Showing posts with label currency crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label currency crisis. Show all posts
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
US to press China on financial reform: Geithner
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| © AFP/Getty Images/File Justin Sullivan |
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States will press China to make progress on financial reform at high-level bilateral talks next week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said.
The US is going "to put a little more attention this time on expanding our discussion to the next stage of financial reform in China," he told a US-China Business Council forum in Washington.
"If China's going to be successful in moving the economy away from exports to a more domestic-demand economy, it's going to have to increase the return to savers in China and dismantle the set of protections that are now designed to lower the cost of capital to state-owned enterprises."
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Euro under siege as now Portugal hits panic button
The Gazette
The euro is facing an unprecedented crisis after another country indicated on Monday night that it was at a "high risk" of requiring an international bail-out.
Portugal became the latest European nation to admit it was on the brink of seeking help from Brussels after Ireland confirmed it had begun preliminary talks over its debt problems.
Greece also disclosed that its economic problems are even worse than previously thought.
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, raised the spectre of the euro collapsing as she warned: "If the euro fails, then Europe fails."
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Obama returns fire after China slams Fed's move
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| Dees Illustration |
Reuters
President Barack Obama defended the Federal Reserve's policy of printing dollars on Monday after China and Russia stepped up criticism ahead of this week's Group of 20 meeting.
The G20 summit has been pitched as a chance for leaders of the countries that account for 85 percent of world output to prevent a currency row escalating into a rush to protectionism that could imperil the global recovery.
But there is little sign of consensus.
The summit has been overshadowed by disagreements over the U.S. Federal Reserve's quantitative easing (QE) policy under which it will print money to buy $600 billion of government bonds. The move could depress the dollar and cause a destabilizing flow of money into emerging economies.
"I will say that the Fed's mandate, my mandate, is to grow our economy. And that's not just good for the United States, that's good for the world as a whole," Obama said during a trip to India. "The worst thing that could happen to the world economy, not just ours, is if we end up being stuck with no growth or very limited growth."
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said all participants at a meeting of the world's central bankers in Basel, Switzerland had insisted they were not pursuing weak currency policies.
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Friday, November 5, 2010
Bank Holiday Rumors Swirl Amidst Currency Crisis
Fed’s “mad experiment” in dollar debasement stokes fresh jitters
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
With the world on the verge of a currency war as the Federal Reserve follows through on its dollar-killing quantitative easing program, rumors are once again swirling of a “bank holiday,” during which US citizens will be prevented from withdrawing money or at least limited in the amount of the withdrawal they can make.
The bank holiday is rumored to be set for next week, with Tuesday November 11 pinpointed as the likeliest date.
Prison Planet
With the world on the verge of a currency war as the Federal Reserve follows through on its dollar-killing quantitative easing program, rumors are once again swirling of a “bank holiday,” during which US citizens will be prevented from withdrawing money or at least limited in the amount of the withdrawal they can make.
The bank holiday is rumored to be set for next week, with Tuesday November 11 pinpointed as the likeliest date.
According to radio host Steve Quayle, a pastor was told by one of the managers of a prominent east coast bank that banks would close for an undetermined amount of time, and that when they reopened, “all withdrawals by checks would be limited to $500 per week – no matter what the balance in the account is.”
Limiting the amount of money customers can withdraw or blocking the facility altogether reminds us of a Citigroup advisory that was sent to customers at the start of the yearwhich stated that the bank reserved “the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts.” The story stoked fears that financial institutuions were preparing for bank runs.
On his website, Quayle asks, “When in U.S. History has a sitting President taken off on an overseas trip for an extended period of time, with 65 airplanes, 34 warships reportedly 3,000 people including his friends and cohorts, at the pinnacle of an economic and political upheaval?”
Fears of a bank holiday first arose in June of last year, when it was rumored that banks would close their doors in early September. Concern was fueled by reports that US embassies in foreign countries were purchasing large quantities of local currency.
With Brazil and other countries now threatening to take drastic currency measures to protect themselves against a dollar crisis, a similar financial environment is stoking identical fears.
Bank holidays are not without precedent in the United States. On March 5 1933, newly elected Franklin Roosevelt declared a “bank holiday” that lasted four days, during which he rammed through the Emergency Banking Act which granted FDR near dictatorial control over the dealings of banks. The Act also forced every citizen and business in the country to relinquish their gold in exchange for paper currency.
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Friday, October 29, 2010
Time for a New Theory of Money
By understanding that money is simply credit, we unleash it as a powerful tool for our communities.
Ellen Brown
Yes Magazine
The reason our financial system has routinely gotten into trouble, with periodic waves of depression like the one we’re battling now, may be due to a flawed perception not just of the roles of banking and credit but of the nature of money itself. In our economic adolescence, we have regarded money as a “thing”—something independent of the relationship it facilitates. But today there is no gold or silver backing our money. Instead, it’s created by banks when they make loans (that includes Federal Reserve Notes or dollar bills, which are created by the Federal Reserve, a privately-owned banking corporation, and lent into the economy). Virtually all money today originates as credit, or debt, which is simply a legal agreement to pay in the future.
Money as Relationship
In an illuminating dissertation called “Toward a General Theory of Credit and Money” in The Review of Austrian Economics, Mostafa Moini, Professor of Economics at Oklahoma City University, argues that money has never actually been a “commodity” or “thing.” It has always been merely a “relation,” a legal agreement, a credit/debit arrangement, an acknowledgment of a debt owed and a promise to repay.
The concept of money-as-a-commodity can be traced back to the use of precious metal coins. Gold is widely claimed to be the oldest and most stable currency known, but this is not actually true. Money did not begin with gold coins and evolve into a sophisticated accounting system. It began as an accounting system and evolved into the use of precious metal coins. Money as a “unit of account” (a tally of sums paid and owed) predated money as a “store of value” (a commodity or thing) by two millennia; the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations using these accounting-entry payment systems lasted not just hundreds of years (as with some civilizations using gold) but thousands of years. Their bank-like ancient payment systems were public systems—operated by the government the way that courts, libraries, and post offices are operated as public services today.
In the payment system of ancient Sumeria, goods were given a value in terms of weight and were measured in these units against each other. The unit of weight was the “shekel,” something that was not originally a coin but a standardized measure. She was the word for barley, suggesting the original unit of measure was a weight of grain. This was valued against other commodities by weight: So many shekels of wheat equaled so many cows equaled so many shekels of silver, etc. Prices of major commodities were fixed by the government;
Hammurabi, Babylonian king and lawmaker, has detailed tables of these. Interest was also fixed and invariable, making economic life very predictable.
Grain was stored in granaries, which served as a form of “bank.” But grain was perishable, so silver eventually became the standard tally representing sums owed. A farmer could go to market and exchange his perishable goods for a weight of silver, and come back at his leisure to redeem this market credit in other goods as needed. But it was still simply a tally of a debt owed and a right to make good on it later. Eventually, silver tallies became wooden tallies became paper tallies became electronic tallies.
Read Full Article
RELATED ARTICLE:
The After-the-Fed Debate Begins: Greenbackers Vs. Goldbugs
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Yes Magazine
The reason our financial system has routinely gotten into trouble, with periodic waves of depression like the one we’re battling now, may be due to a flawed perception not just of the roles of banking and credit but of the nature of money itself. In our economic adolescence, we have regarded money as a “thing”—something independent of the relationship it facilitates. But today there is no gold or silver backing our money. Instead, it’s created by banks when they make loans (that includes Federal Reserve Notes or dollar bills, which are created by the Federal Reserve, a privately-owned banking corporation, and lent into the economy). Virtually all money today originates as credit, or debt, which is simply a legal agreement to pay in the future.
Money as Relationship
In an illuminating dissertation called “Toward a General Theory of Credit and Money” in The Review of Austrian Economics, Mostafa Moini, Professor of Economics at Oklahoma City University, argues that money has never actually been a “commodity” or “thing.” It has always been merely a “relation,” a legal agreement, a credit/debit arrangement, an acknowledgment of a debt owed and a promise to repay.
The concept of money-as-a-commodity can be traced back to the use of precious metal coins. Gold is widely claimed to be the oldest and most stable currency known, but this is not actually true. Money did not begin with gold coins and evolve into a sophisticated accounting system. It began as an accounting system and evolved into the use of precious metal coins. Money as a “unit of account” (a tally of sums paid and owed) predated money as a “store of value” (a commodity or thing) by two millennia; the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations using these accounting-entry payment systems lasted not just hundreds of years (as with some civilizations using gold) but thousands of years. Their bank-like ancient payment systems were public systems—operated by the government the way that courts, libraries, and post offices are operated as public services today.
In the payment system of ancient Sumeria, goods were given a value in terms of weight and were measured in these units against each other. The unit of weight was the “shekel,” something that was not originally a coin but a standardized measure. She was the word for barley, suggesting the original unit of measure was a weight of grain. This was valued against other commodities by weight: So many shekels of wheat equaled so many cows equaled so many shekels of silver, etc. Prices of major commodities were fixed by the government;
Hammurabi, Babylonian king and lawmaker, has detailed tables of these. Interest was also fixed and invariable, making economic life very predictable.
Grain was stored in granaries, which served as a form of “bank.” But grain was perishable, so silver eventually became the standard tally representing sums owed. A farmer could go to market and exchange his perishable goods for a weight of silver, and come back at his leisure to redeem this market credit in other goods as needed. But it was still simply a tally of a debt owed and a right to make good on it later. Eventually, silver tallies became wooden tallies became paper tallies became electronic tallies.
Read Full Article
RELATED ARTICLE:
The After-the-Fed Debate Begins: Greenbackers Vs. Goldbugs
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Currency Wars: The Phantom Financial Menace
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| AgentOgden Illustration |
NeitherCorp Press
War, almost every kind of war, is first and foremost a production. A piece of live-action theater with “good guys” and “bad guys” delineated by governments and by media for the benefit of the masses. Most plot-points in most modern conflicts are not genuine. They are written and staged (Gulf of Tonkin, or WMD’s in Iraq anyone?), though we treat the fairytale as if it were reality simply because the story is being told by some corporate mouthpiece wearing a fake smile and a suit on our TV. Very often, we discover after the fact that the wars we witnessed in the dark shadows of our cultural cinema with greasy popcorn and mega-large soda in hand were actually a charade, a farce. We get angry, we get livid, and then we go on with our menial lives because the “damage is done” and what can we do about it now anyway? Very rarely in history do the majority of people have the ability or occasion to see the authentic war going on right in front of their eyes, between the social puppeteers, and those who have broken loose from their strings.
Today, we as Americans have a rare opportunity to step outside the theater, away from the fabricated pageantry of a particular conflict barreling down the horizon, and examine the situation objectively before it fully develops. That conflict is the now increasingly aggressive “global currency war” being readied for implementation and public consumption at this very moment.
For now, the threat of a large scale currency fight is being presented as “minimal” but potentially relevant. In fact, the war has been slowly taking root since at least 2008, right after the initial collapse of the mortgage derivatives bubble when the private Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to near zero and began openly purchasing U.S. Treasury debt. Only this past month has the MSM finally begun discussing the wider implications of these measures, along with the obvious reactions of other nations, including the escalation of trade wars into a full fledged fiat battle royale. But all is not what it seems…
As I hope to demonstrate clearly in this article, not only is the currency war threat utterly unnecessary, irrational, and fiscally pointless, it is also completely engineered to serve a purpose beyond the policy directives of any one sovereign nation, and meant to benefit only a small handful of financial elite…
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