Post by jeffolie on May 28, 2012 17:48:46 GMT -6
Memorial Day Dark Musings, doom alternatives
Perhaps my jeffolie doom predictions for 2014 and/or beyond will come true or not.
Voters are disaffected as proven by the purality of Independent polling results, but not yet behind any particular candidate campaigning for strong banking reform that even parallels the prior ignored Glass Stegal which failed to prevent many frauds, devious banking events and schemes that happened anyways.
Volker's reputation and brand name attached to the modestly reform oriented legislation and yet to be written rules & regulations at the admininstering agencies. Nothing real has happened, just talk and lobbying by bribing, scheming K Street professionals and revolving doors ex government workers, politicans now paid big bucks to undermine banking reform to the level of easy manipulation.
All in all, the banks have grown more 'Too Big to Fail', more likely to cause 'systematic risk' failures justifying even more extremely scheming and gifts of public money to banks & crony capitalism favored corporations.
One could even look forward to the whole stinking, corrupt financial and government system collapse if one believed that eventual a rebirth that would improve the average American's life. The downside is that often severe, horrendous strongmen come to power after such systematic collapses ... not a good outcome. Imagine an American Putin because in socialist Spain, the overwhelmingly high voter turnout elected conservatives and created their own regime change by kicking out the socialist without improving their financial ongoing collapse as past financial frauds, thefts and malinvestment now surfacing, making for the largest in their history bank bailout in todays press.
Even the rioting, roilling Greeks may bring in a conservative regime. So, Americans might this fall treat Obama as they did former President Jimmy Carter with a last minute, whimsical voting decision during the 1980 election day, ousting the incumbent President. If the polls correctly forecast that Greeks want austerity by electing enough politicans to form a pro Euro government, then the June 17th election puts off the immediate media drama.
You can not make this up: after I wrote these musings political reality made a dark piece seem possible, Romney campaigning as the strongman.
========================
Romney promises world's strongest military
By STEVE PEOPLES | Associated Press – 38 mins ago.http://news.yahoo.com/romney-promises-worlds-strongest-military-190812834.html
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========================
May 28, 2012, 1:22 p.m. EDT
U.S. stock futures up with Greek austerity
www.marketwatch.com/story/investo....ture-2012-05-26
Read more: www.unlawflcombatnt.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalization&action=display&thread=10770#ixzz1wD2nEnqz
=============================
Big Banks: Now Even Too Bigger to Fail
By David J. Lynch on April 19, 2012
Two years after President Barack Obama vowed to eliminate the danger of financial institutions that are too big to fail, the nation’s largest banks are bigger than they were before the financial meltdown. Five banks—JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Goldman Sachs (GS)—held more than $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s up from 43 percent five years earlier.
The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy, meaning trouble at a major bank would leave the government with the same Hobson’s choice it faced in 2008: let a big bank collapse and perhaps wreck the entire economy or inflame public ire with a costly bailout. “Market participants believe that nothing has changed, that too-big-to-fail is fully intact,” says Gary Stern, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
In recent weeks, at least four current Fed presidents—Esther George of Kansas City, Charles Plosser of Philadelphia, Jeffrey Lacker of Richmond, and Richard Fisher of Dallas—have voiced concern about the risk of another crisis if one or more of the big banks were to fail. Giant institutions sheltered under an invisible government umbrella pose “a clear and present danger to the U.S. economy,” the Dallas Fed’s annual report cautioned last month.
This isn’t what the president had in mind two years ago when he vowed to “prevent the further consolidation” of the banking industry. The sprawling Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill that he signed in July 2010 was designed to avoid a repeat of the government’s frantic rescue of failing banks amid the 2008 crisis. Citing higher capital and liquidity standards, new powers to take over a failing giant institution, and prohibitions on the largest banks acquiring competitors, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in February that the U.S. financial system is “significantly stronger than it was before the crisis.”
Fifteen of the 19 largest U.S. financial institutions last month passed a Fed stress test that measured their ability to withstand a deep recession. JPMorgan, which has swelled to $2.3 trillion in assets from $2 trillion when Dodd-Frank was signed, has repeatedly boasted about its “fortress balance sheet.” Bank of America, which was about 50 percent larger at the end of 2011 than five years earlier, is gradually shrinking and says it has boosted to 29 months the amount of time it could operate without external funding. “We’re a much stronger company than we were heading into the crisis,” says Jerry Dubrowski, a Bank of America spokesman.
Yet credit-rating companies Standard & Poor’s (MHP) and Moody’s (MCO) aren’t convinced the too-big-to-fail threat has been vanquished. They assert that the government would rescue megabanks in a future crisis. Affluent depositors increasingly prefer the biggest banks, even if they could earn higher interest rates elsewhere. The implicit government guarantee compensates for a little lost interest.
Dodd-Frank requires that the biggest banks draft contingency plans specifying how they would be gracefully wound down in a crisis. Fed officials such as Lacker see those “living wills,” due by July, as critical. Yet even if those safety measures work as planned, the underlying risk remains, says Richard Spillenkothen, the Fed’s director of banking supervision and regulation from 1991 to 2006. “Probably the only way you can be 100 percent sure you’ve solved too-big-to-fail,” he says, “is by doing away with banks that are too big.”
The bottom line: In December 2011, the five largest banks’ assets were equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, compared with 43 percent five years earlier.http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-19/big-banks-now-even-too-bigger-to-fail
Perhaps my jeffolie doom predictions for 2014 and/or beyond will come true or not.
Voters are disaffected as proven by the purality of Independent polling results, but not yet behind any particular candidate campaigning for strong banking reform that even parallels the prior ignored Glass Stegal which failed to prevent many frauds, devious banking events and schemes that happened anyways.
Volker's reputation and brand name attached to the modestly reform oriented legislation and yet to be written rules & regulations at the admininstering agencies. Nothing real has happened, just talk and lobbying by bribing, scheming K Street professionals and revolving doors ex government workers, politicans now paid big bucks to undermine banking reform to the level of easy manipulation.
All in all, the banks have grown more 'Too Big to Fail', more likely to cause 'systematic risk' failures justifying even more extremely scheming and gifts of public money to banks & crony capitalism favored corporations.
One could even look forward to the whole stinking, corrupt financial and government system collapse if one believed that eventual a rebirth that would improve the average American's life. The downside is that often severe, horrendous strongmen come to power after such systematic collapses ... not a good outcome. Imagine an American Putin because in socialist Spain, the overwhelmingly high voter turnout elected conservatives and created their own regime change by kicking out the socialist without improving their financial ongoing collapse as past financial frauds, thefts and malinvestment now surfacing, making for the largest in their history bank bailout in todays press.
Even the rioting, roilling Greeks may bring in a conservative regime. So, Americans might this fall treat Obama as they did former President Jimmy Carter with a last minute, whimsical voting decision during the 1980 election day, ousting the incumbent President. If the polls correctly forecast that Greeks want austerity by electing enough politicans to form a pro Euro government, then the June 17th election puts off the immediate media drama.
You can not make this up: after I wrote these musings political reality made a dark piece seem possible, Romney campaigning as the strongman.
========================
Romney promises world's strongest military
By STEVE PEOPLES | Associated Press – 38 mins ago.http://news.yahoo.com/romney-promises-worlds-strongest-military-190812834.html
========================
========================
May 28, 2012, 1:22 p.m. EDT
U.S. stock futures up with Greek austerity
www.marketwatch.com/story/investo....ture-2012-05-26
Read more: www.unlawflcombatnt.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalization&action=display&thread=10770#ixzz1wD2nEnqz
=============================
Big Banks: Now Even Too Bigger to Fail
By David J. Lynch on April 19, 2012
Two years after President Barack Obama vowed to eliminate the danger of financial institutions that are too big to fail, the nation’s largest banks are bigger than they were before the financial meltdown. Five banks—JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Goldman Sachs (GS)—held more than $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s up from 43 percent five years earlier.
The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy, meaning trouble at a major bank would leave the government with the same Hobson’s choice it faced in 2008: let a big bank collapse and perhaps wreck the entire economy or inflame public ire with a costly bailout. “Market participants believe that nothing has changed, that too-big-to-fail is fully intact,” says Gary Stern, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
In recent weeks, at least four current Fed presidents—Esther George of Kansas City, Charles Plosser of Philadelphia, Jeffrey Lacker of Richmond, and Richard Fisher of Dallas—have voiced concern about the risk of another crisis if one or more of the big banks were to fail. Giant institutions sheltered under an invisible government umbrella pose “a clear and present danger to the U.S. economy,” the Dallas Fed’s annual report cautioned last month.
This isn’t what the president had in mind two years ago when he vowed to “prevent the further consolidation” of the banking industry. The sprawling Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill that he signed in July 2010 was designed to avoid a repeat of the government’s frantic rescue of failing banks amid the 2008 crisis. Citing higher capital and liquidity standards, new powers to take over a failing giant institution, and prohibitions on the largest banks acquiring competitors, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in February that the U.S. financial system is “significantly stronger than it was before the crisis.”
Fifteen of the 19 largest U.S. financial institutions last month passed a Fed stress test that measured their ability to withstand a deep recession. JPMorgan, which has swelled to $2.3 trillion in assets from $2 trillion when Dodd-Frank was signed, has repeatedly boasted about its “fortress balance sheet.” Bank of America, which was about 50 percent larger at the end of 2011 than five years earlier, is gradually shrinking and says it has boosted to 29 months the amount of time it could operate without external funding. “We’re a much stronger company than we were heading into the crisis,” says Jerry Dubrowski, a Bank of America spokesman.
Yet credit-rating companies Standard & Poor’s (MHP) and Moody’s (MCO) aren’t convinced the too-big-to-fail threat has been vanquished. They assert that the government would rescue megabanks in a future crisis. Affluent depositors increasingly prefer the biggest banks, even if they could earn higher interest rates elsewhere. The implicit government guarantee compensates for a little lost interest.
Dodd-Frank requires that the biggest banks draft contingency plans specifying how they would be gracefully wound down in a crisis. Fed officials such as Lacker see those “living wills,” due by July, as critical. Yet even if those safety measures work as planned, the underlying risk remains, says Richard Spillenkothen, the Fed’s director of banking supervision and regulation from 1991 to 2006. “Probably the only way you can be 100 percent sure you’ve solved too-big-to-fail,” he says, “is by doing away with banks that are too big.”
The bottom line: In December 2011, the five largest banks’ assets were equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, compared with 43 percent five years earlier.http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-19/big-banks-now-even-too-bigger-to-fail