On the Edge with Max Keiser (09/04/09): The Banksters have free reign in America

Related articles:
Goldman Sachs Wrong on Economic Recovery, Macro Hedge Funds Say (Bloomberg):

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire hedge-fund manager who outperformed peers last year, is wagering that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley got it wrong in declaring the start of an economic recovery.

“If we have a recovery at all, it isn’t sustainable,” Kevin Harrington, managing director at Clarium, said in an interview at the firm’s New York offices. “This is more likely a ski-jump recession, with short-term stimulus creating a bump that will ultimately lead to a more precipitous decline later.”

Head of China Investment Corporation: China & America are addressing bubbles by creating more bubbles (Reuters):
“It will not be too bad this year. Both China and America are addressing bubbles by creating more bubbles and we’re just taking advantage of that. So we can’t lose,” he said.

US: Biggest pension funds record steep losses of almost $100bn (Financial Times)

CalPERS Admits California “Pension Costs Unsustainable” (Global Economic Analysis)

CalPERS Invested More than $110 Million with Former ‘Car Czar’ CalPERS has invested more than $110 million with financier Steven Rattner, who resigned as President Barack Obama’s “car czar” amid an investigation into his dealings with New York’s public employee pension fund.


Guest is Mike Morgan of GoldmanSachs666.com

Mike Morgan: “Obama is the worst thing that could happen in the US.”

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Read moreOn the Edge with Max Keiser (09/04/09): The Banksters have free reign in America

Economy & Stock market: There is no recovery

Green Sharts On The NYSE!:

These four stocks represented thirty seven percent of all shares traded today.

Today 3,162 different stocks traded on the NYSE.  These four represent 0.13% of the total, yet they comprised 37% of the volume.  That’s an over-representation of nearly 300 times the average.

Now folks, let’s be straight here.  Do you believe for one second that this is “great liquidity” added by the “high-frequency trading” computers that are almost certainly behind the vast majority of this volume?

This isn’t the first day with this sort of abnormal trading and volume pattern either.  In fact it has been going on for the last week, with AIG making a frequent appearance on the list as well.

If there was ever an argument to be made for the NYSE having turned into a gigantic “hot potato” parlor game, this is it – in your face in an impossible-to-explain-away fashion.

Stocks led by four wounded horsemen (of  the coming apocalypse):

In fact, these four wounded horsemen of the financial sector comprised 40% of the overall trading volume on the NYSE on Tuesday. These stocks haven’t just been active, they’ve been surging.

This is kind of scary. It suggests that the late-summer portion of the almost six-month long market rally is being fueled more by speculation and momentum, not real optimism about a potential recovery in the financial sector and the overall economy.

The Great Economic Recovery of 2009 Is a Fraud:

If the economy were truly in “recovery” mode, and if consumer demand were truly picking up, the Baltic Dry Index should be moving consistently higher.

It’s not. And that fact should be a major warning sign for anyone buying stocks and betting the economy’s current blip higher is sustainable.

PE Ratio Shows That Today’s Stock Market Is Very Expensive:

From 1936 into the late 1980s, the PE ratio tended to peak in the low 20s (red line) and trough somewhere around seven (green line). The price investors were willing to pay for a dollar of earnings increased during the dot-com boom (late 1990s) and the dot-com bust (early 2000s). As a result of the recent plunge in earnings and recent stock market rally, the PE ratio spiked and just peaked at 144 – a record high. Currently, with 97% of US corporations having reported for Q2 2009, the PE ratio now stands at a lofty 129.

RBS chief credit strategist issues red alert on global stock markets:

Three-month slide could hit record lows, Royal Bank of Scotland chief credit strategist Bob Janjuah predicts.
He expects the S&P 500 index of US equities to reach the “mid 500s”.

Eliot Spitzer: Federal Reserve is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job

eliot-spitzer

The Federal Reserve – the quasi-autonomous body that controls the US’s money supply – is a “Ponzi scheme” that created “bubble after bubble” in the US economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney-general of New York.

In a wide-ranging discussion of the bank bailouts on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan described the process by which the Federal Reserve exchanged $13.9 trillion of bad bank debt for cash that it gave to the struggling banks.

Spitzer – who built a reputation as “the Sheriff of Wall Street” for his zealous prosecutions of corporate crime as New York’s attorney-general and then resigned as the state’s governor over revelations he had paid for prostitutes – seemed to agree with Ratigan that the bank bailout amounts to “America’s greatest theft and cover-up ever.”

Advocating in favor of a House bill to audit the Federal Reserve, Spitzer said: “The Federal Reserve has benefited for decades from the notion that it is quasi-autonomous, it’s supposed to be independent. Let me tell you a dirty secret: The Fed has done an absolutely disastrous job since [former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker left.

“The reality is the Fed has blown it. Time and time again, they blew it. Bubble after bubble, they failed to understand what they were doing to the economy.

“The most poignant example for me is the AIG bailout, where they gave tens of billions of dollars that went right through – conduit payments – to the investment banks that are now solvent. We [taxpayers] didn’t get stock in those banks, they didn’t ask what was going on – this begs and cries out for hard, tough examination.

“You look at the governing structure of the New York [Federal Reserve], it was run by the very banks that got the money. This is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job. It is outrageous, it is time for Congress to say enough of this. And to give them more power now is crazy.

“The Fed needs to be examined carefully.”

Spitzer resigned as governor of New York in March, 2008, after news reports stated he had paid for a $1,000-an-hour New York City call girl.

Read moreEliot Spitzer: Federal Reserve is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job

On the Edge with Max Keiser (07/17/09): ‘Obama is a bum’

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Read moreOn the Edge with Max Keiser (07/17/09): ‘Obama is a bum’

AIG bonuses four times higher!!!


The American International Greed Group (AIG) offices in New York, 2008. Troubled US insurance giant American International Group is close to selling its Japanese headquarters for about one billion dollars.

The 2008 AIG bonus pool just keeps getting larger and larger.

In a response to detailed questions from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the company has offered a third assessment of exactly how much it paid out in bonuses last year.

And the new number, offered in a document submitted to Cummings on May 1, is the highest figure the company has disclosed to date.

AIG now says it paid out more than $454 million in bonuses to its employees for work performed in 2008.

That is nearly four times more than the company revealed in late March when asked by POLITICO to detail its total bonus payments. At that time, AIG spokesman Nick Ashooh said the firm paid about $120 million in 2008 bonuses to a pool of more than 6,000 employees.

The figure Ashooh offered was, in turn, substantially higher than company CEO Edward Liddy claimed days earlier in testimony before a House Financial Services Subcommittee. Asked how much AIG had paid in 2008 bonuses, Liddy responded: “I think it might have been in the range of $9 million.”

“I was shocked to see that the number has nearly quadrupled this time,” said Cummings. “I simply cannot fathom why this company continues to erode the trust of the public and the U.S. Congress, rather than being forthcoming about these issues from the start.”

AIG spokesman Ashooh said the company’s revised accounting is the result of different wording of the questions asked by Cummings and POLITICO.

The new figure of $454 million, Ashooh said, “reflects all types of variable compensation across all of our businesses,” while the $120 million figure he provided earlier reflected only bonuses paid to corporate headquarters executives and high-ranking officers at its major businesses around the world. Ashooh said the $454 million figure includes the $120 million he had previously disclosed.

All of the numbers provided are on top of the controversial $165 million in retention bonuses offered to employees of a division of the company known as AIG Financial Products. It was the disclosure of those payments that set off a political firestorm earlier this year. Washington was stunned that employees of the very unit that had brought AIG to its financial knees were being so richly rewarded — especially after the company received $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money.

Read moreAIG bonuses four times higher!!!

Obama administration seeks powers to shut firms like AIG

This is how the Reuters homepage linked to this article:
Government seeks wider takeover powers
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers that the government needs authority to shut down troubled institutions like AIG to avoid future bailouts.

The Financial Times reports:
Fed chief seeks new powers:

The Obama administration joined forces with Ben Bernanke on Tuesday to press Congress for stronger powers to intervene in troubled financial institutions, as moves to strengthen the regulatory system gained pace on Capitol Hill.

So more powers for the government and the Fed is proposed as the solution, when in reality it was the Fed and the government that caused the entire crisis.



Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner take their seats to testify on Capitol Hill, March 24, 2009. REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration on Tuesday mounted a full-scale push for government authority to shut down troubled institutions like insurer AIG to avoid the need for future bailouts.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, testifying before lawmakers still fuming about big bonuses for executives at bailout recipient AIG, called on Congress for new powers to take over big non-bank financial firms that run amok.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke strongly backed Geithner in testimony before the same committee, and President Barack Obama took the case public in remarks to reporters.

“In the absence of that capacity you end up with the situation we’ve been in … an institution that poses systemic risks to the system but a lack of capacity to close it down in an orderly fashion, renegotiate contracts, sell off bad assets,” Obama said.

Read moreObama administration seeks powers to shut firms like AIG

Official: AIG bonus estimates grow $53 million

Yes, these bonuses for total failure deserve outrage, but all that really is, is sacrificing a pawn or two in a chess game.

These bonuses for the banksters are little pawns compared to the hundreds of billions of taxpayer money for bailing out Wall Street and the Fed printing money like there is no tomorrow. The elite, who controls Wall Street and the corporate media, has worked out a brilliant strategy.

Just a few moves later everyone will realize that the real plan was to loot the taxpayer, destroy the middle class, the dollar and the economy, bankrupt the U.S. and create the greatest financial /economic collapse in history.

And all the people are excited about are a few pawns, when the elite is after the king – total power and control.


Company paid $218 million, not $165 million, Conn. attorney general says

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut – The attorney general of Connecticut said Saturday that he is asking American International Group Inc. why documents appear to show the company paid $53 million more in bonuses to its financial products division than previously reported.

Documents turned over late Friday show AIG paid $218 million in bonuses last weekend, higher than the $165 million that was previously disclosed, said the office of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who had issued a subpoena.

Bonuses were “showered like confetti” on AIG employees, Blumenthal said.

Read moreOfficial: AIG bonus estimates grow $53 million

Paul Craig Roberts: Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.


A Program of Financial Concentration

Professor Michael Hudson (CounterPunch, March 18) is correct that the orchestrated outrage over the $165 million AIG bonuses is a diversion from the thousand times greater theft from taxpayers of the approximately $200 billion “bailout” of AIG. Nevertheless, it is a diversion that serves an important purpose. It has taught an inattentive American public that the elites run the government in their own private interests.

Americans are angry that AIG executives are paying themselves millions of dollars in bonuses after having cost the taxpayers an exorbitant sum. Senator Charles Grassley put a proper face on the anger when he suggested that the AIG executives “follow the Japanese example and resign or go commit suicide.”

Yet, Obama’s White House economist, Larry Summers, on whose watch as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration financial deregulation got out of control, invoked the “sanctity of contracts” in defense of the AIG bonuses.

But the Obama administration does not regard other contracts as sacred. Specifically: labor unions had to agree to give-backs in order for the auto companies to obtain federal help; CNN reports that “Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday [March 10] that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance”; the Washington Post reports that the Obama team has set its sights on downsizing Social Security and Medicare.

According to the Post, Obama said that “it is impossible to separate the country’s financial ills from the long-term need to rein in health-care costs, stabilize Social Security and prevent the Medicare program from bankrupting the government.”

After Washington’s trillion dollar bank bailouts and trillion dollar gratuitous wars for the sake of the military industry’s profits and Israeli territorial expansion, there is no money for Social Security and Medicare.

The US government breaks its contracts with US citizens on a daily basis, but AIG’s bonus contracts are sacrosanct. The Social Security contract was broken when the government decided to tax 85% of the benefits. It was broken again when the Clinton administration rigged the inflation measure in order to beat retirees out of their cost-of-living adjustments. To have any real Medicare coverage, a person has to give up part of his Social Security check to pay Medicare Part B premium and then take out a private supplemental policy. The true cost of Medicare to beneficiaries is about $6,000 annually in premiums, plus deductibles and the Medicare tax if the person is still earning.

Treasury Secretary Geithner, the fox in charge of the hen house, has resolved the problem for us. He is going to withhold $165 million (the amount of the AIG bonuses) from the next taxpayer payment to AIG of $30,000 million. If someone handed you $30,000 dollars, would you mind if they held back $165?

Read morePaul Craig Roberts: Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Senate quietly stripped measure restricting bonuses from bailout legislation

A new revelation in the scandal surrounding AIG’s decision to pay multi-million dollar bonuses to executives — a provision that would have restricted companies receiving federal government bailout aid from paying bonuses was quietly stripped from a bill last month.

The measure, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), was removed by negotiators in a late-night, close door meeting. In the negotiations, senators agreed to limit executive compensation but decided to forgo barring excessive bonuses — in fact, they specifically exempted it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) (above right) dodged a question about the decision when asked by a reporter.

“I’m wondering sir, if that was a mistake by Democrats to drop that and you wish you hadn’t at this time?” the reporter asked.

“I think we should look at what we did put in the bill,” Reid replied. “We did put the Dodd language.”

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Sen. Wyden bemoaned the removal of his bonus-limiting provision.

Senator Ron Wyden said on Tuesday that the furor surrounding AIG’s bonus payments could have been avoided had the Obama White House and members of Congress simply backed legislation that he and Sen. Olympia Snowe introduced more than a month ago.

Read moreSenate quietly stripped measure restricting bonuses from bailout legislation

Jim Rogers on Bloomberg: There will be civil unrest in the U.S. and other countries (03/17/09)

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Read moreJim Rogers on Bloomberg: There will be civil unrest in the U.S. and other countries (03/17/09)

Obama Received a $101,332 Bonus from AIG

Obama Orders Treasury Chief to Try to Block AIG Bonuses (New York Times)
“Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses at all, much less $165 million in extra pay,” Mr. Obama said. “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?”



AP Photo/Ron Edmonds

Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are – Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.

The A.I.G. Financial Products affiliate of A.I.G. gave out $136,928, the most of any AIG affiliate, in the 2008 cycle. I would note that A.I.G.’s financial products division is the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps and “misjudged” the risk.

The Washington Post reports a “mob effect” at A.I.G financial products division:

A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn’t show up at all.

With the anger and rage that is being exhibited against A.I.G., perhaps the bonuses Obama received from A.I.G. explain Obama’s A.I.G crocodile tears.

Now that the Wall street Journal has revealed that A.I.G. paid bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 employees, it’s time to ask if recipients of A.I.G. “bonuses,” including President Obama, will give what now ought to be taxpayer money back?

March 17, 2009
Dan Spencer

Source: The Examiner

AIG Discloses Counterparties as Obama, Cuomo Assail Bonuses

This time the bailout money from the U.S. taxpayer went to:
Goldman Sachs led beneficiaries, with $12.9 billion, followed by SocGen, France’s No. 3 bank, with $11.9 billion, and Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest lender, with $11.8 billion. Barclays Plc received $8.5 billion from AIG, Merrill Lynch & Co. got $6.8 billion, Bank of America Corp. got $5.2 billion and UBS AG got $5 billion.

“I was happy to see that AIG finally handed over the counterparty information we’ve been requesting for months,” said Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. “However, I am deeply concerned that Goldman Sachs received so much money from AIG considering the relationships between the two companies. We will certainly be investigating this further to ensure that this is merely a coincidence.”



A pedestrian walks past the Societe Generale SA company logo in Paris

March 16 (Bloomberg) — American International Group Inc., bailed out four times by taxpayers and under pressure to show what it’s doing with the money, disclosed which banks and states got $105 billion of U.S. funds and may have to name some of the employees splitting $1 billion in retention pay.

President Barack Obama called AIG’s $165 million of retention bonuses handed out yesterday unwarranted and vowed to block or recover them. Andrew Cuomo, New York State’s attorney general, demanded names of the recipients and said he’d send a subpoena if New York-based AIG didn’t respond by 4 p.m.

“It’s hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay,” said the text of Obama’s White House speech today. “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?”

AIG has been pressed to reveal its inner workings since the U.S. took a stake of almost 80 percent last year to avert a collapse of the insurer, once the world’s biggest. Yesterday, AIG said U.S. states and banks led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Societe Generale SA and Deutsche Bank AG were among those that benefited from the rescue, now valued at $173 billion.

Read moreAIG Discloses Counterparties as Obama, Cuomo Assail Bonuses

A.I.G. Planning $100 Million in Bonuses After Huge Bailout

WASHINGTON – Despite being bailed out with more than $170 billion from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, the American International Group is preparing to pay about $100 million in bonuses to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

An official in the Obama administration said Saturday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner had called A.I.G.’s government-appointed chairman, Edward M. Liddy, on Wednesday and asked that the company renegotiate the bonuses.

Administration officials said they had managed to reduce some of the bonuses but had allowed most of them to go forward after the company’s chief executive said A.I.G. was contractually obligated to pay them.

Read moreA.I.G. Planning $100 Million in Bonuses After Huge Bailout

Top U.S., European Banks Got $50 Billion in AIG Aid

The beneficiaries of the government’s bailout of American International Group Inc. include at least two dozen U.S. and foreign financial institutions that have been paid roughly $50 billion since the Federal Reserve first extended aid to the insurance giant.

Among those institutions are Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG, each of which received roughly $6 billion in payments between mid-September and December 2008, according to a confidential document and people familiar with the matter.

Covered Counterparties

Some banks that were paid by AIG after it was bailed out by the government

  • Goldman Sachs
  • Deutsche Bank
  • Merrill Lynch
  • Société Générale
  • Calyon
  • Barclays
  • Rabobank
  • Danske
  • HSBC
  • Royal Bank of Scotland
  • Banco Santander
  • Morgan Stanley
  • Wachovia
  • Bank of America
  • Lloyds Banking Group

Source: WSJ research

Other banks that received large payouts from AIG late last year include Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America Corp., and French bank Société Générale SA.

Read moreTop U.S., European Banks Got $50 Billion in AIG Aid

Fed Refuses to Release Identity of Credit Default Swap Counterparties

As you know, the Fed and Treasury are refusing to reveal to Congress, their overseers or the American people who is getting the bailout money.

But did you know that the Fed is now refusing to disclose who the counterparties are to AIG’s billions of dollars of credit default swaps?

Read moreFed Refuses to Release Identity of Credit Default Swap Counterparties

AIG Seeks More Aid, May Lose $60 Billion, CNBC Says

Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) — American International Group Inc., the insurer rescued by the government, is in talks with the U.S. for more funding as it prepares to report the biggest corporate loss in American history, CNBC reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation.

AIG may report a loss of as much as $60 billion, CNBC’s David Faber said. The company is also exploring bankruptcy, which is an unlikely outcome, Faber said.

A loss may cast doubt on the New York-based insurer’s ability to repay the government, which controls 80 percent of the shares. AIG’s rescue package was expanded to about $150 billion in November as regulators tried to reduce losses at firms that did business with the company. The insurer posted more than $60 billion in writedowns and unrealized losses in two years through Sept. 30, 2008.

Read moreAIG Seeks More Aid, May Lose $60 Billion, CNBC Says

Bush administration overpaid banks tens of billions of dollars in bailout, watchdog says


Elizabeth Warren , chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), right, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009, before the Senate Banking Committee as Gene L. Dodaro , acting Comptroller General for the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), left, and TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky, center, listen. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration overpaid tens of billions of dollars for stocks and other assets in its massive bailout last year of Wall Street banks and financial institutions, a new study by a government watchdog says.

The Congressional Oversight Panel, in a report released Friday, said last year’s overpayments amounted to a taxpayer-financed $78 billion subsidy of the firms.

The findings added to the frustrations of lawmakers already wary of the $700 billion rescue plan, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Congress approved the plan last fall, but members of both parties criticized spending decisions by the Bush administration and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Financially ailing insurance giant American International Group, deemed by the Treasury Department to be too big to be allowed to fail, received $40 billion from the Treasury for assets valued at $14.8 billion, the oversight panel found.

Read moreBush administration overpaid banks tens of billions of dollars in bailout, watchdog says

Fed Calls Consultants to Treat AIG, Stricken Markets

Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) — Every Sunday night, New York bankruptcy lawyer Marshall Huebner spends a 13-hour shift on call as an emergency medical technician. His day job involves work on another sort of rescue: The government’s $152.5 billion bailout of American International Group Inc.

“There’s a stronger parallel than you would think,” Huebner, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, said in an interview. Helping resuscitate the insurance giant takes “a lot of the same qualities that I think stand you in very good stead with emergency medicine — the ability to remain calm in almost any situation, and the ability to assess, triage and treat, even in a crisis.”

Huebner, 41, is part of an army of outside lawyers and consultants the Federal Reserve has called upon to help fight the biggest financial crisis in 70 years. While the central bank won’t disclose how much work it has outsourced, Fed watchers say the institution is relying on Wall Street experts to an unprecedented extent, seeking help from insiders in the very industries where the turmoil originated.

“I don’t think the Fed has seen anything like this,” former New York Fed general counsel and AIG executive Ernest Patrikis said in an interview. “AIG just got so complex in terms of private corporate matters that you just need that outside expertise.” Patrikis is now with the law firm of White & Case in New York.

In addition to hiring consultants, the Fed and the Treasury have retained Wall Street firms to help manage more than $2 trillion in bailout and emergency-loan programs.

Pimco, JPMorgan

Pacific Investment Management Co. runs a $259 billion program to backstop the commercial-paper market. BlackRock Inc., Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Pimco and Wellington Management Co. are managing the Fed’s purchases of up to $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities. JPMorgan Chase & Co. oversees a separate program under which the Fed may lend up to $540 billion to support money market mutual funds.

Morgan Stanley is also advising the Fed on the AIG rescue.

Read moreFed Calls Consultants to Treat AIG, Stricken Markets

Global Economic Crisis Accelerating

Obama administration considers launch of ‘bad bank’ (Telegraph)

US Initial Jobless Claims Match Highest Since ’82 (Bloomberg)

Barack Obama inauguration: this Emperor has no clothes, it will all end in tears (Telegraph)

Despite billions, banks still teeter on the brink (MSNBC)

Microsoft to shed 5,000 jobs (Financial Times)

Intel to Cut at Least 5000 Jobs (New York Times)

GM Gets $5.4 Billion Loan Installment From Federal Government (CNNMoney)

US jobless claims surge, housing start tumble (Forbes)

Housing Starts, Permits in US Slump to Record Low (Bloomberg)

Banks Foreclose on Builders With Perfect Records (New York Times)

Jim Rogers: Now it’s time to emigrate, says investment guru (Independent)

Saudi prince’s firm loses $8.3B in 4Q (AP)

Investors flee after brutal losses at global markets (Emirates Business)

Indians Flee Dubai as Dreams Crash – Fall out of Economic Crisis (Daijiworld):
It’s the great escape by Indians who’ve hit the dead-end in Dubai.

China growth slows, Bank of Japan sees deflation (Forbes):
(Reuters) – China’s economy slowed sharply in the fourth quarter and Japan’s central bank on Thursday predicted two years of deflation as Asia’s largest economies buckle under the strain of the financial crisis.

Roubini Sees China Recession Despite ‘Massaged’ GDP (Bloomberg)

Asian economic woe grows as China slows and Japanese exports plunge (Telegraph):
China’s economy may have ground to a halt entirely between the third and fourth quarters of last year and Japanese exports plunged 35pc in December, underlining the scale of the slowdown in Asia.

ZIMBABWE: Inflation at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent (IRIN)

Sony forecasts $2.9bn operating loss (Financial Times)

Hedge funds’ $400bn withdrawals hit (Financial Times)

Google income drops 68% on one-time charges (IHT)

Is Britain facing bankruptcy? (Guardian)

Manufacturing outlook plummets (Financial Times)

Car production plummets as pressure for industry bail-out grows (Telegraph)

London’s Evening Standard sold to ex-KGB agent (Reuters)

AIG starts $20bn auction of Asian unit (Financial Times):
AIG, the stricken insurance giant, on Wednesday kicked off the sale of its Asian life assurance unit – one of its most prized assets – in the hope of raising up to $20bn to help repay the $60bn US government loan that is keeping the group alive.

UBS to Cut Securities Jobs, Close More Debt Units (Bloomberg)

Japanese Housewives Desperate After Currency Scheme Collapses (Bloomberg)

New age of rebellion and riot stalks Europe (Times Online)

Increase in burglaries shows effect of recession (Guardian)

Chinese media issues stinging attack on Barack Obama and George W Bush (Telegraph)

Barclays may lose control to Gulf investors (Telegraph)

Cars to be crushed in insurance crackdown (Scotsman)

Investors say jailed pilot swiped money for years (Washington Post)

Capital One Reports $1.42 Billion Loss on Charges (Bloomberg)

Nokia reports sharp fall in profits (Financial Times)

GAO: 83% of big U.S companies, contractors use offshore tax havens

Citigroup – which has received $25 billion from the bailout fund, plus $300 billion in government guarantees – has set up 427 tax haven subsidiaries to do business: 91 in Luxembourg, 90 in the Cayman Islands and 35 in the British Virgin Islands. Other havens include Switzerland, Hong Kong, Panama and Mauritius.”



The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just issued a report showing that most of the nation’s largest public companies and government contractors rely on offshore subsidiaries to do business and cut their tax bills. Some of these same firms – including big banks and insurers – have already received tens of billions in taxpayer money from the federal bailout fund.

Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, American International Group, American Express have set up hundreds of tax-haven subsidiaries, the report states. All have taken billions from the bailout fund. Pepsi and Caterpillar, both of which have received billions in tax dollars from being major government contractors, also shelter revenue in offshore subsidiaries, The Washington Post says.

Read moreGAO: 83% of big U.S companies, contractors use offshore tax havens

Hyperinflation and then The Second Great Depression

A future out of control, bankrupt financial institutions trying to hold on, limitation on credit severely limits ability of the economy to start up again, debt totally embraces our lives, handouts a state secret, soon cash infusions wont work for banks anymore, banks hold too much toxic garbage to even know if they are solvent. We are now 17 months into a credit crisis that continues to expose the corruption and incompetence of government, banking, Wall Street and transnational corporations. The situation has not stabilized and it won’t anytime soon. All we see are sweetheart deals for elitist corporations for which American taxpayers will pay for years to come. The future of our nation is totally out of control. For the last eight years our economy has been running on something for nothing, lies and deceit. The result will be hyperinflation and then the Second Great Depression.

Read moreHyperinflation and then The Second Great Depression