by Bill Van Auken In his second foreign policy speech in less than a week, President Bush Tuesday portrayed the ongoing US military occupation in Iraq as part of a broader regional struggle to defend vital US interests against “radicals and extremists.” Contained in this speech was the explicit threat of widening the US war […]
Monthly Archives: August 2007
Posted by Dan Denning Leaderless, directionless, and clueless. That’s how we’d describe the state of the local and global market. The problem is the “known unknowns” (US$43 billion of them) and those pesky “unknown unknowns” (credit derivatives). More on that below.First, did you see the current account deficit widened to nearly AU$16 billion in the […]
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Dennis Ott April 02, 2007 Dennis Ott: In a recent interview you quoted Thorstein Veblen, who contrasted “substantial people” and “underlying population.”[1] At a shareholder’s meeting of Allianz AG, major shareholder Hans-Martin Buhlmannn expressed the view that there is only one limit to the increase of the dividend: “The inferiors must […]
by Stephen Lendman Large transnational corporations are clearly the dominant institution of our time. They’re preeminent throughout the world but especially in the Global North and its epicenter in the US. They control or greatly influence what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, how we get most of our essential services […]
Part 1 By Andre Damon 31 August 2007 The following is the first in a two-part series. Home foreclosures in the US have reached near-epidemic scope and scale. In Detroit, there was one foreclosure filing for every 97 households in July alone, according to RealtyTrac.com, the largest database of foreclosed properties. Michigan, Georgia and California […]
by Richard C. Cook Global Research, July 23, 2007 U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., has joined the chorus of those in high places who are warning of a major worldwide economic downturn. Paulson was quoted at length in a July 23, 2007, article in Fortune by Rik Kirkland entitled, “The Greatest Economic Boom […]
Thomas Au is author of “A Modern Approach to Graham & Dodd Investing.” This article was previously published on TheStreet.com’s “Street Insights.” *The bursting of the housing bubble means that band-aid has been ripped off the country’s Achilles heel, the cash-strapped average American consumer. * The resulting two-decade pullback in living standards would represent “the […]
Economics / Global Financial System Apr 24, 2007 – 12:50 PM By: Joel. S. Hirschhorn Stop being a compliant consumer. Face the ugly truth. Don’t get fooled by the stock market. Accept the need for the mistreated middle class to become the revolutionary class. The British military establishment’s most prestigious think tank sees what too […]
by Russell Mokhiber This is the text of a speech delivered by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter to the Taming the Giant Corporation conference in Washington, D.C., June 9, 2007: Twenty years ago, Corporate Crime Reporter, a weekly print newsletter, was launched.From the beginning, the most popular feature of Corporate Crime Reporter has […]
by Laura Carlsen The North American Free Trade Agreement is the world’s most advanced example of the U.S.-led free trade model. It’s not just about economics any more. The expansion of NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership reveals the road ahead for other nations entering into free trade agreements. It is not a road […]
Larry Edelson writes: By every measure under the sun, the dollar is getting creamed, just like I told you it would. It recently hit a 25-year low against the British pound … a record low against the euro … a 12-year low against the Thai baht … and a seven-year low against a third-world currency, […]
by Rodrigue Tremblay / August 22nd, 2007 The U.S. government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices. – David Walker, U.S. Comptroller General Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace. – Ludwig von Mises, Austrian economist People know that […]
By Walter T Molano (Asia Times) The US economy is down by the bow, and the prognosis does not look good. The final outcome is inevitable, and no one (outside the United States) is really surprised. However, how does Asia avoid contagion? At the current moment, the US represents almost half of global demand – […]
Jul 22, 2007 – 03:04 PM By: Mike_Whitney Two columns of black smoke can be seen rising over Wall Street and disappearing into the ice-blue New York sky.Terrorism? Not quite. The plumes of smoke are all that’s left of two major hedge funds which blew up just weeks ago leaving nothing behind but a few […]
LATEST: Dubai Aerospace Enterprise is looking to pull out of its amalgamation proposal with Auckland International Airport. Opinion: DAE – AIA merger dying a messy deathThe airport last night received a notice from DAE which claimed the recent legal proceedings filed by Air New Zealand seeking a judicial review of Auckland Airport’s aeronautical pricing process […]
By NICK CHURCHOUSE and VERNON SMALL – The Dominion Post | Friday, 31 August 2007Five Star Consumer Finance announced it was going into receivership yesterday, its directors saying it could no longer operate because of a lack of new investors and difficulty retaining existing investors. The Auckland firm, owned by Antares Finance Holdings, is the […]
A New York journalist who played a key role in exposing corrupt energy company Enron will be a guest speaker at a journalism educators’ conference in Wellington in December. Covering the story for Fortune magazine in 2001, Bethany McLean challenged Enron over its financial accounting practices and questioned whether it was the powerhouse most people […]
By JOE BEL BRUNO, AP Business Writer 2 hours, 35 minutes ago NEW YORK – Volatility returned to Wall Street Tuesday, sending stocks plunging as investors grew more uneasy about the economy and whether the Federal Reserve will take the steps needed to prevent credit market problems from spreading further. The Dow Jones industrials fell […]
A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effects George Monbiot Tuesday August 28, 2007 The Guardian For the first time the UK’s consumer debt exceeds the total of its gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion. Inspectors in the […]
By Shobhana Chandra Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — Sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell to the lowest level in almost five years in July, and the glut of unsold properties climbed to its highest since 1991 as mortgage-market turmoil rippled through the housing industry. With no recovery in sight for housing, lower property values and […]
By Mathew Dearnaley Commerce Minister Lianne Dalziel Government moves to tighten scrutiny of the $16 billion finance company sector are being slated as “too little too late” – as yet another firm faces trouble. The suspension of trading yesterday in shares of the Christchurch-based Property Finance Group, which holds $80 million in fixed-term debentures from […]
By DAVID LEONHARDT and VIKAS BAJAJ Published: August 26, 2007 The median price of American homes is expected to fall this year for the first time since federal housing agencies began keeping statistics in 1950. Read more
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times China’s industrial growth depends on coal, plentiful but polluting, from mines like this one in Shenmu, Shaanxi Province, behind a village store. Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big […]
Enjoy the relative calm, it may not last THE relief is palpable, though it may prove short-lived. Efforts by central banks to jump-start stalled financial markets by injecting huge amounts of liquidity—and, in the Federal Reserve’s case, by cutting the lending rate at its banks-only “discount window”—have kept worst-case scenarios at bay. But uncertainty […]
Will Predatory Mortgage Brokers be charged with Money Laundering? 25 August 2007 The sub-prime mortgage scandal is certain to result in casualties in the financial services industry, and the nation’s largest mortgage lenders could be amongst those charged. Remember how it works in our justice system: any entity involved in financial crime is often also […]
Friday, 24 August 20 Another finance company appears to be in trouble with the board of Christchurch-based Property Finance Group suspending trading of its shares this morning. The board of the NZAX-listed company suspended trading of the company’s shares today due to “concerns about the company’s ability to manage its current liquidity position given the […]
You don’t often see yields on three-month U.S. Treasury notes fall by 66 basis points in one day. Then again, in polite (or even impolite society) the yield on three-month Treasury notes is not a subject you’d willingly bring up-unless you wanted to make a spectacle of yourself. But financial panics can bring even obscure […]
By JOHN HENZELL – The Press | Thursday, 23 August 2007 The police have won a crucial legal battle to keep informants’ names secret after telling a High Court judge they have no faith in the ability of the court system to maintain the anonymity of regular tipsters. Justice John Hansen overturned a ruling that […]
Posted by Dan Denning on Aug 22nd, 2007 You don’t often see yields on three-month U.S. Treasury notes fall by 66 basis points in one day. Then again, in polite (or even impolite society) the yield on three-month Treasury notes is not a subject you’d willingly bring up-unless you wanted to make a spectacle of […]
By Joseph Stiglitz Sunday, Aug 12, 2007, Page 9The pessimists who have long forecast that the US economy was in for trouble finally seem to be coming into their own. Of course, there is no glee in seeing stock prices tumble as a result of soaring mortgage defaults. But it was largely predictable, as are […]
Aotearoa: A Wider Perspective 