Oldtent Archives 2007 - 2008

WHAT ALL THAT BAILOUT MONEY COULD BUY

1

The number of 22-inch flat-screen high-definition televisions that could be bought for each man, woman and child on the planet with the money the governments of the world have committed to ease the financial crisis ($3-trillion U.S.).

7

The number of Apollo moon shots the U.S. financial relief package would buy ($700-billion).

112

The number of years the world could be supplied with French wine with the money France is spending on its bailout (€360-billion).

20

The number of Channel tunnels that could be built for the amount British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has committed to meltdown relief (£400-billion).

67

The years that Russians could go without paying bribes, if the payoffs were financed by Russia’s proposed bailout package (5.2-trillion rubles).

3.5

The number of years the world could be supplied with Swiss chocolate with the money Switzerland is spending to prop up banking giant UBS AG (six billion Swiss francs).

………….One more they forgot….3 Trillion Dollar would buy

.ALL………..as in All the Above groung AND Below Ground Gold on the Planet………and probably the Solar System as well !

“All of this sounded a bit rich to a community that had watched these European leaders, notably Mr. Brown as Britain’s finance minister in the late 1990s, participate in a deregulation and neglect of the financial system that had allowed the complex network of mortgage-backed debt instruments to spiral out of control and destroy the debt-burdened banking system.”

They had happily gone along with Bill Clinton when, in 1999, he cancelled the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a Depression law that had tried to prevent future debt-driven collapses by barring savings banks from going into high-flying equity and debt trading. With the United States allowing anything to be traded by anyone, the Europeans soon followed, and Britain prospered from an even more freewheeling system

In 2004, some of the world’s central bankers published the Basel II Accord, designed to stop banks from getting into trouble by preventing them from lending money without fixed levels of deposits and capital to back it up. It might have saved many of the major banks from crisis and collapse - but, because no international body championed it, it was a purely voluntary code, and as of 2008 nobody had ratified it. (Some countries, like Canada, have legal reserve requirements, and this may have saved them from trouble).

Mr. Brown could have taken a hand in this, and, as the chairman of one of the IMF’s top committees, he could have played an influential role in pushing for global regulations a decade ago. He did not, though, because the deregulated, freewheeling system was benefiting the City of London more than anyone else.

So, in one of those ironies of politics, the self-professed saviours of the system are those who played a large hand in the collapse of that system.

………….Finally…some REAL Journalism !

Before a meeting date could even be set, the leaders squabbled over who had invented the idea. Mr. Sarkozy, through his aides, make it known that he had been proposing since Sept. 23 that a new global regulatory system be built.

Mr. Brown, in turn, had his aides point out that in January of 2007 he had argued that international finance regulation was “urgently in need of modernization and reform.”

The otherwise conservative Mr. Sarkozy declared in a grandiose speech that “we need to found a new capitalism, based on values that put finance at the service of companies and citizens, and not the reverse.” Such lines play very well in France, but are not likely to win any high-fives from Mr. Bush this morning in Washington.

….Colorado Rocky Mountain High ?

“The idea became surprisingly popular in Brussels on that day, partly because Mr. Brown’s vagueness turned his seven-page plan into something of a Rorschach test on which could be projected each country’s economic fantasies. Italian President Silvio Berlusconi talked about a world without the dollar, where the euro might become the reserve currency. ”

It could be that if I had had that large blank the Equiz had I wouldn’t have read the piece. I was really laid back and mellow until then…..now I want to kill……something…..mabey I will just go stomp a grape!! HA

…..I get it when I have favorites list on the screen…but if I dump the list I get no gap !

…..also If I use a tinyurl…..it eventually stops working…..wanted to keep the article for future reference in the right sidebar…………

…to tiny or not to tiny.that is the question

)

……..Wonder who will be the new John Maynard Keynes of this new Financial Order ?

………Keynes said………In the Long Run we are all dead !

………I guess this mess we are in is exactly what he ment !!

of the Globe/Mail link give me a big white screen on Goldtent until one scrolls down to the bottom of the side links.  As you know this is normally  alleviated by use of tinyurl.   But I am wondering now if it is only me computer, and not all Goldtent readers, who saw a big white space between your posting header and the actual link of the Globe/Mail article. 

This is not an issue as far as I am concerned, but I wanted to alert you that at least on my computer there was a long white space after your opening header, a condition I thought was becoming less frequent on Goldtent.  This is not a criticism of efforts by you and others to keep Goldtent the excellent site it is.  I appreciate the efforts of all of you very much.  Just wanted to alert you to the long white space on my screen.  Cheers.  Equiz.

“What they will be trying to sell is a seven-page document that Mr. Brown first made public on Wednesday morning. It proposes a set of organizations - a “new international financial architecture for the global age” - that will monitor risks in the financial system and provide an early-warning system; determine global standards of regulation; supervise international corporations in their cross-border activities, protect markets from excessive activities of speculators; stamp out major conflicts of interest and set standards for pay and bonuses; internationalize accounting standards, and provide transparency in complex financial transactions.”

Very interesting read. What I found interesting is what was not said. Nothing was said about why Bretten Woods worked for a time and then failed…..Bretten Woods was a good system until The US started inflating to pay for guns and butter and Nixon finally closed the gold window in ‘71, nothing was said about real honest money for goods and services……the whole article was about more regulation, transparency, (yea, right, I believe that one) and intervention in free markets etc. The PTB will only put lipstick on the pig, they have no intention of establishing a real, honest, solid economy based on anything except what will continue to benefit themselves and continue to financially enslave the populace.

Just me take on the article…
Dusty

‘Made in U.S.A’., from White Flame who at one time made lamps in Grand Rapids.  Although we have used it on numerous occasions when the BC Hydro/Bonneville power grid give us a power failure, it took until this weekend to clean up the White Flame kerosene kitchen-table lamp that we keep for lighting backup when the lights go out.  Our White Flame lamp had a permanent home on the table of my parents farm in southwest Saskatchewan, and it still works perfectly today.  All I was doing was cleaning the wick holder with wire wool when I uncovered its place of manufacture in Grand Rapids.  Its nice to expose a bit of metal that says ‘made in U.S.A.’ instead of the plastic mouldings we see today, all of which say ‘made in China’.  I like our old kerosene lamp, and from the link below it seems that others, too ,appreciate what White Flame offered to us in previous generations.  Cheers.  Equiz.

http://www.lampguild.org/QandApage/archives/Q0000297.htm