U.S. Bankrupt. Its official. China to take over US assets? BP final nail in US economic coffin? Is War the only US way out?
THE USA OBITUARY IN BLOOMBERG
When the IMF declares US as good as bankrupt and Bloomberg announces it ,then the writing is on the wall (street).We now just have the time as this FACT goes thru the system and shuts down USA plc. sector by sector.This is not the first time the financial system has produced this result in the US. The UK will follow soon.
The Who – Wall Street ,the Fed and thier political lackees,
The How – fractional reserve banking ,media lies and war
The Why – a good excuse to bring on global government and make a lot of money?
U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don’t Even Know It: Laurence Kotlikoff
By Laurence Kotlikoff – Aug 11, 2010 3:00 AM GMT+0200
Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.
What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”
But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”
The fiscal gap is the value today (the present value) of the difference between projected spending (including servicing official debt) and projected revenue in all future years.
Double Our Taxes
To put 14 percent of gross domestic product in perspective, current federal revenue totals 14.9 percent of GDP. So the IMF is saying that closing the U.S. fiscal gap, from the revenue side, requires, roughly speaking, an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll levy set down in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act.
Such a tax hike would leave the U.S. running a surplus equal to 5 percent of GDP this year, rather than a 9 percent deficit. So the IMF is really saying the U.S. needs to run a huge surplus now and for many years to come to pay for the spending that is scheduled. It’s also saying the longer the country waits to make tough fiscal adjustments, the more painful they will be.
Is the IMF bonkers?
No. It has done its homework. So has the Congressional Budget Office whose Long-Term Budget Outlook, released in June, shows an even larger problem.
‘Unofficial’ Liabilities
Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt. This gargantuan discrepancy between our “official” debt and our actual net indebtedness isn’t surprising. It reflects what economists call the labeling problem. Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities “unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.
For example, our Social Security FICA contributions are called taxes and our future Social Security benefits are called transfer payments. The government could equally well have labeled our contributions “loans” and called our future benefits “repayment of these loans less an old age tax,” with the old age tax making up for any difference between the benefits promised and principal plus interest on the contributions.
The fiscal gap isn’t affected by fiscal labeling. It’s the only theoretically correct measure of our long-run fiscal condition because it considers all spending, no matter how labeled, and incorporates long-term and short-term policy.
$4 Trillion Bill
How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?
Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year. (BUT also remember this Social Security money was already paid to the government in “GOOD FAITH” via pension payments taken from the workers PAY CHECKS.This money should of accumulated interest over the 40 years and be more than enough for a comfortable retirement. UNFORTUNATELY THE GOVERNMENT SPENT IT!!!…So much for good faith)
This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.
Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.
And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.
Worse Than Greece
Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.
Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run.
This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance.
Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue.
My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain “solutions.”
(Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University and author of “Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking.” The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Laurence Kotlikoff at kotlikoff@bu.edu
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html
BUT THE REAL ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM THAT NO-ONE WANTS TO MENTION…. DERIVATIVES THE QUADRILLION DOLLAR QUESTION!!! (NOT MILLION , NOT BILLION , NOT TRILLION , QUADRILLION!!!!)THE REAL REASON FOR THE BAILOUT WAS TO GIVE BANKS LIQUID LENDING MONEY. IF THEY PUT THIER OVER PRICED ASSETS IN THE MARKET TO RAISE CASH ,THEY WOULD GO BANKRUPT. THIS WOULD TRIGGER A DERIVITIVES MARKET COLLAPSE…..DERIVATIVES ARE HEAVILY LEVERAGED BETS…THERE IS NOT A BANK THAT WOULD SURVIVE THIS COLLAPSE!!!
The Horrific Derivatives Bubble That Could Destroy Entire World Financial System
Stock-Markets / Derivatives
Aug 09, 2010 – 03:29 PM
By: Pravda
Michael Snyder writes: Today there is a horrific derivatives bubble that threatens to destroy not only the U.S. economy but the entire world financial system as well, but unfortunately the vast majority of people do not understand it. When you say the word “derivatives” to most Americans, they have no idea what you are talking about. In fact, even most members of the U.S. Congress don’t really seem to understand them. But you don’t have to get into all the technicalities to understand the bigger picture
Basically, derivatives are financial instruments whose value depends upon or is derived from the price of something else. A derivative has no underlying value of its own. It is essentially a side bet. Originally, derivatives were mostly used to hedge risk and to offset the possibility of taking losses. But today it has gone way, way beyond that. Today the world financial system has become a gigantic casino where insanely large bets are made on anything and everything that you can possibly imagine.
The derivatives market is almost entirely unregulated and in recent years it has ballooned to such enormous proportions that it is almost hard to believe.
Today, the worldwide derivatives market is approximately 20 times the size of the entire global economy.
Because derivatives are so unregulated, nobody knows for certain exactly what the total value of all the derivatives worldwide is, but low estimates put it around 600 trillion dollars and high estimates put it at around 1.5 quadrillion dollars.
Do you know how large one quadrillion is?
Counting at one dollar per second, it would take 32 million years to count to one quadrillion.
If you want to attempt it, you might want to get started right now.
To put that in perspective, the gross domestic product of the United States is only about 14 trillion dollars. In fact, the total market cap of all major global stock markets is only about 30 trillion dollars.
So when you are talking about 1.5 quadrillion dollars, you are talking about an amount of money that is almost inconceivable.
So what is going to happen when this insanely large derivatives bubble pops?
Well, the truth is that the danger that we face from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet has called them “financial weapons of mass destruction”.
Unfortunately, he is not exaggerating.
It would be hard to understate the financial devastation that we could potentially be facing.
A number of years back, French President Jacques Chirac referred to derivatives as “financial AIDS”.
The reality is that when this bubble pops there won’t be enough money in the entire world to fix it.
But ignorance is bliss, and most people simply do not understand these complex financial instruments enough to be worried about them.
Unfortunately, just because most of us do not understand the danger does not mean that the danger has been eliminated.
In a recent column, Dr. Jerome Corsi of WorldNetDaily noted that even many institutional investors have gotten sucked into investing in derivatives without even understanding the incredible risk they were facing….
A key problem with derivatives is that in the attempt to reduce costs or prevent losses, institutional investors typically accepted complex risks that carried little-understood liabilities widely disproportionate to any potential savings the derivatives contract may have initially obtained.
The hedge-fund and derivatives markets are so highly complex and technical that even many top economists and investment-banking professionals don’t fully understand them.
Moreover, both the hedge-fund and the derivatives markets are almost totally unregulated, either by the U.S. government or by any other government worldwide.
Most Americans don’t realize it, but derivatives played a major role in the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.
Do you remember how AIG was constantly in the news for a while there?
Well, they weren’t in financial trouble because they had written a bunch of bad insurance policies.
What had happened is that a subsidiary of AIG had lost more than $18 billion on Credit Default Swaps (derivatives) it had written, and additional losses from derivatives were on the way which could have caused the complete collapse of the insurance giant.
So the U.S. government stepped in and bailed them out – all at U.S. taxpayer expense of course.
But the AIG incident was actually quite small compared to what could be coming. The derivatives market has become so monolithic that even a relatively minor imbalance in the global economy could set off a chain reaction that would have devastating consequences.
In his recent article on derivatives, Webster Tarpley described the central role that derivatives now play in our financial system….
Far from being some arcane or marginal activity, financial derivatives have come to represent the principal business of the financier oligarchy in Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, and other money centers. A concerted effort has been made by politicians and the news media to hide and camouflage the central role played by derivative speculation in the economic disasters of recent years. Journalists and public relations types have done everything possible to avoid even mentioning derivatives, coining phrases like “toxic assets,” “exotic instruments,” and – most notably – “troubled assets,” as in Troubled Assets Relief Program or TARP, aka the monstrous $800 billion bailout of Wall Street speculators which was enacted in October 2008 with the support of Bush, Henry Paulson, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Obama Democrats.
But wasn’t the financial reform law that Congress just passed supposed to fix all this?
Well, the truth is that you simply cannot “fix” a 1.5 quadrillion dollar problem, but yes, the financial reform law was supposed to put some new restrictions on derivatives.
And initially, there were some somewhat significant reforms contained in the bill. But after the vast horde of Wall Street lobbyists in Washington got done doing their thing, the derivatives reforms were almost completely and totally neutered.
So the rampant casino gambling continues and everybody on Wall Street is happy.
For now.
One day some event will happen which will cause a sudden shift in world financial markets and trillions of dollars of losses in derivatives will create a tsunami that will bring the entire house of cards down. (like the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster!!!)
All of the money in the world will not be enough to bail out the financial system when that day arrives.
The truth is that we should have never allowed world financial markets to become a giant casino.
But we did.
Soon enough we will all pay the price, and when that disastrous day comes, most Americans will still not understand what is happening.
Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Pravda.ru
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article21764.html
SO HOW DID WE GET HERE ?……REAGONOMICS , (OR THATCHERISM IN THE UK)
Reagan insider: ‘GOP destroyed U.S. economy’
Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — “How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy.” Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse.”
Get it? Not “destroying.” The GOP has already “destroyed” the U.S. economy, setting up an “American Apocalypse.”
Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats’ Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider — someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology — says about America, helps all of us better understand how America’s toxic partisan-politics “holy war” is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.
But why focus on Stockman’s message? It’s already lost in the 24/7 news cycle. Why? We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened?
We’ve arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.
Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely:
Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy
Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt … will soon reach $18 trillion.” It screams “out for austerity and sacrifice.” But instead, the GOP insists “that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.”
In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: “Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too.”
No more. Today there’s a “new catechism” that’s “little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes” making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in “serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.” Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.
Stockman’s indictment warns that the Republican party’s “new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:”
Stage 1. Nixon irresponsible, dumps gold, U.S starts spending binge
Richard Nixon’s gold policies get Stockman’s first assault, for defaulting “on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world.” So for the past 40 years, America’s been living “beyond our means as a nation” on “borrowed prosperity on an epic scale … an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves.”
Remember Friedman: “Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.” Friedman was wrong by trillions. And unfortunately “once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.”
And without discipline America was also encouraging “global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.” Yes, the road to the coming apocalypse began with a Republican president listening to a misguided Nobel economist’s advice.
Stage 2. Crushing debts from domestic excesses, war mongering
Stockman says “the second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40% of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970.” Who’s to blame? Not big-spending Dems, says Stockman, but “from the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.”
Back “in 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts,” but Stockman makes clear, they had to be “matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.”
OK, stop a minute. As you absorb Stockman’s indictment of how his Republican party has “destroyed the U.S. economy,” you’re probably asking yourself why anyone should believe a traitor to the Reagan legacy. I believe party affiliation is irrelevant here. This is a crucial subject that must be explored because it further exposes a dangerous historical trend where politics is so partisan it’s having huge negative consequences.
Yes, the GOP does have a welfare-warfare state: Stockman says “the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending, exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.”
When Fed chief Paul Volcker “crushed inflation” in the ’80s we got a “solid economic rebound.” But then “the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.” By 2009, they “reduced federal revenues to 15% of gross domestic product,” lowest since the 1940s. Still today they’re irrationally demanding an extension of those “unaffordable Bush tax cuts [that] would amount to a bankruptcy filing.”
Recently Bush made matters far worse by “rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures.” Bush also gave in “on domestic spending cuts, signing into law $420 billion in nondefense appropriations, a 65% percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy.” Takes two to tango.
Stage 3. Wall Street’s deadly ‘vast, unproductive expansion’
Stockman continues pounding away: “The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector.” He warns that “Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation.” Wrong, not oblivious. Self-interested Republican loyalists like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner knew exactly what they were doing.
They wanted the economy, markets and the government to be under the absolute control of Wall Street’s too-greedy-to-fail banks. They conned Congress and the Fed into bailing out an estimated $23.7 trillion debt. Worse, they have since destroyed meaningful financial reforms. So Wall Street is now back to business as usual blowing another bigger bubble/bust cycle that will culminate in the coming “American Apocalypse.”
Stockman refers to Wall Street’s surviving banks as “wards of the state.” Wrong, the opposite is true. Wall Street now controls Washington, and its “unproductive” trading is “extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives.” Wall Street banks like Goldman were virtually bankrupt, would have never survived without government-guaranteed deposits and “virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.”
Stage 4. New American Revolution class-warfare coming soon
Finally, thanks to Republican policies that let us “live beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore,” while at home “high-value jobs in goods production … trade, transportation, information technology and the professions shrunk by 12% to 68 million from 77 million.”
As the apocalypse draws near, Stockman sees a class-rebellion, a new revolution, a war against greed and the wealthy. Soon. The trigger will be the growing gap between economic classes: No wonder “that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1% of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90% — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12%. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.”
Get it? The decaying fruit of the GOP’s bad economic policies is destroying our economy.
Warning: this black swan won’t be pretty, will shock, soon
His bottom line: “The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing … it’s a pity that the modern Republican party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.”
Wrong: There are far bigger things to “pity.”
First, that most Americans, 300 million, are helpless, will do nothing, sit in the bleachers passively watching this deadly partisan game like it’s just another TV reality show.
Second, that, unfortunately, politicians are so deep-in-the-pockets of the Wall Street conspiracy that controls Washington they are helpless and blind.
And third, there’s a depressing sense that Stockman will be dismissed as a traitor, his message lost in the 24/7 news cycle … until the final apocalyptic event, an unpredictable black swan triggers another, bigger global meltdown, followed by a long Great Depression II and a historic class war.
So be prepared, it will hit soon, when you least expect
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy-2010-08-10
SO THE NEO-CON REPUBLICANS PASS THE TORCH TO THE CLINTON DEMOCRATS AND KEEP THE DERIVITIVES BALL ROLLING. THE DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY NOW RUNS THE USA AS A ONE PARTY STATE FOR THE BENEFIT OF DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICANS AND THIER BIG BUSINESS BACKERS.THE TORCH NOW PASSES TO OBAMA !! (CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN? HAHAHAHA …JUST BEEN FOOLED AGAIN CHUMP!)
The Rubin Con Goes On
By Robert Scheer
August 11, 2010 “Truthdig” — The corruptions of journalism were on full display when CNN’s Fareed Zakaria turned to Robert Rubin this past Sunday for advice on how to fix the financial crisis that he, as much as anyone, caused. I was trapped on a treadmill in front of an overhead television and unable to turn the thing off in time to avoid this assault on my mental and physical health.
As a result I was forced to hear Rubin, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, insist that he always favored regulating toxic derivatives and is therefore not at all responsible for the ensuing economic meltdown. He was responding to the sole critical question from the CNN host, who quoted a question by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: “Did all the senior members of the [Obama] economics team have to be protégés of Robert Rubin, the apostle of financial deregulation?” Unfortunately, Zakaria just rolled over when his guest simply lied in response:
“First of all, I am not the apostle of financial deregulation. Quite the contrary. On derivatives … I developed a deep concern about the systemic problem that was created. When I was back at Goldman Sachs, it was a concern I had … a concern I had when I was in government. And in fact, when I wrote my book in 2003, I was so concerned about it that I actually included that discussion in there.”
Zakaria ended the show recommending it as his book of the week: “He wrote a great memoir that covered his two distinguished careers, both … on Wall Street and in Washington. … It was written with Jacob Weisberg, a great writer, the editor of Slate, and the two men weave a compelling tale that has many lessons for today.”
To be charitable, I will assume that Zakaria has not actually read that book, which omits any discussion of the radical deregulation legislation that Rubin ushered through Congress and got the president to sign. Bill Clinton is on record stating that he got bad advice from Rubin and his handpicked successor, Lawrence Summers, on derivatives regulation: “On derivatives, yeah, I think they were wrong and I think I was wrong to take it,” Clinton told ABC News last April 10.
Rubin and Summers were responsible for forcing Brooksley Born out of the Clinton administration because as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission she had the temerity to suggest regulating the mortgage-backed securities that eventually proved to be so toxic. Instead, Rubin and Summers pushed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Clinton signed into law in his last month in office, categorically exempting those suspect derivatives from any government regulation.
By then, Rubin had moved on to a $15-million-a-year job at Citigroup, which became a prime exploiter of the subprime housing market. As a result of its massive involvement with toxic securities, Citigroup, with Rubin in a leading role until early 2009, had to be bailed out by the federal government with a $45 billion direct investment and a guaranteed Fed protection for $306 billion in potentially toxic assets.
Citigroup, a merger of the old Citibank and Travelers insurance company, was made legal only by the Financial Services Modernization Act, which Rubin backed while treasury secretary. Then, in one of the most egregious conflicts of interest in U.S. history, he went to work for the new bank, which took advantage of the changes in the law to buy up the infamous subprime lenders, beginning with Associates First Capital. The Economist magazine wrote of that purchase that
“it extends Citi’s already huge credit card operation to a lucrative new niche (price insensitive, if default prone, borrowers)” and questioned whether investors would see Citi’s bold new venture “as something smart, such as ‘evolved credit extension,’ or something seamy such as loan-sharking.”
Rubin was a major proponent of the firm’s seamy expansion into the mortgages that proved to be toxic, and by 2007 Citigroup was the second-largest subprime servicer, after the only slightly more infamous Countrywide. As The New York Times pointed out on Nov. 22, 2008, after a decade of flattering portraits of the man, finally acknowledging Rubin’s role in Citi’s disgrace: “The bank’s downfall was years in the making and involved many in its hierarchy, particularly [CEO Charles O.] Prince and Robert E. Rubin, an influential director and senior adviser.”
There is much more, and I haven’t even touched on Rubin’s shameful role in Enron’s shenanigans. Enough said, though, to question not only Zakaria’s journalism but, far more important, Barack Obama’s leadership in first turning to Rubin as a key campaign adviser and then putting his disciples in charge of the U.S. economy.
Click here to check out Robert Scheer’s new book, “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26135.htm
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/the-record-of-the-federal-reserve/
SO IS CHINA ABOUT TO TAKE OVER THE BANKRUPT USA?
CHINA ALREADY HAS EMINENT DOMAIN OVER THE USA, (US DEBT SOLD TO FOREIGNERS BACKED BY US REAL ESTATE GUARANTEES). SO ALL CHINA HAS TO DO IS NOT BUY ANYMORE US DEBT AND WAIT FOR THE US TO COLLAPSE. CHINA WOULD THEN BECOME THE RIGHTFUL OWNERS OF THE USA WITHOUT FIRING A SHOT……IT SHOULD NOT BE TOO LONG NOW THEY ARE DEVALUING WESTERN ASSESTS AS WE SPEAK….
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/is-the-us-already-bankrupt-and-trading-in-fake-gold/
China: The US Is “Insolvent and Faces Bankruptcy”
Interest-Rates / US Bonds
Jul 21, 2010 – 06:34 PM
By: Jesse
The common thought amongst even reasonably educated and economically literate Americans is that China is ‘stuck with US Treasuries’ and has no choice, so it must perform within the status quo and do as the US wishes, or face a ruinous decline in their reserve holdings of US Treasuries
And with real short term US Treasury interest rates decidedly negative, meaning that it is costing you money to hold dollars, there is a case to be made that there are a lot of ‘price takers’ out there in this world. Wow, they are just that good, aren’t they. Having their heyday in a genuine deflation. A subtle tax levied on all holders of US dollars, probably more significant because of the official understantement of inflation. Yo, come git some.
I think China is already diversifying their reserve portfolio, and more stealthily and effectively than one would imagine.
Further, I suspect that through the use of hedging short positions and derivatives such as Credit Default Swaps, China would be able to cover a greater portion of its reserves than the common mind might allow. And if this is in reality one theater in a global struggle for power, sacrificing a pawn or two, and even a bishop, would be a small price to pay to bring down the world’s remaining superpower, as indirectly and gracefully as is possible. War is never cheaply waged.
It would most certainly be a nuclear option to outright dump Treasuries outright, and would raise the ire of what is still a formidable military power. But it is the Western mind that is so incapable of seeing the many shades of gray in every situation, the subtle gradations in a range of choices that I believe China not only sees but is already actively pursuing.
China is not the only country that resents the devastating frauds that the US has perpetrated on not only its own people but the rest of the world through its Wall Street banks and ratings agencies.
Most Americans overlook this developing estrangement that is beginning to isolate the US and UK from even their traditional allies in Europe and South America and Asia. This is a serious error, but so typical of the short term mentality dominated by greed, dishonesty, and self-delusion that captured the American psyche in the latter part of The New American Century. But what choice does Europe have except to take what the Anglo-Americans serve them. Take it or leave it. And ain’t currency war hell?
It never pays to have a ‘checkerboard mentality’ when your opponent is playing Go.”
Financial Times
China rating agency condemns rivals
By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing
July 21 2010 16:22
The head of China’s largest credit rating agency has slammed his western counterparts for causing the global financial crisis and said that as the world’s largest creditor nation China should have a bigger say in how governments and their debt are rated.
“The western rating agencies are politicised and highly ideological and they do not adhere to objective standards,” Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global
Credit Rating, told the Financial Times in an interview. “China is the biggest creditor nation in the world and with the rise and national rejuvenation of China we should have our say in how the credit risks of states are judged.”
He specifically criticised the practice of “rating shopping” by companies who offer their business to the agency that provides the most favourable rating.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis “rating shopping” has been one of the key complaints from western regulators , who have heavily criticised the big three agencies for handing top ratings to mortgage-linked securities that turned toxic when the US housing market collapsed in 2007.
“The financial crisis was caused because rating agencies didn’t properly disclose risk and this brought the entire US financial system to the verge of collapse, causing huge damage to the US and its strategic interests,” Mr Guan said.
Recently, the rating agencies have been criticised for being too slow to downgrade some of the heavily indebted peripheral eurozone economies, most notably Spain, which still holds triple A ratings from Moody’s.
There is also a view among many investors that the agencies would shy away from withdrawing triple A ratings to countries such as the US and UK because of the political pressure that would bear down on them in the event of such actions.
Last week, privately-owned Dagong published its own sovereign credit ranking in what it said was a first for a non-western credit rating agency.
The results were very different from those published by Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, with China ranking higher than the United States, Britain, Japan, France and most other major economies, reflecting Dagong’s belief that China is more politically and economically stable than all of these countries.
Mr Guan said his company’s methodology has been developed over the last five years and reflects a more objective assessment of a government’s fiscal position, ability to govern, economic power, foreign reserves, debt burden and ability to create future wealth.
“The US is insolvent and faces bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation but the rating agencies still give it high rankings ,” Mr Guan said. “Actually, the huge military expenditure of the US is not created by themselves but comes from borrowed money, which is not sustainable.”
A wildly enthusiastic editorial published by Xinhua , China’s official state newswire, lauded Dagong’s report as a significant step toward breaking the monopoly of western rating agencies of which it said China has long been a “victim”.
“Compared with the US’ conquest of the world by means of force, Moody’s has controlled the world through its dominance in credit ratings,” the editorial said…
By Jesse
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
Welcome to Jesse’s Café Américain – These are personal observations about the economy and the markets. In providing information, we hope this allows you to
make your own decisions in an informed manner, even if it is from learning by our mistakes, which are many.
© 2010 Copyright Jesse’s Café Américain – All Rights Reserved
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article21293.html
TIME TO DUMP DOLLARS AND BUY GOLD!!!! OPEN AN E-GOLD ACCOUNT TODAY!!! GET RID OF YOUR WORTHLESS FIAT MONEY NOW!!!
http://www.ecurrencylinks.com/category/atm-cards-and-debit-cards.htm
CHINA HAS ALREADY REDUCED WESTERN RATINGS AND NOW IS BUYING GOLD BIG TIME!!!! THE WEST IS SCREWED , BUT THE US AND UK GOVERNMENTS WILL SAY NOTHING!! THEY WILL SCREW THE TAXPAYER AND LOOT THE NATION INSTEAD!!
China Enters the Gold Market
Commodities / Gold and Silver 2010
Aug 11, 2010 – 01:19 AM
By: Richard_Daughty
There was an editorial power struggle at Mogambo News Service over whether it was Big, Big News (BBN) or if it was Big Freaking News (BFN), or even if it was The Biggest Freaking News Of Your Life (TBFNOYL) that China has, officially through the People’s Bank of China, said that they have “seen the light” as concerns gold, and they see how gold is the only true money, and how worthless paper monies and computer blip monies are the Wrong Way To Go (WWTO), as evidenced by the Chinese merely looking at us Americans and what happened! Hahaha
The Chinese decision to acquire gold and gold mines, and establish a large, multi-tier market for gold, may have been influenced by many things, including, for example, the stinging criticism of the Fabulous Mogambo Guru (FMG), who said many, many times that if the Chinese did not buy up the world’s gold and establish a gold-standard yuan with at least some of that trillion dollars in foreign reserves that they are sitting upon, then they were indeed idiots, and thus we Americans had nothing to fear from a bunch of dumb clucks like that.
So, now, it looks like the Chinese were not as dumb as everybody thought, and they are following the advice of The Wonderful And Wise Mogambo (TWAWM) to buy up gold with at least some of their trillion trade-surplus dollars, although they are not paying me anything for my terrific advice to do so, the cheap bastards.
And now that they have decided to buy gold, this will doubtlessly rank in history as an inflection point in the dollar-price of gold, Thanks to a bankrupt-yet-spendthrift Congress willing to deficit-spend money without end and a compliant Federal Reserve willing to create money without end, any price I can think of will come true! Hahaha! I love this stuff!
For those of you who quickly tire of watching me using a calculator and periodically gloating, “Ooh! Ooh! I’m rich!” let me present Tyler Durden, writing at Zerohedge.com, who sums it up neatly as, “The PBoC has asked the Shanghai Gold Exchange, Shanghai Futures Exchange and commercial banks to become actively engaged in developing a national gold market.”
An interesting statistic is that China owns “a mere 1,064 tonnes of gold (sixth in the world and well behind both France and the GLD ETF in terms of holdings)” and which represents a mere “1.6% of its reserve holdings.”
The importance is that, as Mr. Durden says, “there is only one way to interpret this borderline revolutionary press release. China has now officially entered the gold market.”
It gets even better than that at Bloomberg.com, which had the headline “China Plans to Help Bullion Producers Expand Overseas, Central Bank Says”! Wow!
Literally, China is going to provide the financing of expansions of gold, as, “China, the world’s largest gold producer, will support overseas investment plans by ‘large- scale’ bullion companies by backing them financially.” Wow! The Chinese are going to buy up the gold mines, too!
I know you, clever Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) that you are, have made special note of ending that last sentence using the word “too,” which implies that an unnamed something else, perhaps some mysterious “something else,” was also bought.
And it was! And rather than suffer the barrage of your questions about it, Bloomberg quickly continues that “Chinese companies spent more than $30 billion last year buying mining assets and oil deposits to help secure raw material supplies to feed the nation’s growing economy.”
Well, I gotta admit that $30 billion seems like chump change to a country that had a trade surplus of over $100 billion last year, which is not to mention the $1 trillion in foreign reserves that the Chinese got after years and years of growing trade surpluses versus America’s $700 billion trade deficits. So, wow! Talk about “room to the upside”!
Ed Steer’s Gold & Silver Daily looks at this news and says, “Well, it appears that China has publicly come out of the closet regarding its gold market,” Instead, Mr. Steer went on that the Chinese making a public announcement of financing the buying of gold mines and establishing a distributed market for gold through the banks, as astonishing as it is, may be just the tip of the iceberg of China “coming out of the closet,” about gold, with the caveat that that we know “at least the part of it that they want us to know about.”
Rocky Vega here at The Daily Reckoning adds, “…if China were to suddenly announce a huge increase in its gold reserves it wouldn’t be the first nation to do so. Saudi Arabia already set the precedent in late June when it restated gold reserves and revealed it holds about twice as much gold as previously thought.”
Not coincidentally, perhaps, the winner of this week’s Mogambo Award For Sheer Understatement (MAFSU) goes to Mr. Steer, whose winning entry was, “I expect that all this news will be gold positive going forward!” Hahaha! Perfect, and delivered with perfect timing, too! Congratulations, Mr. Steer!
I twist Mr. Vega’s words to make it look like he proposes a conspiracy as, according to Mineweb, the World Gold Council had earlier this year “entered an agreement with China’s, and the world’s, largest bank the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) (state-owned of course) to co-operate to promote gold investments in China. Yesterday we learnt that China is further loosening its controls on the import and export of gold on the one hand, and on the other that it is also going to support Chinese company investment in overseas gold mining projects.”
He asks, perhaps conspiratorially, “Does anyone notice a pattern emerging here?”
Well, I sure do! And because of that, I can barely conceal my glee at the prospect of buying gold, too, which, because such a profound, dramatic increase in demand for gold versus a relatively static supply of world gold makes it all so childishly simple that I shout in glee, “Whee! This investing stuff is easy!”
Richard Daughty (Mogambo Guru) is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the writer/publisher of the Mogambo Guru economic newsletter, an avocational exercise to better heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it. The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron’s, The Daily Reckoning, and other fine publications.
Copyright © 2010 Daily Reckoning
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article21797.html
IT LOOKS LIKE THE BP ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER AND ITS KNOCK ON ECONOMIC FALLOUT ARE THE “BLACK SWAN TRIGGER” OR TIPPING POINT …….THE REAL REASON BP AND THE US GOVERNMENT ARE WORKING TOGETHER?
BP THE FINAL NAIL IN THE US ECONOMIC COFFIN……USA COUGHING TO THE COFFIN IN THE GULF OF MEXICO.
THE ACTORS IN THIS TRAGEDY BP ,US GOVERNMENT AND GOLDMAN SACHS ..PIRATES OF THE CARIBEAN IV , THE BLACK SPOT!!!!
SULTANS OF SWAP: BP Collapse Potentially More Devastating than Lehman!
Companies / Credit Crisis 2010
Jul 01, 2010 – 02:51 PM
By: Gordon_T_Long
As horrific as the gulf environmental catastrophe is, an even more intractable and cataclysmic disaster may be looming. The yet unknowable costs associated with clean-up, litigation and compensation damages due to arguably the world’s worst environmental tragedy, may be in the process of triggering a credit event by British Petroleum (BP) that will be equally devastating to global over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. The potential contagion may eventually show that Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns were simply early warning signals of the devastation lurking and continuing to grow unchecked in the $615T OTC Derivatives market
What is yet unknowable is what the reality is of BP’s off-balance sheet obligations and leverage positions. How many Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) is it operating? Remember, during the Enron debacle Andrew Fastow, the Enron CFO, asserted in testimony nearly 10 years ago that GE had 2500 such entities already in existence. BP has even more physical assets than Enron and GE. Furthermore, no one knows the true size of BP’s OTC derivative contracts such as Interest Rate Swaps and Currency Swaps. Only the major international banks have visibility to what the collateral obligations associated with these instruments are, their credit trigger events and who the counter parties are. They are obviously not talking, but as I will explain, they are aggressively repositioning trillions of dollars in global currency, swap, derivative, options, debt and equity portfolios
Once again, as we saw with Lehman Bros and Bear Stearns we have no visibility to the murky world of off balance sheet, off shore and unregulated OTC contracts, where BP’s financial risk is presently being determined. At a time when understanding a corporation’s risk position is critically important, investors are in the dark. When markets are uncertain, bad things are certain to follow. The new financial regulations under the Dodd-Frank legislation does absolutely nothing to address this. This was the central issue in truly understanding and corralling TBTF risk. It has not been addressed and the markets will likely make the tax payer pay for this regulatory failure once again.
Massive BP Risk lay in the $615T OTC Market that only the major international banks have any visibility to…. and they are not talking!
THE LEVERAGE ASSOCIATED WITH “AAA” ASSETS
I could not have stated it any clearer than Jim Sinclair at jsmineset.com: “People are seriously underestimating how much liquidity in the global financial world is dependent on a solvent BP. BP extends credit – through trading and finance. They extend the amounts, quality and duration of credit a bank could only dream of. You should think about the financial muscle behind a company with 100+ years of proven oil and gas reserves. Think about that in comparison to a bank with few tangible assets. Then think about what happens if BP goes under. This is no bank. With proven reserves and wells in the ground, equity in fields all over the planet, in terms of credit quality and credit provision – nothing can match an oil major. God only knows how many assets around the planet are dependent on credit and finance extended from BP. It is likely to dwarf any banking entity in multiples…. The price tag and resultant knock-on effects of a BP failure could easily be equal to that of a Lehman, if not more. It is surely, at the very least, Enron x10.”
From a historical context, some may not be aware that the infamous House of Rothschild at the height of their banking power moved into Energy & Oil. Also, John D. Rockefeller quickly realized his globally expanding Standard Oil was more a bank, consolidating his financial empire under a banking structure which resulted in the Chase Manhattan Bank (the basis of Citigroup). As long as an energy giant can manage its cash flows throughout the volatility of price fluctuations, it becomes a money and credit generating machine. It can borrow with AAA yields anywhere on the curve and lend to less credit worthy entities at attractive spreads. These lending differentials help fuel the $430T Interest Rate Swap OTC market. BP has been able to spin off $20B of earnings for the last 5 years and $15B in cash last year. All of this suddenly comes to an end if its credit rating is significantly impaired. But what could possibly cause this to happen? It would take a black swan event. An outlier. A fat tail.
Sound familiar? Heard this discussion before?
The Gulf Oil Disaster may be the fat tail to end all fat tails and shows the exposure behind the entire risk models of the vast majority of derivatives algorithm models. To suggest that BP would need to take impairments north of $20B would have seemed out of the realm of possibilities less than 90 days ago.
Now, if it is contained to only $20B, it would be considered a blessing. Fitch dropped BP’s credit rating an unprecedented 6 notches on June 15th from AA to BBB which followed June 3rd’s AA+ to AA cut. This is what happens when a fat tail occurs and it has only just begun.
CONTAGION HAS BEGUN
Though few are talking openly, it doesn’t mean large amounts of money aren’t aggressively repositioning. This repositioning is effectively de-leveraging and is consequentially a liquidity drain. This comes as US M3 has gone negative and M2, M1 are rapidly declining. BP is going to face a massive liquidity crunch which has all the earmarks of triggering an already tenuous and worsening international liquidity situation.
I found the charts (right) published by Credit Derivatives Research to be very telling of the abrupt shift that has occurred. Their charts show that the April 21st Macondo well explosion has triggered a significant inflection in the risk, counterparty and high yield areas. A comparison with Government and High Grade Debt has a different profile which reflects the European banking concerns associated with the southern European economies (PIIGS). It is important to differentiate these as separate drivers. Both come as the percentage of corporate bonds considered in distress is at the highest in six months – a sign investors expect the economy to slow and defaults to rise. This spells deleveraging.
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/its-official-the-economy-will-recover-when-pigs-fly/
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT BP DERIVATIVES:
1 – CSO (Credit Synthetic Obligations)
A study by Moody’s outlines that a BP bankruptcy would impair 117 Collateralized Synthetic Obligations (CSOs), which would lead to pervasive losses by a broad range of holders. The 117 effected is a startling 18% of the total CSOs outstanding, which is an indication of the scope and impact of BP financing globally. For those that remember the 2008 financial debacle, you will recall its epicenter was the collapse of Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) associated with mortgages and Credit Default Swaps (CDS) of financial companies impacted. CSOs are even more leveraged and toxic
The exhibit above lists CSOs (excluding CSOs backed by CSOs) with over 3% exposure to the five companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico incident.
To quote Moody’s:
In the event of BP’s restructuring or bankruptcy, CSO transactions referencing BP or its affected subsidiaries may experience what is called a “credit event.” If the credit event occurs, the CSO transactions will have to meet their payment obligations to the protection buyers, which will result in the loss of subordination to the rated CSO tranches. In cases where the subordination is no longer available, CSO investors will incur the loss.
….
We reviewed our entire universe of outstanding CSOs and determined that exposure to BP and its rated subsidiaries appears in 117 (excluding CSOs backed by CSOs) transactions, which represents approximately 18% of global Moody’s-rated CSOs. Exposure ranged from 0.26% to 2% of the respective reference portfolios.
The transaction with the largest exposure to BP and its subsidiaries is Arosa Funding Limited – Series 2005-5.
Restructuring or Bankruptcy of Other Oil Companies Involved in the Spill Also Affects CSOs. In addition, we assessed Moody’s-rated CSO exposure to the other four companies and their subsidiaries that were involved in the Gulf of Mexico incident, which are Halliburton, Anadarko Petroleum, Transocean Inc., and Cameron International. Halliburton appears in 43 CSOs, Anadarko Petroleum appears in 28 CSOs, Transocean Inc. appears in 79 CSOs, and Cameron International appears in 6 CSOs. We recently changed the credit outlooks for Transocean and Anadarko Petroleum, as well as their rated subsidiaries, to negative from stable because of uncertainties related to the companies’ involvement in the Gulf of Mexico incident and potential financial liabilities associated with it.
The CSOs referencing one or more of these issuers would face credit event consequences in a scenario where any of them restructures or enters bankruptcy.
We need to recall that Transocean was the owner /operator of Deepwater Horizon with 131 of the actual 137 employed by Transocean (RIG) and that Anadarko (APC) was BP’s 25% partnership holder in the well. Cameron International (CAM) was the builder of the faulty blowout preventer and Halliburton (HAL) the contractor for the well cementing operation in sealing the 13,350 foot Macondo drill site. These players will no doubt be heavily involved in the litigation and compensation settlements, but additionally will have collateral damage on other oil industry participants as they are forced to raise cash for litigation and claims.
2 – CDS (Credit Default Swaps)
On June 25th BP’s Credit Default Swaps shot up 44 to 580 on the 5 years CDS. This meant it costs $580,000 per year to ensure $10 million in BP bonds over a 5 year contract period. Anything approaching 300 is considered serious risk. For counterparties willing to pay this amount means their dynamic hedging models are working over time and a near panic scramble is taking place.
On June 16th Zero Hedge Reported:
The BP Curve has really flipped (out). The 1 year point on the curve is now over 1,000 bps, a 400 bps move in one day. The point is also offerless (bidless in traditional cash jargon). Granted the DV01 so close to 0 is rather low, but this kind of ridiculous curve inversion is simply wreaking havoc on correlation desks. The 6 month point is now 0.5 pts upfront. Pretty soon BP will need to apply for the same ECB bailout that rescued all those banks who were risking a wipe out when Greek spreads were trading at comparable levels. The question now becomes: who sold the bulk of the BP protection? BofA’s announcement yesterday (06-15-10) that it is limiting counterparty risk exposure with BP to all contracts over 1 year could be a rather material clue as to the identity of at least one such entity
3 – BOND INVERSION
With Credit Default Swap concerns we would expect this to be reflected in BP’s Yield Curve Spread. What is interesting here is that the curve is inverted as is BP’s CDS curve . Usually short term yields are less than longer term yields because of inherent risk over a longer period of time. For instance, one heavily traded bond, which matures in March 2012, traded with 9.48% yield recently. Meanwhile, further down the curve a bond that matures in March 2019 is trading at a yield of 7.74%, less than the shorter-term bond. This suggests that the market is pricing in a credit event. A credit event would have a profound impact on OTC contracts, which we have no visibility to.
What we do know however is that BP has between $2 and $2.5 Billion in one year commercial paper to rollover that is required for trading operations and working capital. This is going to make it both more expensive and harder to secure and will be a liquidity drain for BP.
4 – LIQUIDTY REQUIREMENTS
To the above Commercial paper roll-over ($2-$2.5B in one year), ongoing new and rollover debt issuance, we need to add the $20B it has agreed with the White House to put in place, though we know of no detailed agreement actually being signed.
5 – SHORT INTEREST
The Financial Times Alphaville via Data Explorers reported the short interest through June 4th. As you can see from the graph below by stripping out the spike related to the last dividend payment, the underlying level of stock outstanding on loan (SOOL) has barely budged since the spill. So, short sellers can’t be blamed for the plunge; the selling must be coming from somewhere else, such as long-only funds. Rumors circulated 06/10/10 that Norges Bank was looking to offload 330m shares. Brokers said the total Transatlantic volume of stock traded in BP 06-09-10 had a value of $8bn. To put that figure into some perspective, the total volume traded on the entire EuroStoxx index on the same day amounted to $15bn. Moreover, since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 21st, 70 per cent of BP’s market cap has turned over, most of it in the US. Trading volumes in BP American Depository Receipts (ADRs) are usually 10 per cent lower than the ordinary shares in London. Since the spill, that position has been reversed and the ADRs have traded 3.5 times the ordinaries, all of which suggests BP’s largest US investor base have been dumping stock.
How long before equity shorting begins? It must be noted here that this is BP equity. Shorting activity of BP debt is all together another matter especially concerning dynamic hedging, with again much less visibility.
6 – OPTIONS ACTIVITY
Wall Street Pit on 06/10/10 wrote that “Options volume on beleaguered oil company, BP PLC, is fast approaching 750,000 contracts, fueling a more than 79.7% upward shift in the stock’s overall reading of options implied volatility to a 5-year high of 120.96%. Options activity on the stock can easily be described as frenzied as volume continues to grow in both call and put options across multiple expiries.”
COST OF CAPITAL IS SKYROCKETING FOR BP WHICH AS FUNDAMENTALLY AN ENERGY FINANCING CORPORATION CAN BE TERMINAL!
SIZE & SCOPE OF LITIGATION
Are the final gulf oil spill costs going to be $20B or $60B? Does anyone know? I personally believe it is closer to the latter than the former. If we just use the reported oil spillage numbers for comparison we might get a better understanding of the complete failure to grasp the scope of the disaster.
According to the Financial Times, the oil spillage was reported as follows:
SPILLAGE COST INCREASE
(bls./day) TO DATE
April 20 1000
May 4 5000
May 7 5000 350M
May 14 5000 625M
May 28 15,500 950M
June 3 19,000 990M
June 8 15,500 1,250M
June 10 15,500 1,430M
June 17 15,500 1,600M
June 23 25,800 2,600M Spillage increased by 25 X in 60 days
As time passes the numbers are rising exponentially. Engineers are warning that the capture will be complicated and scientists monitoring the situation are predicting the spill will prove larger than the current estimates are reflecting. An expert in the field, Matt Simmons of Simmons International has stated that the flows are over 100,000 barrels per day. Most independent experts agree.
Assuming $4,000/barrel damages costs, 100,000 barrels per day flow rates, a 90 day flow duration (minimal), we arrive at clean-up, litigation and damage compensation of approximately $32B. This is nearly twice the US escrow account agreement and within our expectations of between $20 and 60B. There are a range of issues regarding further leaks, shifting seafloor, methane levels, hurricanes, disbursement effects and many more that are surfacing daily that will have significant negative impact on current analysis and assumptions.
An element of future litigation that is very concerning is the amount of punitive damages that may be awarded. After the White House sent Attorney General Eric Holder to New Orleans to threaten BP with criminal prosecution, BP responded that it believes a case of negligence can’t be proven. However, the Deepwater Horizon travesty comes at a particularly bad time for BP. According to Caroline Baum at Bloomberg: “BP is already the most reviled company in America. Two of its refineries accounted for 97 percent of the violations (a total of 862, of which 760 were “egregious willful”) in the refining industry over the last three years, according to the Center for Public Integrity. It holds the record for the largest fine ($87 million) ever levied by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.” Additionally, the US Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board has immediately jumped into the oil spill investigation as they did previously at the 2005 fire and explosion of BP’s Texas City refinery that killed 15 and injured many others.
After Moody’s cut Anadarko’s rating to junk late on June 18th, the US oil company (a 25 per cent non-operating investor in the Macondo well) broke its eight-week silence with this broadside from CEO Jim Hackett:
“The mounting evidence clearly demonstrates that this tragedy was preventable and the direct result of BP’s reckless decisions and actions. Frankly, we are shocked by the publicly available information that has been disclosed in recent investigations and during this week’s testimony that, among other things,indicates BP operated unsafely and failed to monitor and react to several critical warning signs during the drilling of the Macondo well. BP’s behavior and actions likely represent gross negligence or willful misconduct and thus affect the obligations of the parties under the operating agreement.”
We can safely surmise that the stab in the dark by the White House of $20B is about as accurate as its forecasts of GDP growth, unemployment improvement and the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Slim to none. A more realistic number is likely substantially larger and will likely surface soon. However, anything larger than $20B is likely to be the immediate nail in the coffin for BP as evidenced by how quickly the newly elected British Prime Minister was dispatched to the White House to stop the mounting implosion of both BP and the seriously impacted British Pension system.
Since Matt Simmons spoke out about the spill he has died. A suicide or state/BP execution, make your mind up. Whatever it is very convenient for BP and the state.
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/another-nwo-state-murder/
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/another-state-protected-murderer-goes-free/
BP RESPONSE
BP has stated it has immediate cash available of $15B and will raise additional cash via:
1.Asset Sales
2.Capital Expenditure Cuts
3.Dividend Cut for the Next 3 Quarters
LEHMAN BROS / BEAR STREARNS DEATH SPIRAL
To again quote Jim Sinclair at jsmineset.com: “BP is the primary player on the long-end of the energy curve. How exposed are Goldman sub J. Aron, Morgan Stanley and JPM? Probably hugely. Now credit has been cut to BP. Counter-parties will not accept their name beyond one year in duration. This is unheard of.
A giant is on the ropes. If he falls, the very earth may shake as he hits the ground. As we are beginning to see, the Western pension structure, financial trading and global credit are all inter-twined. BP is central to this, as a massive supplier of what many believe(d) to be AAA credit. So while we see banks roll over and die, and sovereign entities begin to falter… we now have a major oil company on the verge of going under. Another leg of the global economic “chair” is being viciously kicked out from under us.”
The whole BP travesty is quickly compounded via the OTC Derivatives market and the risk inherent within it.
1.As it was in Lehman, opacity is once again experienced when transparency is most critically required.
2.Finance has always been about risk determination but never before with so much leverage associated with risk assessments and held in such complex,dependent structured instruments.
3.Investors are still unprotected. The Frank-Dodd Bill is now nothing more than watered down window dressing before it finally reaches legislative approval and even before it begins the regulatory supervision machinations.
4.Investors hate uncertainty and we have nothing but uncertainty here:
1.Political
2.Legal
3.Financial
4.Business
CONCLUSIONS
The most likely scenario is that the US operations of BP will voluntarily attempt Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. This is the worst possible scenario for claimants. The problem here is that this triggers a credit event which has daunting repercussions to the highly leveraged global financial markets. Like AIG before, the government does not want to tamper with the ramifications and fall out of a CDS event. Lehman was one too many.
If a US voluntary bankruptcy is stopped by the US and there is a BP corporate bankruptcy, then there is a strong possibility that the British Government will be forced to step in and bailout BP. In the end, the tax payer will pay as the ongoing game of Regulatory Arbitrage is played masterfully once again.
Deleveraging associated with BP may be the event that triggers the $5T Quantitative Easing spike we have been warning about for some time now. It will be needed to complete the final process of manufacturing of a Minsky Melt-up to avoid the looming pension, entitlement and US state financial crisis.
The ability of the government to achieve this is anything but certain. However, we need to expect the unexpected and watch out for fat tails to trip over.
The Dodd-Frank Legislation leaves investors & taxpayers once again exposed to another Lehman
The Regulatory Arbitrage Game Continues
UNFOLDING BP FINANCIAL EVENTS ARE TRACKED DAILY ON THE Tipping Points WEB PAGE
Gordon T Long gtlong@comcast.net Web: Tipping Points
Mr. Long is a former executive with IBM & Motorola, a principle in a high tech start-up and founder of a private Venture Capital fund. He is presently involved in Private Equity Placements Internationally in addition to proprietary trading that involves the development & application of Chaos Theory and Mandelbrot Generator algorithms.
© 2005-2010 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk – The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article20778.html
BP’s Insidious Coverup and Propaganda Campaign: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
by Dahr Jamail
Since BP announced that CEO Tony Hayward would receive a multi-million dollar golden parachute and be replaced by Bob Dudley, we have witnessed an incredibly broad, and powerful, propaganda campaign. A campaign that peaked this week with the US government, clearly acting in BP’s best interests, itself announcing, via outlets willing to allow themselves to be used to transfer the propaganda, like the New York Times, this message: “The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20543
NOW THAT IS AMAZING ,CONCIDERING THE AMOUNT OF TIME IT TOOK TO CLEAN UP EXXON VALDEZ AND THE FACT ITS STILL POLLUTED TODAY
Despite the extensive cleanup attempts, less than ten percent of the oil was recovered and a study conducted by NOAA determined that as of early 2007 more than 26 thousand U.S. gallons (98 m3) of oil remain in the sandy soil of the contaminated shoreline, declining at a rate of less than 4% per year
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill
BUT THEN THESE PEOPLE HAVE A FINANCIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND THESE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU OIL IS A “FOSSIL FUEL” AND THERE IS A “FUEL CRISIS” ….BOLLOCKS!!!!
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/the-oil-crisis-what-oil-crisis/
“The capital fact to note is that petroleum was born in the depths of the Earth, and it is only there that we must seek its origin.” (D. Mendeleev, 1877){{ref|Mendeleev}} Mendeleev, D., 1877. L’Origine du pétrole. Revue Scientifique, second series, VIII, p. 409–416
Following is a very brief history of the Abiogenic Theory of Petroleum, which can be found at the following link:
http://tripatlas.com/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
The following blog presents additional information which invalidates the conventionally held “fossil fuel” hypothesis. After having been artificially propped up for so many years by scientists, academics and especially oil and gas industry geologists, who have known the obvious truth about the source and nature of oil all along, the aforementioned Russian and Ukrainian scientists have debunked it with finality.
http://freeenergynews.com/Directory/Theory/SustainableOil/
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article20845.html
SO THESE PEOPLE EITHER DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DRILLING OR THEY ARE LIARS.
BUT ITS MORE PROFITABLE IF THEY TELL YOU ITS A NON-RENEWABLE SOURCE, (ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A SCOTTISH NATIONALIST OR AN ARAB SITTING ON A PILE OF IT)
AND WOULD WE BE SO QUICK TO DRAIN IT ,IF WE THOUGHT IT WAS A VITAL PART OF PLANETRY PLATE TECTONICS?
BUT BEWARE THE OTHER LIARS IN GOVERNMENT. THEY WILL SEND YOU OFF TO A FAKE WAR FOR ECONOMIC REASONS AND DISTRACT YOU FROM THIER GREED AND CORRUPTION. TODAY THEY ARE LYING ABOUT IRAN JUST LIKE THEY LIED ABOUT IRAQ!
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/iranian-oil-bourse-the-real-reason-for-war-with-iran/
IN CONCLUSION
IF BY MAGIC THE FISCAL SYSTEM RIGHTED ITSELF TODAY, WHO WOULD PUT ONE PENNY OF THIER SAVINGS IN IT TOMORROW?
THE SYSTEM IS STILL BEING RUN BY THE VERY SAME FRAUDSTERS , CROOKS , INCOMPITANT ,UNPROFITABLE AND JUST PLAIN GREEDY BUNCH OF LOOSERS!!! ……….I CERTAINLY WOULD NOT BE PUTTING MY SAVINGS IN THIERS BANKS …..WOULD YOU?!?!
THE IDEA BEHIND CAPITALISM WAS a. TO HAVE CAPITAL (NOT CREATE DEBT) AND b. TO GET RID OF INCOMPITANT ,UNPROFITABLE BUSINESS NOT BAIL THEM OUT!!!!!
WHAT WE ARE SEEING HERE IS A FASCIST BUSINESS MODEL!!! NOT SOCIALISM AND NOT CAPITALISM!!!
UNFORTUNATELY WE HAVE BEEN IN THIS SITUATION BEFORE …..AND IT ENDED UP IN WAR!!!
DO NOT LET YOUR GOVERNMENT LIE YOU INTO ANOTHER WAR .JUST TO DISTRACT YOU FROM THE REAL CAUSE OF YOUR SUFFERING!!!..BIG GOVERNMENT AND BIG BUSINESS CORRUPTION!!!
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/us-government-making-a-killing-on-war/
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/us-government-spreading-freedom-and-democracy-since-1945/
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/will-cameron-and-hague-start-a-war-with-iran/
ITS TIME TO CLAIM BACK OUR FREEDOM , OUR DIGNITY , OUR WEALTH , OUR COUNTRY ,OUR RESOURSES ……AND END THE LIES ,THE THEFT AND MASS MURDER THAT IS TODAYS STATE CAPITALISM
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/the-global-political-awakening-and-the-new-world-order/
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/libertarian-vs-authoritarian-todays-real-politic/
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/libertarian-socialists-the-original-and-real-libertarians/
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/a-direct-democracy-independant-scotland/
Posted by cuthulan 
Cuthulan's Blog 
