ICAN and PAX’s latest Don’t Bank on the Bomb Report:“Perilous Profiteering: The companies building nuclear arsenals and their financial backers” exposes the financial institutions making $685 billion available to the nuclear weapon producing companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Airbus, Northrop Grumman and Leonardo, and shows how divestment is seriously shaking up the industry.
Mike Whitney, Counterpunch 11-13 Oct: "Absent a debt ceiling deal, the repurchase market–known as repo–would undergo another deep-freeze as it did in 2008 when Lehman Brothers defaulted..." "...The same tragedy will play out again, if congress fails lift the ceiling and reinforce the present value of US debt." "Repo is at the heart of the shadow banking system, that opaque off-balance sheet underworld where maturity transformation and other risky banking activities take place beyond the watchful eye of government regulators." "Keep in mind, the US government does not have to default on its debt to trigger a panic in the credit markets. Changing expectations can easily produce the same result... when people start to doubt that US Treasuries will be liquid cash equivalents in the future" "This is what the Fidelity flap is all about. It’s about the erosion of confidence in US debt."
"... as lately so often happens, courtesy of the narrative by Alan Friedman of what really happened that summer [2011], this too conspiracy theory has just become conspiracy fact. Thanks to the FT's "Monti’s secret summer", we learn with painful detail (especially for those of our readers who may be Italian), just how the grand conspiracy to out Berlusconi took shape, and how it was deviously executed with the assistance of none other than the European Central Bank. It all started on In the summer of 2011 when Carlo De Benedetti, the Italian industrial tycoon, hosted Mario Monti, Italy's then former prime minister and an old friend of De Benedetti's in the St Moritz-based alpine retreat of the industrialist for dinner, and a private chat to discuss "a development that was to have profound public consequences
President Condé of Guinea at Davos , Jan 2014 (Guardian 22.1.14): "... we live in a global economy. We simply can't deal with the network of corruption embedded in a few key western institutions from a distance of nearly 3,000 miles. These corrupt practitioners operate from the west, but their practices are global and require a global response. Only tighter, more responsive and highly co-ordinated action between law enforcement authorities in both developing nations and the world's financial centres will be effective... With international legal co-operation, Guinea will soon be announcing the outcome of an investigation into some of the most disturbing allegations of mining corruption in Africa's history. I ask other countries to do the same with their own financial institutions."
Prem Sikka and the Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs. "The UK government did not withdraw ambassadors. The UK government did not seek extradition of the culprits, shut down foreign embassies, demand trade sanctions or regime change. It just c
James Meadway , Jan 6, 2023. BlackRock thinks inflation will come down only if central banks ‘crush’ economies into a severe recession
The world’s largest asset manager has forecast systemic economic chaos. The reality is even worse
Susanne Trimbath 11/26/2008: "The market for US Treasury bonds has been in serious disarray since the days immediately following September 11, 2001. Despite reports, reviews, examinations, committee meetings, speeches, and advisory groups formed by the US
The flaws in the international financial system are old and profound, and they defeat any effort to work around them. Chief among them is the lack of a mechanism to force any country with a current account surplus to reduce it. Huge imbalances – such as the Chinese surplus that sent a flood of capital into the US and helped create the financial crisis – can therefore develop and persist. The answer is what John Maynard Keynes proposed in the 1930s: an international reserve asset, rules for pricing national currencies against it, and penalties for countries that run a persistent surplus. After the financial crisis there was a flood of proposals along these lines from the UN, from the economist Joseph Stiglitz, and even from the governor of the People’s Bank of China. None has gone anywhere. Even the most basic first step towards that goal – boosting the IMF’s resources and handing more voting power to emerging markets so they can rely on it in time of need – has stalled in the US Congress.
Enl. Wyplosz fokuserar EU-ledrana i alltför hög grad på att gardera sig mot moral hazard ( moralisk risk: utsikten att en part som är isolerad från risk kan bete sig annorlunda än hur den skulle bete sig om parten var fullt utsatt för risk) gm att förstärka stabilitets- och tillväxtpakten. Nationalekonomerna har inte kunnat enas om en diagnos på krisen. Stabiltetapakt och/eller nytt EU-fördrag räcker inte för att lösa problemet. EU-ländernas sammanlagda skuld uppgår till 9000 miljarder euro. Stabilitetsfonden skulle kunna hosta upp 200 mrd, IMF ytterligare 200 mrd. Enast ECB kan kapitalisera bankerna. Alternativ till ett nytt EU-fördrag: "budgetdisciplinärt råd" och ECB:s regler för säkerheter (collaterals): "The proposal is for some European authority (the Commission? Or some other body?) to take over fiscal policy in a country that runs afoul of the Stability and Growth Pact. The idea that a country loses fiscal policy sovereignty is inspired by IMF programmes. " "The ECB has the authority to decide what collateral it accepts and it could decide to only accept treasury bonds issued by governments that exercise fiscal discipline. "
by Philip S Golub
a slow shift towards a tripolar world monetary system no longer exclusively centred in the West
Despite worries over the end of the Chinese economic miracle and harder times because of the aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis, global rebalancing is happening — and quickly. The International Monetary Fund's executive board announced on 30 November that the Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB) or yuan, would soon be included in the basket of currencies that make up its Special Drawing Rights (SDR), beside the US dollar, the euro, the British pound and the yen. The decision recognised (...)
{. Baldassarri, {. Bagella, and {. Paganetto (Eds.) Central issues in contemporary economic theory and policy Palgrave, Basingstoke, Hampshire u.a., (2001)