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It seems that the Fed is behaving today much as it did during the 2008 financial disaster, only this time instead of bailing out politically well-connected too-big-to-fail firms it is bailing out profligate government spending. Citizens the world over deserve better than this. They deserve sound money that cannot be manipulated and created out of thin air by central planners who promise printed prosperity. Fiat money caused this European crisis and the financial disaster before it. More fiat money is not the cure. The global fiat currency system has proven itself a failure, we need real monetary reform. We need sound money.
The Fed’s latest actions in cooperating with foreign central banks to undertake liquidity swaps of dollars for foreign currencies is another reason why Congress needs enhanced power to oversee and audit the Fed. Under current law, Congress cannot examine these types of agreements. Those who would argue that auditing the Fed or these agreements with central banks harms the Fed’s independence should reevaluate the Fed’s supposed independence when the Fed bails out Europe so soon after President Obama promised US assistance in resolving the Euro crisis.
Many have predicted that it is only a short-term measure to kick the can down the road. But the numbers themselves show that the bailout might not even be having a sufficient short-term effect. In fact, money markets and the cost of protecting bank bonds from losses show investors are concerned the almost $1 trillion rescue plan announced by European leaders may not be enough to contain the region’s sovereign debt crisis.
My personal opinion?
The bailout is not a cure-all. In the short term, raising taxes and cutting spending is going to imply further recession and further deflationary pressures in the euro zone. In the longer-term, it creates huge moral hazard risks.
the 1990s, Israel emerged as a leading center for technology start-ups and innovation.
In the 1990s, Israel emerged as a leading center for technology start-ups and innovation. In 2000, near the peak of the high-tech boom, Israel had 4000 high-tech firms and new ones were forming at the rate of about 500 start-ups per year.
Today, out of the 101 companies trading on NASDAQ; 63 of them are registered in Israel; a stunning number indeed for a country with a population of only seven million people, the size of Rhode Island and the population of New Jersey.
And the story doesn’t stop here.
The Israeli high-tech industry boasts today 43 of the 50 leading technology giants in the world; all with cutting-edge R&D centers. Scientific American’s list of ’50 Research Leaders’ include three Israeli scientists. Notwithstanding the fact that S&P credit rating for Israel is still AA – amid a still shaky global environment – , four Israelis have been awarded the Nobel Prize and Israel tech investments have produced consistent and significant returns which only continue to climb.
So the question is: What makes Israeli technology companies so unique?
Read More: The Israeli hi-tech Experience
Thank you
If ever a chart provided unequivocal proof the economic recovery storyline is a fraud
If ever a chart provided unequivocal proof the economic recovery storyline is a fraud, the one below is the smoking gun. What a joke this whole recovery BS they are feeding us.
Thank you
The independent economic think tank Financial Policy Council (FPC) fears that the business and investing community (not to mention, bank depositors and shareholders) are potential big losers from the Justice Department’s much-trumpeted settlement of civil and criminal charges with J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. in connection with its activities involving Bernard L. Madoff’s legendary fraud.
We wish we did not have to emphasize the criminality of J.P. Morgan Chase — and we wish it had never occurred — except that the bank itself admitted to this fact. Others can speculate on whether there was arm-twisting or the use of leverage, and even on whether or why other Too Big To Fail banks might be “untouchable.”
We restrain our focus on the hard fact: J.P. Morgan has admitted to criminal wrongdoing, and in so doing has agreed to a massive $1.7 billion penalty and to reform its anti-money laundering funds in order to get a two-year deferred prosecution agreement. The particularized admissions are formidable, as contained in the criminal information filed in Manhattan Federal Court (Southern District of New York) by the United States Attorney’s Office.
Criminal wrongdoing needs to be emphasized here, because a criminal act involves criminal intent, that is, willfulness. Here, the bank is charged with having “willfully fail[ed] to establish an adequate money-laundering program” and further having “willfully fail[ed] to report suspicious transactions.”
Americans who play by the rules just got coal in their stockings, courtesy of the United States Government.
The most damaging and dispiriting government action this month is not its treatment of the Fiscal Cliff, but its enforcement decision showing that the rule of law is deliberately uneven. That is the message conveyed by the Department of Justice with its announcement earlier this month that neither HSBC nor any executives at the international bank would be criminally prosecuted for activities involving the money laundering of funds for terrorists and drug cartels (among other bad actors) for which the company itself has agreed to an unprecedented $1.92 billion fine, out of concern that such criminal charges could “destabilize the global financial system.”(1)
The message of a two-tiered justice system is actually amplified by the slap-on-the-wrist criminal plea on December 19th by a subsidiary of the equally too-big-to-fail UBS to one felony count of wire fraud in an emerging interest-rate manipulation scandal, providing for about $1.5 billion in fines and accompanied by criminal indictments of two hapless traders whom the bank decided to throw under the bus in a show sacrifice.(2) One need not be a cynic to view the institutional criminal plea, and the financial settlement which amounts to little more than a rounding error, a cost of doing business, as a transparent attempt to uphold the image — if not the rule — of equality under the law, precisely when they are being broken with impunity and the unofficial imprimatur of the government.
Lands where justice can be bought, where the application of the law depends upon whom it is to be applied, are typically found in Third World countries ruled by despots and the law of the jungle, where might makes right. In such countries, any purported rule of law is best referred to as crony justice. (Note: One cannot define it as “crony justice,” since the definition of justice involves equal application of uniform rules, hence, a two-tiered system involving arbitrary applications or “special treatment” ceases to be justice and that term cannot properly be modified by the word “crony,” or any other adjective, for that matter.)