Here Comes The Next Bubble: Carbon Trading

‘Carbon Trading’ should not even exist:

Prof. Ian Clark: ‘Rises in C02 lag 800 years behind temperature rises!’ – You will pay taxes for nothing!

Study: CO2 levels remained constant since 1850! (University of Bristol)

This has nothing to do with saving the planet.

carbon-trading

And you will be presented the bill in form of higher prices.


Forget CDOs and other inventions of the great credit bubble. That’s all old hat. Investment bankers are moving on to an area of securities trading that is potentially even more lucrative, and what’s more, even has a social value – saving the planet. Or supposedly so, anyway. I’ve long had my suspicions about the great carbon trading bubble, and I’ve had them pretty much confirmed by a brilliant article which has been drawn to my attention by one Mark Schapiro in Harper’s magazine.

According to Mr Schapiro, carbon trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth. Since Kyoto signatories bought in to the cap and trade concept in 2005, there have been more than $300bn carbon transactions, prompting several investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Barclays, to set up their own carbon trading desks. But that’s just the start. If President Obama and his supporters can institute a cap-and-trade system in the United States – and that’s a big if for this increasingly marooned presidency – demand could explode into a $2 to $3 trillion market.

And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon credits, or finding carbon reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible.

Read moreHere Comes The Next Bubble: Carbon Trading

Barclays banksters to be handed pay rises of 150% or more

barclays
Barclays is set to reward its investment bankers with huge pay deals

Barclays is preparing to hand 150 per cent pay rises to staff at its ‘casino’ banking division.

In a pre-Christmas give-away, some 20,000 workers at the Barclays Capital investment bank will see their salaries jump sharply, sources said.

High-flyers could enjoy massive hikes of 150 per cent or more, pushing their basic pay up to as much as £300,000.

Read moreBarclays banksters to be handed pay rises of 150% or more

Fall Of The Republic – The Presidency Of Barack H. Obama (The Full Movie HQ)

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
– Benjamin Franklin


Added: 22. October 2009

Fall Of The Republic documents how an offshore corporate cartel is bankrupting the US economy by design. Leaders are now declaring that world government has arrived and that the dollar will be replaced by a new global currency.

President Obama has brazenly violated Article 1 Section 9 of the US Constitution by seating himself at the head of United Nations’ Security Council, thus becoming the first US president to chair the world body.

A scientific dictatorship is in its final stages of completion, and laws protecting basic human rights are being abolished worldwide; an iron curtain of high-tech tyranny is now descending over the planet.

A worldwide regime controlled by an unelected corporate elite is implementing a planetary carbon tax system that will dominate all human activity and establish a system of neo-feudal slavery.

Read moreFall Of The Republic – The Presidency Of Barack H. Obama (The Full Movie HQ)

Barclays’ chief currency strategist: Dollar to Fall – ‘The question is, what is there in the US to attract capital? And that answer is hard to find.’

change
U.S. quarters and U.S. dollar bills are arranged for a photograph in New York, Aug. 18, 2009. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) — The dollar will weaken as U.S. investors send money overseas and the nation’s assets fail to attract global investors, said Steven Englander, chief currency strategist for the Americas at Barclays Capital Inc.

“Even though U.S. asset markets are doing well, they’re not doing well enough,” Englander said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio. “The question is, what is there in the U.S. to attract capital? And that answer is hard to find.”

Net buying of long-term equities, notes and bonds totaled $15.3 billion in July, compared with purchases of $90.2 billion in June, the Treasury Department said on Sept. 16. Including short-term securities such as stock swaps, foreigners sold a net $97.5 billion in July, compared with net selling of $56.8 billion the previous month.

Emerging economies such as China and Russia have questioned the dollar’s dominance in the global economy because of a federal budget deficit projected to exceed $1.5 trillion in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. Investors abroad reduced purchases of Treasuries by more than a third in July from the prior month and were also net sellers of U.S. corporate and agency debt.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of U.S. stocks has gained 17 percent this year, lagging behind the 60 percent increase in Brazil’s Bovespa benchmark and the 28 percent advance in Canada’s S&P/TSX Composite Index. The Canadian dollar will probably rise to parity versus the U.S. currency from C$1.0658, or 93.83 U.S. cents, Englander predicted.

Read moreBarclays’ chief currency strategist: Dollar to Fall – ‘The question is, what is there in the US to attract capital? And that answer is hard to find.’

Barclays Bank leaked memos

Infinite Unknown reader Dave has sent this important information.


Barclays Bank gags Guardian over leaked memos detailing offshore tax scam, 16 Mar 2009

March 17, 2009

Download from
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Summary

On Monday 16th March 2009, The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom published a series of leaked memos from the banking giant Barclays, together with the article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/16/revenue-investigates-barclays-tax-mole-claims

The next day, these documents were removed from The Guardian web archive, as a result of a court injunction obtained in the middle of the night:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/17/barclays-guardian-injunction-tax
Barclays’ lawyers, Freshfields, worked into the early hours to force the Guardian to remove the documents from the website. They argued that the documents were the property of Barclays and could only have been leaked by someone who acquired them wrongfully and in breach of confidentiality agreements.
The Guardian’s solicitor, Geraldine Proudler, was woken by the judge at 2am and asked to argue the Guardian’s case by telephone. Around 2.31am, Mr Justice Ouseley issued an order for the documents to be removed from the Guardian’s website.

The documents are copies of alleged internal memos from within Barclays Bank. They were sent by an anonymous whistleblower to Vince Cable, Liberal-Democrat shadow chancellor. The documents reveal a number of elaborate international tax avoidance schemes by the SCM (Structured Capital Markets) division of Barclays.

According to these documents, Barclays has been systematically assisting clients to avoid huge amounts of tax they should be liable for across multiple jurisdictions.

A commentator to the Financial Times stated:

I was lucky enough to read through the first of the Barclays documents…
I will say it was absolutely breathtaking, extraordinary. The depth of deceit, connivance and deliberate, artificial avoidance stunned me. The intricacy and artificiality of the scheme deeply was absolutely evident, as was the fact that the knew exactly what they were doing and why: to get money from one point in London to another without paying tax, via about 10 offshore companies. Simple, deliberate outcome, clearly stated, with the exact names of who was doing this, and no other purpose.
Until now I have been a supporter of the finance industry – I work with people there regularly and respect many of them, and greatly enjoy the Financial Times and other financial papers. However this has shone a light on something for me, and made me certain that these people belong in jail, and companies like Barclays deserve to be bankrupt. They have robbed everyone of us, every single person who pays tax or who will ever pay tax in this country (and other countries!), through both the bailouts and schemes such as this.

Read moreBarclays Bank leaked memos

Barclays Banksters Gag Guardian Over Tax

Download the memos here: Barclays Bank leaked memos
Infinite Unknown reader Dave has sent this important information.


Injunction forces news website to remove seven leaked memos showing how bank avoided hundreds of millions of pounds in tax

Barclays Bank obtained a court order early today banning the Guardian from publishing documents which showed how the bank set up companies to avoid hundreds of millions of pounds in tax.

The gagging order was granted by Mr Justice Ouseley after Barclays complained about seven documents on the Guardian’s website which had been leaked to the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader, Vince Cable.

The internal Barclays memos – leaked by a Barclays whistleblower – showed executives from SCM, Barclays’s structured capital markets division, seeking approval for a 2007 plan to sink more than $16bn (£11.4bn) into US loans.

Tax benefits were to be generated by an elaborate circuit of Cayman islands companies, US partnerships and Luxembourg subsidiaries.

The documents had been leaked to Cable by a former employee of the bank, who wrote a long account of how the bank works.

The anonymous whistleblower wrote to Cable: “The last year has seen the global taxpayer having to rescue the global financial system. The taxpayer has already had a gun put to their head and been told to pay up or watch the financial system and life as we know it disappear into a black hole.

Read moreBarclays Banksters Gag Guardian Over Tax

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

Banks face new wave of losses on CDS contracts, analysts warn

Banks in Europe and the US face a new wave of losses linked to contracts issued to insure against companies going bust and defaulting on their loans, City analysts have warned.

After the billions lost over the US subprime market and leveraged loans, investment banks such as Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, UBS and RBS face losses on credit default swaps (CDS) – contracts that allow an investor to be repaid if a company loan or a bond defaults.

CDS contracts became a favourite tool of speculators, mostly hedge funds, which bought the contracts without having any link to the original lending. They bought the contract to trade or in the expectation the company would in fact default, meaning they could claim back the full value of a loan they never made.

The CDS market exploded to be worth as much as $50 TRILLION, many times the size of the underlying assets. Each loan could have thousands of protection contracts, even if there were only a few lenders. Hedge funds accounted for about 60% of CDS trading, according to ratings agency Fitch.

Read moreBanks face new wave of losses on CDS contracts, analysts warn

How top financiers paid themselves £1bn before the wheels fell off

A dozen senior bankers whose influence has shaped the financial world gave themselves pay awards valued at more than £1bn before the credit crunch spectacularly exposed the fragility of the profits they appeared to have secured for shareholders.

Although seemingly profitable during the boom, these same banks have since revealed losses, write-downs and emergency capital injections totalling more than £300bn.

In Britain, they include Barclays executives John Varley and Bob Diamond, who between them took more than £50m of awards in the past four years.

But the biggest winners were on Wall Street where Stan O’Neal – who was pushed out of Merrill Lynch in 2007 after shock losses from sub-prime mortgage investments made him one of the first high-profile casualties of the crisis – received pay, bonuses, stock and options totalling $279m (£196m) for less than nine years’ service. This is the highest amount for any Wall St executive in the Guardian’s study.

The figures are based on annual proxy statement filings in the case of US bank executives. These include a projection by the banks of the likely future value of stock and option awards. If such awards have not been cashed in they will have depreciated in value along with relevant bank share prices. Data for UK bank directors only values share-based awards that have been cashed in and therefore makes comparisons difficult.

The US bankers include Dick Fuld who presided over the collapse of Lehman Brothers – the world’s biggest ever corporate failure, which sent shockwaves throughout the global banking system last September. Fuld received annual awards totalling $191m from 1999 to 2007. The tally includes stock and options valued at the time at $111m.

Jimmy Cayne, the long-serving boss of Bear Stearns, also makes the list. Cayne received pay awards valued at $233m before Bear Stearns became the first big Wall Street investment bank to effectively fail, when it was forced to seek an emergency Federal Reserve loan in March last year.

Former US treasury secretary Hank Paulson, charged by George Bush with marshalling the $700bn taxpayer bailout efforts, had been another central Wall St figure – chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs – until joining the US government three years ago. Paulson’s taxpayer-funded troubled assets relief programme is in the process of handing out tens of billions of dollars each to firms including Goldmans, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. Paulson’s pay awards from Goldmans totalled $170m over eight years.

His successor Lloyd Blankfein took home $231m over eight years. Fellow Goldman executive and later Merrill Lynch boss John Thain received $94.9m over six years, while Citigroup boss Sandy Weill and his successor Chuck Prince received $173m and $110m respectively over seven years.

Britain’s top five banks made two-year pre-tax profits of £76bn for 2006 and 2007 after credit and housing boom years combined with ever more exotic financial instruments to push their earning power to unprecedented heights.

Wednesday 28 January 2009
Simon Bowers

Source: The Guardian

City Minister Lord Myners: Banking System Was Close to Collapse

City Minister Lord Myners attacks bankers for greed and arrogance

A furious onslaught on banking’s “masters of the universe” has been unleashed by Gordon Brown’s City Minister.

Too many top bankers fail to realise they are grossly over-rewarded and have no sense of society, Lord Myners says in an interview with The Times.

With figures yesterday pointing to a longer and deeper recession than feared, lasting into 2010, Lord Myners says that banks have been mismanaged and delivers the strongest attack so far on those responsible.

He also reveals that the banking system was close to collapse before the first bailout was announced.

Read moreCity Minister Lord Myners: Banking System Was Close to Collapse

Hedge fund made millions betting on Barclays crash

Barclays bank eagle logo
Shares in Barclays and other banks have been hit hard since the ban on short-selling was lifted. They fell 10% yesterday. Photo: Martin Godwin

One of London’s most successful hedge funds has made £12m in just four days by betting on a fall in the Barclays share price, a move that will heighten the controversy over so-called short-selling strategies.

Lansdowne Partners, which also profited from the fall in the share price of Northern Rock at the height of its problems, sold Barclays shares last Friday – when the bank lost almost a quarter of its value in frenzied trading – and bought them back again on Wednesday after they had fallen by almost £1.

Read moreHedge fund made millions betting on Barclays crash

Barclays, RBS and Lloyds need £80bn more in capital, analyst warns

Britain’s three top lenders need another £80bn of capital to end concerns about their solvency once and for all, stabilising the financial system, according to analysts at investment bank Nomura.

The warning will fuel fears that Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group and Barclays may be fully nationalised, coming after a week in which share prices in all three banks have more than halved. Nomura added that the latest Government bail-out measures “do not change the key issue of the unknown and potentially unlimited losses of the banking system, and therefore whether it will ultimately require further capital injections”.

Investors in banks have been spooked by worse-than-expected losses at HBOS and RBS. Comparing the current recession with the 1990s, Nomura estimates that over four years Barclays will record credit losses of £33bn, Lloyds £56bn and RBS £61bn.

Read moreBarclays, RBS and Lloyds need £80bn more in capital, analyst warns

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)

Banks bailout: Bonds tumble as Government admits no cap on taxpayer risk

Bank shares plunged and Government bonds tumbled after Gordon Brown announced plans to insure lenders for losses on bad loans which could amount to billions of pounds.

The Prime Minister announced a scheme to allow banks to exchange cash or shares for a Government guarantee on their “toxic” debts, transferring any losses they suffer from the banks to the taxpayer.

But the Government has conceded that it can’t estimate how much taxpayers’ money will be on the line in the latest bank assistance package.

UK bond prices fell sharply as the financial markets digested the prospect of further Government borrowing. Bank stocks also tumbled with shares of Royal Bank of Scotland losing more than half their value. Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC also fell.

Ministers say the new package, which comes only three months after another £500 billion bailout, is vital to restore bank lending and help companies get credit and stay in business.

Read moreBanks bailout: Bonds tumble as Government admits no cap on taxpayer risk

Royal Bank of Scotland Sees $41 Billion Loss as Government Increases Stake


Pedestrians walk past a branch of Royal Bank of Scotland in London on Oct. 13, 2008. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg News

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) — Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc said it may post a loss of as much as 28 billion pounds ($41 billion), the biggest ever reported by a U.K. company, as the credit crisis worsens. The stock slumped as much as 46 percent.

Britain’s biggest government-controlled bank may post a full-year loss before exceptional goodwill impairments of as much as 8 billion pounds, Edinburgh-based RBS said in a statement today. In addition, the bank may write down the value of past acquisitions by as much as 20 billion pounds.

Related articles:
RBS shares dive 70% on mounting debt fears (Times Online)
RBS Plummets Amid Concern Bank May Be Nationalized (Bloomberg)
British banks are ‘technically insolvent’ (Independent)
ANOTHER £100BN BAIL-OUT FOR ‘INSOLVENT’ BANKS (Daily Express)
UK is in freefall, warns think-tank (The Observer)

The loss would eclipse Vodafone Group Plc’s 22 billion- pound net loss in 2006. RBS has been crippled by its acquisition of ABN Amro Holding NV’s investment banking assets three months before the credit crisis began, a takeover Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling today called “disastrous.” The Treasury said today it may raise its stake in RBS as it announced the second British bank rescue in three months.

“I am angry at the Royal Bank of Scotland and what has happened,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown told reporters in London today. The bank took “irresponsible risks,” in investing in U.S. subprime mortgages and ABN Amro, he said.

RBS shares dropped as low as 18.9 pence and traded down 43 percent at 20 pence at 1 p.m. in London trading, their lowest value since at least September 1988. Barclays Plc dropped 10 percent to 88.2 pence. Lloyds Banking Group Plc dropped 25 percent to 74 pence, as the bank said it still plans to repay the government’s preference shares by the end of the year.

‘Full-scale Nationalization’

Read moreRoyal Bank of Scotland Sees $41 Billion Loss as Government Increases Stake

British banks are ‘technically insolvent’

The Independent had previously removed the article.


“Britains biggest banks are “technically insolvent”, Royal Bank of Scotland said yesterday, as the global banking industry was rocked by another day of turmoil, including the announcement of $23bn (£16bn) of new losses from Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, the giant US institutions.

Analysts working for RBS, one of several British banks to have received emergency funding from the UK Government last year, told the City that “the domestic UK banks are technically insolvent on a fully marked-to-market basis”.

The warning does not mean British banks are about to go bust, because the assessment is purely theoretical, and RBS said the position was “not unusual at this stage in the economic cycle”.

However, it will add to pressure on the Government to provide more support for the country’s banks. Treasury officials are now set to spend this weekend in talks about a fresh round of measures, which could be unveiled as early as next week, to free up lending to households and major corporations hit by the credit crunch.

The value of Barclays fell by a quarter in stock market trading yesterday, amid a series of wild rumours about its finances, although the bank said it saw no need to comment on the drop.

Read moreBritish banks are ‘technically insolvent’

Global Economic Crisis Accelerating

UK jobless rise of 40000 in a week just ‘tip of the iceberg’ (Telegraph)

Schwarzenegger Says Deficit has ‘Incapacitated’ State (Bloomberg):
Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) — Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said California has been so “incapacitated” by a fiscal crisis that threatens to leave it unable to pay bills within weeks that the only issue he and lawmakers must consider is how to fix it.

Charter misses $74 mln in debt interest payments (Reuters):
NEW YORK, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Charter Communications, the fourth largest U.S. cable operator, said on Thursday it missed interest payments of $73.7 million as it continues to negotiate a debt restructuring with bondholders.
The company said it has until Feb. 15 to make the payment and avoid default, which could push it into bankruptcy.

ECB cuts rates by 50 points to 2% (Financial Times):
Eurozone interest rates fell by half a percentage point to their lowest in more than three years on Thursday as the European Central Bank said that it expected the recession to deepen and signalled that borrowing costs could fall further.
Jean-Claude Trichet, ECB president, warned that growth forecasts published only last month would have to be revised downwards in a sign of the ferocity of the downturn.

Pfizer May Fire 2,400, One-Third of U.S. Sales Force (Bloomberg):
Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) — Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, may fire almost a third of its U.S. sales force, or as many as 2,400 workers, in a plan under consideration by senior management, people familiar with the discussions said.h the discussions said.

JPMorgan chief says 2009 will be bleak (Financial Times):
The US financial and economic crisis will worsen this year as hard-hit consumers default on credit cards and other loans, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, has predicted in an interview with the Financial Times.

JPMorgan Profit Drops 76 Percent on Asset Writedowns (Bloomberg)

Yet another blow to the US newspaper industry (Guardian)

Aircraft industry shocked by view from ground (Financial Times)

Airbus forecasts ‘very challenging’ year (Financial Times):
Airbus on Thursday said its new commercial aircraft orders had fallen sharply last year, as the European aerospace group forecast “a very challenging year” for the industry in 2009. Net new orders fell by 42 per cent last year to 777, from a record 1,341 won in 2007.

Irish government fears IMF intervention (Guardian)

Ireland plans drastic cuts to prevent debt crisis (Telegraph):
Ireland is to demand pay cuts for civil servants and public employees to prevent the budget deficit soaring to 12pc of gross domestic product by next year – becoming the first country in the eurozone to resort to 1930s-style wage deflation to claw back competitiveness.

If anyone doubted scale of crisis, work even halts in Dubai on world’s tallest tower (Scotsman)

Hedge funds ‘encourage bankruptcies’ for profit (Guardian)

Spain’s Debt Costs Rise at Bond Sale After S&P Alert (Bloomberg)

Banks gird for commercial property collapse (FinancialWeek):
Some of the biggest financial institutions have huge, potentially troublesome commercial real estate stakes, Standard & Poors data shows. Based on information in their most recent financial reports, Citigroup and Barclays each had more than $20 billion worth of commercial mortgage-related investments. Merrill Lynch, acquired by Bank of America last year, had some $19.7 billion in such investments, according to S&P.

60 Minutes: Speculation Affected Oil Price Swings More Than Supply And Demand


The Price Of Oil: The historic swings in oil prices last year were the result of financial speculation from Wall Street and not supply and demand. Steve Kroft investigates.

(CBS) About the only economic break most Americans have gotten in the last six months has been the drastic drop in the price of oil, which has fallen even more precipitously than it rose. In a year’s time, a commodity that was theoretically priced according to supply and demand doubled from $69 a barrel to nearly $150, and then, in a period of just three months, crashed along with the stock market.

So what happened? It’s a complicated question, and there are lots of theories. But as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, many people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike the one that caused the housing crisis, and that it had more to do with traders and speculators on Wall Street than with oil company executives or sheiks in Saudi Arabia.


To understand what happened to the price of oil, you first have to understand the way it’s traded. For years it has been bought and sold on something called the commodities futures market. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, it’s traded alongside cotton and coffee, copper and steel by brokers who buy and sell contracts to deliver those goods at a certain price at some date in the future.

Read more60 Minutes: Speculation Affected Oil Price Swings More Than Supply And Demand

British banks may face second credit crunch in the New Year

Rising unemployment may prompt new capital raisings

The worsening economic slowdown is increasing fears that Britain’s banks will have to raise still more capital next year in a market starved of investors.

Investment bankers are preparing for a second round of capital raising by UK lenders on top of the £65bn already declared. Having rebuilt their balance sheets after toxic debt writedowns, the banks face an increasingly dire economic outlook that threatens to take ordinary loan impairments from individuals and businesses to levels not seen since the early 1990s.

Under those worst-case conditions, impairment charges at the domestic banks – Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and the combined Lloyds Banking Group – could hit £60bn next year, according to Credit Suisse analysts.

“There could be a second credit crunch for banks, with a whole new round of writedowns late in 2009 as the economy filters back to banks,” a senior investment banker said. “They have so far only provisioned for the credit crunch – so they will need to undertake a whole new round of capital raising.”

A trading update earlier this year from HBOS, which will be bought by Lloyds next month, made grim reading for the sector. Impairments from commercial and residential property shot up, and the bank warned of more bad news to come as unemployment, the biggest driver of bad debts, continues to rise.

Read moreBritish banks may face second credit crunch in the New Year

HBOS takes £8bn write-down as UK economy weakens

HBOS sent another wave of panic through the banking industry today after revealing that its bad debts will top £8bn this year, wiping out more than half the £15.5bn of emergency capital raised by the lender so far.

Shares across the sector tumbled, with HBOS crashing 20pc and Lloyds TSB 17pc as HBOS investors gathered in Birmingham and voted on its merger with Lloyds TSB. Preliminary indications show they voted overwhelmingly in favour.

Royal Bank of Scotland was off 17pc and Barclays 13pc by early afternoon, while analysts at Dresdner Kleinwort said “more capital increases [are] virtually inevitable” on top of the £50bn being injected into Britain’s eight largest banks.

HBOS revealed that bad debts on mortgages, credit cards and corporate lending – plus writedowns on “toxic” debts – had reached £8bn in the first 11 months of the year. The figure is a £3.2bn increase since September alone.

Read moreHBOS takes £8bn write-down as UK economy weakens

Darling summons bank chiefs over rate cut failure

Alistair Darling summoned the chief executives of Britain’s biggest banks to Downing Street today to demand that they immediately pass on the Bank of England’s interest rate cut to their customers.

Treasury sources confirmed to The Times that the Chancellor told the heads of all Britain’s big high street lenders – including HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, HBOS Nationwide and Abbey – to implement rate cuts immediately.

Yesterday, the Bank of England slashed interest rates by 1.5 per cent to 3 per cent, the lowest level in 54 years, and today, the shock reduction helped to ease the strain in nervous money markets.

Libor, which is the rate at which banks lend to each other and is key for pricing mortgages, fell by more than one per cent from 5.561 per cent to 4.496 per cent.

However, the figure remains almost 1.5 per cent higher than the official interest rate.

The spread between the Bank of England’s borrowing cost and the rate that banks charge to borrow money over a three-month period – a key measure in the wholesale money market – is the widest since October 22. The day before, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, publicly acknowledged for the first time that a recession in the UK is now likely.

Read moreDarling summons bank chiefs over rate cut failure

Wall Street halts futures trading amid panic

Stock markets across the world cracked yesterday, forcing Wall Street to suspend trading on a key futures contract to stem panic-selling while Moscow shut for business altogether.

Sharp losses in New York, London, Europe and the Far East raised the spectre that governments may be forced to impose emergency holidays to avert a meltdown across world stock markets.

Before Wall Street opened yesterday, American regulators suspended all trading of Dow Jones futures contracts, which had plunged. Such contracts allow traders to bet on the future direction of the Dow Jones index. The plunge had triggered an automatic circuit breaker, which halts trading to prevent a market sliding into freefall.

Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics at New York University, said that his prediction earlier this week that markets would have to be shut down is already coming true.

He said: “This morning, even before the markets in the US opened, the S&P futures fell by more than their daily limit. What I said yesterday has already started.”

A forced closure of stock markets in America would respresent the first time that Washington would have shut Wall Street since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. It would also have echoes of the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt shut American banks during an enforced holiday.

Read moreWall Street halts futures trading amid panic

CDO Cuts Show $1 Trillion Corporate-Debt Bets Toxic

Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) — Investors are taking losses of up to 90 percent in the $1.2 trillion market for collateralized debt obligations tied to corporate credit as the failures of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Icelandic banks send shockwaves through the global financial system.

The losses among banks, insurers and money managers may spark the next round of writedowns on CDOs after $660 billion in subprime-related losses. They may force lenders to post more reserves against losses after governments worldwide announced $3 trillion in financial-industry rescue packages since last month, according to Barclays Capital.

“We’ll see the same problems we’ve seen in subprime,” said Alistair Milne, a professor in banking and finance at Cass Business School in London and a former U.K. Treasury economist. “Banks will take substantial markdowns.”

The collapse of Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual Inc. and the three banks in Iceland prompted Susquehanna Bancshares Inc., a Lititz, Pennsylvania-based lender, to lower the value of $20 million in so-called synthetic CDOs by almost 88 percent last week.

Read moreCDO Cuts Show $1 Trillion Corporate-Debt Bets Toxic

UK: Government to save HBOS and RBS

Government set to become biggest shareholder in top banks as Japanese weigh bid for Morgan Stanley

THE government will launch the biggest rescue of Britain’s high-street banks tomorrow when the UK’s four biggest institutions ask for a £35 billion financial lifeline.

The unprecedented move will make the government the biggest shareholder in at least two banks.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which has seen its market value fall to below £12 billion, is to ask ministers to underwrite a £15 billion cash call.

Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), Britain’s biggest provider of mortgages, is seeking up to £10 billion.

Lloyds TSB, which is in the process of acquiring HBOS in a rescue merger, wants £7 billion, while Barclays needs £3 billion.

The scale of the fundraising could lead to trading at the London stock market being suspended. This would give time for the market to digest the impact of the moves.

Read moreUK: Government to save HBOS and RBS

Bank shares plunge again in panicky trading

Shares in Britain’s banks plunged again amid panicky trading following emergency talks with the government over a possible injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the banking sector.

Royal Bank of Scotland nosedived by almost 40% to 90p in morning trading – its lowest point since the recession of the early 1990s. Barclays, Lloyds TSB and HBOS were also hit, as the lack of a coordinated rescue plan for the banking sector alarmed the City.

By 3pm RBS shares were 32.5% lower at 112p, giving it a market capitalisation of £15.98bn – down from over £75bn a year ago.

HBOS was 23% lower at 124p and Lloyds TSB had lost 13% to 225p. Barclays had recovered most of its early losses following Varley’s comments this morning.

Last night Britain’s bank bosses met with chancellor Alistair Darling, to discuss a possible £50bn injection of equity. They are due to meet again at the Treasury this afternoon.

The talks centre on the idea of a part-nationalisation of the banking system through the injection of capital into the banks via preference shares, which take precedence over ordinary shares during a liquidation, but do not give the holders any voting rights.

Read moreBank shares plunge again in panicky trading