Fucked Yen : Dollar Oil Politics

[pheyton]

I don't deny the players you mentioned and I'm no Republican. No legislation twists anyone's arm into buying three houses. Thats like the people who want to blame the creidt card companies for people's credit card debt.
The "liberal idiot" is a continuation of past posts referencing those liberals who love to pay taxes - keep feeding the pig. Liberals always think the players who make things happen as you say do it for Bush and Republicans - can't get out of the partisan political rut. Wasn't Greenspan and the bankers around during the Clinton years?
This Fannie Freddie bailout scheme is another example of your hard-earned tax dollars at work. Its a shame to see the people who did the right thing get taxed even more in order to bail out the no-money down, get rich quick, punk real estate speculatators. Thats what this is really about. The average guy with his home mortgage was never in trouble although the politicians will always paint this issue as if this is who they are trying to rescue. The problem people in this debacle were the noveau real estate speculators - Joe Shmoe who was going to get rich in real estate leveraging a few buys and got caught extended along with his banker. I say let them hang out to dry together.

Liberals don't love paying taxes, we just understand that you must in order to live in a civil society. Make no mistake, I am not a Democrat, rather a Democratic Socialist. As I have said before, I believe in capitalism, but I also believe that capitalism needs to be balanced with socialism in order to keep one another from running amok. We are seeing the cancer stage of capitalism going on now in the US. Nothing is functioning properly anymore because unfettered greed and ignorance. The one thing you can say about government is we always have a chance to throw the bums out. Not so with corporations.

I agree with Ron Paul that the FED should be abolished and their responsibilities moved into the treasury. I think that would solve a lot of our problems over night.

Credit cards are straight up evil. They charge usury rates and if you are even late on 1 payment. Your rate could go to 30%! That's bullshit. It happened to me a few months back with Chase. I forgot to move the money into the bank account I use to pay my CCs. I caught the error about a day after the payment was due and immediately called it in. Too late. After 2 years of never even being late they threw my rate up to 26%. I called them and asked them kindly to fix it. They said no, call us back in 2 months so I told them to fuck off, close my account and the check was in the mail.

Yes, there are people who are greedy and get themselves into the shit, but the loan agents and banks knew exactly what they were doing. So, the blame should be evenly spread.

Fannie and Freddie, socialism saves the day. Without the government going into bail them out the US economy would have collapsed. Major banks and governments all over the world have interests in the 2 giants. If those countries, banks lost their investments America wouldn't recover for 50 years. It had to be done. We should look at what caused them to fail, rather than say Gov. is bad bad bad.

[nottu]

[Greji]

Everyone knows taxes are necessary for government functions but the line you use is one of the typical ones used by liberals to justify exaggerated taxation]you[/B] not the credit card company. And your response is typical - put the blame on someone else and have someone else pay for it if possible. In your case you would like to even spread the blame of your mistake. Your first mistake was getting that credit card. You didn't understand how they worked when you got it?
So the US economy was going to collapse without this Fannie/Freddie bailout - 50 years - that's a good one. You sound like you've been reading the same economic satires Alicia has. America will recover sooner than you think and it will be good for everyone. Sometimes I sense in people's diatribes a somewhat unconscious desire for the American economy to fail. Just like they would like to see the "rich" fail. Its all part of the same socialist loser mentality. If failure were to happen the world would be a good deal less happy and the rich the least affected by the failure.
Someone once postulated on this forum that America's economy was going to go down and China would keep on going without skipping a beat. Well, China is skipping more than a few beats and whats worse the poor countries are starting to see starvation, something that would be of apocalyptic proportions if America failed. Now thats some trickle down economics.
Lets get Obama in - raise taxes - and bring on the pain.

Please write in a larger sized font so Bird can understand. He is not too good with letters!

[pheyton]

Everyone knows taxes are necessary for government functions but the line you use is one of the typical ones used by liberals to justify exaggerated taxation]you[/B] not the credit card company. And your response is typical - put the blame on someone else and have someone else pay for it if possible. In your case you would like to even spread the blame of your mistake. Your first mistake was getting that credit card. You didn't understand how they worked when you got it?
So the US economy was going to collapse without this Fannie/Freddie bailout - 50 years - that's a good one. You sound like you've been reading the same economic satires Alicia has. America will recover sooner than you think and it will be good for everyone. Sometimes I sense in people's diatribes a somewhat unconscious desire for the American economy to fail. Just like they would like to see the "rich" fail. Its all part of the same socialist loser mentality. If failure were to happen the world would be a good deal less happy and the rich the least affected by the failure.
Someone once postulated on this forum that America's economy was going to go down and China would keep on going without skipping a beat. Well, China is skipping more than a few beats and whats worse the poor countries are starting to see starvation, something that would be of apocalyptic proportions if America failed. Now thats some trickle down economics.
Lets get Obama in - raise taxes - and bring on the pain.

Oh fuck you and your self righteousness. People make mistakes and should not be ruined because of them. I made a mistake after 2 years of not making one. I corrected it by paying off and closing the account immediately since they weren't willing to work with me. Somehow I am to blame for the CC companies being usury fucks? How much money did CC companies make last year? Why are their contracts so difficult to read that even lawyers can't figure out exactly what they mean? Why is it if a CC company gets wind that you missed a truck payment they can jack up your rate?

Exaggerated taxation? Oh you mean like the payroll tax that affects the middle class and poor? The one Reagan doubled? The one the rich stop paying after $97,500? Or how about the expat tax loophole that your boy Bush closed? Do you crybabys even know what the tax rates were before Regan came into office? 70% on top earners and we were still #1 back then.

US Economy: I was pointing out that the bail out had to be done and how the world would react if their investments weren't protected. No where did I say I hope the ship goes down. I did say people would be hesitant to invest in American companies if they had been burned by a FM and FM failure.

I don't want the rich to fail, I want them to be accountable and responsible. I want to stop paying for their bailouts. I want them and their companies to be jailed for using tax havens and hiring tax attorneys to make sure they don't pay shit in taxes. When the debt is paid down and our public institutions restored, then we can talk about your tax cuts.

Obama will get in, and he will raise taxes on the people who have reaped, sorry, raped the treasury for the past 8 years. Someone has to pay down the debt, pay for the wars that have made American contractors billionaires, pay for the crumbling infrastructure that corporations use, etc. So fuck you and your whiny attitude about having to pay taxes. Last I recall the only president in recent memory to have a balanced budget, a surplus, was a Democrat, a LIBERAL. Before you say shit about the Congress, think about why a Republican controlled Gov. couldn't do the same thing.

[nottu]

[kamome]

Please write in a larger sized font so Bird can understand. He is not too good with letters!

Sorry, I was focused on the McCain v Obama thread. You called?

[Greji]

Sorry, I was focused on the McCain v Obama thread. You called?

You hadn't been on for a bit, I was worried about you. Barricudas eat sea gulls, so I feared you had slipped by the wayside.....

[kamome]

You hadn't been on for a bit, I was worried about you. Barricudas eat sea gulls, so I feared you had slipped by the wayside.....

I hadn't realized this thread turned into an interesting debate. I have to admit that I agree somewhat with nottu about the Fannie/Freddie bailouts. The use of taxpayer dollars to bail out the institutions and players involved in the mortgage debacle sticks in my craw. And what happens when Lehman goes down the tubes? Another bailout? I'm kind of sick of it - I'd like to see what happens if these institutions were allowed to fail. Maybe I can then afford to buy a house in the tri-state area for the first time ever.

[Uhhuh35]

I hadn't realized this thread turned into an interesting debate. I have to admit that I agree with nottu about the Fannie/Freddie bailouts. The use of taxpayer dollars to bail out the institutions and players involved in the mortgage debacle sticks in my craw. And what happens when Lehman goes down the tubes? Another bailout? I'm kind of sick of it - I'd like to see what happens if these institutions were allowed to fail.

Ditto! Bear Stearns shouldn't have been bailed out either.

[kamome]

Ditto! Bear Stearns shouldn't have been bailed out either.

Whoah, you agree with me on something??! I must have got something wrong then

Well, here's something you might disagree with. I think Pheyton is right that credit card companies are usurious and that we've been fucked by their ability to raise interest rates at the slightest indiscretion, including their use of "cross-default" provisions that allow them to raise your interest rate if you are late on a payment for other things like your car or another credit card. I think they should bring back the ability to declare bankruptcy on credit card defaults.

[pheyton]

[nottu]

[Charles]

It's their game and you have no choice but to play until we elect Liberals who will force them to play nice.

We did. I personally voted against Republican asshole Jim Leach, Chairman of the House Banking Committee and co-author of the heinous Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act that deregulated banking and securities trading and paved the way for the current financial disaster.

Leach lost by an extremely small margin and was replaced by liberal Democrat Dave Loebsack.

You're welcome.

[amdg]

Sorry to interrupt, but when did this thread move off topic from "oil dollar politics". I want to hear more about "oil dollar politics". Well, not so much about "oil dollar politics" as I want to hear everyone's special opinions on "oil dollar politics". It's fucking in teresting.

[pheyton]

Sorry to interrupt, but when did this thread move off topic from "oil dollar politics". I want to hear more about "oil dollar politics". Well, not so much about "oil dollar politics" as I want to hear everyone's special opinions on "oil dollar politics". It's fucking in teresting.

To understand what is happening with the yen/dollar/oil you have to understand what Bush and the Republicans have been doing in America. Of course we know China and India have put a lot of pressure on the 3, but by far the Americans have dominant force. From deflating the $ to speculative buying of oil. The root cause is America. The question is why is all of this happening and how long will it last?

As Charles stated the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act is the main reason the mortgage crisis happened. Gramm is the financial advisor to the McCain campaign. The mortgage crisis drove oil and commodities through the roof because the big investors needed other places to make money since real estate was dead. This in turn drove oil through the fuckin roof. At one time this summer Morgan-Stanley was the largest holder of oil futures in the world. This article says it all:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aboqiSz1AZm4&refer=home

[amdg]

To understand what is happening with the yen/dollar/oil you have to understand what Bush and the Republicans have been doing in America. Of course we know China and India have put a lot of pressure on the 3, but by far the Americans have dominant force. From deflating the $ to speculative buying of oil. The root cause is America. The question is why is all of this happening and how long will it last?

As Charles stated the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act is the main reason the mortgage crisis happened. Gramm is the financial advisor to the McCain campaign. The mortgage crisis drove oil and commodities through the roof because the big investors needed other places to make money since real estate was dead. This in turn drove oil through the fuckin roof. At one time this summer Morgan-Stanley was the largest holder of oil futures in the world. This article says it all:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aboqiSz1AZm4&refer=home

Tell me more. I'm starting to get interested.

[GuyJean]

.. And what happens when Lehman goes down the tubes? Another bailout? I'm kind of sick of it - I'd like to see what happens if these institutions were allowed to fail. Maybe I can then afford to buy a house in the tri-state area for the first time ever.

Looks like you'll soon find out..

Republican thought process:

$10,000,000,000 per month bailout for Iraq? Fuck yeah!
$29,000,000,000 bailout for Bear Stearns? No Fucking Way!

(Actually, I'm opposed to both these bailouts; But I'm a 'tax-loving' Progressive. What would I know about NeoComunism? )

GJ

[kamome]

[quote="GuyJean"]Looks like you'll soon find out..

Republican thought process:

$10,000,000,000 per month bailout for Iraq? Fuck yeah!
$29,000,000,000 bailout for Bear Stearns? No Fucking Way!

(Actually, I'm opposed to both these bailouts]

NeoCommunism - Haha! Seems like a bailout for a Rep is ok if it means more pork for the military. I'd be happy with no bailout for either too.

[rooboy]

Notto - just what do you object to in that interview that Pheyton posted? I'm an Aussie and have some interest in economics - did a couple of years of it at uni tho I majored in Arts.

I am not claiming to have a lotta knowledge of the USA economy and the current problems but I'd like to respectfully point out that if this was the time when Roosevelt was around, you probably would have slagged him off too for his government interventionism.

I don't like big government, I think one of the enduring problems with the latter part of the 20th century in western societies including that of my home country Oz is that government's role has badly affected people's will to do things for themselves. An example is that influential US liberal who encouraged public expenditure in the USA during the 60s and beyond. Whats his name? - he was a famous liberal, big government economist. The kind whose work led to things like all those housing projects for blacks which just led to people being lumped together in dysfunctional, crime ridden ghettoes.

The core problem is: when you get too much emphasis on the taxpayer paying for others, when the public domain is emphasised over private initiative then you breed the sense of deferred or absent responsibility.

It's always somebody else's role to look after you, runs the mentality. I don't vote for the conservatives in OZ who go by the name of Liberal Party but one great thing little Johnny Howard did was make people work for the dole (their welfare payments) or go into education or training schemes. Before then there was an amazing sense of entitlement - blow all your dole on alcohol or whatever and you'd get more, no strings attached. No more.

On the other hand, Pheyton's points about accountability and responsibility on the part of corporations and businesses, was spot on. You can't preach individual responsibility but encourage a system where business agressively targets people and makes a living out of their being in debt. It's a two way thing. It's not so simple as people getting back to living within their means.

The US economy is not a free enterprise system - it's monopoly capitalism allied with rapacious financial speculation schemes that don't create wealth and pass it down but destabilise the economy. The declining middle class in western societies is carrying the burden of these monopolists and speculators
aswell as paying the tax burden for welfare. So what does anybody find to object to in that interview and in Pheyton's points?

[pheyton]

Notto - just what do you object to in that interview that Pheyton posted? I'm an Aussie and have some interest in economics - did a couple of years of it at uni tho I majored in Arts.

Roo thank you for the input. Gov. is the counterbalance to Corporate power. Gov is public, Corporate is private. One is accountable to the people, the other is accountable to no one, although some would say shareholders but that is a myth. One can be thrown out on it's ass, the other, especially when dealing with American monopolies, will tell you where to stick it.

Having said that, yes, liberals have made big mistakes in trying to level the playing field. Rooboy was referring to Johnson's "Great Society". However there are so many dynamics that go into why people or ideas fail/failed. For example, poorer area schools have less funding and larger class sizes which lead to poorer education. More affluent areas have the exact opposite. So each perpetuates better/worse students.

Another example would be the destruction of the labor unions which elevated so many poorer people in America. Companies were forced to pay wages and offer benefits to their employees or they would get a union job. Reagan came in, broke the unions, and our society has declined since then.

Back to Dollar politics. FDR signed regulations after the Great Depression. One of those was Glass-Stegall(2).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act
which Phil Gramm and another Republican, Bliley, wrote the repeal of in Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act
History repeats itself.

Gramm was also responsible for energy deregulation, aka the Enron Loophole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_loophole

Yes, Clinton signed both of those pieces of legislation, but they were authored by Republicans. We can clearly see now why there is a need for regulation. If Americans read more, knew more of their history none of this would have happened.

Washington Mutual, Wamu the nation's largest savings and loan, is teetering on the brink of going under along with Leehman Bros. As the article above points out. Not only do these failures affect the tax payers on the federal end, but they also hit them on the private end because so many American's now have 401k's and stocks. And not only are the people invested in the failing companies hurt, but so are people who have stocks in any companies in the related fields. Again, all of this could have, should have been prevented through regulation. Perhaps we will learn, as those who lived through the depression learned, that Free Market Capitalism isn't free, unless your well connected and affluent.

Again, all of this is sending world markets into turmoil.

[rooboy]

This topic's interesting. There's no doubt that times are way more tougher for ordinary people now, even as we get bombarded with 'but people are greedy so serves em right when they lose everything'.

I'm all for personal responsibility but times have changed drastically for poor/poorer/ordinary/middle class people in 'western countries' over the past 25 years. The growth in junk jobs that have no career paths and job security is just one thing that comes to mind.

The lack of protection such as trade union membership is another thing. The previous conservative Govt in Oz did away with so much employee protection. They spewed bullshit about employees being able to negotiate their own payrises and conditions (ha!). Would you willingly go to court without a lawyer representing you? Of course not. But employees were expected to handle legal agreements with their employer.

Of course the breaking of trade union movements has been a big factor in the US, and the UK just to mention two other countries for some time now. By highlighting the irresponsibility of certain unions in certain fields, goverments such as that of Reagan and Thatcher assaulted the very idea that individuals do need to be in a protective organisation when it comes to negotiating their working conditions and rights.

In the 1920s onward for about 35 years,
Australia, home ownership for working class people who had come from relatively poor backgrounds was made possible by enlightened govt. policies. These policies continued for some time, and made private ownership of homes a reality, not a luxury. Now it's difficult for people earning middle incomes to buy their own home.

Looking at the US, the subprime crisis seems to have its roots in out of control lending policies, with lenders fully aware that the people they lent to were not capable of meeting repayments. These businesses with their lack of accountability mechanisms, lack of responsible financial practices are ursurers in the basic sense of the word.

Fiscal responsibility is a two way street - you can't load down debtors with all the blame when those who hold the capital are so willing to make it available with no real checks in too many cases. The kind of financial speculation we are seeing in the US and elsewhere has little to do with genuine free enterprise.

[TFG]

Another US bank Lehman Brothers, quickly succumbs to insolvency and unless someone bails them out by the time the US market opens, it will be gone.
Am I glad I managed to get in and out of currency trade before this news broke this morning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7615712.stm

[pheyton]

Another one bites the dust. 4th largest Investment Bank in the US. Plus Merril Lynch and Wamu are still on their death beds. Yen is trading up against the dollar, as are most currencies.

6 Page article.

http://tinyurl.com/6jtyax

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The ruptured U.S. financial system was facing an unprecedented shakeup on Sunday that was expected to lead to the failure of Lehman Brothers, the takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co and big asset sales by major insurer American International Group.

The developments indicate that chief executives on Wall Street and regulators in Washington are accepting that massive triage is necessary in the face of the 13-month old credit crisis and destructive U.S. housing bust.

[pheyton]

Another US bank Lehman Brothers, quickly succumbs to insolvency and unless someone bails them out by the time the US market opens, it will be gone.
Am I glad I managed to get in and out of currency trade before this news broke this morning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7615712.stm

TFG, seems like an excellent time to trade. Yen will gain, then they will buy $$ and send the dollar back up.

[Tsuru]

Alright, Tokyo is closed so we had no prior indications, but for your information Europe just woke up screaming "SELL!!!!".

Lehmann toppling

[TFG]

TFG, seems like an excellent time to trade. Yen will gain, then they will buy $$ and send the dollar back up.

The market is just too volatile today, I managed to skip about $800 out of it this morning and got out before the news of Barclay's pulling out of the deal was announced on the BBC.

Now the point is, what will happen tomorrow?

I am staying out of it all today till things start to become clearer.
Now, if the treasury announces another bail out, I may jump back in.

Got in and out at short arrows.
People buying back in seems to be having a little effect but resistance levels are still much higher than support levels.
Nah, I am out of this game for the day.

[Greji]

Plus Merril Lynch and Wamu are still on their death beds.

One just got out of bed....

[SIZE="4"]Bank of America to Buy Merrill[/SIZE]

In a rushed bid to ride out the storm sweeping American finance, 94-year-old Merrill Lynch & Co. agreed late Sunday to sell itself to Bank of America Corp. for $50 billion.

The deal, worked out in 48 hours of frenetic negotiating, could instantly reshape the U.S. banking landscape, making the nation's prime behemoth even bigger. Late Sunday night, the companies' boards had approved the deal, but lawyers were negotiating over last-minute details.

Driven by Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America has already made dozens of acquisitions large and small, including the purchase of ailing mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. earlier this year. In adding Merrill Lynch, it would control the nation's largest force of stock brokers as well as a well-regarded investment bank....more here......

[Greji]

Another US bank Lehman Brothers, quickly succumbs to insolvency and unless someone bails them out by the time the US market opens, it will be gone.
Am I glad I managed to get in and out of currency trade before this news broke this morning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7615712.stm

Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy and closes doors today according to J-TV news.

[omae mona]

It's hard to follow the magnitude of what's going on from abroad. To put it in some perspective, the venerable (to some) Alan Greenspan has declared this weekend's events a "once-in-100-years" crisis. The US had five large independent investment banks at the beginning of this year; now there are only two (since two more disappeared this weekend).

And there's a big elephant in the closet that not a lot of people are talking about yet. AIG. If the country's largest insurer doesn't raise 40 billion dollars real damn fast, the mess is going to be even bigger than the mess caused by the disappearance of Lehman and Merrill.

Remember that.

[Greji]

Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy and closes doors today according to J-TV news.

[SIZE="4"]Lehman Files for Biggest Bankruptcy as Suitors Balk[/SIZE]

Sept. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, succumbed to the subprime mortgage crisis it helped create in the biggest bankruptcy filing in history.

The 158-year-old firm, which survived railroad bankruptcies of the 1800s, the Great Depression in the 1930s and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management a decade ago, has filed a Chapter 11 petition with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan today. The collapse of Lehman, which listed more than $613 billion of debt, surpasses WorldCom Inc.'s insolvency in 2002 and Drexel Burnham Lambert's failure in 1990.

Lehman was forced into bankruptcy after two suitors, Barclays Plc and Bank of America Corp., abandoned takeover talks yesterday and the company lost 94 percent of its market value this year. Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld, who started working for the New York-based firm in 1969 and turned it into the biggest underwriter of mortgage-backed securities at the top of the U.S. real estate market, joins his counterparts at Bear Stearns Cos., Merrill Lynch & Co. and more than 10 banks that couldn't survive this year's credit crunch. More.......