[Cobbles]

Garak, on 16 May 2010 - 11:24 PM, said:

Can someone please invade us and save from these incompetent morons please?

I'm pretty sure the Turks would oblige.

[Cold Iron]

Actually if you include hong kong and taiwan it's over 30%, more if you consider that part of Japan's stake is really held in proxy by China due to Japan's not insignificant foreign debt. Also domestically held debt is not considered as much of a problem because interest payments stay onshore.

If you consider the fact that most Eurozone foreign debt is held within the Eurozone, the US and Australia really do come out on top of the foreign debt tree, with only Zimbabwe, Liberia and Iraq in the same league. Super solid economies those three.

[Jusentantaka]

well, ok, I'll give you hong kong being china but taiwan, no. Whatever the Communapitalists say, the ROC isn't beholden to the PRC, and neither are the ROC banks which hold US treasury bonds.

And Japan holds 93% of its debt internally, I can't seem to find any figures on who owns japan's foreign debt though, so maybe China does own over 3/4s of the 7% (3/4 would be over 400bn), In which case fuck-ish. I recall reading that China didn't own much of japan's foreign-debt, but that very well could have been ten years ago.

Quote

If you consider the fact that most Eurozone foreign debt is held within the Eurozone, the US and Australia really do come out on top of the foreign debt tree,

Its late, so maybe that is why, but I just don't see how it matters that germany holds UK debt (need two big economies, and there isn't much in the way of choice ) rather than say australia or india or someone else outside the EZ.

This post has been edited by Jusentantaka: 17 May 2010 - 04:51 AM

[Cold Iron]

Come on we're talking about a US collapse hypothetical, you think the PRC won't gobble up ROC as soon as the US falters?

Yeah I haven't been able to google stats on how much of Japan's debt is owned by China, that's why I just said "more". Yes Japan's debt is 93% internal, but it's also near 200% of GDP, so we're talking about potentially hundreds of billions here, which is not entirely trivial, a few more % points at any rate.

It matters because they are governed with common interest. You will not see China providing the US with a bailout. In fact you may see China adopting aggressive policy depending on the US trade policy like agricultural tariffs, and involvement in matters of national pride, like ROC and North Korea not to mention US fiscal policy, China will not be able to afford for their currency to fall through the floor if the Fed decides the answer is to print trillions.

This post has been edited by Cold Iron: 17 May 2010 - 06:07 AM

[Nicodimas]

Quote

Come on we're talking about a US collapse hypothetical

I'm not /stares. But you all knew that. I honestly don't think they will let anything falther, which may lead to everything faltering all at once if they are unlucky. At this point this may be a good thing, or it migh be 30-40s europe again. I'd love to think we learned something from history...but naw. It's going to be good times as U.S. firms are engaging in economic war imo. Here is some more concise history all in one spot:

British Financial Warfare: 1929; 1931-33; How The City Of London Created The Great Depression

The great economic and financial cataclysm of the first half of the twentieth century, which we have come to know as the Great Depression, was caused by the Bank of England, the British government, and the City of London. The potential for the Great Depression derived from the economic and human destruction wrought by World War I, which was itself a product of British geopolitics and especially of the British policy, exemplified by King Edward VII, of creating an encircling anti-German alliance in order to wage war. The economic destruction of Europe was continued after 1918 by the Peace of Paris (Versailles, St. Germain, Trianon, Neuilly, Sevres) imposed by the Allies on the defeated Central Powers. Especially important here were the 55 billion gold dollars in reparations inflicted on defeated Germany, along with the war debt burden of the supposedly victorious powers themselves. Never during the 1920’s did world trade surpass the levels of 1913. Reparations and war debt were a recipe for economic stagnation.

The ravaged post-war, post-Versailles world of the 1920’s provides the main backdrop for the following considerations:

The events leading to the Great Depression are all related to British economic warfare against the rest of the world, which mainly took the form of the attempt to restore a London- centered world monetary system incorporating the gold standard. The efforts of the British oligarchy in this regard were carried out by a clique of international central bankers dominated by Lord Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, assisted by his tools Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and Hjalmar Schacht of the German Reichsbank. This British-controlled gold standard proved to be a straightjacket for world economic development, somewhat along the lines of the deflationary Maastricht “convergence criteria” of the late 1990’s.
The New York stock exchange speculation of the Coolidge-Hoover era was not a spontaneous phenomenon, but was rather deliberately encouraged by Norman and Strong under the pretext of relieving pressure on the overvalued British pound sterling after its gold convertibility had been restored in 1925. In practice, the pro-speculation policies of the US Federal Reserve were promoted by Montagu Norman and his satellites for the express purpose of fomenting a Bubble Economy in the United States, just as later central bankers fostered a Bubble Economy in Japan after 1986. When this Wall Street Bubble had reached gargantuan proportions in the autumn of 1929, Montagu Norman sharply cut the British bank rate, repatriating British hot money, and pulling the rug out from under the Wall Street speculators, thus deliberately and consciously imploding the US markets. This caused a violent depression in the United States and some other countries, with the collapse of financial markets and the contraction of production and employment. In 1929, Norman engineered a collapse by puncturing the bubble.
This depression was rendered far more severe and, most importantly, permanent, by the British default on gold payment in September, 1931. This British default, including all details of its timing and modalities, and also the subsequent British gambit of competitive devaluations, were deliberate measures of economic warfare on the part of the Bank of England. British actions amounted to the deliberate destruction of the pound sterling system, which was the only world monetary system in existence at that time. The collapse of world trade became irreversible. With deliberate prompting from the British, currency blocs emerged, with the clear implication that currency blocs like the German Reichsmark and the Japanese yen would soon have to go to war to obtain the oil and other natural resources that orderly world trade could no longer provide. In 1931, Norman engineered a disintegration by detonating the gold backing of the pound sterling.
In the United States, the deliberate British default of September 1931 led, given the do-nothing Hoover Administration policies, directly to the banking crisis of 1932-33, which closed down or severely restricted virtually every bank in the country by the morning of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration. If Roosevelt had not broken decisively with Hoover’s impotent refusal to fight the depression, constitutional government might have collapsed. As it was, FDR was able to roll back the disintegration, but economic depression and mass unemployment were not overcome until 1940 and the passage of Lend-Lease.
As we have already hinted, we consider that these matters are not solely of historical interest. The repertoire of central bank intrigue, speculative bubbles, defaults, devaluations, bank rate manipulations, deflations and inflations constitute the essential arsenal being used by British economic warfare planners today.

The Maastricht “convergence criteria” with their insane deflationary thrust are very similar in effect to the rules of the gold exchange standard as administered by London, 1925-1931. For that matter, the policies of the International Monetary Fund are too. The parallel extends even to the detail of Perfidious Albion’s gambit of opting out of the European Currency Union while watching its victims writhe in an deflationary straightjacket tailored between Threadneedle Street and Saville Row.

Since the summer of 1995 hot money generated by the low interest rates of the Bank of Japan has been used by hedge fund operators of the Soros school to puff up the world bubble. If the Bank of England’s late 1996 switch to bank rate increases turns out to be a harbinger of world tight money, then it is possible that the collapse and disintegration of the world financial system will recapitulate other phases of the interwar years.

Lord Montagu Norman was always obsessed with secrecy, but the British financial press has often practiced an arrogant and cynical bluntness in its self-congratulatory accounts of its own exploits. Therefore, wherever possible we have let the British, especially the London Economist magazine and Lord Keynes, speak for themselves and indict themselves. We have also drawn on the memoirs of US President Herbert Hoover, who had moments of suprising lucidity even as he, for the sake of absurd free-market, laissez-faire ideology, allowed his country to drift into the abyss. As we will see, Hoover had everything he needed to base his 1932 campaign for re-election on blaming the Federal Reserve, especially its New York branch, for the 1929 calamity. Hoover could have assailed the British for their September 1931 stab in the back. Hoover would have been doing the country a permanent service, and he might have done somewhat better in the electoral college. But Hoover was not capable of seriously attacking the New York Fed and its master, Lord Montagu Norman.



ECONOMIC DECLINE AFTER WORLD WAR I

The roots of the crash of 1929 are to be sought in the economic consequences of World War I, which was itself a product of the British geopolitical machinations of King Edward VII and his circles. The physical impact of World War I was absolutely devastating in terms of human losses and material damage. This destruction was then greatly magnified by the insistence of London and Paris on reparations to be paid by defeated and prostrate Germany.

After a few years of haggling, these reparations were fixed at the astronomical sum of 32 billion gold-backed US dollars, to be paid over 62 years at an interest rate of 5%. Even Lord Keynes, in his “Economic Consequences of the Peace,” compared this to the imposition of slavery on Germany and her defeated allies, or to squeezing a lemon until the pits squeak.

The reparations issue was complicated by the inter-allied war debts, owed especially by France and Britain to the United States. For a time a system emerged in which Wall Street made loans to Germany so that Germany could pay reparations to France, which could then pay war debts to Britain and the US. But this system was based on usury, not production, and was therefore doomed.

The most dramatic evidence available on economic stagnation during the 1920’s is the fact that during this decade world trade never attained the pre-war level of 1913.

THE BRITISH RECORD OF STARTING WALL STREET PANICS

The British had a long track record of using the London Bank Rate (that is, the rediscount rate of the Bank of England) for financial and economic warfare against the United States. The periodic panics of the nineteenth century were more often than not caused by deliberate British sabotage. A few examples:

In the Panic of 1837, the stage had been set for depression by outgoing President Andrew Jackson’s and Secretary of the Treasury Roger Taney’s abolition of the Second Bank of the United States, by their cultivation of the state “pet” banks, by their imbecilic Specie Circular of 1836, which demanded gold payment to the federal government for the purchase of public lands, and by their improvident distribution of the Treasury surplus to the states. London’s ultinmate weapon turned out to be the Bank of England bank rate. With all the American defenses sabotaged, the Bank of England sharply raised its discount rates, sucking gold specie and hot money liquidity back across the Atlantic, while British merchants and trading houses cut off their lines of credit to their American customers. In the resulting chaos, not just private banks and businesses went bankrupt, but also the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan, which repudiated their debts, permanently impairing US credit in the world. Internal improvements came to a halt, and the drift towards secession and civil war became more pronounced.

The Panic of 1873 resuted from a British-directed effort to ruin the banking house of Jay Cooke and Company, which had served Lincoln and his successors as a quasi-governmental agency for the marketing of United States Treasury securities and railroad bonds during and after the Civil War. The Cooke insolvency had been preceded by a massive dumping of US staocks and bonds in London and the rest of Europe. This was London’s way of shutting down the Civil War boom that Lincoln’s dirigist and protectionist policies had made possible. Instead, a long US depression followed.

The Panic of 1893 was prepared by the 1890 “Baring panic” in London, caused by the insolvency of Barings Bank, the same one which went bankrupt and was sold off in the spring of 1995. In the resulting depression, the US Treasury surplus was reduced to almost nothing, and a budget defecit loomed. Using this situation as a pretext, British speculators drove the exchange rate of the dollar down to the point where owners of gold began exporting their gold to London. Treasury gold stocks dipped below $100,000,000, and then kept falling to $68,000,000; US national bankruptcy threatened. In response to this crisis, subversive President Grover Cleveland gave control of the US public debt to the New York banking houses of Morgan and Belmont, themselves British agents of influence. Cleveland “sold out to Wall Street” by selling US gold bonds to Morgan and Belmont at reduced prices, with the taxpayers picking up the tab; Morgan and Belmont promised to “use their influence” in London to prevent further British bear raids against the US dollar and gold stocks. All of this caused another long depression.

The economics profession is totally bankrupt today, with every Nobel Prize winner in economics with the sole exception of Maurice Allais qualifying for committment to a psychiatric institution. One of the reasons for the depravity of the economists is that their assigned task has always been one of mystification, especially the job of covering up the simple and brutal fact that American depressions have generally been caused by Bank of England and City of London bankers. All the mystical mumbo-jumbo of curves, cycles, and epicycles a la Schumpeter has always had the purpose of camouflaging the fact that the Bank of England bank rate was the nineteenth century’s closest equivalent to the hydrogen bomb.




DEFLATION CRISIS OF 1920-21

The New York panic of 1920-21 represents yet another example of British economic warfare. The illusion that the existence of the Federal Reserve System might serve as a barrier against new financial panics and depressions received a nasty knock with the immediate postwar depression of 1920, which was a co-production of the Bank of England and the New York Federal Reserve. The British deliberately provoked this Wall Street panic and severe depression during a period of grave military tension between London and washington occasioned by the naval rivalry of the US and UK. The British Bank Rate had been at 6% from November 1919 until April 15, 1920, when it was raised to 7%. The bust in Wall Street began in the late summer of 1920. The UK Bank Rate was lowered to 6.5% in April 1922, and it went down all the way to 3% by July, 1922.

The Federal Reserve, as usual, followed London’s lead, gradually escalating the discount rate to 7% in June, 1920 to detonate the bust, and descending to 6.5% about a year later. The argument used by the central bankers’ cabal to justify their extreme tight money policy was the climate of postwar inflation, speculation, expansion and the freeing of consumer demand that had been pent up in wartime. This depression lasted about two years and was quite sharp, with a New York composite index of transaction indices falling 13.7% for the sharpest contraction since 1879. In many other countries this was the fiercest depression on record. As Keynes later complained, the US recovered much more rapidly than the British, who scarcely recovered at all. For the rest of the interwar period, the United Kingdom was beset by permanent depression.

The fact that this depression was brought on deliberately by the Norman-Strong duo is amply documented in their private correspondence. In December 1920, Strong and Norman agreed that “the policy of making money dearer had been successful, though it would have been better six months earlier. They agreed, too, that deflation must be gradual; it was becoming now too rapid and they favored a small reduction in rates both in London and New York.” [Clay, Lord Norman, p. 132]

THE CRASH OF 1929

The panic of 1929 is a prime example of a financial collapse which was not prevented by the Federal Reserve. In fact, the 1920’s speculaltive bubble and subsequent crash of 1929 was directly caused by Federal Reserve policies. Those policies in turn had been dictated by the world of British finance, which had been decisive in shaping the Federal Reserve to begin with.

During World War I, all the industrialized nations except the United States had left the gold standard. Only the United States had been able to stay with gold, albeit with special controls. During the 1920’s about two thirds of the world’s supply of monetary gold, apart from Soviet holdings, was concentrated in two countries – the United States and France. The British, who were fighting to preserve their dominance of the world financial system, had very little gold.

The British were determined to pursue their traditional economic imperialism, but they had emerged from the war economically devastated and, for the first time, a debtor nation owing war debts to the United States. At the same time, the British were fighting to keep their precious world naval supremacy, which was threatened by the growth of the United States Navy. If the US had merely built the ships that were called for in laws passed in 1916, the slogan of “Brittania Rules the Waves” would have gone into the dust- bin of history early in the 1920’s.

The pre-war gold parity had given a dollar to pound relation of $4.86 per pound sterling. As an avid imperialist Montagu Norman was insisting by the mid-1920’s that the pound return to the gold standard at the pre-war rate. A high pound was a disaster for British exports, but gave the British great advantages when it came to buying American and other foreign real estate, stocks, minerals, food, and all other external commodities. A high pound also maximized British earnings on insurance, shipping, and financial services — London’s so-called “invisible exports” and earnings.

[Nicodimas]

Double post..Weird.


Go Suns!

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 19 May 2010 - 05:32 PM

[Adjutant Stormy~]

You've got to break up your posts into manageable chunks, man!

Keynesian economics: keeping the house standing by welding it to the neighbors' houses.

[Cold Iron]

TLDR. Blame the brits? Why the face not?

[Cold Iron]

So the Aussie dollar copped a battering last night due to a rise in global risk aversion. We'll be ok because we've got China buying iron ore and coal, but this is a bad sign for US, EU recovery.

This post has been edited by Cold Iron: 20 May 2010 - 10:44 PM

[Thelomen Toblerone]

I find the attempt to blame the Brits for the great depression absolutely fucking hilarious, especially from an American. It's like blaming Andorra for WW2.

[Cold Iron]

Those vicious Pyrenees bastards? Don't let on we know they'll kill us all!

[MTS]

That has got to be the most anti-British piece of history I have ever read (and yay for FDR!). It's making out like America was this poor, betrayed nation dancing to Britain's malevolent, economic puppetmastery. Ridiculous. The author even blames them for WWI! The author's obvious bias makes this 'concise' slice of history unreliable at best, and pretty much useless at worst.

[Nicodimas]

America is dying. The Goverment is completely taking over it all.

So they control Housing. Check.
They have taken over complete control of the stock market. Check.
Healthcare will be theres very very soon. Check.
Last year they decided where money goes through for Higher education as they run all the loan processes.
Now they are cutting govermental money to private education, which dooms 99% of privates. Check.

http://www.ktar.com/...=1296562&nid=48
This sent shiver's down my spine as it all just clicked.

With Profound sadness, the goverment has single handingly destroyed America as they have completely taken over Market Controls, Housing, Healthcare, and Higher Education in the last year to a level never before thought of.

I'm just going to sit on sidelines and watch the travesty unfold. No point telling people as they just don't get it. I'm just going to tally which industry they are going to steal from the people next. You can try to deny it, but the goverment just did a powergrab in the last year on all aspects of life. Many people will be gleeful on this situation too.

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 25 May 2010 - 05:32 PM

[Aptorian]

Oh no! America is turning into a socialist state! The Government is caring for the people! We're dooooooomed!

[worry]

The first three things on that checklist are entirely untrue, and the last two things are extremely positive. Federal student loans don't require a middleman, that only costs students more in the long term. And cutting federal aid to private colleges should be cheered on by any and all conservatives, libertarians, teabag sympathizers, small gov. proponents, etc.

[Obdigore]

Nicodimas, on 25 May 2010 - 05:31 PM, said:

America is dying. The Goverment is completely taking over it all.

So they control Housing. Check.

Nope

Quote

They have taken over complete control of the stock market. Check.

Nope

Quote

Healthcare will be theres very very soon. Check.

Nope

Quote

Last year they decided where money goes through for Higher education as they run all the loan processes.

They simplified their control over where the money goes. And it certainly isnt 'all' the loan process, but just the government loans.

Quote

Now they are cutting govermental money to private education, which dooms 99% of privates. Check.

Shouldn't private education be... private?

Quote

http://www.ktar.com/...=1296562&nid=48
This sent shiver's down my spine as it all just clicked.

With Profound sadness, the goverment has single handingly destroyed America as they have completely taken over Market Controls, Housing, Healthcare, and Higher Education in the last year to a level never before thought of.

I'm just going to sit on sidelines and watch the travesty unfold. No point telling people as they just don't get it. I'm just going to tally which industry they are going to steal from the people next. You can try to deny it, but the goverment just did a powergrab in the last year on all aspects of life. Many people will be gleeful on this situation too.

GLOOM AND DOOM AND IDIOCY BASED ON LIES, OH MY!

This post has been edited by Obdigore: 25 May 2010 - 07:22 PM

[Nicodimas]

Quote

Shouldn't private education be... private?

Consequences of actions--->

Yup Obdigore...you are correct let's seperate the have and have not's even more. I can think of some preety good privates where some kid's could use money to get into them. Now there parents are going to have cover the missing money they would have gotten. So the kid's no longer get to go on the big ones-<Harvard>. On the smallers ones, minorites go here four times more than any other school system<UoP>. Alternatively, those rich kids will have some more slots because minorites and the poor will have less axcess. The goverment just wants to support it's own product.

Instead of just disagreeing back it up. I have posted multiple times with factually information on how the goverment wormed it's way into the market through housing,this crash, and all the way back to 1913. There next goal is to take 401ks <15 trillion worth> and make sure treasures are invested in as a backstop for security of the economy. Granted it will be percentages, but still a different way of taxing people. There are several bills pending doing this. Ten pages is what they got rid of in 97 and helped cause this crash, they however are going introduce several thousands of bill..Have you been reading this stuff at all?

Healthcare bill. The effects of this will be known by 2016 to everyone. I think people will be ticked when it clicks what this really caused. This is a wait and see really. I could give you this point, but MASSIVE modifications have to made as it looks like a power grab to me from the private market. Another couple thousand page bill.

Quote

They simplified their control over where the money goes. And it certainly isnt 'all' the loan process, but just the government loans.

Your totally misinformed on the way this is working. Sorry go read some more on this. Private lenders are no longer allowed as the goverment took this over, yet FAILED to change the interest rate of 6.8%. You think if the cost issue was really there they would have lowered this with freaking ZIRP going on. We need some true fixes and granting more power to entity complicit may not work the way you think.

To me the goverment is here for security. Something they have failed at with the speculation of the stock market<nobody policing it-See SEC case>, response to the oil spill, resposne to Katrina, failure to protect small cities from industrialized waste after calling for fixes for a decade, etc. You can go on and on with the failures, yet you'd give them control of higher education, healthcare, and the market so willingly?

If they have failed so badly at these things why trust them? I would rather trust a corporation that has some accoutability and I could put out of business if needed. The the biggest business in America, the goverment, which has zero chance to sue and very little accoutability. You get arrested for shorting them there needed money, or they have the power to garnish your wages.

I Want to see change for the better, not worse.

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 25 May 2010 - 08:11 PM

[Cold Iron]

Nicodimas, on 25 May 2010 - 05:31 PM, said:

I'm just going to tally which industry they are going to steal from the people next.

Is that irony... or just stupidity?

[Nicodimas]

It depends on the way you see that quote cold. If we are talking marxism's it's kinda funny actually coming from a capitialist. /grins

However, it's kinda true too. Watch this 401k bill go through and people not get it. I still think it's funny that we pay taxes to subsidize public higher education just to have these student fall into debt slavery in a ZIRP world at 6.8 percent interest. That's some funny stuff. Goverment needs it's money..feed it so it grows.

So ticked today. Neoliberalism's goal is to DESTROY the middle class. This made my mind up on this and everything has happened this last year.Have and have not's for us.

Even more controls:

http://www.cnsnews.c...s/article/66439

Quote

The bill, if it becomes law, would create the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and empower it to “gather information and activities of persons operating in consumer financial markets,” including the names and addresses of account holders, ATM and other transaction records, and the amount of money kept in each customer’s account.

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 26 May 2010 - 12:20 AM

[Adjutant Stormy~]

That's not control, that's spying.

It's pretty hard to be strictly angry with 'the people' over legislation. Most Americans are either completely ignorant of legislation, or head-in-the-sand about it.
Now, that said, nobody can suggest, with a straight face, that monitoring bank management is going to regulate wall street investing behaviors.