.
Electricity demand is forecast to fall 3.3% this year as a slump in industrial consumption continues to weigh on sales, the government said Wednesday.
In its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook, the Energy Information Administration said it expects demand to improve in the second-half of the year as residential consumption begins to recover. After seeing a 4.4% decline in the first half of the year, the EIA expects demand to be down only 2.3% during the second half of 2009. As for 2010, the agency sees demand growing 1.2%. The EIA last month had projected a 2.7% drop in demand for 2009 and a 0.8% increase in 2010.
The agency continues to see residential power prices rising this year, but again curbed its estimates. The EIA now is forecasting a 2.5% increase this year driven by rate increases in the first half of the year. The agency significantly cut its outlook for power prices for next year, now seeing a decline of 2.1% amid a sharp drop in natural gas prices. Last month, the EIA estimated a price increase of around 4.2% this year and 2.6% in 2010.
National chain-store sales rose 0.2% in the first week of September versus the previous month, according to Redbook Research’s latest indicator of national retail sales released Tuesday.
The rise in the index compared with a targeted 0.3% drop and came as sales picked up heading into Labor Day.
The Johnson Redbook Index also showed seasonally adjusted sales in the period were down 2.4% from September 2008 and compared with a targeted 2.9% fall. The latest numbers are starkly different because they don’t include Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), which earlier this year stopped giving monthly same-store-sales figures.
Redbook said, “Shoppers responded positively to various Labor Day sales and promotions. Discount stores reported strength in categories such as children’s clothing, shoes and lower margin back-to-school supplies. Discount stores also registered strong food sales ahead of the long weekend.”
The International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs Retail Chain Store Sales Index rose 0.6% in the week ended Saturday from its level a week before on a seasonally adjusted, comparable-store basis.
On a year-on-year basis, retailers saw sales decrease 0.1% in the latest week, with the decline moderating from recent weeks.
Application volume was up an unadjusted 64.5% for the week ended Sept. 4 compared with the same week in 2008, according to the Washington-based MBA’s latest weekly survey. The survey covers about half of all U.S. retail residential mortgage applications.
Week-to-week filings fell a seasonally adjusted 2.2% in the week ended August 28.
Refinancing applications were up 22.5% last week from the prior week before — the biggest jump since mid-March. And applications for mortgages to buy homes were up a seasonally adjusted 9.5% — the largest such gain since early April.
The four-week moving average for all mortgages was up 7% on a seasonally adjusted basis, the MBA said.
Refinancings made up 59.8% of all applications last week, up from 56.5% the previous week, while adjustable-rate mortgages accounted for 5.8%, up from 5.6%.
The average rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages was 5.02% last week, down from 5.15% the week before. Fifteen-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.45%, down from 4.57% the previous week, with one-year ARMs averaging 6.69%, down from 6.71%.
To obtain the rates, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage required an average 1.23 points, the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage required an average 1.13 points and the 1-year ARM required an average 0.19 point. A point is 1% of the total mortgage amount, charged as prepaid interest.
Nevada has replaced Tennessee as the state with the most bankruptcies, as filings continue to stack up nationally.
From January to August, national bankruptcy filings reached 954,911, up from 703,732 in the same period of 2008, according to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records. In August, filings were up 22% compared with August 2008.
It is likely that filings will total 1.45 million this year, says Robert Lawless, professor of law at the University of Illinois.
The default rate on commercial mortgages held by U.S. banks will rise to 5.4 percent in 2011, the highest since at least 1992, as banks anticipate more losses amid falling rents, according to Real Estate Econometrics LLC.
The property research firm increased its projected default rates for 2009 to 2011 amid declining occupancies and incomes at hotels, shopping malls and office buildings.
Defaults will rise to 4.2 percent this year and 5.3 percent next year before peaking at 5.4 percent in 2011, the New York- based firm said. Previously, it estimated rates of 4.1 percent this year, 5.2 percent next year and 5.3 percent in 2011.
“The higher default rate reflects a larger number of loans moving from delinquency to non-accrual status,” said Sam Chandan, president and chief economist of Real Estate Econometrics, in a statement. Loans moved to non-accrual status signify the bank doesn’t expect to be paid back in full.
The default rate more than doubled in the second quarter. Loans that were 90 days or more past due climbed to 2.88 percent of outstanding balances from 1.18 percent a year earlier, according to the firm.
Commercial mortgages labeled as “non-accrual” more than doubled last quarter to $27.76 billion, according to Real Estate Econometrics. Balances for delinquent loans, those that were 30 to 89 days past due, fell.
“This shift corresponds with banks working to identify and mitigate losses associated with problem loans earlier in the delinquency period and an increase in the share of delinquent loans that will require modification or foreclosure,” Chandan said.
The Congressional Oversight Panel did not provide an estimate of the projected loss in its latest monthly report on the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. But it said most of the $23 billion initially provided to General Motors . and Chrysler late last year is unlikely to be repaid.
“I think they drove a very hard bargain,” said Elizabeth Warren, the panel’s chairwoman and a law professor at Harvard University, referring to the Obama administration’s Treasury Department. “But it may not be enough.”
The prospect of recovering the government’s assistance to GM and Chrysler is heavily dependent on shares of the two companies rising to unprecedented levels, the report said. The government owns 10% of Chrysler and 61% of GM. The two companies are currently private but are expected to issue stock, in GM’s case by next year.
The number of open jobs fell 50% over the past two years to a seasonally adjusted 2.4 million in July, the lowest in the brief history of the data, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.
The job opening rate fell to a record-low 1.8% in July.
Job openings track the demand for labor, the flip side of the unemployment rate, which measures the supply of labor.
In July, there were 6.05 unemployed people for every job opening, according to the most recent data on labor turnover. In December 2007, when the recession began, there were 1.72 unemployed people for every job opening.
The number of workers hired in July was little changed at 4.06 million, while the number of workers separated from their jobs was little changed at 4.29 million. The hires rate rose to 3.1%, while the separations rate remained at a series-low 3.3%.
In the past 12 months, hires have fallen 13.9%, while separations are down 12.8%.
Layoffs were little changed in July at 2.3 million, while 1.7 million people quit their job. Layoffs have increased 15% in the past year, while quits are down 32%. In the 12 months ending in July, hires totaled 51.3 million and separations totaled 56.6 million, with a net job loss of 5.3 million.
The federal deficit surged higher into record territory in August, hitting $1.38 trillion with one month left in the budget year.
The Treasury Department says the deficit last month was $111.4 billion, below the $152 billion that economists expected.
Still, the imbalance added to a flood of red ink already accumulated through a severe recession and massive spending needed to stabilize the banking system.
The Obama administration last month trimmed its forecast for this year’s deficit to $1.58 trillion, from an earlier $1.84 trillion. The recovery of the banking system led to the reduced estimate as it meant the administration did not need to get an additional $250 billion in bailout support for banks.
A total of 358,471 properties received a default or auction notice or were seized last month, according to data provider RealtyTrac Inc. That’s up 18 percent from a year earlier, and down 0.5 percent from July, the Irvine, California-based
company said in a statement. One in 357 households received a filing.
“The foreclosure numbers are largely unemployment related,” Davis, a former Federal Reserve Board economist, said in an interview. “As long as 15 million Americans are unemployed, record foreclosures will continue.”
Consumer sentiment improved as of the middle of September.
The Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary consumer sentiment index for September stood at 70.2, from 65.7 in August. It had been expected to stand at 67.5.
The preliminary current conditions index was 71.8, from 66.6, while the expectations index was 69.2, up from 65.0 in August.
The one year inflation expectations index came in at 2.8%, after August’s 2.8%, while the five year inflation expectations index hit 2.8%, versus 2.8% the prior month.
US Aug Import Price Index rises 2.0% MoM and moderates its decline to 15.0% yearly.
Higher crude-oil prices drove import prices up by 2% in August, the fifth increase in the past six months, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Import prices have risen 7.6% so far in 2009 as energy prices have rebounded.
Despite the recent gains, import prices are still down 15% over the past 12 months.
Imported fuel prices rose 9.8% in August, but they’re down 39.6% in the past 12 months. Prices of nonfuel imports into the United States rose 0.4% in August, the largest gain in a year. Nonfuel import prices are down 5.1% in the past year, showing that general deflationary pressures haven’t been confined to energy goods.
Inventories at U.S. wholesalers in July fell to their lowest level in nearly three years, declining for the 11th straight month after sharp drops in furniture and metals stocks, government data showed on Friday,
The Commerce Department said total wholesale inventories dropped 1.4 percent to $387.2 billion, the lowest level since September 2006, after a revised 2.1 percent decline in June, previously reported as a 1.7 percent slump.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 1 percent drop in July from June.
Compared to the same period a year ago, inventories fell 12.8 percent.
Companies have been slashing accumulated stockpiles of goods as the economy reels from the worst recession in seven decades. Furniture inventories fell 2.7 percent, while stocks of unsold metal declined 4.4 percent in July.
Wholesale sales rose 0.5 percent in July, the biggest advance since June 2008, after rising by a revised 0.3 percent the previous month. June sales were previously reported as 0.4 percent higher.
That left the inventory-to-sales ratio, a measure of how long it would take to sell stocks at the current sales pace, at 1.23 months’ worth from June’s 1.25 months. (Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Neil Stempleman
Commercial-property sales in the U.S. this year are forecast to fall to the lowest in almost two decades as the industry endures its worst slump since the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s.
About $16 billion of office transactions will be completed by year-end, according to data compiled by Real Capital Analytics Inc., a New York research firm that has tracked deals for almost a decade. Real Capital Managing Director Dan Fasulo and Sam Chandan, chief economist of Real Estate Econometrics LLC, said that may be the lowest volume since at least 1991.
There’s no real way to sugarcoat it, Fasulo said in an interview. A slowdown of this magnitude certainly hasn’t occurred since I’ve been in the business.
The budget deficit for August was only $111.40 billion and that is 11 straight months of deficits.
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/more-financial-bubbles-ahead/
PortalScape 