Looks like another government arm will soon be knocking on the Treasury’s door: “We are currently considering all options, including borrowing from the Treasury,” said FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair. As we’ve forecast many times, the steady collapse of banks around the U.S. has put an irreparable dent in the FDIC deposit insurance fund.
Give a bank an inch, and it takes a mile. Legislation is making its way through Congress calling for an overhaul of credit card policies. It aims to force banks to stop universal defaults. That’s because a missed payment at one bank currently causes all banks to raise their interest rate.
Buy-out fund manager Mark Patterson won’t be high up on Tim Geithner’s Christmas card list this year. The chairman of MatlinPatterson Advisers says Geithner’s effort to stabilize the banking system through the TARP is a hopelessly ill-conceived policy that enriches speculators at public expense.
People of good intentions and progressive predilection are scratching their heads wondering just how President Barack Obama managed to turn himself into George W. Bush Lite with sugar-on-top just twelve weeks after that fateful walk down the US Capitol’s east stairway to the waiting helicopter. I’m hardly the first observer to note that Mr. Obama’s actions in the face of an epochal finance fiasco and economic collapse are a mere extension of the pre-January-20 policies, carried out by much the same cast of characters.
Bloomberg.com reports that Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Fed bank, says, to my complete disbelief, “For some time to come, disinflation, and even deflation, will represent greater risks than inflation.”
Three cheers for Topolanek!
It was no surprise to me to see gold and silver get sold off the moment that Globex trading began in New York at 6:00 p.m. Wednesday night. Sydney and Hong Kong both open for Thursday morning trading shortly after that, and this gives New York the opportunity to set the tone for trading in the Far East if they wish to do so. The Far East is not a big market [Don't forget that 90%+ of all gold and silver trading volume is during Comex hours in New York] and it can be shoved around quite easily, as volume is never very heavy. Note the bottom of the Kitco graph [below] where it shows the times that various world…
Gold did virtually nothing from the Globex open in New York on Tuesday evening…right through until the Comex open in New York on Wednesday morning.
Pity the rich. Pity the CEOs. Pity the capitalists.
Hate thy neighbor? Giveth his children money; that will fix them all. Few things are as costly as free money.