North American Union

[Nero]

Conspiracy theories! 9/11 was planned by the government! they put flouride in our water! starbucks gives you AIDS!!!

 

 

 

Umm, they...do...put flouride in water...As for starbucks - probably.

 

 

 

I wouldn't put it past them. Crafty people those Starbucks employees are. :anxious:

[Hi9im8Here7]

Conspiracy theories! 9/11 was planned by the government! they put flouride in our water! starbucks gives you AIDS!!!

 

 

 

Umm, they...do...put flouride in water...As for starbucks - probably.

 

 

 

I wouldn't put it past them. Crafty people those Starbucks employees are. :anxious:

 

 

 

This isn't a laughing matter... -.-

 

 

 

You'll remember this when we're occupying Iran and have money chips implanted in all of us. (of course in ameros, not dollars).

[Lenin64]

Conspiracy theories! 9/11 was planned by the government! they put flouride in our water! starbucks gives you AIDS!!!

 

 

 

Umm, they...do...put flouride in water...As for starbucks - probably.

 

So thats why I listen to talk radio....

[tameelf]

if starbucks is a softdrink??? i think youll find they use aspertame

[Errdoth]

if starbucks is a softdrink??? i think youll find they use aspertame

 

Starbucks is coffee. I don't think you can exactly order a "diet" coffee. Other than that, I'm pretty sure they use sugar or those little splenda packets, not aspartame.

[cryztalwing]

Congress has started debateing Concurrent Resolution 40. So here is a chanch to get rid of NAFTA... :mrgreen:

 

 

 

[hide]Congress debate begins on North America Union Resolution calls for end of NAFTA superhighway, abandonment of integration with Canada, Mexico.

 

 

 

A House resolution urging President Bush "not to go forward with the North American Union or the NAFTA Superhighway system" is ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ãâ according to its sponsor Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., in an exclusive WND interview ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ãâ "also a message to both the executive branch and the legislative branch."

 

 

 

As WND previously reported, on Jan. 22 Goode introduced H.C.R. 40, titled "Expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada."

 

 

 

The bill has been referred to the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

 

 

 

WND asked Goode if the president was risking electoral success for the Republican Party in 2008 with his insistence on pushing for North American integration via the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP.

 

 

 

"Yes," Goode answered. "You won't hear the leadership in the Republic Party admit it, but there are many in the House and Senate who know that illegal immigration has to be stopped and legal immigration has to be reduced. We are giving away the country so a few very rich people can get richer."

 

 

 

How did he react when President Bush referred to those who suggest the SPP could turn into the North American Union as "conspiracy theorists"?

 

 

 

"The president is really engaging in a play on words," Goode responded. "The secretary of transportation came before our subcommittee," he explained, "and I had the opportunity to ask her some questions about the NAFTA Superhighway. Of course, she answered, 'There's no NAFTA Superhighway.' But then Mary Peters proceeded to discuss the road system that would come up from Mexico and go through the United States up into Canada."

 

 

 

Goode is a member of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development of the House Committee on Appropriations.

 

 

 

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=57817[/hide]

 

 

 

 

 

Go to the link to send a message to your representative and senators to let them know that you want Congress to repeal NAFTA !

 

 

 

http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=9580451

 

 

 

 

 

Go to the link to send a message to your representative and senators to let them know that you want them to support Concurrent Resolution 40 "Expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada."

 

 

 

http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=9072401

[Bubsa]

Why won't you go away?! :x

[Defender2516]

Why won't you go away?! :x

 

 

 

Its because your kirby and pink..

 

 

 

Cute Avatar cryztalwing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope this movement fails as well!

[llcoolguy972]

Why won't you go away?! :x

 

 

 

+1

 

 

 

THE UNITED STATES IS NOT GOING TO JOIN WITH MEXICO!

[Lenin64]

I was about to say something for real., but it seemed awfully familiar, then i realized I had already posted. This is old! How did this get back?! :shock: :evil:

[Mercifull]

Sell all your possessions Hi9im8Here7 and give me all your money. I'll keep it safe in British Pounds. Then if the US ever gets the Amero i'll give you it all back with accumulated interest. Until then, ill look after it for you. ;)

 

 

 

Or you could just shut the hell up?

[cryztalwing]

Still don't think it's real? Vicente Fox confirmed the existence of a government plan to create the amero as a new regional currency to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar and the Mexican Peso.

 

 

 

 

 

[hide]In an interview last night on CNN's "Larry King Live," the former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, confirmed the existence of a government plan to create the amero as a new regional currency to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar and the Mexican Peso.

 

 

 

It possibly was the first time a leader of Mexico, Canada or the U.S. openly confirmed a plan to create a regional currency. Fox explained the current regional trade agreement is intended to evolve into other previously hidden aspects of integration.

 

 

 

According to a transcript published by CNN, King, near the end of the broadcast, asked Fox a question e-mailed from a listener, a Ms. Gonzalez from Elizabeth, N.J.: "Mr. Fox, I would like to know how you feel about the possibility of having a Latin America united with one currency?"

 

 

 

Fox answered in the affirmative, admitting he and President Bush had agreed to pursue the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ãâ a free-trade zone extending throughout the Western Hemisphere ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ãâ and that part of the plan was to institute a regional currency from Canada to the tip of South America.

 

 

 

"Long term, very long term," he said. "What we proposed together, President Bush and myself, it's ALCA, which is a trade union for all the Americas."

 

 

 

ALCA is the acronym for the Area de Libre Comercio de las Am̮̩̉̉ricas, the name of the FTAA in Spanish.

 

 

 

Fox noted the FTAA plan had been thwarted by Hugo Chavez, the radical socialist president of Venezuela.

 

 

 

"Everything was running fluently until Hugo Chavez came," Fox commented. "He decided to combat the idea and destroy the idea."

 

 

 

King, evidently startled by Fox's revelation of the currency, asked pointedly, "It's going to be like the euro dollar, you mean?"

 

 

 

"Well, that would be long, long term," Fox repeated.

 

 

 

Fox then explained that he and Bush intended to proceed incrementally, establishing FTAA as an economic agreement first and waiting to create an amero-type currency later ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Ãâ a plan Fox also suggested was in place for NAFTA itself.

 

 

 

"I think the process to go, first step is trading agreement," Fox said. "And then further on, a new vision, like we are trying to do with NAFTA."

 

 

 

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=58052[/hide]

[baron8000]

Its going to be like a euro dollar

 

 

 

Well, Europe hasnt turned into a burning mess of economic failure yet...

[highlanders]

Nice findings cryztal.

[cryztalwing]

Remember you can go here to send messages to your U.S. House Representative's and Senators no North American Union.

 

 

 

Go to the link to send a message to your representative and senators to let them know that you want Congress to repeal NAFTA !

 

 

 

http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=9580451

 

 

 

 

 

Go to the link to send a message to your representative and senators to let them know that you want them to support Concurrent Resolution 40 "Expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada."

 

 

 

http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=9072401

 

 

 

No North American Union message.

 

 

 

http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=9037471

 

 

 

 

 

If you happen to live in Idaho or Montana, remind your representative's and senators of the anti-nau resolution of your state. It be a real shame of them to not to vote for to repeal NAFTA or Concurrent Resolution 40.

 

 

 

 

 

[hide]Montana-HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 25

 

 

 

INTRODUCED BY RICE, WELLS, L. JONES, BOGGIO, LANGE, HENDRICK, SALES, HILBERT, BECK, JORE, EVERETT, INGRAHAM, MORGAN, WARD, HIMMELBERGER, ROSS, MACLAREN, MENDENHALL, SONJU, NOONEY, RIPLEY, DUTTON

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A JOINT RESOLUTION OF THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF MONTANA OPPOSING ANY EFFORT TO IMPLEMENT A TRINATIONAL POLITICAL, GOVERNMENTAL ENTITY AMONG THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND MEXICO; OPPOSING THE SECURITY AND PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP OF NORTH AMERICA AND INITIATIVES PURSUED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE PARTNERSHIP THAT THREATEN THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE UNITED STATES; OPPOSING A NORTH AMERICAN UNION; AND OPPOSING THE NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT SUPERHIGHWAY SYSTEM.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHEREAS, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America was launched in March of 2005 as a trilateral effort among the United States, Canada, and Mexico to share information and streamline traffic across shared borders; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, in meeting Security and Prosperity Partnership initiatives, the security and prosperity ministers are examining opportunities to open the borders between the United States, Canada, and Mexico; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, the gradual creation of such a North American Union from a merger of the United States, Mexico, and Canada would be a direct threat to the Constitution and national independence of the United States and imply an eventual end to national borders within North America; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, according to the Department of Commerce, United States trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have significantly widened since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, the economic and physical security of the United States is impaired by the potential loss of control of its borders attendant to the full operation of NAFTA; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, a NAFTA Superhighway System from the west coast of Mexico through the United States and into Canada has been suggested as part of a North American Union and the broader plan to advance the Security and Prosperity Partnership; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, it would be particularly difficult for Americans to collect insurance from Mexican companies that employ Mexican drivers involved in accidents in the United States, which would increase the insurance rates for American drivers; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, future unrestricted foreign trucking into the United States can pose a safety hazard due to inadequate maintenance and inspection and can act collaterally as a conduit for the entry into the United States of illegal drugs, illegal human smuggling, and terrorist activities; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, a NAFTA Superhighway System would be funded by foreign consortiums and controlled by foreign management, which threatens the sovereignty of the United States; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, the Security and Prosperity Partnership aims to integrate United States laws with Mexico and Canada on a broad range of issues such as e-commerce, transportation, environment, health, agriculture, financial services, and national security, which may lead to negative changes in United States administrative laws; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, state and local governments throughout the United States would be negatively impacted by the Security and Prosperity Partnership or a North American Union process, such as an open borders vision, eminent domain takings of private property along potential superhighways, and increased law enforcement problems along such superhighways; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, this trilateral partnership to develop a North American Union has never been presented to Congress as an agreement or treaty and has had virtually no congressional oversight; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, initiatives advancing the Security and Prosperity Partnership will lead to the erosion of United States sovereignty and could lead to integrated continental court systems and currency; and

 

 

 

WHEREAS, United States policy, not foreign consortiums, should be used to control our national borders and to ensure that national security is not compromised.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF MONTANA:

 

 

 

That the Montana Legislature urge the President and the Congress of the United States to withdraw the United States from any further participation in the Security and Prosperity Partnership, any efforts to implement a trinational political, governmental entity among the United States, Canada, and Mexico, or any other efforts used to accomplish any form of a North American Union.

 

 

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Montana Legislature urge the President and the Congress of the United States not to engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement Superhighway System.

 

 

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that copies of this resolution be sent by the Secretary of State to the Honorable George W. Bush, President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the United States Secretary of Commerce, and each member of the United States Congress.

 

 

 

- END -

 

 

 

 

 

Idaho-House Joint Memorial No. 5

 

 

 

A JOINT MEMORIAL TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED, AND TO THE CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION REPRESENTING THE STATE OF 4 IDAHO IN THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

 

 

 

We, your Memorialists, the House of Representatives and the Senate of the State of Idaho assembled in the First Regular Session of the Fifty-ninth Idaho Legislature, do hereby respectfully represent that: WHEREAS, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security participated in the formation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) on March 23, 2005, representing a trilateral agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States designed, among other things, to facilitate common regulatory schemes between these countries; and

 

WHEREAS, reports issued by the SPP indicate that it has implemented regu latory changes among the three countries that circumvent United States trade, transportation, homeland security and border security functions and that it is the intention of SPP to continue toward a North American Union in the future; and

 

WHEREAS, the actions taken by the SPP to coordinate border security by eliminating obstacles to migration between Mexico and the United States actu ally makes the United States-Mexico border less secure and more vulnerable to possible terrorist activities, and Mexico is the primary source country of illegal immigrants, illegal drug entry and illegal human smuggling into the United States; and

 

WHEREAS, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the United States trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have significantly increased since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the volume of imports from Mexico has soared since NAFTA, straining security checks at the U.S. border; and

 

WHEREAS, the economic and physical security of the United States is impaired by the potential loss of control of its borders attendant to the full operation of NAFTA and the SPP; and

 

WHEREAS, the regulatory and border security changes implemented and proposed by the SPP violate and threaten United States sovereignty; and

 

WHEREAS, the NAFTA Superhighway System from the west coast of Mexico through the United States and into Canada has been suggested as part of a North American Union to facilitate trade between the SPP countries; and

 

WHEREAS, the stability and economic viability of the U.S. ports along the western coast will be seriously compromised by huge cargos off-loaded at cheaper labor cost from foreign traders into the ports of Mazatlan and Lazaro Cardenas; and

 

WHEREAS, the state of Texas has already approved and begun planning of the Trans-Texas Corridor, a major multi-modal transportation project beginning at the United States-Mexico border, which would serve as an initial section of

 

the NAFTA Superhighway System; and WHEREAS, plans of Asian trading powers to divert cargo from U.S. ports such as Los Angeles to ports in Mexico will only put pressure on border inspectors, interfering with their already overwhelming job of intercepting the flow of drugs and illegals flowing into this country; and

 

WHEREAS, future unrestricted foreign trucking into the United States can pose a safety hazard due to inadequate maintenance and inspection, and the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) lack of background checks for violations in Mexico, lack of drug and alcohol testing, lack of enforcement of size and weight requirements and lack of national security procedures, which threaten the American people and undermine the very charge given to our homeland security agency to defend our borders against these threats; and

 

WHEREAS, the Eisenhower National Highway System was designed for the national security of the United States for movement of the military, purposes of commerce from state to state, not from foreign countries, and this highway system should not be compromised by treaties or agreements with other countries that would supplant the control and management of our nation's highways by our U.S. Department of Transportation and the various states; and

 

WHEREAS, we strongly object to any treaty or agreement, which threatens to violate national security, private property, United States commerce, constitutional rights and American sovereignty and emphasize our commitment to the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) and other cooperative working nations in mutual beneficial goals; and

 

WHEREAS, this trilateral partnership to develop a North American Union has never been presented to Congress as an agreement or treaty, and has had virtually no congressional oversight; and

 

WHEREAS, recent reports on internet news, Friday, January 26, 2007, 28 WorldNetDaily, stating that Congressman Poe (R-Texas) asked about the U.S. Department of Transportation's work with the trade group North American Super-Corridor Coalition, Inc. (NASCO) and the department's plans to build the 31 Trans-Texas Corridor, Congressman Poe was told that the NAFTA agreement super- 32 highway corridor plans exist to move goods from Mexico through the United States to Canada; and

 

WHEREAS, American citizens and state and local governments throughout the United States would be negatively impacted by the SPP process.

 

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the members of the First Regular Session of the Fifty-ninth Idaho Legislature, the House of Representatives and the Senate concurring therein, that we emphatically urge and petition the Congress of the United States and particularly the congressional delegation representing the state of Idaho to use all efforts, energies and diligence to withdraw the United States from any further participation in the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America or any other bilateral or multilateral activity that seeks to advance, authorize, fund or in any way promote the creation of any structure to create any form of North American Union.

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that House Concurrent Resolution 40 of the First 46 Session of the 110th Congress addresses the concern herein expressed by the state of Idaho.

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we are asking our congressional delegation, our U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters and President Bush to reject appropriated federal fuel tax dollars for such SPP or NAFTA when there is such a need for fuel tax dollars to be dedicated to the needs of the states in the U.S. in order to maintain our highway system.

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Chief Clerk of the House of Representatives be, and she is hereby authorized and directed to forward a copy of this Memorial to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Congress, and the congressional delegation representing the State of Idaho in the Congress of the United States

 

 

 

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE RS 17145 The purpose of this legislation is to send the message to the Congress of the United States, and particularly the congressional delegation representing the State of Idaho that the First Regular Session of the Fifty-ninth Idaho Legislature, the Senate and the House of Representatives concurring therein, that the Congress of the United States, and particularly the congressional delegation representing the State of Idaho, are hereby urged and petitioned to use all of their efforts to withdraw the United States from any further participation in the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and any other bilateral or multilateral activity which seeks to advance, authorize, fund or in any way promote the creation of any structure to accomplish any form of North American Union.

 

[/hide]

[Mercifull]

Im sure they will announce it the day after NESARA :roll: :roll:

[1_man_army]

Christ, will this topic ever die? It's like tip.it's very own Keith Richards - it just keeps on going. Even the completely paranoid hysteria isn't funny anymore.

[cryztalwing]

Canadians call for vote on SPP on a national referendum ? I wonder how many of them whould vote no on the North American Union. Glenn Beck on his radio show will talk to Jerome Corsi about this in the first hour of his show tomorrow, at 9 a.m.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[hide]Canadians call for vote on SPP

 

Activists demand national referendum on 'continental divide'

 

 

 

Canadian activists are demanding Prime Minister Stephen Harper fulfill a promise and submit the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America to a national referendum for an up or down vote.

 

 

 

"The Prime Minister of Canada and his cabinet in both Liberal and Conservative regimes support the unification of North America as witnessed by the fact of [former Prime Minister] Paul Martin and [current Prime Minister] Stephen Harper being signatories to the SPP process," said Connie Fogal, leader of the Canadian Action Party.

 

 

 

Fogal rejects the idea that the vote on SPP should be taken solely in the Canadian Parliament.

 

 

 

"A decision about the restructuring of Canada into an integrated North America is not a decision for parliament, but for the citizens of Canada," Fogal says. "What every Parliamentarian should do is call for a no confidence vote on this issue to cease unification of Canada, the USA and Mexico, and then run a campaign on the life of Canada not its death."

 

 

 

Maude Barlow, the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, agrees.

 

 

 

"So far, only 30 CEOs from North America's richest corporations, including Lockheed Martin, Bank of Nova Scotia, Chevron, Power Corporation and Merck, have had any meaningful input," a news release on Barlow's website proclaims. "Only they have been invited to annual closed-door meetings of SPP leaders and ministers, such as the one that took place in Montebello, Quebec, in August."

 

 

 

As WND previously reported, the North American Competitiveness Council, or NACC, dominated the SPP closed-door meetings with the SPP trilateral working groups, the trilateral cabinet members in attendance and President Bush, Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, and Harper at the third annual SPP summit in Montebello, Quebec, on Aug. 20-21.

 

 

 

WND has also reported the NACC is a shadowy council of 30 top North American multinational corporations self-appointed by the Chambers of Commerce in each of the three countries to constitute the sole outside advisory to the SPP.

 

 

 

The 30 companies composing the NACC are listed on a memo posted on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website.

 

 

 

In the United States, the companies on the NACC are:

 

 

 

 

 

Campbell Soup Company

 

 

 

Chevron Corporation

 

 

 

Ford Motor Corporation

 

 

 

FedEx Corporation

 

 

 

General Electric Company

 

 

 

General Motors Corporation

 

 

 

Kansas City Southern

 

 

 

Lockheed Martin Corporation

 

 

 

Merck & Co., Inc.

 

 

 

Mittal Steel USA

 

 

 

New York Life Insurance Company

 

 

 

Procter & Gamble

 

 

 

UPS

 

 

 

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

 

 

 

Whirlpool Corporation

 

No union leaders, public interest groups, environmental advocates or news media have ever attended the closed-door of the NACC with the SPP.

 

 

 

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=58143[/hide]

 

 

 

[hide]WND reporter, columnist and best-selling author Jerome Corsi will be a guest tomorrow on the nationally syndicated Glenn Beck radio show.

 

 

 

Corsi will join Beck live in the first hour of the show tomorrow, at 9 a.m. Eastern. Some local markets carry the program at a later time.

 

 

 

Corsi will discuss his story on Canadian activists' demand to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to fulfill a promise to submit the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America to a national referendum for an up or down vote.

 

 

 

Corsi is the author of the New York Times best-selling book, "The Late Great USA," which charges the federal government's unwillingness to enforce immigration laws and border security is, at least in part, a result of plans to promote political, social and economic integration of the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

 

 

 

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=58182[/hide]

[cryztalwing]

For you Canadians, you can go to the Canadian Action Party's website and sign thier Petition for Full Disclosure and Referendum on the SPP and the North American Union.

 

 

 

http://www.canadianactionparty.ca/petition1.html

 

 

 

Lou Dobbs Slams the CFR and North American Union

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kjsy2Z3 ... d=49700570

[Bubsa]

Yes Canada, please do it. For the sake of tip.it, do it so cryztalwing will shut the hell up. I'll even dress up as a beaver for you!

[highlanders]

[hide=Wall Street firms see recession nearing] NEW YORK (Reuters) - The economy might be edging toward a recession in the wake of mortgage-related credit woes plaguing the financial markets, bankers and analysts said on Monday.

 

 

 

"I think that the risk of a recession is greater than people realize," James Dunne, chief executive of Sandler O'Neil & Partners, said at the Reuters Finance Summit in New York.

 

 

 

With home prices dropping, more people about to lose their homes due to unaffordable mortgages and sharply higher oil prices, the economy could be on the brink of slowing down, they said.

 

 

 

"I think there is a serious risk to the economy," Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, told the summit.

 

 

 

Charles Peabody, partner at New York-based research firm Portales Partners LLC, said the Fed may have to take more aggressive action and drop the benchmark fed funds rate in an effort to prevent a Japanese-style economic stagnation, which eventually evolved into a deflationary recession.

 

 

 

"We're moving into a recession, and over time -- the length of which is difficult to predict -- there is going to be a lot more credit problems," he said.

 

 

 

Preliminary data released by the U.S. government last week showed that the gross domestic product grew by 3.9 percent in the third quarter, compared with 3.8 percent in the previous quarter and 0.6 percent in the first three months of this year.

 

 

 

Last week the Fed announced at the end of a two-day meeting of its policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee that it was reducing its federal funds rate a quarter percentage point to 4.5 percent, citing its expectation that "economic expansion will likely slow in the near term" because of the housing sector's problems.

 

 

 

The Fed noted that growth was "solid" in the third quarter and said it thought financial-market strains were easing, but still opted for some insurance to add stimulus.

 

 

 

When asked where the U.S. economy is headed over the next year or so, John Duffy, chairman and CEO of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said at the summit: "In the toilet."

 

 

 

With the recent data and Fed moves, Wall Street firms believe the Fed will be forced to reduce interest rates on loans to banks to 3 percent, or even as low as 1 percent, at least over the next year.

 

 

 

Duffy said Fed action alone will not cure what ails the U.S. economy and financial institutions, which are experiencing a liquidity squeeze in the markets for credit and other financial products.

 

 

 

"I don't think they (the Fed) have a silver bullet,' he told Reuters.

 

 

 

(Reporting by John Poirier)

 

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlene ... CONOMY.xml[/hide]

 

 

 

[hide=Worst crisis in 30 years says Hutton]

 

The worst crisis I've seen in 30 years

 

 

 

The latest financial downturn is the final nail in the coffin of the conservative free-market world-view

 

 

 

Will Hutton

 

Sunday November 4, 2007

 

The Observer

 

 

 

I have been following the financial markets for more than 30 years. Crises have come and gone, but the one unfolding since August and which intensified last week is the most serious. It is not just that its impact is cascading around the world because of the new interconnectedness of global finance, it is that the authorities, particularly in Britain and America, have lost control and do not have the means to regain it as quickly as we might hope. With an oil price approaching $100 a barrel, we are in an uncharted and dangerous place.

 

 

 

After more than 15 years of extraordinarily benevolent economic conditions worldwide - cheap oil, cheap money, growing trade, the Asia boom, rising house prices - things are unravelling at bewildering speed. The system might be able to handle one shock; it is undoubtedly too fragile to handle so many simultaneously.

 

The epicentre is the hegemonic London and New York financial system. No longer are these discrete financial markets; financial deregulation and the global ambitions of American and European banks have made them intertwined. They are one system that operates around the same principles, copying each other's methods, making the same mistakes and exposing themselves to each other's risks. Thus the collapse of the American housing market, the explosive growth of American home repossessions and the discovery that 'structured investment vehicles' (SIVs), the toxic newfangled financial instruments that own as much as $350bn of valueless mortgages, are not American problems. They are ours too.

 

 

 

The recent departure of the CEOs of two of the biggest investment banks - UBS and Merrill Lynch - after unexpected losses and loan write-offs running into many billions of dollars is not just an American problem, it's ours. It is also our problem that Credit Suisse last week announced more billions of write-offs, and Citigroup was rumoured to be following suit with even bigger losses. When banks take hits as big as this, it hurts their capacity to lend, because prudence demands they have up to eight dollars or pounds of their own capital to support every hundred dollars or pounds that they lend. If they don't, they have to lend less - and that is called a credit crunch.

 

 

 

This crunch is already upon us - hence the massive selling of bank shares at the end of last week and the extraordinary news that the taxpayer, one way or another, now has supplied ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã40bn to the stricken mortgage lender Northern Rock, a sum that could climb to ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã50bn by Christmas. Stunningly, that represents 5 per cent of GDP. The bank got into trouble because it thought, under the chairmanship of free-market fundamentalist Viscount Ridley, that it could escape trivial matters like having savers' deposits to finance its adventurous lending. Instead, it could copy the Americans and sell SIVs to banks in London - most of them the same banks that bought from New York - and it could steal a march on its competitors.

 

 

 

But in the London/New York financial system, when things went wrong in the US they immediately went wrong for Northern Rock in Britain. The banks announcing those epic write-offs no longer wanted to buy Northern Rock's loans - and neither did anybody else. The Bank and Treasury hoped to get by with masterly inactivity, but instead, as we know, there was a run on the bank. The government had to step in by guaranteeing ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã20bn of small savers' deposits - but also, we now learn, by supplying ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã30bn of finance that the financial system will no longer supply itself.

 

 

 

This is testimony to the degree of fear that characterises today's credit crunch - and it bodes ill. What is worse, the Ridleyite maxims that got Northern Rock into trouble have also disabled the rescue, protracting rather than limiting the crisis.

 

 

 

What should have happened, of course, is that when the Bank of England found that it could not find a secret buyer for Northern Rock in the summer, it should have done what it did in the 1974 secondary banking crisis. It should have taken Northern Rock into the Bank of England's ownership. Individual depositors and the City institutions alike would have been quickly reassured, and when the crisis passed the bank could have been sold back into the private sector.

 

 

 

But in 2007, the Ridley view of how to run a bank is also the authorities' view of how to respond to a crisis. There is a prohibition on even short-term public ownership. In a free-market fundamentalist world, this, like regulation, is regarded as wrong. Instead, the most expensive and riskier route has been taken so that Northern Rock remains part of the problem rather than the solution.

 

 

 

For when a central bank supplies rescue finance on this epic scale, it has wider implications. In effect it is printing money to bail out Northern Rock; good for the financial system, but bad for the rest of us because it will make it harder for the Bank to cut interest rates. Already the British property market is in trouble. Given the absurd prices it is all too possible that we could follow the American market, with huge bad debts and mortgage repossessions. The way Northern Rock has been rescued will make it hard for the Bank to cut interest rates and revive the property market, while remaining wedded to its inflation target. And if there are more Northern Rocks rescued in the same way, the dilemma will get worse.

 

 

 

Last week David Cameron proudly pronounced that the Tories were winning the battle of ideas. He could not be more wrong. The credit crunch is testimony to the exhaustion of a conservative free-market world-view. To get through this crisis, the American and British governments are going to have to think what hitherto has been unthinkable. Already the Americans are cutting interest rates careless of the inflationary consequences. Britain may have to follow suit. Both governments will have to devise new forms of regulation and control. Banks may have to be taken into public ownership.

 

 

 

For 30 years we have been suckered into thinking that public authority has no business intervening in the wealth-generating, free-market financial system. This is the year when reality resurfaced with a vengeance.

 

 

 

[email protected]

 

 

 

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnis ... e_continue

 

 

 

[/hide]

[Rebdragon]

[hide=Wall Street firms see recession nearing] NEW YORK (Reuters) - The economy might be edging toward a recession in the wake of mortgage-related credit woes plaguing the financial markets, bankers and analysts said on Monday.

 

 

 

"I think that the risk of a recession is greater than people realize," James Dunne, chief executive of Sandler O'Neil & Partners, said at the Reuters Finance Summit in New York.

 

 

 

With home prices dropping, more people about to lose their homes due to unaffordable mortgages and sharply higher oil prices, the economy could be on the brink of slowing down, they said.

 

 

 

"I think there is a serious risk to the economy," Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, told the summit.

 

 

 

Charles Peabody, partner at New York-based research firm Portales Partners LLC, said the Fed may have to take more aggressive action and drop the benchmark fed funds rate in an effort to prevent a Japanese-style economic stagnation, which eventually evolved into a deflationary recession.

 

 

 

"We're moving into a recession, and over time -- the length of which is difficult to predict -- there is going to be a lot more credit problems," he said.

 

 

 

Preliminary data released by the U.S. government last week showed that the gross domestic product grew by 3.9 percent in the third quarter, compared with 3.8 percent in the previous quarter and 0.6 percent in the first three months of this year.

 

 

 

Last week the Fed announced at the end of a two-day meeting of its policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee that it was reducing its federal funds rate a quarter percentage point to 4.5 percent, citing its expectation that "economic expansion will likely slow in the near term" because of the housing sector's problems.

 

 

 

The Fed noted that growth was "solid" in the third quarter and said it thought financial-market strains were easing, but still opted for some insurance to add stimulus.

 

 

 

When asked where the U.S. economy is headed over the next year or so, John Duffy, chairman and CEO of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said at the summit: "In the toilet."

 

 

 

With the recent data and Fed moves, Wall Street firms believe the Fed will be forced to reduce interest rates on loans to banks to 3 percent, or even as low as 1 percent, at least over the next year.

 

 

 

Duffy said Fed action alone will not cure what ails the U.S. economy and financial institutions, which are experiencing a liquidity squeeze in the markets for credit and other financial products.

 

 

 

"I don't think they (the Fed) have a silver bullet,' he told Reuters.

 

 

 

(Reporting by John Poirier)

 

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlene ... CONOMY.xml[/hide]

 

The writer of that article is utterly [developmentally delayed]ed. Recessions are a natural part of the growth of an economy, and have never in the past lasted any more than about a year.

 

 

 

[hide=Worst crisis in 30 years says Hutton]

 

The worst crisis I've seen in 30 years

 

 

 

The latest financial downturn is the final nail in the coffin of the conservative free-market world-view

 

 

 

Will Hutton

 

Sunday November 4, 2007

 

The Observer

 

 

 

I have been following the financial markets for more than 30 years. Crises have come and gone, but the one unfolding since August and which intensified last week is the most serious. It is not just that its impact is cascading around the world because of the new interconnectedness of global finance, it is that the authorities, particularly in Britain and America, have lost control and do not have the means to regain it as quickly as we might hope. With an oil price approaching $100 a barrel, we are in an uncharted and dangerous place.

 

 

 

After more than 15 years of extraordinarily benevolent economic conditions worldwide - cheap oil, cheap money, growing trade, the Asia boom, rising house prices - things are unravelling at bewildering speed. The system might be able to handle one shock; it is undoubtedly too fragile to handle so many simultaneously.

 

The epicentre is the hegemonic London and New York financial system. No longer are these discrete financial markets; financial deregulation and the global ambitions of American and European banks have made them intertwined. They are one system that operates around the same principles, copying each other's methods, making the same mistakes and exposing themselves to each other's risks. Thus the collapse of the American housing market, the explosive growth of American home repossessions and the discovery that 'structured investment vehicles' (SIVs), the toxic newfangled financial instruments that own as much as $350bn of valueless mortgages, are not American problems. They are ours too.

 

 

 

The recent departure of the CEOs of two of the biggest investment banks - UBS and Merrill Lynch - after unexpected losses and loan write-offs running into many billions of dollars is not just an American problem, it's ours. It is also our problem that Credit Suisse last week announced more billions of write-offs, and Citigroup was rumoured to be following suit with even bigger losses. When banks take hits as big as this, it hurts their capacity to lend, because prudence demands they have up to eight dollars or pounds of their own capital to support every hundred dollars or pounds that they lend. If they don't, they have to lend less - and that is called a credit crunch.

 

 

 

This crunch is already upon us - hence the massive selling of bank shares at the end of last week and the extraordinary news that the taxpayer, one way or another, now has supplied ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã40bn to the stricken mortgage lender Northern Rock, a sum that could climb to ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã50bn by Christmas. Stunningly, that represents 5 per cent of GDP. The bank got into trouble because it thought, under the chairmanship of free-market fundamentalist Viscount Ridley, that it could escape trivial matters like having savers' deposits to finance its adventurous lending. Instead, it could copy the Americans and sell SIVs to banks in London - most of them the same banks that bought from New York - and it could steal a march on its competitors.

 

 

 

But in the London/New York financial system, when things went wrong in the US they immediately went wrong for Northern Rock in Britain. The banks announcing those epic write-offs no longer wanted to buy Northern Rock's loans - and neither did anybody else. The Bank and Treasury hoped to get by with masterly inactivity, but instead, as we know, there was a run on the bank. The government had to step in by guaranteeing ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã20bn of small savers' deposits - but also, we now learn, by supplying ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã30bn of finance that the financial system will no longer supply itself.

 

 

 

This is testimony to the degree of fear that characterises today's credit crunch - and it bodes ill. What is worse, the Ridleyite maxims that got Northern Rock into trouble have also disabled the rescue, protracting rather than limiting the crisis.

 

 

 

What should have happened, of course, is that when the Bank of England found that it could not find a secret buyer for Northern Rock in the summer, it should have done what it did in the 1974 secondary banking crisis. It should have taken Northern Rock into the Bank of England's ownership. Individual depositors and the City institutions alike would have been quickly reassured, and when the crisis passed the bank could have been sold back into the private sector.

 

 

 

But in 2007, the Ridley view of how to run a bank is also the authorities' view of how to respond to a crisis. There is a prohibition on even short-term public ownership. In a free-market fundamentalist world, this, like regulation, is regarded as wrong. Instead, the most expensive and riskier route has been taken so that Northern Rock remains part of the problem rather than the solution.

 

 

 

For when a central bank supplies rescue finance on this epic scale, it has wider implications. In effect it is printing money to bail out Northern Rock; good for the financial system, but bad for the rest of us because it will make it harder for the Bank to cut interest rates. Already the British property market is in trouble. Given the absurd prices it is all too possible that we could follow the American market, with huge bad debts and mortgage repossessions. The way Northern Rock has been rescued will make it hard for the Bank to cut interest rates and revive the property market, while remaining wedded to its inflation target. And if there are more Northern Rocks rescued in the same way, the dilemma will get worse.

 

 

 

Last week David Cameron proudly pronounced that the Tories were winning the battle of ideas. He could not be more wrong. The credit crunch is testimony to the exhaustion of a conservative free-market world-view. To get through this crisis, the American and British governments are going to have to think what hitherto has been unthinkable. Already the Americans are cutting interest rates careless of the inflationary consequences. Britain may have to follow suit. Both governments will have to devise new forms of regulation and control. Banks may have to be taken into public ownership.

 

 

 

For 30 years we have been suckered into thinking that public authority has no business intervening in the wealth-generating, free-market financial system. This is the year when reality resurfaced with a vengeance.

 

 

 

[email protected]

 

 

 

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnis ... e_continue

 

 

 

[/hide]

 

The writer of this article is also utterly [developmentally delayed]ed.

 

 

 

One: Higher gas prices, macroeconomically, are a good thing. It leads to a higher level of movement towards finding alternative fuel methods (such as ethanol, though I hope we find another as that uses up corn from the food market), as well as the ability to be financially able to get oil from, say, the oil sands of Canada or the oil shoals in Utah.

 

 

 

Two: There is no such "crisis", they're just playing at bull [cabbage], for media attention or god-knows what. This is worse than all the climatologists pulling global warming effect models out of their [bleep]es.

 

 

 

Three: A quarter percent cut is not going to cause drastic "inflationary consequences". And for that matter, they're also [developmentally delayed]ed for blatantly labeling inflation as a bad thing.

 

 

 

Morons.

[Nom]

[hide=Wall Street firms see recession nearing] NEW YORK (Reuters) - The economy might be edging toward a recession in the wake of mortgage-related credit woes plaguing the financial markets, bankers and analysts said on Monday.

 

 

 

"I think that the risk of a recession is greater than people realize," James Dunne, chief executive of Sandler O'Neil & Partners, said at the Reuters Finance Summit in New York.

 

 

 

With home prices dropping, more people about to lose their homes due to unaffordable mortgages and sharply higher oil prices, the economy could be on the brink of slowing down, they said.

 

 

 

"I think there is a serious risk to the economy," Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, told the summit.

 

 

 

Charles Peabody, partner at New York-based research firm Portales Partners LLC, said the Fed may have to take more aggressive action and drop the benchmark fed funds rate in an effort to prevent a Japanese-style economic stagnation, which eventually evolved into a deflationary recession.

 

 

 

"We're moving into a recession, and over time -- the length of which is difficult to predict -- there is going to be a lot more credit problems," he said.

 

 

 

Preliminary data released by the U.S. government last week showed that the gross domestic product grew by 3.9 percent in the third quarter, compared with 3.8 percent in the previous quarter and 0.6 percent in the first three months of this year.

 

 

 

Last week the Fed announced at the end of a two-day meeting of its policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee that it was reducing its federal funds rate a quarter percentage point to 4.5 percent, citing its expectation that "economic expansion will likely slow in the near term" because of the housing sector's problems.

 

 

 

The Fed noted that growth was "solid" in the third quarter and said it thought financial-market strains were easing, but still opted for some insurance to add stimulus.

 

 

 

When asked where the U.S. economy is headed over the next year or so, John Duffy, chairman and CEO of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said at the summit: "In the toilet."

 

 

 

With the recent data and Fed moves, Wall Street firms believe the Fed will be forced to reduce interest rates on loans to banks to 3 percent, or even as low as 1 percent, at least over the next year.

 

 

 

Duffy said Fed action alone will not cure what ails the U.S. economy and financial institutions, which are experiencing a liquidity squeeze in the markets for credit and other financial products.

 

 

 

"I don't think they (the Fed) have a silver bullet,' he told Reuters.

 

 

 

(Reporting by John Poirier)

 

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlene ... CONOMY.xml[/hide]

 

The writer of that article is utterly [developmentally delayed]. Recessions are a natural part of the growth of an economy, and have never in the past lasted any more than about a year.

 

 

 

[hide=Worst crisis in 30 years says Hutton]

 

The worst crisis I've seen in 30 years

 

 

 

The latest financial downturn is the final nail in the coffin of the conservative free-market world-view

 

 

 

Will Hutton

 

Sunday November 4, 2007

 

The Observer

 

 

 

I have been following the financial markets for more than 30 years. Crises have come and gone, but the one unfolding since August and which intensified last week is the most serious. It is not just that its impact is cascading around the world because of the new interconnectedness of global finance, it is that the authorities, particularly in Britain and America, have lost control and do not have the means to regain it as quickly as we might hope. With an oil price approaching $100 a barrel, we are in an uncharted and dangerous place.

 

 

 

After more than 15 years of extraordinarily benevolent economic conditions worldwide - cheap oil, cheap money, growing trade, the Asia boom, rising house prices - things are unravelling at bewildering speed. The system might be able to handle one shock; it is undoubtedly too fragile to handle so many simultaneously.

 

The epicentre is the hegemonic London and New York financial system. No longer are these discrete financial markets; financial deregulation and the global ambitions of American and European banks have made them intertwined. They are one system that operates around the same principles, copying each other's methods, making the same mistakes and exposing themselves to each other's risks. Thus the collapse of the American housing market, the explosive growth of American home repossessions and the discovery that 'structured investment vehicles' (SIVs), the toxic newfangled financial instruments that own as much as $350bn of valueless mortgages, are not American problems. They are ours too.

 

 

 

The recent departure of the CEOs of two of the biggest investment banks - UBS and Merrill Lynch - after unexpected losses and loan write-offs running into many billions of dollars is not just an American problem, it's ours. It is also our problem that Credit Suisse last week announced more billions of write-offs, and Citigroup was rumoured to be following suit with even bigger losses. When banks take hits as big as this, it hurts their capacity to lend, because prudence demands they have up to eight dollars or pounds of their own capital to support every hundred dollars or pounds that they lend. If they don't, they have to lend less - and that is called a credit crunch.

 

 

 

This crunch is already upon us - hence the massive selling of bank shares at the end of last week and the extraordinary news that the taxpayer, one way or another, now has supplied ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã40bn to the stricken mortgage lender Northern Rock, a sum that could climb to ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã50bn by Christmas. Stunningly, that represents 5 per cent of GDP. The bank got into trouble because it thought, under the chairmanship of free-market fundamentalist Viscount Ridley, that it could escape trivial matters like having savers' deposits to finance its adventurous lending. Instead, it could copy the Americans and sell SIVs to banks in London - most of them the same banks that bought from New York - and it could steal a march on its competitors.

 

 

 

But in the London/New York financial system, when things went wrong in the US they immediately went wrong for Northern Rock in Britain. The banks announcing those epic write-offs no longer wanted to buy Northern Rock's loans - and neither did anybody else. The Bank and Treasury hoped to get by with masterly inactivity, but instead, as we know, there was a run on the bank. The government had to step in by guaranteeing ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã20bn of small savers' deposits - but also, we now learn, by supplying ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã30bn of finance that the financial system will no longer supply itself.

 

 

 

This is testimony to the degree of fear that characterises today's credit crunch - and it bodes ill. What is worse, the Ridleyite maxims that got Northern Rock into trouble have also disabled the rescue, protracting rather than limiting the crisis.

 

 

 

What should have happened, of course, is that when the Bank of England found that it could not find a secret buyer for Northern Rock in the summer, it should have done what it did in the 1974 secondary banking crisis. It should have taken Northern Rock into the Bank of England's ownership. Individual depositors and the City institutions alike would have been quickly reassured, and when the crisis passed the bank could have been sold back into the private sector.

 

 

 

But in 2007, the Ridley view of how to run a bank is also the authorities' view of how to respond to a crisis. There is a prohibition on even short-term public ownership. In a free-market fundamentalist world, this, like regulation, is regarded as wrong. Instead, the most expensive and riskier route has been taken so that Northern Rock remains part of the problem rather than the solution.

 

 

 

For when a central bank supplies rescue finance on this epic scale, it has wider implications. In effect it is printing money to bail out Northern Rock; good for the financial system, but bad for the rest of us because it will make it harder for the Bank to cut interest rates. Already the British property market is in trouble. Given the absurd prices it is all too possible that we could follow the American market, with huge bad debts and mortgage repossessions. The way Northern Rock has been rescued will make it hard for the Bank to cut interest rates and revive the property market, while remaining wedded to its inflation target. And if there are more Northern Rocks rescued in the same way, the dilemma will get worse.

 

 

 

Last week David Cameron proudly pronounced that the Tories were winning the battle of ideas. He could not be more wrong. The credit crunch is testimony to the exhaustion of a conservative free-market world-view. To get through this crisis, the American and British governments are going to have to think what hitherto has been unthinkable. Already the Americans are cutting interest rates careless of the inflationary consequences. Britain may have to follow suit. Both governments will have to devise new forms of regulation and control. Banks may have to be taken into public ownership.

 

 

 

For 30 years we have been suckered into thinking that public authority has no business intervening in the wealth-generating, free-market financial system. This is the year when reality resurfaced with a vengeance.

 

 

 

[email protected]

 

 

 

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnis ... e_continue

 

 

 

[/hide]

 

The writer of this article is also utterly [developmentally delayed].

 

 

 

Well, really, you can only call the writer of the second article [developmentally delayed]ed as it is an editorial. The first is merely a report on what a bunch of other people said :P .

[Defender2516]

[hide=Wall Street firms see recession nearing] NEW YORK (Reuters) - The economy might be edging toward a recession in the wake of mortgage-related credit woes plaguing the financial markets, bankers and analysts said on Monday.

 

 

 

"I think that the risk of a recession is greater than people realize," James Dunne, chief executive of Sandler O'Neil & Partners, said at the Reuters Finance Summit in New York.

 

 

 

With home prices dropping, more people about to lose their homes due to unaffordable mortgages and sharply higher oil prices, the economy could be on the brink of slowing down, they said.

 

 

 

"I think there is a serious risk to the economy," Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, told the summit.

 

 

 

Charles Peabody, partner at New York-based research firm Portales Partners LLC, said the Fed may have to take more aggressive action and drop the benchmark fed funds rate in an effort to prevent a Japanese-style economic stagnation, which eventually evolved into a deflationary recession.

 

 

 

"We're moving into a recession, and over time -- the length of which is difficult to predict -- there is going to be a lot more credit problems," he said.

 

 

 

Preliminary data released by the U.S. government last week showed that the gross domestic product grew by 3.9 percent in the third quarter, compared with 3.8 percent in the previous quarter and 0.6 percent in the first three months of this year.

 

 

 

Last week the Fed announced at the end of a two-day meeting of its policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee that it was reducing its federal funds rate a quarter percentage point to 4.5 percent, citing its expectation that "economic expansion will likely slow in the near term" because of the housing sector's problems.

 

 

 

The Fed noted that growth was "solid" in the third quarter and said it thought financial-market strains were easing, but still opted for some insurance to add stimulus.

 

 

 

When asked where the U.S. economy is headed over the next year or so, John Duffy, chairman and CEO of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said at the summit: "In the toilet."

 

 

 

With the recent data and Fed moves, Wall Street firms believe the Fed will be forced to reduce interest rates on loans to banks to 3 percent, or even as low as 1 percent, at least over the next year.

 

 

 

Duffy said Fed action alone will not cure what ails the U.S. economy and financial institutions, which are experiencing a liquidity squeeze in the markets for credit and other financial products.

 

 

 

"I don't think they (the Fed) have a silver bullet,' he told Reuters.

 

 

 

(Reporting by John Poirier)

 

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlene ... CONOMY.xml[/hide]

 

The writer of that article is utterly [developmentally delayed]. Recessions are a natural part of the growth of an economy, and have never in the past lasted any more than about a year.

 

 

 

[hide=Worst crisis in 30 years says Hutton]

 

The worst crisis I've seen in 30 years

 

 

 

The latest financial downturn is the final nail in the coffin of the conservative free-market world-view

 

 

 

Will Hutton

 

Sunday November 4, 2007

 

The Observer

 

 

 

I have been following the financial markets for more than 30 years. Crises have come and gone, but the one unfolding since August and which intensified last week is the most serious. It is not just that its impact is cascading around the world because of the new interconnectedness of global finance, it is that the authorities, particularly in Britain and America, have lost control and do not have the means to regain it as quickly as we might hope. With an oil price approaching $100 a barrel, we are in an uncharted and dangerous place.

 

 

 

After more than 15 years of extraordinarily benevolent economic conditions worldwide - cheap oil, cheap money, growing trade, the Asia boom, rising house prices - things are unravelling at bewildering speed. The system might be able to handle one shock; it is undoubtedly too fragile to handle so many simultaneously.

 

The epicentre is the hegemonic London and New York financial system. No longer are these discrete financial markets; financial deregulation and the global ambitions of American and European banks have made them intertwined. They are one system that operates around the same principles, copying each other's methods, making the same mistakes and exposing themselves to each other's risks. Thus the collapse of the American housing market, the explosive growth of American home repossessions and the discovery that 'structured investment vehicles' (SIVs), the toxic newfangled financial instruments that own as much as $350bn of valueless mortgages, are not American problems. They are ours too.

 

 

 

The recent departure of the CEOs of two of the biggest investment banks - UBS and Merrill Lynch - after unexpected losses and loan write-offs running into many billions of dollars is not just an American problem, it's ours. It is also our problem that Credit Suisse last week announced more billions of write-offs, and Citigroup was rumoured to be following suit with even bigger losses. When banks take hits as big as this, it hurts their capacity to lend, because prudence demands they have up to eight dollars or pounds of their own capital to support every hundred dollars or pounds that they lend. If they don't, they have to lend less - and that is called a credit crunch.

 

 

 

This crunch is already upon us - hence the massive selling of bank shares at the end of last week and the extraordinary news that the taxpayer, one way or another, now has supplied ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã40bn to the stricken mortgage lender Northern Rock, a sum that could climb to ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã50bn by Christmas. Stunningly, that represents 5 per cent of GDP. The bank got into trouble because it thought, under the chairmanship of free-market fundamentalist Viscount Ridley, that it could escape trivial matters like having savers' deposits to finance its adventurous lending. Instead, it could copy the Americans and sell SIVs to banks in London - most of them the same banks that bought from New York - and it could steal a march on its competitors.

 

 

 

But in the London/New York financial system, when things went wrong in the US they immediately went wrong for Northern Rock in Britain. The banks announcing those epic write-offs no longer wanted to buy Northern Rock's loans - and neither did anybody else. The Bank and Treasury hoped to get by with masterly inactivity, but instead, as we know, there was a run on the bank. The government had to step in by guaranteeing ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã20bn of small savers' deposits - but also, we now learn, by supplying ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâã30bn of finance that the financial system will no longer supply itself.

 

 

 

This is testimony to the degree of fear that characterises today's credit crunch - and it bodes ill. What is worse, the Ridleyite maxims that got Northern Rock into trouble have also disabled the rescue, protracting rather than limiting the crisis.

 

 

 

What should have happened, of course, is that when the Bank of England found that it could not find a secret buyer for Northern Rock in the summer, it should have done what it did in the 1974 secondary banking crisis. It should have taken Northern Rock into the Bank of England's ownership. Individual depositors and the City institutions alike would have been quickly reassured, and when the crisis passed the bank could have been sold back into the private sector.

 

 

 

But in 2007, the Ridley view of how to run a bank is also the authorities' view of how to respond to a crisis. There is a prohibition on even short-term public ownership. In a free-market fundamentalist world, this, like regulation, is regarded as wrong. Instead, the most expensive and riskier route has been taken so that Northern Rock remains part of the problem rather than the solution.

 

 

 

For when a central bank supplies rescue finance on this epic scale, it has wider implications. In effect it is printing money to bail out Northern Rock; good for the financial system, but bad for the rest of us because it will make it harder for the Bank to cut interest rates. Already the British property market is in trouble. Given the absurd prices it is all too possible that we could follow the American market, with huge bad debts and mortgage repossessions. The way Northern Rock has been rescued will make it hard for the Bank to cut interest rates and revive the property market, while remaining wedded to its inflation target. And if there are more Northern Rocks rescued in the same way, the dilemma will get worse.

 

 

 

Last week David Cameron proudly pronounced that the Tories were winning the battle of ideas. He could not be more wrong. The credit crunch is testimony to the exhaustion of a conservative free-market world-view. To get through this crisis, the American and British governments are going to have to think what hitherto has been unthinkable. Already the Americans are cutting interest rates careless of the inflationary consequences. Britain may have to follow suit. Both governments will have to devise new forms of regulation and control. Banks may have to be taken into public ownership.

 

 

 

For 30 years we have been suckered into thinking that public authority has no business intervening in the wealth-generating, free-market financial system. This is the year when reality resurfaced with a vengeance.

 

 

 

[email protected]

 

 

 

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnis ... e_continue

 

 

 

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The writer of this article is also utterly [developmentally delayed].

 

 

 

One: Higher gas prices, macroeconomically, are a good thing. It leads to a higher level of movement towards finding alternative fuel methods (such as ethanol, though I hope we find another as that uses up corn from the food market), as well as the ability to be financially able to get oil from, say, the oil sands of Canada or the oil shoals in Utah.

 

 

 

Two: There is no such "crisis", they're just playing at bull [cabbage], for media attention or god-knows what. This is worse than all the climatologists pulling global warming effect models out of their [bleep]es.

 

 

 

Three: A quarter percent cut is not going to cause drastic "inflationary consequences". And for that matter, they're also [developmentally delayed] for blatantly labeling inflation as a bad thing.

 

 

 

Morons.

 

 

 

 

 

So your saying you hold more econmical knowledge and proffesionism then these guys.. but you do not hold a position in the field like they do?

 

 

 

Its kinda like the poor kid telling the rich kid how to be rich.

[cryztalwing]

More news about how bad the dollar is doing.

 

 

 

 

 

[hide]ItÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s no secret that the dollar is on a downward spiral. Its value is dropping, and the Fed isnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t doing a whole lot to change that. As a result, a number of countries are considering a shift away from the dollar to preserve their assets. These are seven of the countries currently considering a move from the dollar, and how theyÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll have an effect on its value and the US economy.

 

 

 

Saudi Arabia: The Telegraph reports that for the first time, Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates along with the US Federal Reserve. This is seen as a signal that a break from the dollar currency peg is imminent. The kingdom is taking ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¦Ã¢â¬Åappropriate measuresÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬ÃâÃ