U.S. Debt May Grow $1 Trillion on Rescue, Barclays' Pond Says -- Bloomberg.
Since 90% of the money in the world are really documents or numbers in a computer, all they have to do is zero out and the money is gone. Poof. No actual gold, silver or even paper money passes through anyone's hands. -- Elaine Meinel Supkis.
A euforia bolsista de hoje, na América, na Europa e na Ásia, mostra duas coisas: que a economia especulativa mundial está sob uma enorme pressão, propensa à histeria, e que não sabe fazer outra coisa senão especular. Sob a ameaça de uma implosão do sistema financeiro neoliberal, da falência de milhares de bancos e empresas financeiras diversas, e do deslizamento rápido da actual recessão americana e europeia para uma recessão muito grave, ou mesmo para uma prolongada estagnação económica, os piratas que comandam na sombra a Reserva Federal americana acabaram por iniciar uma vasta manobra de destruição dos actores dispensáveis do sistema, expropriação fiscal dos americanos, e chantagem sobre os seus principais fornecedores de matérias primas, mercadorias e crédito -- a China, o Japão, a OPEP e a Rússia. Estes, ou continuam a suportar as dívidas do império, nomeadamente através do esquema conhecido por carry-trade japonês, ou arriscam-se a ouvir uma ameaça do género: se não nos deixais expandir a dívida, fechamos para balanço, e sereis forçados a engolir boa parte das vossas exportações; e os vossos activos em dólares serão reduzidos a zero!
Claro que as coisas não se passam exactamente assim, pelo menos diante das televisões. O discurso público, e sobretudo as declarações saídas das reuniões internacionais onde se decidem coisas importantes, são embrulhadas em metáforas mais ou menos obscuras, embora com um final feliz. Desta vez, o terço reza assim: o governo americano e o FED (que é ao mesmo tempo um banco central e um cartel privado) irão comprar e reciclar as más acções do mercado e as "hipotecas ilíquidas", em nome da necessária e urgente estabilidade das principais instituições financeiras do país, sem as quais haveria uma implosão certa de todo o sistema financeiro, não apenas americano, mas mundial. Claro que esta operação de salvamento terá custos, nomeadamente para a generalidade dos contribuintes, e não impedirá a falência de muitas empresas e bancos. No entanto, sairia muito mais caro aos contribuintes, bem como aos parceiros comerciais dos Estados Unidos, deixar cair Wall Street, ou provocar um enfarte no coração oculto da Reserva Federal. Foi explicando ao mundo a dureza desta realidade, que Henry Paulson, Secretário de Estado do Tesouro, e antigo CEO da Goldman Sachs, justificou a chuva dourada de dívida americana lançada nos mercados mundiais. Os corretores, como era previsível, viveram um dia orgiástico. O frenesim entre os especuladores foi certamente intenso. As casas de putas estão abarrotar!
A coisa é escabrosa e potencialmente explosiva. Mas a euforia de hoje pode não durar mais de uma semana!
REFERÊNCIAS
- Friday, 19 September 2008
The Unitary Federal Reserve - Crisis Choreography. By London Banker.
Just as we here in the rest of the world hoped we might breathe easy with the end of the Bush administration in sight, and several creditable candidates for president coming forward, the lawless unitary executive has expanded to embrace the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, debasing and contaminating the financial markets globally with its spread to our own central banks and market authorities and destabilizing our banks and investment markets. Once again in the name of crisis and expediency the laws are ignored, decisions are taken in secret, extra-judicial reapportionment of property and contract is mandated by executive fiat, and legislative review and judicial intervention are impossible. Over the past year every financial crisis has been met with lawless and Enron-esque innovation by the Federal Reserve and Treasury, and this week was arguably more extreme.
(...)
The unitary executive of the Bush presidency eroded and disregarded the civil rights of Americans and others. The unitary Federal Reserve [FED] disregards the property and contract rights of Americans and others. Arguably the actions of the Federal Reserve over the past year represent the largest state confiscation of wealth in the history of man, dispossessing currency investors, equity investors, bond investors and taxpayers of literally trillions of dollars of current and future wealth by executive fiat.
The hypocrisy of the Bush administration criticizing Chavez while defending Paulson and Bernanke should be the stuff of late night stand up comedy.
And the answer to the crisis so created, according to those in authority in Washington and Wall Street, is to give more concentrated power with less review and less oversight to the Federal Reserve. The reforms now being discussed in Washington are aimed at (1) gutting the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] so that it can no longer challenge the Fed's primacy in investment bank and financial conglomerate prudential supervision, oversight of clearing and settlement systems, market integrity and stability and introducing “principles based” regulation so that no one well connected need ever worry about prosecution or conviction ever again; (2) gutting the FDIC [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation] so that it can no longer challenge the Fed's determination of capital adequacy or prudential supervision at insured banks or restrain cross-affiliate financing or excessively risky activity within bank holding company groups; (3) gutting the CFTC [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] so that the Fed has primacy to oversee risk management in all OTC [Over-the-counter] and exchange-traded derivatives clearing and margin; and (4) providing explicit powers to the Federal Reserve to promote "market stability" by means which shall be secret, unreviewable, and above challenge in the courts; and (5) making the Federal Reserve the prime global regulator for review of the regulatory and prudential supervision arrangements everywhere else in the world through mandated “harmonization” of global standards as a quid pro quo for foreign market recognition and access.
Stalin couldn’t have drafted a better plan for central control of the global economy after wreaking such havoc and devastation.
(...)
For now the ECB [European Central Bank], Bank of England and others are content to cooperate with the Fed, but as the chaos deepens and it becomes clear that the losses are to be allocated principally outside the US borders to those foolish enough to hold assets the Fed’s policies degrade and debase, they will begin to question and to look to each other for common interest and alignment.
(...)
In the past year and just this past week, trillions of dollars of wealth have been allocated or misallocated, preserved, appropriated or destroyed by central bank fiat. If we really have nations of laws and not men, capitalist markets and not command economies, then it’s essential we peek behind the curtain to ask by whom and why and hold them accountable. -- London Banker. - Friday, 19 September 2008
We need a new HOLC - more than a new RTC or RFC- to provide massive debt relief to the household sector. We need to create the HOME (Home Owners’ Mortgage Enterprise). By Nouriel Roubini.
The most important policy action is not the decision of extending the swap lines between central banks (so as to provide dollar liquidity to non-US banks abroad); it is not the re-imposition of limits to short sales (a policy action that is itself a naked attempt to manipulate upward stock prices); it is rather the realization that a generalized debt and solvency problem required a solution that leads to significant debt reduction.
(...)
At this point a severe recession is unavoidable; the only question is how severe and protracted it will be. Debt reduction and public recapitalization of banks will not instantly resolve every problem and will not prevent a painful recession that – at this point – will last at least 18 month. But it will prevent a painful U-shaped recession from turning into a multi-year L-shaped recession like the one that afflicted Japan for a decade after the bursting of its real estate and equity bubble. So let us not delude ourselves that even a HOME program of debt reduction will prevent a recession: the recession train has already left the station and the economic downturn is already becoming global. What we can avoid now is only the risk that a severe US and now advanced economy recession will turn into a Japanese style decade long stagnation. -- Nouriel Roubini.
OAM 438 20-09-2008 01:17
