EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU-China trade tensions were further strained on Thursday (4 February), after China filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organisation over European shoes tariffs. The Chinese government said European tariffs "violated various obligations under the WTO and consequently caused damage to the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese exporters."
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU-China trade tensions were further strained on Thursday (4 February), after China filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organisation over European shoes tariffs.
The Chinese government said European tariffs "violated various obligations under the WTO and consequently caused damage to the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese exporters."
NEW YORK/ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - New York's attorney general charged Bank of America Corp, former Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis and former Chief Financial Officer Joe Price with fraud for allegedly misleading shareholders about the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. Separately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the largest U.S. bank agreed to pay a $150 million (95 million pounds) civil fine and strengthen disclosure and corporate governance to settle its two lawsuits alleging poor disclosure of Merrill's losses and bonus payouts. The accord requires court approval.
NEW YORK/ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - New York's attorney general charged Bank of America Corp, former Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis and former Chief Financial Officer Joe Price with fraud for allegedly misleading shareholders about the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co.
Separately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the largest U.S. bank agreed to pay a $150 million (95 million pounds) civil fine and strengthen disclosure and corporate governance to settle its two lawsuits alleging poor disclosure of Merrill's losses and bonus payouts. The accord requires court approval.
The bank bought Merrill after examining its books for just 25 hours, Cuomo claimed. Shareholders approved the deal on Dec. 5, 2008. The acquisition closed Jan. 1, 2009, after Merrill losses had increased by billions of dollars, a change the bank didn't disclose before the shareholder vote, Cuomo said. "It's the way we approved acquisitions that ticks me off the most!!!" director Chad Gifford later wrote in an e-mail about the last-minute switch, according to a securities-fraud complaint Cuomo filed yesterday in state court in New York. Lehman filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008. Read more...
"It's the way we approved acquisitions that ticks me off the most!!!" director Chad Gifford later wrote in an e-mail about the last-minute switch, according to a securities-fraud complaint Cuomo filed yesterday in state court in New York. Lehman filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008.
Read more...
thass ma boy Harold F.'s joint! He on leab ba absinths. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
LISBON (Reuters) - Investors sold off stocks in Portugal, Spain and Greece and the euro plunged on Thursday as market fears over the fiscal problems of debt-laden southern members of the euro zone widened. The head of the International Monetary Fund called for painful steps to cut huge fiscal deficits across Europe, saying no country should be under the illusion that it was possible to escape the financial crisis without paying the cost. The Portuguese government's defeat over a regional finance bill, a climbdown by the Spanish government over pension reform, and protests by tax officials in Greece added to the woes of states struggling to cut budget shortfalls bloated by recession.
LISBON (Reuters) - Investors sold off stocks in Portugal, Spain and Greece and the euro plunged on Thursday as market fears over the fiscal problems of debt-laden southern members of the euro zone widened.
The head of the International Monetary Fund called for painful steps to cut huge fiscal deficits across Europe, saying no country should be under the illusion that it was possible to escape the financial crisis without paying the cost.
The Portuguese government's defeat over a regional finance bill, a climbdown by the Spanish government over pension reform, and protests by tax officials in Greece added to the woes of states struggling to cut budget shortfalls bloated by recession.
We are getting a sell-off every morning as Europe goes through the daily ritual of waking up and seeing the cost of default protection rise and rise. This morning Greece is with STUPID (Spain, Turkey, UK, Portugal, Italy & Dubai) as five-year sovereign credit default swap spreads were recently at 4.23 percentage points, compared with Wednesday's closing level of 3.97 percentage points. That means the annual cost of insuring €10 million of Greek government debt against default for five years had risen €26,000 to €423,000. In a nutshell, that's 4.23% annually to insure Greek bonds from default so Greece needs to offer 4.23% more interest on their bonds than an Aaa nation to attract investors.
As we expected in yesterday's post, Greek workers were none too pleased with the EU's budget plan for their country and is rejecting the idea of wage freezes on top of wage cuts. Greece's biggest union is moving towards a mass strike and the public-employee union is planning a job action next week as well. Tax collectors are striking, customs workers are striking, which is screwing up the airports and shipyards and delaying commerce all over Europe - shades of things to come perhaps?
Napoleon said: "A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonetes" and John Kennedy said: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" and what we are seeing here is backlash as workers of the world have been pushed to the brink for many years and now, as the governments are asking them to take that one final step into the abyss - they are, not surprisingly, pushing back. That's why my 2010 Outlook was titles "A Tale of Two Economies." As we expected, Jobless Claims were a disappointment this week with another 480,000 people involuntarily joining the revolutionary masses (and we will get one whopper of an adjustment tomorrow to the unemployed totals!). Also as we expected, productivity is up nicely - up a whopping 6.2% in Q4 as workers literally kill themselves to keep their jobs. The 138M remaining workers were rewarded with a 4.4% reduction in unit labor costs, which is how US corporations managed to put up those astounding cost savings in Q4 as that's roughly $60Bn in additional profits wrung off the backs of workers in a single quarter. Go capitalism!
As we expected, Jobless Claims were a disappointment this week with another 480,000 people involuntarily joining the revolutionary masses (and we will get one whopper of an adjustment tomorrow to the unemployed totals!). Also as we expected, productivity is up nicely - up a whopping 6.2% in Q4 as workers literally kill themselves to keep their jobs. The 138M remaining workers were rewarded with a 4.4% reduction in unit labor costs, which is how US corporations managed to put up those astounding cost savings in Q4 as that's roughly $60Bn in additional profits wrung off the backs of workers in a single quarter. Go capitalism!
LONDON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - European shares fell more than 2 percent on Thursday, on worries about the peripheral economies in the euro zone, and downbeat U.S. economic data.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The cooperation of two former hedge fund managers in a 2007 insider trading case led to the arrest of seven traders and lawyers last November in the wide-ranging Galleon prosecutions, a U.S. prosecutor said on Thursday. During a sentencing proceeding for former Chelsey Capital hedge fund manager Mark Lenowitz in the 2007 case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Fish told the judge that Lenowitz's cooperation led to the prosecution and cooperation of his onetime colleague at Chelsey Capital, David Slaine.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The cooperation of two former hedge fund managers in a 2007 insider trading case led to the arrest of seven traders and lawyers last November in the wide-ranging Galleon prosecutions, a U.S. prosecutor said on Thursday.
During a sentencing proceeding for former Chelsey Capital hedge fund manager Mark Lenowitz in the 2007 case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Fish told the judge that Lenowitz's cooperation led to the prosecution and cooperation of his onetime colleague at Chelsey Capital, David Slaine.
LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England announced on Thursday no increase to its unprecedented 200 billion pound asset-buying programme, but left the door open to more so-called quantitative easing if economic conditions deteriorated. It also left interest rates at a record low of 0.5 percent, as expected. Almost all analysts had predicted a pause in the programme after 11 months of pumping newly-created money into the economy but sterling rose and gilts fell as some traders had positioned for an increase, given the fragility of the economy which has only just come out of recession.
LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England announced on Thursday no increase to its unprecedented 200 billion pound asset-buying programme, but left the door open to more so-called quantitative easing if economic conditions deteriorated.
It also left interest rates at a record low of 0.5 percent, as expected.
Almost all analysts had predicted a pause in the programme after 11 months of pumping newly-created money into the economy but sterling rose and gilts fell as some traders had positioned for an increase, given the fragility of the economy which has only just come out of recession.
The Federal Reserve shut down some of the emergency liquidity programs that were launched to stem the credit crisis sparked by the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market in 2007. Read more...
Stocks, Commodities Plunge, Dollar Gains on U.S. Jobless Claims
Retreating shares outnumbered rising stocks by more than six to one in the MSCI World and by 24 to one on the New York Stock Exchange. Only 11 stocks in the S&P 500 advanced and all but one of the companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined as the 30-stock gauge fell below 10,000 during the day for the first time since November.... Treasuries gained as investors fled to assets perceived as being the most safe, sending the yield on the benchmark 10-year note down as much as 11 basis points to 3.59 percent, the biggest decline since Jan. 12. Read more...
Treasuries gained as investors fled to assets perceived as being the most safe, sending the yield on the benchmark 10-year note down as much as 11 basis points to 3.59 percent, the biggest decline since Jan. 12. Read more...
every body now...
Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Today's price action registered extremely bearish readings across the NYSE TICK and NYSE VOLD (Up-Down Volume Difference). In our oh-so-very-humble opinion ~ equity markets are about to enter the Temple of Doom.
Once the offer was accepted by the seller, the homebuyer was surprised to learn that there's a third party involved, a "Short Sale Negotiator" who is charging an additional $9,000 fee on top of the real estate commissions paid to both the agent for the seller and the agent for the buyer. The Short Sale Negotiator is demanding that the homebuyer sign an agreement that the homebuyer will be responsible for paying the $9,000 fee. Read more...
jillayne (homepage, profile) wrote on Thu, 2/4/2010 - 6:06 pm Great book to buy. You could buy it used via amazon for under $10. "The Sociopath Next Door." Author says in some Native cultures, once the group identifies the sociopath, they plan a hunting trip, isolate the sociopath and then push him off a cliff. This might not work with the predatory lenders. Someone would notice 100,000 people at the bottom of a cliff.
Great book to buy. You could buy it used via amazon for under $10. "The Sociopath Next Door." Author says in some Native cultures, once the group identifies the sociopath, they plan a hunting trip, isolate the sociopath and then push him off a cliff. This might not work with the predatory lenders. Someone would notice 100,000 people at the bottom of a cliff.
Didn't anyone ever pull you aside to ask, "TBG, if Suzie jumps off a bridge, does that mean you got to jump off the bridge, too?" Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Sociopaths are very destructive of basic, common, trust in/of the social order and need to be firmly sat upon.
Pushing them over a cliff hadn't occurred to me ... but it's worth careful consideration for implementing as fundamental Public Policy.
;-)
AFP - The government of Dubai, facing dwindling oil resources and a mountain of debt, announced on Thursday the discovery of a new offshore oil field which it hoped would rescue its limping economy. The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum, "heralds the good news to the people of the United Arab Emirates that a new offshore oil field has been discovered in Dubai," a government statement said. The UAE sits on the world's fifth largest proven oil reserves, amounting to 97.8 billion barrels of crude oil. But 95 percent of those reserves are controlled by the leading partner in the federation, Abu Dhabi. The UAE also has 214.4 trillion cubic feet (six trillion cubic metres) of gas reserves, ranking it sixth in the world after Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Dubai's poor oil reserves, mostly offshore, are expected to be exhausted within 20 years, while it controls only two percent of the country's gas wealth, according to UAE government website.
Thousands of campaigners have signed a petition calling for quake-stricken Haiti's international debt to be written off. The petition, with more than 15,000 signatures, was handed to the Treasury asking Chancellor Alistair Darling to call on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cancel Haiti's 890 million dollar (£560 million) international debt. Haiti was already one of the world's poorest nations before the devastating earthquake struck. Up to 200,000 people died in the 7-magnitude earthquake on January 12, including more than 30 UN workers, while leaving thousands of others injured and homeless. The cost of rebuilding the country's battered infrastructure is expected to cost billions of pounds.
Thousands of campaigners have signed a petition calling for quake-stricken Haiti's international debt to be written off.
The petition, with more than 15,000 signatures, was handed to the Treasury asking Chancellor Alistair Darling to call on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cancel Haiti's 890 million dollar (£560 million) international debt.
Haiti was already one of the world's poorest nations before the devastating earthquake struck.
Up to 200,000 people died in the 7-magnitude earthquake on January 12, including more than 30 UN workers, while leaving thousands of others injured and homeless.
The cost of rebuilding the country's battered infrastructure is expected to cost billions of pounds.
