Global Economy

[Guest]

[url="http://www.cnbc.com/id/38092759"]Dow Repeats Great Depression Pattern: Charts[/url]

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is repeating a pattern that appeared just before markets fell during the Great Depression, Daryl Guppy, CEO at Guppytraders.com, told CNBC Monday.



“Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it…there was a head and shoulders pattern that developed before the Depression in 1929, then with the recovery in 1930 we had another head and shoulders pattern that preceded a fall in the market, and in the current Dow situation we see an exact repeat of that environment,” Guppy said.



The Dow retreated 457.33 points, or 4.5 percent last week, to close at 9,686 Friday. Guppy said a Dow fall below 9,800 confirmed the head and shoulders pattern.



The Shanghai Composite is seeing a very rapid collapse, falling below 2,500, which suggests the major fall in the Dow, he added.



In the European markets, Guppy says Frankfurt's Dax is witnessing a different pattern to London's FTSE.



Guppy uses the broad trading band as measurement- giving the Dax a downsize target of 1,500. The same head and shoulders pattern seen in the Dow can also being seen in the FTSE, he added.

[Guest]

[url="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e3ed5836-8949-11df-8ecd-00144feab49a.html"]European banks use gold reserves to raise cash[/url]

European commercial banks have begun using their holdings of gold to raise cash with the Bank for International Settlements, in a further sign of strains in the money markets on which many rely for funding.



The BIS, the so-called “central banks’ central bank”, took 346 tonnes of gold in exchange for foreign currency in “swap operations” in the financial year to March 31, according to a note in its latest annual report.



In a gold swap, one counterparty, in this case a bank, sells its gold to the other, in this case the BIS, with an agreement to buy it back at a later date.



In the past the BIS has occasionally engaged in gold swaps.



There has been no mention, though, of any such operation in recent years.



The gold swaps detailed in the annual report began in December last year, according to monthly data from the International Monetary Fund, and have surged since January, when the Greek debt crisis erupted.



The amount raised in the operations, just over $13bn at current prices, is small compared with the wholesale money markets. But the fact that banks are using their gold holdings to raise capital is a further indication of the stress in the sector.



Euribor, the rate at which eurozone banks lend to each other, has risen for 27 successive days, while markets are nervous about the impending release of bank stress tests in Europe, scheduled to be published at the end of the month.



The BIS annual report says the gold received in the swaps was held “at central banks”.



Talk of the swaps caused a stir in the gold market, with some traders citing it as a reason for gold’s fall to a five-week low below $1,200 a troy ounce.



Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Gold price will start sliding.

[Guest]

This video explains European Financial crisis in 3 mins. Enjoy it.



[url="http://www.norcalblogs.com/gate/2010/07/world-economic-collapse-explained-in-3-minute-video.php"]LINK[/url]

[acharya]

Retirement: Gen Y's Empty Piggy Bank







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By Mark Scott – Fri Jul 16, 8:08 am ET

Baby boomers fretting over their pensions should spare a thought for Constance DeCherney. Like many of her generation, the 27-year-old Web strategist at Planned Parenthood in New York has done little to prepare for retirement. While she became eligible for a 401(k) in 2005, DeCherney only began putting money into it last year. She now contributes 3 percent of her pay, though that's just half of what Planned Parenthood will match, and DeCherney doesn't know how the investments are performing. "Just the idea of (saving for retirement) feels overwhelming," she says. "My fear of doing something wrong, or not doing enough, sort of paralyzes me."

DeCherney is typical of America's so-called Generation Y, the twentysomethings who have entered the workforce in the past 10 years. Already saddled with student debts averaging almost $20,000, according to New York-based think tank Demos, Gen Y is in a tougher financial position than previous generations. The average salary for 25- to 34-year-olds, for instance, fell 19 percent over the last 30 years, after adjusting for inflation, to $35,100, Demos estimates. That's if they can get jobs: Unemployment among 19- to 24-year-olds stands at 15.3 percent vs. the overall rate of 9.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While many of their parents have guaranteed retirement income from being in a company-funded pension for part of their careers, Gen Y is "the first do-it-yourself retirement generation," says Catherine Collinson, president of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies in Los Angeles.

Investment companies are stepping up efforts to engage Gen Yers in retirement planning. Charles Schwab has revamped its website to include weekly advice for younger workers on everything from retirement planning to paying down debt. Vanguard is testing out social media, using more blogs, a Facebook page, and soon, Twitter. "It's how this younger generation learns," says Vanguard Chief Executive Officer William McNabb III. Fidelity, the nation's largest 401(k) administrator, in June launched an iPhone app for tracking retirement savings and has replaced bulky pension literature with e-mail updates. "This generation lacks confidence about making financial decisions," says Beth McHugh, Fidelity's vice-president of market insights. "You have to explain why planning for retirement is so important."

That's presuming you can get their attention. Fewer than 4,000 Facebook users have clicked the "like" button for Fidelity's page and about 9,000 have done so for Vanguard's. Meanwhile, 4.2 million people say they like Apple iTunes on Facebook. Schwab, which began sending Twitter feeds in mid-June, has 277 followers. Whole Foods Market has 1.8 million.

Some baby boomer parents enlist the help of their financial planners in giving their kids a retirement reality check. Jim Stoops, a Schwab financial consultant in Chicago, says his 250-plus clients often bring their sons and daughters to his office for advice. "Parents just can't believe how difficult retirement will be for their children," he says. "They're trying to instill financial values in their kids."

Changes in the way 401(k) plans are designed may help the retirement prospects of Gen Y. Growing numbers of companies automatically enroll employees in plans rather than requiring them to sign up to establish an account, which has helped double participation to roughly 80 percent of eligible workers since 2006, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington. (More than half of the U.S. labor force, though, works at companies that don't offer 401(k) plans.) More companies also use so-called auto-escalation programs that bump up contributions over time. And most 401(k)s now offer target-date funds that automatically adjust the investment mix to less volatile securities such as bonds as an investor ages.

Still, the best solution for Gen Yers who want a comfortable retirement is old-fashioned. "The trick is to be incredibly disciplined about saving early," says Vanguard boss McNabb. His proposal: "An addendum to the basic principles of investing that reads: 'I am not kidding.'"

The bottom line: Young workers lack the pensions their parents enjoyed, and few are setting aside enough for retirement via 401(k)s and similar plans.

[Guest]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG4jhlPLVVs&feature=player_embedded[/media]

[acharya]

ASIANS are HOARDING THE MONEY!

BIGGEST THREAT TO U.S. and THE WORLD.



Ever made a DOLLAR from an ASIAN! NO and NO



http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/and...35350.html



I agree with you Mr. Gerald Celente that we are steadfastly headed into the Greatest Depression ever ! I have observed the following Trends. Our Fiat currency has been devalued into oblivion and by the way we are not on the Gold Standard. The US Constitution mandates Gold as legal tender. Our current denominational bills are all Federal Reserve NOTES. NOTES are IOU's that are not backed by GOLD certificates so therefore you cannot go to any bank and cash in your bills and demand GOLD. Our money is useless and is not worth the paper it is printed on. We are currently in a deflationary period account of economic contraction account of consumers are not buying any goods and manufacturing has excess inventories.



As a result of this we have massive layoffs and massive unemployment and to top that off Banks are not loaning back the money they hoarded from the bailouts back to small businesses to create new jobs. There has been no trickle down effect of money getting back in the pockets of consumers on Main Street. The Large Banks and Wall Street in this charade are deliberately driving down the prices and earnings of small companies to eliminate competition through bankruptcies and merger acquisitions monopolizing Cartels. Credit contraction has been deliberate by large Banks in the refusal to make loans available to small businesses. The second wave of derivative ARM product mortgages are just about to reset starting the process of a new wave of home mortgage foreclosures. Home prices continue to drop along with equities in homes.



Commercial real estate foreclosures continue to rise. The home loan volunteer mortgage modification program is a charade that is not working. Wall Street just took a big hit and the dreaded W is upon us. The Bond market is in a Bubble and it will pop ! A third World country will default on its credit that will start a domino effect that will erupt into a Worldwide depression. Inflation will be rampant and shortages will exist for goods account of demand now exceeds the capacity to manufacture goods thanks to the massive layoffs and downsizing. Now than we have to look at Iran and wonder about the what if with Israel and also look at North Korea and wonder about the what if with South Korea.



As we speak the Central Banks along with Wall Street are doing a little trading after the closing trading hours on the New York Stock Exchange to manipulate the price of Gold and try to hold it down ! Now than since you can see the whole picture it is very easy and clear to see all of the Trends.

[acharya]

We live in a system designed by the European Central banks the international oil cartels and the Industrial Military Complex. All who propped up the Federal Reserve to take over America back in 1913. (Read The Creature From Jekyll Island.) (Also read The Iron Mountain Report published during the JFK Administration.)



President Obama, and all the presidents before him were just CEO’s of the American Corporation. What most people fail to understand is that all of Washington is bought and paid for by the banking, oil and military cartels. Votes from the common people no longer count, they never did. Most Americans are still fooled by the deception of right vs. left Republican vs. Democrat Liberal vs. Conservative. None of it is real. It’s an illusion to keep the game going so the powers that be can profit off the world’s wealth.



Real wealth comes from the ground not the stock market. It’s an illusion design to keep the theft of wealth going. It took me years of research to crack this deception to the point of understanding. Now I know why I never voted or got involved in politics. Obama was the first president I voted for now knowing what I know. I presently regret my decision of taking part in this phony political system. All I offer is the truth. I have on request countless hours of research from web links I can send you via e-mail. All documented facts not off the wall conspiracy theories. I will be more than happy to send them to you and explain what you do not understand. Again all I offer is the truth.

[acharya]

In the fall of 1940, a group of industrial designers, artists, craftsmen, manufacturers, etc. formed a group called "The American Way."

[size="5"]

Its goal was to encourage an "American way of marketing and living," - in other words - to have Americans buy products made in America by Americans.



We must arrive at a solution to the effects of globalization and the challenges that foreign workers are presenting to us in terms of our wages and benefits.



We need to develop a comprehensive program to gradually bring back our factories and manufacturing jobs, and we MUST accept the fact that not every American can work in swanky air-conditioned offices, dressed-up, pushing buttons on a computer and getting top level salaries.[/size]



Ditches need to be dug, toilets need to be cleaned, shelves need to be stocked, floors need to be scrubbed, packages need to be delivered, etc. These jobs must be returned to American high school and college students, legal immigrants seeking citizenship, etc., who at one time did these jobs, and many more similar to them, in pre-1970 America. This was before illegal immigrants poured into this nation and took those jobs without paying taxes, and overburdened our school and hospital systems.



While many illegal immigrants do have it tough, until factories and jobs return, employing American citizens making American products, we will never get out of this situation. In short, this country and our elected officials MUST develop a new "American Way."

[acharya]

It seems that the vast majority of American are quite ignorant about how Hitler pulled Germany ouf of its depression. Naturally all their lives they have been filled with garbage about him. It wasn't Hitler who used a military build-up as most claim. It was FDR that pulled AMERICA out of the depression with MILITARY production LONG BEFORE there was an threat of war! Hitler, through Finance Minister Schacht, used financial reforms along with abrogating draconian economic burdens imposed by the Allies after WW I that got Germany's economy back on track to the jealousy of the victorious Allies that caused them to plot to draw Hitler into a war. Yes! Read the history Americans. [size="5"]It was You and Britain, those "peace loving peoples" who started WW II! As early as 1936 Churchill declared that "we will impose war on Herr Hitler whether he likes it or not." [/size]



Just like you did to Iraq with your WMD excuse and are now are doing to Iran. Neither one has ever posed any threat to America or Britain. So why are you doing it. Because you can't stand a competitor in a region that you want to control. The real "Evil Empires" are in Washington D.C. and at 10 Downing street. Remember the "Maine"? That phony excuse to steal Spain's territories back in 1898. No you wouldn't. Most Americans can't think beyond the latest MTV show. [size="5"]Another 25 years and America will be just another degenerate third world cess pool with a few elite like Haitians running the show.[/size]



[size="6"]

America is being told by its leaders that America is just another country among others. Our greatness is being diminished. We are falling rather than rising. Our free and open society is being overrun and taken advantage of by a bunch of party crashers. We need to wise up. If the Dems can't get the job done, throw them out! If the Repubs can't get the job done, throw them out! We need to elect real people who get it and get this great country back on track. [/size]

[acharya]

The America you used to know went to China, Taiwan, India, Viet Nam , etc. Our governmnet has made it nearly impossible too maake anything here. Every time it looks like someone is going too make a buck they make a law against it. If they can kill the middle class they will become our rulers. [size="5"]The lower class consists of 40 percenters (IQ under 90 is 40% of the population of the U.S.) who are only slightly capable of cogent thought or conversation. They vote for whoever feeds them. Just dumb animals being led by opportunistic crooks and thieves that are the Liberal/Progressive elite.[/size] This L/P elite crosses party lines so that Democrat or Republican are meaningless names for the same old song.



[size="5"]The Great Depression saw a 40% decrease in consumer spending and a decade long absence of substantial growth. Celente emphasizes unemployment but high corporate earnings have been coexisting with these figures. Why can't this continue? Europe and Asia are growing. To cite the most dramatic example, Coke has earned 80% of its revenues outside North America. We saw this phenonenon help WMT's bottom line recently.[/size] Goofballs like Celente are talking us into a double dip when we are in a recovery. This is not 1933, my homies. We are so affluent that if a man wants to furnish his home he can do so with abandoned items left in front of houses. Some go on to sell these items on the net. Everything from mattresses to vacuum cleaners. I don't know anyone who can't find any source of income. Our black, or underground, economy has been estimated at one third of our reported. We are on thecomeback trail, my homies. Lets not let goofballs like Celest talk us into another dip. Russ Stahl, author of Hip Hop Murders

[acharya]

I am a small potatoes biz owner and investor and im here to tell you that the middle class in this country will be gone in 10 years if not sooner. [size="5"]The Us worker cant compete on the stage of this now global economy, not because they are not productive but because they have been priced out of the market. A guy in china can and will do the same job at a tenth the compensation and the guy in china still saves half or more of that income.[/size] Gee i wonder how these companies are posting record profits? Its not rocket science. Now i buy a tooth brush and the handle so thin it feels like im brushing with a drinking staw. I bought the kids some twinkies to put in their lunches and couldnt believe it when we opened the box and they are now the size that the fun size candy bars used to be. Im sure glad that there still ways to make money, even if its only cutting a product in half and charging the same price. But i think this party is just getting started.



We have a Quid Pro Quo society, it is now the “land of the special interest” that rules, behind their castle walls, costing and burdening what is left of the free markets, with taxes for trillions in entitlements and generous government salaries and pension obligations. The great community organizer has tried to create a no pain and all gain society. The liberal wing has brainwashed several generations, that business and “people of enterprise” are demons of greed and exploitation. It has worked most successfully. We now have the highest most suffocating business taxes in the world at near 45% Federal & State. [size="5"]Now we watch how China embraces our corporations to move their operations there, with zero corporate tax and free land. China and most of Asia worships free markets capitalism and does not tax the means of production. [/size]



As the liberal wing makes fun of trickle down economics, we again watch China with near 10% torrid economic growth. We watch China not “trickle down’ but a “torrent down” economics bringing great wealth to tens of millions of Chinese along the coast. This great wealth is rising all boats, which shows up in car sales that now exceed America’s. We see the many Chinese now buying new homes and consumer products. Much of Asia is growing wealthier as America declines into the abyss with 52 Trillion in private and public debt, ( David Stockten) as we still reward “people of entitlement” at the expense of “people of enterprise” This country is not the land of opportunity like it was 100 years ago that brought our ancestors here. It has become “the land of .

[acharya]

[size="6"]China has won the manufacturing war, Middle East (OPEC) has won the petrolium war, only thing left is the food war. United States is the worlds largest producer of food in the world, Hmmmm....should we start playing the game (greed) also with the only weapon we have left? Nah...our goverment will try this on us first.[/size]







Sad but, I fear, true. The military-industrial complex in this country is so huge and swallows up so much of the federal budget that it's no wonder there's such a huge budget deficit. Campaign reform turned out to be a total joke on both sides of the aisle, which only fuels the corruption that has become omnipresent in both parties. I have to agree that campaign donations have become basically a de-facto system of bribery, a sort of "pay to play" where those in congress become so indebted to big business through their campaigns that they end up only serving those lobbying interests, rather than their constituents.



So, how do we fix these issues? Obviously communism and socialism are not the answer. Both of these systems have one inherent failing: greed. but what do we do when that same fallability becomes present in a system that was designed to avoid it?



First, term limits on congressmen and senators would be a great idea. This would prevent these officals from getting too "fat". Next, limit campaign donations from big business. Third, to help US workers, start slapping real tarriffs on overseas goods, much like foreign economies have done to us, and like we did to Japan back in the late 70's. It's a start. As long as we let big business run our government and other economies like China, India, and Eastern Europe push us around, the downward spiral that the United States is stuck in will continue.

[Capt M Kumar]

As a nation we are driven by the urge to save and invest in gold and silver, while skimping on infrastructure that can propel growth. http://www.dailypioneer.com/349494/China...-bane.html



A recent issue of Time offers an interesting snippet of information: 47 per cent of Americans can’t raise $2,000 in 30 days without selling an asset. I dare say most of the middle classes in India, including the lower echelons of the descriptor, can find, or borrow, one solitary lakh of rupees in one month without liquidating any asset.



Of course, our poor, some 500 million Indians, and almost the same percentage of our 1.25 billion population, can’t think of raising that kind of money. However, the comparison is between the richest country in the world, which is going through a rough economic patch, and the country with the second fastest growing economy which is going through political turbulence and governance deficit.

[sumishi]

[size="3"]Gems of wisdom and information from [url="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/03/michael-lewis-ireland-201103?printable=true"]When Irish Eyes Are Crying[/url].



A little dated (March 2011), but brings out starkly a case study in the global financial turmoil.

[Thanks rytha for linking to the article in topic "Banks and Banking in India"]



Excerpts:[/size]

[indent][size="3"]

[/size][size="4"]When Irish Eyes Are Crying[/size]



[size="3"]First Iceland. Then Greece. Now Ireland, which headed for bankruptcy with its own mysterious logic. In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country—from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. So where’s the rage?[/size]





[size="3"]... It had been two years since a handful of Irish politicians and bankers decided to guarantee all the debts of the country’s biggest banks, but the people were only now getting their minds around what that meant for them. The numbers were breathtaking. A single bank, Anglo Irish, which, two years before, the Irish government had claimed was merely suffering from a “liquidity problem,” faced losses of up to 34 billion euros. ... And that was for a single bank. As the sum total of loans made by Anglo Irish, most of it to Irish property developers, was only 72 billion euros, the bank had lost nearly half of every dollar it invested.[/size]



[size="3"] The two other big Irish banks, Bank of Ireland and, especially, Allied Irish Banks (A.I.B.), remained Ireland’s dirty little secrets. Both older than Ireland itself ... both were now also obviously bust. The Irish government owned big chunks of the two ancient banks but revealed less about them. As they had lent vast sums not only to Irish property developers but also to Irish homebuyers, their losses were also obviously vast—and similar in spirit to the losses at the upstart Anglo Irish.[/size]



[size="3"] Even in an era when capitalists went out of their way to destroy capitalism, the Irish bankers set some kind of record for destruction. ...[/size]



[size="3"] Ireland’s financial disaster shared some things with Iceland’s. ... But while Icelandic males used foreign money to conquer foreign places—trophy companies in Britain, chunks of Scandinavia—the Irish male used foreign money to conquer Ireland. ... the Irish decided what they really wanted to do with it was to buy Ireland. From one another. An Irish economist named Morgan Kelly, ... made a back-of-the-envelope calculation that puts the losses of all Irish banks at roughly 106 billion euros. ... At the rate money currently flows into the Irish treasury, Irish bank losses alone would absorb every penny of Irish taxes for at least the next three years.[/size]



[size="3"]In recognition of the spectacular losses, the entire Irish economy has almost dutifully collapsed. ... The Irish are once again leaving Ireland, along with hordes of migrant workers. In late 2006, the unemployment rate stood at a bit more than 4 percent; now it’s 14 percent and climbing toward rates not experienced since the mid-1980s. Just a few years ago, Ireland was able to borrow money more cheaply than Germany; now, if it can borrow at all, it will be charged interest rates nearly 6 percent higher than Germany, another echo of a distant past. The Irish budget deficit—which three years ago was a surplus—is now 32 percent of its G.D.P., the highest by far in the history of the Eurozone. ...[/size]



[size="3"]... In Iceland, the business-friendly conservative party had been quickly tossed out of power, and the women booted the alpha males out of the banks and government. ... In Greece the business-friendly conservative party was also given the heave-ho, and the new government is attempting to create a sense of collective purpose ... Ireland was the first European country to watch its entire banking system fail, and yet its business-friendly conservative party, Fianna Fáil (pronounced “Feena Foil”), would remain in office into 2011. There’s been no ... serious protests of any kind. The most obvious change in the country’s politics has been the role played by foreigners. The Irish government and Irish banks are crawling with American investment bankers and Australian management consultants and faceless Euro-officials, referred to inside the Department of Finance simply as “the Germans.” ...[/size]



[size="3"]Ireland’s regress is especially unsettling because of the questions it raises about Ireland’s former progress: even now no one is quite sure why the Irish suddenly did so well for themselves in the first place. Between 1845 and 1852, during the Great Potato Famine, the country experienced the greatest loss of population in world history—in a nation of eight million, a million and a half people left. Another million starved to death or died from the effects of hunger. Inside of a decade the nation went from being among the most densely populated in Europe to the least. The founding of the Irish state, in 1922, might have offered some economic hope—they could now have their own central bank, their own economic policies—but right up until the end of the 1980s the Irish failed to do what economists expected them to: catch up with their neighbors’ standard of living. As recently as the 1980s one million Irish people—a third of the population—lived below the poverty line.[/size]



[size="3"] What has occurred in Ireland since then is without precedent in economic history. By the start of the new millennium, the Irish poverty rate was under 6 percent and by 2006 Ireland was one of the richest countries in the world. How did that happen? ... For the better part of a decade there has been quicker money to be made in Irish real estate than in investment banking. How did that happen?[/size]



[size="3"] For the first time in history, people and money longed to get into Ireland rather than out of it. ...[/size]



[size="3"]How did any of this happen? There are many theories: the elimination of trade barriers, the decision to grant free public higher education, the persistent lowering of the corporate tax rate, beginning in the 1980s, which turned Ireland into a tax haven for foreign corporations ...[/size]

[size="3"]...[/size]



[size="3"] A few months after the spell was broken, the short-term parking-lot attendants at Dublin Airport noticed that their daily take had fallen. The lot appeared full; they couldn’t understand it. Then they noticed the cars never changed. They phoned the Dublin police, who in turn traced the cars to Polish construction workers, who had bought them with money borrowed from Irish banks. The migrant workers had ditched the cars and gone home. Rumor has it that a few months later the Bank of Ireland sent three collectors to Poland to see what they could get back, but they had no luck. The Poles were untraceable: but for their cars in the short-term parking lot, they might never have existed.[/size]



[size="3"] True Love’s First Kiss[/size]



[size="3"]Morgan Kelly is a professor of economics at University College Dublin, but he did not, until recently, view it as his business to think much about the economy under his nose. He had written a handful of highly regarded academic papers on topics (such as “The Economic Impact of the Little Ice Age”) considered abstruse even by academic economists. ... Kelly saw house prices rising madly and heard young men in Irish finance to whom he had recently taught economics try to explain why the boom didn’t trouble them. And they troubled him. “Around the middle of 2006 all these former students of ours working for the banks started to appear on TV!” he says. “They were now all bank economists, and they were nice guys and all that. And they were all saying the same thing: ‘We’re going to have a soft landing.’ ”[/size]



[size="3"]The statement struck him as absurd: real-estate bubbles never end with soft landings. A bubble is inflated by nothing firmer than expectations. The moment people cease to believe that house prices will rise forever, they will notice what a terrible long-term investment real estate has become and flee the market, and the market will crash. ...[/size]



[size="3"]... Kelly learned that more than a fifth of the Irish workforce was employed building houses. The Irish construction industry had swollen to become nearly a quarter of the country’s G.D.P.—compared with less than 10 percent in a normal economy—and Ireland was building half as many new houses a year as the United Kingdom, which had almost 15 times as many people to house. He learned that since 1994 the average price for a Dublin home had risen more than 500 percent. In parts of the city, rents had fallen to less than 1 percent of the purchase price ... The investment returns on Irish land were ridiculously low: it made no sense for capital to flow into Ireland to develop more of it. Irish home prices implied an economic growth rate that would leave Ireland, in 25 years, three times as rich as the United States. (“A price/earning ratio above Google’s,” as Kelly put it.) Where would this growth come from? Since 2000, Irish exports had stalled, and the economy had been consumed with building houses and offices and hotels. ...[/size]



[size="3"]Their real-estate boom had the flavor of a family lie: it was sustainable so long as it went unquestioned, and it went unquestioned so long as it appeared sustainable. ...“There is an iron law of house prices,” he wrote. “The more house prices rise relative to income and rents, the more they subsequently fall.”[/size]

[size="3"] ...[/size]



[size="3"]His warning ... took the form of his first-ever newspaper article. Its bottom line: “It is not implausible that [Irish real-estate] prices could fall—relative to income—by 40 to 50 per cent.” (They did.) He sent his piece to the small-circulation Irish Times ... “It had no impact,” Kelly says of his piece. “The response was general amusement. It was What will these crazy eggheads come up with next? sort of stuff.”[/size]



[size="3"] What the crazy egghead came up with next was the obvious link between Irish real-estate prices and Irish banks. After all, the vast majority of the construction was being funded by Irish banks. If the real-estate market collapsed, they would be on the hook for the losses. “I eventually figured out what was going on,” says Kelly. “The average value and number of new mortgages peaked in summer 2006. But lending standards were clearly falling after this.” The banks continued to make worse loans, but people borrowing the money to buy houses were growing wary. “What was happening,” says Kelly, “is that a lot of people were getting cold feet.” The consequences for Irish banks—and the economy—of the inevitable shift in market sentiment would be catastrophic. The banks’ losses would lead them to slash their lending to actually useful businesses. Irish citizens in hock to their banks would cease to spend. And, perhaps worst of all, new construction, on which the entire economy was now premised, would cease.[/size]



[size="3"] Kelly wrote his second newspaper article, more or less predicting the collapse of the Irish banks. He pointed out that in the last decade they and the economy had fundamentally changed. In 1997 the Irish banks were funded entirely by Irish deposits. By 2005 they were getting most of their money from abroad. The small German savers who ultimately supplied the Irish banks with deposits to re-lend in Ireland could take their money back with the click of a computer mouse. Since 2000, lending to construction and real estate had risen from 8 percent of Irish bank lending (the European norm) to 28 percent. One hundred billion euros—or basically the sum total of all Irish public bank deposits—had been handed over to Irish property developers and speculators. By 2007, Irish banks were lending 40 percent more to property developers than they had to the entire Irish population seven years earlier. “You probably think that the fact that Irish banks have given speculators €100 billion to gamble with, safe in the knowledge that taxpayers will cover most losses, is a cause of concern to the Irish Central Bank,” Kelly wrote, “but you would be quite wrong.”[/size]



[size="3"]This time Kelly sent his piece to a newspaper with a far bigger circulation, the Irish Independent . The Independent’s editor wrote back to say he found the article offensive and wouldn’t publish it. Kelly next turned to The Sunday Business Post , but the editor there just sat on the piece. The journalists were following the bankers’ lead and conflating a positive outlook on real-estate prices... Kelly finally went back to The Irish Times , which ran his article in September 2007.[/size]



[size="3"]A brief and, to Kelly’s way of thinking, pointless controversy ensued. The public-relations guy at University College Dublin called the head of the department of economics and asked him to find someone to write a learned attack on Kelly’s piece. (The department head refused.) A senior executive at Anglo Irish Bank, Matt Moran, called to holler at Kelly. “He went on about how ‘the real-estate developers who are borrowing from us are so incredibly rich they are only borrowing from us as a favor.’ ... Kelly also received a flurry of worried-sounding messages from financial people in London, but of these he was dismissive: “I get the impression there’s this pool of analysts in the financial markets who spend all day sending scary e-mails to each other.” He never found out how much influence his little newspaper piece exerted on the minds of people who mattered.[/size]



[size="3"]It wasn’t until almost exactly one year later, on September 29, 2008, that Morgan Kelly became the startled object of popular interest. The stocks of the three main Irish banks, Anglo Irish, A.I.B., and Bank of Ireland, had fallen by between a fifth and a half in a single trading session, and a run on Irish bank deposits had started. The Irish government was about to guarantee all the obligations of the six biggest Irish banks. The most plausible explanation for all of this was Morgan Kelly’s narrative: the Irish economy had become a giant Ponzi scheme and the country was effectively bankrupt. But it was so starkly at odds with the story peddled by Irish government officials and senior Irish bankers—that the banks merely had a “liquidity” problem and that Anglo Irish was “fundamentally sound”—that the two could not be reconciled. The government had a report thrown together by Merrill Lynch, which declared that “all of the Irish banks are profitable and well capitalised.” ...[/size]

[size="3"]...[/size]



[size="3"]A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will. Two weeks earlier the collapse of Lehman Brothers had cast doubt on banks everywhere. Ireland’s banks had not been managed to withstand doubt; they had been managed to exploit blind faith. Now the Irish people finally caught a glimpse of the guy meant to be safeguarding them: the crazy uncle had been sprung from the family cellar. Here he was, on their televisions, insisting that the Irish banks were “resilient” and “more than adequately capitalized” … when everyone in Ireland could see, in the vacant skyscrapers and empty housing developments around them, evidence of bank loans that were not merely bad but insane. “What happened was that everyone in Ireland had the idea that somewhere in Ireland there was a little wise old man who was in charge of the money, and this was the first time they’d ever seen this little man,” says McCarthy. “And then they saw him and said, Who the fuck was that??? Is that the fucking guy who is in charge of the money??? That’s when everyone panicked.”[/size]



[size="3"]The Drinks Cabinet[/size]

[size="3"]...[/size]



[size="3"]The Irish real-estate bubble was different from the American version in many ways: it wasn’t disguised, for a start; it didn’t require a lot of complicated financial engineering beyond the understanding of mere mortals; it also wasn’t as cynical. There aren’t a lot of Irish financiers or real-estate people who have emerged with a future. In America the banks went down, but the big shots in them still got rich; in Ireland the big shots went down with the banks...[/size]



[size="3"]The top executives of the three big banks all operated in a similar spirit: they bought shares in their own companies right up to the moment of collapse, and continued to pay dividends, as if they had capital to burn. Virtually all of the big Irish property developers who behaved recklessly signed personal guarantees for their loans. ...[/size]



[size="3"]The Irish nouveau riche may have created a Ponzi scheme, but it was a Ponzi scheme in which they themselves believed. So too for that matter did some large number of ordinary Irish citizens, who bought houses for fantastic sums. Ireland’s 87 percent rate of home-ownership is among the highest in the world. There’s no such thing as a non-recourse home mortgage in Ireland. The guy who pays too much for his house is not allowed to simply hand the keys to the bank and walk away. He’s on the hook, personally, for whatever he borrowed. Across Ireland, people are unable to extract themselves from their houses or their bank loans. ...[/size]



[size="3"]... the two men who sold the Irish people on the notion that they, the people, were responsible not merely for their own disastrous financial decisions but also for the ones made by their banks arrive in the chamber: Prime Minister Brian Cowen and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan. ...[/size]



[size="3"] .. The Irish bank debt is now Irish government debt, and any suggestion of default will only raise the cost of borrowing the foreign money they now can’t live without....[/size]



[size="3"] As the scope of the Irish losses has grown clearer, private investors have been less and less willing to leave even overnight deposits in Irish banks and are completely uninterested in buying longer-term bonds. The European Central Bank has quietly filled the void: one of the most closely watched numbers in Europe has been the amount the E.C.B. has loaned to the Irish banks. In late 2007, when the markets were still suspending disbelief, the banks borrowed 6.5 billion euros. By December of 2008 the number had jumped to 45 billion. As Burton spoke to me, the number was still rising from a new high of 86 billion. That is, the Irish banks have borrowed 86 billion euros from the European Central Bank to repay private creditors. In September 2010 the last big chunk of money the Irish banks owed the bondholders, 26 billion euros, came due. Once the bondholders were paid off in full, a window of opportunity for the Irish government closed. A default of the banks now would be a default not to private investors but a bill presented directly to European governments....[/size]

[size="3"] ...[/size]



[size="3"] Ireland’s Choice[/size]

[size="3"]...[/size]



[size="3"].. This awkward social responsibility—normalizing a freak show—is now a meaningful part of the job of being Ireland’s finance minister. At just the moment the crazy uncle leapt from the cellar, the drunken aunt lurched through the front door and, in front of the entire family and many important guests, they carved each other to bits with hunting knives. Daddy must now reassure eyewitnesses that they didn’t see what they think they saw.[/size]



[size="3"]... The finance minister might as well be standing in Pompeii and saying that actually the volcano wasn’t really worth mentioning. Just a little lava![/size]

[size="3"] ...[/size]



[size="3"] Back in September 2008... On September 17 the financial markets were in turmoil. Lehman Brothers had failed two days earlier, shares of Irish banks were plummeting, and big corporations were withdrawing their deposits from them. ...[/size]



[size="3"] A week later the department hired investment bankers from Merrill Lynch to advise it. Some might say that if you were asking Merrill Lynch for financial advice in 2008 you were already beyond hope, but that is not entirely fair. The bank analyst who had been most prescient and interesting about the Irish banks worked for Merrill Lynch. His name was Philip Ingram. ... Ingram had done something original and useful: he’d shined a new light on the way Irish banks lent against commercial real estate.[/size]



[size="3"]The commercial-real-estate loan market is generally less transparent than the market for home loans. Deals between bankers and property developers are one-offs, on terms unknown to all but a few insiders. The parties to any loan always claim it is prudent: a bank analyst has little choice but to take them at their word. But Ingram was skeptical of the Irish banks.... On March 13, 2008, six months before the Irish real-estate Ponzi scheme collapsed, Ingram published a report, in which he simply quoted verbatim what British market insiders had told him about various banks’ lending to commercial real estate. The Irish banks were making far riskier loans in Ireland than they were in Britain, but even in Britain, the report revealed, they were the nuttiest lenders around...[/size]



[size="3"]For a few hours the Merrill Lynch report was the hottest read in the London financial markets, until Merrill Lynch retracted it. Merrill had been a lead underwriter of Anglo Irish’s bonds and the corporate broker to A.I.B.: they’d earned huge sums of money off the growth of Irish banking.... Ingram’s superiors at Merrill Lynch hauled him into meetings with in-house lawyers, who toned down the report’s pointed language and purged it of its damning quotes from market insiders, including its many references to Irish banks. And from that moment everything Ingram wrote about Irish banks was edited, and bowdlerized by Merrill Lynch’s lawyers. At the end of 2008, Merrill fired him. ...[/size]



[size="3"]... in the seven-page memo to Brian Lenihan—for which the Irish taxpayer forked over to Merrill Lynch seven million euros—they kept whatever reservations they may have had to themselves. “All of the Irish banks are profitable and well capitalised,” wrote the Merrill Lynch advisers, who then went on to suggest that the banks’ problem wasn’t at all the bad loans they had made but the panic in the market. The Merrill Lynch memo listed a number of possible responses the Irish government might have to any run on Irish banks. It refrained from explicitly recommending one course of action over another, but its analysis of the problem implied that the most sensible thing to do was guarantee the banks. After all, the banks were fundamentally sound. Promise to eat all losses, and markets would quickly settle down—and the Irish banks would go back to being in perfectly good shape....[/size]



[size="3"]What exactly was said in meetings on the night of September 29, 2008, remains, amazingly, something of a secret. The government has refused Freedom of Information Act-type requests for records. But gathered around the conference tables inside the prime minister’s offices was an array of top government and finance officials, including Lenihan, Cowen, the attorney general, and bank officials and regulators. Eventually they brought in the heads of the two yet-to-be-disgraced big Irish banks: A.I.B. and Bank of Ireland. ... what they neglected to mention was that, in the general frenzy, all of Ireland had become subprime. Otherwise sound Irish borrowers had been rendered unsound by the size of the loans they had taken out to buy inflated Irish property. ...[/size]



[size="3"]The report from Merrill Lynch, which touted the banks as fundamentally sound, buttressed whatever story they told the finance minister.... Anglo Irish’s stock had fallen 46 percent that day; A.I.B.’s had fallen 17 percent; there was a fair chance that when the stock exchange reopened one or both of them would go out of business. In the general panic, absent government intervention, the other banks would have gone down, too. Lenihan faced a choice: Should he believe the people immediately around him or the financial markets? Should he trust the family or the experts? He stuck with the family. Ireland gave its promise. And the promise sank Ireland.[/size]



[size="3"]... The Irish banks, like the big American banks, managed to persuade a lot of people that they were so intertwined with their economy that their failure would bring down a lot of other things, too. But they weren’t, at least not all of them. ... It was not, by nature, systemic. It became so only when its losses were made everyone’s.[/size]



[size="3"]In any case, if the Irish wanted to save their banks, why not guarantee just the deposits? There’s a big difference between depositors and bondholders: depositors can flee. The immediate danger to the banks was that savers who had put money into them would take their money out, and the banks would be without funds. The investors who owned the roughly 80 billion euros of Irish bank bonds, on the other hand, were stuck. They couldn’t take their money out of the bank. And their 80 billion euros very nearly exactly covered the eventual losses inside the Irish banks. ...Across the financial markets this episode repeated itself. People who had made a private bet that went bad, and didn’t expect to be repaid in full, were handed their money back—from the Irish taxpayer.[/size]



[size="3"]In retrospect, now that the Irish bank losses are known to be world-historically huge, the decision to cover them appears not merely odd but suicidal. A handful of Irish bankers incurred debts they could never repay, of something like 100 billion euros. ... Their debts were private—owed by them to investors around the world—and still the Irish people have undertaken to repay them as if they were obligations of the state. For two years they have labored under this impossible burden with scarcely a peep of protest. What’s more, all of the policy decisions since September 29, 2008, have set the hook more firmly inside the mouths of the Irish public. ...[/size]



[size="3"] A single decision sank Ireland, but when I ask Lenihan about it he becomes impatient, as if it isn’t a fit topic for conversation. It wasn’t much of a decision, he says, as he had no choice. The Irish financial markets are governed by rules rooted in English law, and under English law bondholders enjoy the same status as ordinary depositors. That is, it was against the law to protect the little people with deposits in the bank without also saving the big investors who owned Irish bank bonds.[/size]



[size="3"] This rings a bell. When U.S. Treasury secretary Hank Paulson realized that allowing Lehman Brothers to fail was viewed not as brave and principled but catastrophic, he, too, claimed he’d done what he’d done because the law gave him no other option. But in the heat of the crisis, Paulson had neglected to mention the law just as Lenihan didn’t bring up the law requiring him to pay off the banks’ private lenders until long after he’d done it. In both cases the explanation was legalistic: narrowly true, but generally false. The Irish government always had the power to impose losses on even the senior bondholders, if it wanted to. “Senior people have forgotten that the government has certain powers,” as Morgan Kelly puts it. “You can conscript people. You can send them off to certain death. You can change the law. ”[/size]



[size="3"]On September 30, 2008, in the heat of the moment, Lenihan gave the same reason for guaranteeing the banks’ debts that Merrill Lynch had given him: to prevent “contagion.” Tell financial markets that a loan to an Irish bank was a loan to the Irish government and investors would calm down. For who would doubt the credit of the government? A year and a half later, when suspicions arose that the banks’ losses were so vast they might bankrupt the government, Lenihan offered a new reason for the government’s gift to private investors: the bonds were owned by Irishmen. Up until then the government’s line had been that they had no idea who owned the bank’s bonds. Now they said that, if the Irish government didn’t eat the losses, Irish credit unions and insurance companies would pay the price. The Irish, in other words, were simply saving the Irish. This wasn’t true, and it provoked a cry of outrage from the credit unions, which said that they owned hardly any of the bonds. A political investigative blog called Guido Fawkes somehow obtained a list of the Anglo Irish foreign bondholders: German banks, French banks, German investment funds, Goldman Sachs. ...[/size]



[size="3"]Across Europe just now men who thought their title was “minister of finance” have woken up to the idea that their job is actually government bond salesman. ... The blunt truth is that, since September 2008, Ireland has been, every day, more at the mercy of her creditors. To remain afloat, Ireland’s biggest banks, which are now owned by the Irish government, have taken short-term loans from the European Central Bank amounting to 86 billion euros. Two weeks later Lenihan will be compelled by the European Union to invite the I.M.F. into Ireland, relinquish control of Irish finances, and accept a bailout package. The Irish public doesn’t yet know it... And soon Brian Lenihan will stand up in the Irish Parliament and offer a fourth explanation for why private investors in Ireland’s banks cannot be allowed to take losses. “There is simply no way that this country, whose banks are so dependent on international investors, can unilaterally renege on senior bondholders against the wishes of the E.C.B.,” he will say.[/size]

[size="3"]...[/size]



[size="3"] Bring Me a Little Ire[/size]

[size="3"]...[/size]



[size="3"]In October, Ireland’s Department of the Environment published its first audit of the country’s new housing stock after inspecting 2,846 housing developments, many of them called “ghost estates” because they’re empty. Of the nearly 180,000 units that had been granted planning permission, the audit found that only 78,195 were completed and occupied. Others are occupied but remain unfinished. Virtually all construction has now ceased. There aren’t enough people in Ireland to fill the new houses; there were never enough people in Ireland to fill the new houses....[/size]



[size="3"]...In Greece the money was borrowed by the state: the debts are the debts of the Greek people, but the people want no part of them. The Greeks already have taken to the streets, violently, and have been quick to find people other than themselves to blame for their problems: monks, Turks, foreign bankers. .... In Ireland the money was borrowed by a few banks, and yet the people seem not only willing to repay it but to do so without a peep of protest. ...[/size]

[size="3"]...[/size]



[size="3"]... Irish bankruptcy laws were not designed for spectacular failure, perhaps because the people who wrote them never imagined spectacular success. When a bank forces an Irish person into receivership, a notice is published in a national and a local newspaper—ensuring the bankrupt’s widespread shame. For as many as 12 years the person is not permitted to take out a loan for more than 650 euros without disclosing his bankruptcy status or own assets amounting to more than 3,100 euros, and part of whatever he earns may pass to his creditors at the discretion of the court. “It’s not like the United States, where being bankrupt is almost a badge of honor,” says Patrick White, of the Irish Property Council. “Here you are effectively disbarred from commercial life.”[/size]



[size="3"] There is an ancient rule of financial life—that if you owe the bank five million bucks the bank owns you, but if you owe the bank five billion bucks you own the bank—that newly applies to Ireland. The debts of its big property developers—now generally defined as anyone who owed the bank more than 20 million euros—are being worked out behind closed doors. In exchange for helping the government to manage or liquidate their real-estate portfolios, the biggest failures are hoping to be spared bankruptcy. Smaller developers ... are in a far harder place, and while no one seems to know how many of these people exist, the number is clearly big.[/size]

[size="3"] ...[/size]



[size="3"]Two things strike every Irish person when he comes to America, Irish friends tell me: the vastness of the country, and the seemingly endless desire of its people to talk about their personal problems. Two things strike an American when he comes to Ireland: how small it is and how tight-lipped. An Irish person with a personal problem takes it into a hole with him, like a squirrel with a nut before winter. He tortures himself and sometimes his loved ones too. What he doesn’t do, if he has suffered some reversal, is vent about it to the outside world. The famous Irish gift of gab is a cover for all the things they aren’t telling you.[/size]

[size="3"] ...[/size]



[size="3"]... the most shocking and the most familiar aspect of the Irish catastrophe: how easily ancient financial institutions abandoned their traditions and principles. An upstart bank, Anglo Irish, had entered their market and professed to have found a new and better way to be a banker. Anglo Irish made incredibly quick decisions: an Irish property developer who was an existing client could walk into its office in the late afternoon with a new idea and walk out with a commitment of hundreds of millions of euros that night. ...[/size]



[size="3"] Rather than point out the insanity of the approach, the two old Irish banks simply caved to it....[/size]



[size="3"]They did it by doing what Anglo Irish had done: writing checks to Irish property developers to buy Irish land at any price. A.I.B. even opened a unit dedicated to poaching Anglo’s biggest property-developer clients—the very people who would become the most spectacular busts in Irish history. ...[/size]

[size="3"] ...[/size][size="3"]

[/size][/indent]

[shamu]

Listen to what a trader said in BBC live. Just be prepared, it gives both risks and opportunities.



[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC19fEqR5bA"]Trader on the BBC says Eurozone Market will crash[/url]

[sumishi]

[size="3"][url="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Western-economies-in-deep-freeze-expats-look-at-India-for-jobs/articleshow/10287508.cms"]Western economies in deep freeze, expats look at India for jobs[/url] : TOI, [/size][size="3"]Oct 9, 2011



[/size][indent][size="3"]

MUMBAI: As the Western economies continue to remain in deep freeze, more and more foreigners, mostly from the US and Europe are looking at India for jobs, a trend that has seen up to 20 per cent spurt this year, according to head-hunters.[/size]



[size="3"]According industry estimates, there are as many as 40,000 expats working in various industries in the country today.[/size]



[size="3"]"Hiring of expats has picked up by 15-20 per cent at all levels since last year, mainly on account of India being one of the fastest growing economies offering huge job opportunities," recruitment process outsourcing firm Elixir Consulting manager for International Practices Ratnesh Kumar said.[/size]



[size="3"]Increasing number of expats are seeking jobs in the country on account of job cuts in their home countries, coupled with rising outsourcing and high taxes, he said, adding that this is happening more in the US and Europe.[/size]



[size="3"]The Indian experience also adds values to the expats' resume, reflecting an individual's ability to adapt and deal with diversity, he explained.[/size]



[size="3"]These professionals are mainly being hired in banking and financial services, automobile, pharma and retail sectors, apart from areas, where the domestic industry does not have competency like alternative energy, complex infrastructural sector, etc he said.[/size]



[size="3"]"While CXOs are generally offered around $2,50,000 per annum, mid-manager level employees get $80,000-1,25,000 per annum," he said.[/size]



[size="3"]The number of foreigners seeking jobs in the country are no longer limited to the middle and senior levels, but is spreading over to beginners as well, he said, adding that at present, there are around 40,000 expats working in the country and the number is still growing.[/size]



[size="3"]What is interesting is that these expats are given compensation almost at par with what is being paid in foreign countries.[/size]



[size="3"]"Expats, with specialised skillsets, which are not available in the country due to financial or technology constraints such as molecular research, are being offered highly attractive packages," Kumar said.[/size]



[size="3"]Companies are also offering attractive leadership positions to experienced expatriates ranging from mid-level managerial roles to departmental heads. However, the attrition rate of expats is around 10 per cent annually mainly due to difficulties in communication and cultural differences, Kumar added.[/size]



[size="3"]Echoing similar view, Globalhunt director Sunil Goel said some global companies have their largest centres in the country on one hand, while on the other, many local organisations are also going global.[/size]



[size="3"]"So, the expat hiring is becoming the need of the hour, where foreigner from various parts of the globe are taking up multiple roles and are recruited as experts in sectors like infrastructure, healthcare, power and energy, oil and gas and automotive," he said.[/size]



[size="3"]According to TeamLease vice-president Rituparna Chakraborty, the country is seeing an increased demand in expats across various industries, especially post the 2008 recession in the developed economies.[/size]



[size="3"]"Professionals from Europe, Southeast Asia and the US mostly are being hired mainly by sectors like travel and tourism, retail, aviation, education and sports, where we see maximum traction," she said.[/size]



[size="3"]Talking about salary, she said, for most levels it is at par with industry standards, unless they are being brought in for a particular skill, which is niche and is non-existent within the country.

[/size]

[/indent]

[sumishi]

[size="3"]So finally it is time your covered your sorry donkey, Nobel Krugmann!

Time you sang this different tune!!



[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/panic-of-the-plutocrats.html"]Panic of the Plutocrats[/url] : NYT, October 9, 2011



[/size][indent][size="3"]

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.



And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.



Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.



Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.



Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.



And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”



The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.



Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.



And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”



But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”



What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.



Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.



This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.



So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

[/size][/indent]

[sumishi]

[size="3"][url="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/Oct-revolution-Wall-St-stir-goes-global-today/articleshow/10361660.cms"]Oct revolution? Wall St stir goes global today[/url] : TOI, Oct 15, 2011



[/size][indent][size="3"]

LONDON: For an October revolution , dress warm.[/size]



[size="3"]That's the word going out - politely - on the web to rally street protests on Saturday around the globe from New Zealand to Alaska via London, Frankfurt, Washington and, of course, New York, where the past month's Occupy Wall Street movement has inspired a worldwide yell of anger at banks and financiers.[/size]



[size="3"]How many will show up, let alone stay to camp out to disrupt city centres for days, or months, to come, is anyone's guess.[/size]



[size="3"]The hundreds at Manhattan's Zuccotti Park were calling for back-up on Friday, fearing imminent eviction. Rome expects tens of thousands at a national protest of more traditional stamp.[/size]



[size="3"]Few other police forces expect more than a few thousand to turn out on the day for what is billed as an exercise in social media-spread , Arab Spring-inspired , grassroots democracy with an emphasis on peaceful, homespun debate , as seen among Madrid's "indignados" in June or at Wall Street park sit-in .[/size]



[size="3"]Blogs and Facebook pages devoted to "October 15" - #O15 on Twitter - abound with exhortations to keep the peace, bring an open mind, a sleeping bag, food and warm clothing; in Britain, "Occupy London Stock Exchange" is at pains to stress it does not plan to actually, well, occupy the stock exchange.[/size]



[size="3"]Concrete demands are few from those who proclaim "We are the 99%", other than a general sense that the other 1% - the "greedy and corrupt" rich, and especially banks - should pay more, and that elected governments are not listening.[/size]



[size="3"]George Soros denies funding movement[/size]



[size="3"]George Soros isn't a financial backer of the Wall Street protests, despite speculation by critics including radio host Rush Limbaugh that the billionaire investor has helped fuel the anti-capitalist movement. Limbaugh summed up the chatter when he told his listeners last week, "George Soros money is behind this" .[/size]



[size="3"]Soros spokesman Michael Vachon said that Soros has not "funded the protests directly or indirectly" . Soros has donated at least $3.5 million to an organization called the Tides Center in recent years, earmarking the funds for specific purposes. Tides has given grants to Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada whose inventive marketing campaign sparked the first demonstrations last month. Vachon said funds were not for general purposes to be used at the discretion of Tides.

[/size]

[/indent]

[dhu]

^^



[size="3"]At "home", the revolutionary mantle needs to be taken away from the Ron Paul-types who had internalized Chalmers Johnson's critique of overreach of Amerikan imperium. So both sides seem to be jostling for top-of-the-pile position after the impending downsizing.

In the colonized third world, new sepoys are also needed for some reason (?)



Street signs in OWS are all homemade unlike the pre-manufactured "I am Anna" and the Obama 2008-plagiarized signs in the Arab Spring. This must be for believabilty purposes for general Amerikan audience.



OWS also seems related to mobilization towards the Amerikan election:



[url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/can-occupy-wall-street-give-liberals-a-lift/2011/10/11/gIQA8GyCgL_story.html"]Can Occupy Wall Street give progressives a lift?[/url]

The Tea Party’s splendid successes, which have altered the nation’s political vocabulary and agenda, have inspired a counter-movement — Occupy Wall Street (OWS).....



In scale, OWS’s demonstrations-cum-encampments are to Tea Party events as Pittsburg, Kan., is to Pittsburgh, Pa. So far, probably fewer people have participated in all of them combined than attended just one Tea Party rally, that of Sept. 12, 2009, on the Mall.

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[Guest]

[quote name='dhu' date='16 October 2011 - 05:37 AM' timestamp='1318723167' post='113355']

^^

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"In scale, OWS’s demonstrations-cum-encampments are to Tea Party events as Pittsburg, Kan., is to Pittsburgh, Pa. So far, probably fewer people have participated in all of them combined than attended just one Tea Party rally, that of Sept. 12, 2009, on the Mall."

[/indent]

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Tea Party movement had the blessings of the Republican Party whereas OWS is largely apolitical grass-root movement. Tea Party movement was directed against the Democrats and the black President whereas the OWS is a protest movement against the very system. Tea Party movement is a right wing American movement that is very sympathetic to the rich and the OWS is a global movement of dispossessed and cast out slaves who are not disinclined to oppose global capitalism. Many of the American OWS protesters might be equally opposed to the democrats as well.