World financial crisis Part 5

..my bold in body

Reshaping Fiscal Policies In Europe:

Enforcing Austerity, Attacking Democracy

These proposals, when fully implemented, will not only enforce a permanent regime of fiscal austerity, but also further remove macroeconomic policy from democratic control. For these reasons they need to be vigorously fought right across Europe. But if readers in the UK (Canada) imagine that they are not affected, since we are not in the Eurozone, they need to think again, for the structural deficit has also become the preferred fiscal target of Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, backed by the Office of Budget Responsibility. While the most influential economic think tanks, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the National Institute for Economic and Social research, have begun to challenge the Coalition's austerity policies, they have not as yet repudiated the use of the structural deficit as a fiscal target. So what exactly is the structural deficit, and why is it such a danger?...

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/772.php

The Delicious Irony of Morris Greenberg’s AIG Suit Against the US Treasury   Michael Hudson

It's a good one. Financial oligarchy pushing false hope that re-inflating another financial bubble is the way to prosperity.

It's finished. We can expect more U.S. Military aggressions and more bad central planning courtesy of Wall Street.

Ryan and the Poor

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NYC RESTAURANT WORKERS DANCE & SING FOR A WAGE HIKE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_s8e1R6rG8&feature=player_embedded

Tiny Cyprus tells neoliberal Europe to get lost

In the face of massive popular outrage, Cypriot MPs spectacularly vote against a bank deposit tax imposed by the Troika, leaving the eurozone reeling.

We almost stopped believing it was possible, but apparently some lawmakers in European debtor states still have the guts and ability to stand up to their cocky, greedy and reckless foreign creditors. On Tuesday, an overwhelming majority of Cypriot MPs spectacularly voted against a bank deposit tax imposed by the Troika of lenders — with not a single MP voting in favor, despite the President’s warning that a no-vote would lead to financial armageddon. The tax was a prerequisite for Cyprus to receive its 10 billion euro EU-IMF bailout; the country’s dramatic act of defiance now leaves the eurozone reeling in great uncertainty as to the repercussions for the single currency.

Of course, the neoliberal European Goliath has itself to blame for the rebellious behavior of tiny Cyprus, whose 17 billion euro economy constitutes only half a percent of total eurozone GDP. After all, it was they who on Saturday blackmailed the Cypriot government into imposing a bank deposit tax of 9.9% on rich depositors — mostly Russian oligarchs – and 6.75% on ordinary Cypriot savers with less than 100.000 euros in the bank. The bank deposit tax was needed, according to EU and IMF officials, in order for Cyprus to contribute 7 billion towards the 10 billion euro EU-IMF bailout. If creditors were to take the burden of covering the entire 17 billion euro shortfall, so their reasoning went, it would both outrage German voters and take Cypriot debt levels to unsustainable levels.

But as soon as the “agreement” was announced, it immediately became obvious that the bailout was botched. The 10 billion euro emergency loan alone will already push Cyprus’ debt-to-GDP ratio to an unsustainable 130%, forcing an unprecedented degree of austerity onto the country — the likes of which would make even the Greek plight look like a walk in the park. But more importantly, perhaps, Cypriot depositors were rightly outraged by what effectively amounted to a government raid (spurned on by foreign creditors) on their hard-earned savings. While wealthy bondholders were once again let off the hook, ordinary Cypriots were forced to pay for the reckless behavior of their shady offshore banking sector and the irresponsible crisis management policies pursued by the European Union and IMF.

Taking to the streets in the thousands in an attempt to convince the government to backtrack on its commitment to foreign creditors — and simultaneously taking to the banks in the hundreds of thousands in an attempt to retrieve their savings — the panicked reaction of the Cypriot people threatened not only to spill over into a wholesale loss of confidence in the political system, but also to unleash nothing short of a potentially self-destructive and internationally contagious bank run, which could have had dramatic reverberations across the eurozone as depositors elsewhere might conclude that their savings are no longer safe either. Protesters in Nicosia were therefore right to carry placards into the streets in Spanish and Italian: it may be us today, but there is no doubt that you will be next.

Under this immense popular pressure, and under the general threat of a crippling bank run and mass capital flight that could force the Cypriot government to pump even more liquidity into its banks — which would in turn require it to print money, implying a forced exit from the eurozone and a return to the Cypriot pound — a total of 36 out of 56 MPs voted against the deposit tax, with 19 prominent government MPs abstaining and one absent. Not a single MP voted against. How come? Why did Cypriot lawmakers suddenly decide to listen to their own people, where Greek, Spanish, Irish and Portuguese MPs have made a profession out of backstabbing their voters?...

http://roarmag.org/2013/03/cyprus-bailout-tax-eu-imf-bailout/

The markets have dropped quite a bit today - Financial analysts will call it a correction but....................................

Oil  down $2.50

Gold down another $130 after last week's drop

DJIA - down $150

TSX - down $250

Cdn $ - down 0.75 of a cent

Deficit Is Falling Because Of Government Austerity, Not Economic Recovery

quote:

KELTON: Well, mainly because if you think about the rationale, if the rationale is that the U.S. government is at some future date, you know, whether it's ten years or 15 or 25 years from now, going to find itself in a situation where it has a debt problem--and by debt problem [incompr.] you know, you have debts that you can't pay--well, then we know that that's just a silly thing to be worried about if you're the United States of America, because the U.S. government borrows in dollars and has a monopoly on the creation of the U.S. dollar. Nobody else on the planet can legally create U.S. dollars. Only the U.S. government can do that. And so if you're talking about whether you can afford to make good on promises that you've made to the elderly, to dependants, to the disabled in the form of Social Security support, you would never say we need to reform these programs today because somewhere down the road we're not going to be able to mail the checks to the seniors and the disabled that we promised, because we won't know where to get dollars. That doesn't make any sense. And Alan Greenspan has said as much. So I think what happened is that we watched what happened in places like Greece, and we bought into the story that, you know, if somehow we don't get our fiscal house in order--we need to behave like a household, tighten our belts, and all that sort of stuff--we're going to end up like Greece...

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&I...

Sounds like funny-money laundering is the Fed's latest 'stimulus' scheme.  It's either that, or there's a new financial powerhouse on the world's financial scene.  The citizens of Belgium should be more surprised than anyone to hear the country has that kind of money to throw away.

Quote:

Foreign capital inflow into U.S. Treasuries declined sharply in March, with robust demand coming mainly from Belgium, which extended its recent run of heavy buying of U.S. debt.  Holdings of U.S. Treasuries in Belgium rose a net $40.2 billion in the month. Over the last five months, Belgium's net increase totaled about $201.1 billion.

Quote:

The euro zone nation is now the third largest holder of U.S. Treasuries with $381.4 billion, after China and Japan.

The issue is not going away...what with the spiraling acceleration of financial and real estate assets, the Central banks are being forced to end their 14 Trillion plus money printing scam (since 2008) to sustain? the system!

Creating increasing pressure on the bond markets to take up the slack!
Combined with the Trump administration´s attempts to weaken the dollar to strengthen its faltering industry, forcing increased inflation...which in turn is guaranteed to create bankruptcies to the highly indebted......

¨However, a bigger point brought up is what this renewed currency warfare could mean for the Federal Reserve in 2018, when a lower dollar will boost inflation even more than expected, forcing the FOMC to be more hawkish, and hike even faster, resulting in a risk asset crash.¨...from zerohedge

the collapse is now in sight!

NDPP wrote:

The 'Fractured World': Plutocrats Convene in Davos Amid War and Great Power Conflict

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/27/pers-j27.html

"...The threat of war was only one of the threats vexing the Davos elite. The past week saw a spate of warnings that red-hot markets are on the verge of a meltdown. William White, the chairman of the OECD review board, declared this week: 'All the market indictors right now look very similar to what we saw before the Lehman crisis..."

Plutocrats Convene in Davos Amid War and Great Power Conflict

Don't they do that every single year?

Quote:

the promised apocalypse, after which everything will be ruled by the one true doctrine, is always just around the corner and foretold by any number of current events.

Don't forget the apostates and sinners, writhing and crying in a pool of regret.

WSWS's Trotskyist eschatology bears a strong resemblance to the Christian variety: the promised apocalypse, after which everything will be ruled by the one true doctrine, is always just around the corner and foretold by any number of current events.....

you miss the point entirely....latest financial news is greater increases in mortgage rates.....a sure sign of mass bankruptcies and foreclosures.........it is not that one dogma will come to the fore...it means that people must begin taking the steps to propse and act out their ideas of the alternatives...what strategies to take up...discussions must begin...the point of describing the imminent collapse  is to get ready!!!