(RussiaToday) – As student loan debt tops $1 trillion a quick clip explaining why so many students are taking to the streets in protest. Read the rest of this entry »

(RussiaToday) – College tuition prices are skyrocketing following the Congress\’ decision to raise interest rates on student loans, but the situation with unemployment isn’t improving either. That means Americans owe more money for their school loans then they do on their credit cards. Stefanie Gray of the Change.org knows about the issue first hand. The unemployed 23-year-old who is struggling to survive has a masters degree and $130k in debt. Stefanie Gray shares her sad experience with RT’s Lucy Kafanov Read the rest of this entry »

This time Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert look at the scandals of perfect trading days; PIIGS flying only to fall to earth five minutes later when markets realize the Euro-Tarp financiers are themselves bankrupt debt pigs; and Max Keiser explains high frequency terrorism in the Manchurian candidate markets. In the second half of the show, Max interviews post-neoclassical economic philosopher Damon Vrabel about the European bailout, the financial empire and the IMF, and how the right kind of republic can provide some solutions.

(Infowars) – Perhaps you have noticed that frequently the largest and most extravagant buildings in most cities (and even small towns) are banks. It’s fascinating how banks make money off interest, which is one of the most lucrative businesses known to man. While most businesses build a product or provide some kind of service involving manual labor or specialized knowledge, banks make enormous profits through the seemingly magical practice of lending people money and collecting interest on the loans. Read the rest of this entry »

(C-Span) – April 20, 2010 Read the rest of this entry »

(C-Span) – April 20, 2010 Read the rest of this entry »

Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, talks about growth in lending and increases in property prices in China. Faber also discusses his caution about buying industrial commodities and Australian stocks. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Liza Lin in Singapore. Read the rest of this entry »

Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, talks about growth in lending and increases in property prices in China. Faber also discusses his caution about buying industrial commodities and Australian stocks. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Liza Lin in Singapore. Read the rest of this entry »

(MSNBC) – The Dylan Ratigan Show – April 16, 2010 Read the rest of this entry »

“We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. . . . Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson . . . and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business.” William Jennings Bryan, Democratic Convention, 1896

William Jennings Bryan would have been pleased. The government is now officially in the banking business. On March 30, 2010, President Obama signed the reconciliation “fix” to the health care reform bill passed by Congress last week. Slipped into it was student loan legislation the President calls “one of the most significant investments in higher education since the G.I. Bill.” Under the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), the federal government will lend directly to students, ending billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies to firms providing student loans. The bill will save an estimated $68 billion over 11 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy news! The government has come up with a 5.9 percent GDP growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. The recession is over.
Or is it? Statistician John Williams has informed us that 69 percent of this growth, or 4.1 percentage points, is the result of inventory accumulation. That leaves a 1.8 percent growth rate, and the 1.8 percent is likely due to the underestimate of inflation and other statistical problems. Read the rest of this entry »

(Rense) – With the foul mixture of adjustable rate mortgages, low down payments, unqualified loans, and liar loans, where potential homebuyers could not even verify that they had jobs or adequate funds to buy a house, the private International Banking Cartel inflated their US housing bubble. Then, the Cartel violently burst their bloated, thin-walled, and ephemeral bladder of toxins, they had so carefully pumped with hype, lies, and wicked intentions. Now, the Cartel is delivering their coupe de grace on some defaulting home buyers; they are siccing their private collection agency, the IRS on many of the homeless and jobless of America. Read the rest of this entry »

“Unlike other kinds of debt, student loans can be particularly hard to wriggle out of… ditching a student loan is virtually impossible, especially once a collection agency gets involved. Although lenders may trim payments, getting fees or principals waived seldom happens.”
(TheComingDepression) – Some governments believe that the future of their country lies in a well educated healthy population. With this in mind they make post secondary education free (tax payer subsidized, remember) to all who wishing further education as long as they can pass the academic standards and complete the course in the allotted time frame. Read the rest of this entry »

In this week’s much anticipated State of the Union address, President Obama again demonstrated his poor understanding of the fundamental problems that confront our nation. By following the advice of the same people who helped guide our economy to the precipice of total collapse, Obama now threatens to push it over the edge. Read the rest of this entry »

(CNSNews) – A bill currently before the Senate would empower the Obama administration to nationalize the student lending industry, eliminating the federally subsidized private loans millions of university students rely on to finance their educations. Read the rest of this entry »

(MoneyAndMarkets) – Washington has so thoroughly botched its supervision of the banking industry that 200 banks are likely to fail this year — easily surpassing last year’s 140 bank failures … inevitably involving the greatest bank losses in history … and already costing the FDIC ten times more than the great S&L and banking crisis of the 1980s did. Read the rest of this entry »

(BBC) – If voters in the US or the UK had been given a vote on whether their governments should inject trillions of dollars into their banks (in the form of loans, guarantees and investments), it is pretty likely that those referenda would have been lost. Read the rest of this entry »

(MSNBC) – The recession’s jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks. Read the rest of this entry »

A staggering 22 percent of all mortgages in the state of Florida are non-current, according to a new report from Lender Processing Services. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Hudson on Max Keiser – What happens when a country goes broke? Read the rest of this entry »

(Fox) – “The Giving away of the United States has never been greater than under Barack Obama” – Corsi Read the rest of this entry »

Last week the Dow added 1.3%, the S&P 1.5%, the Russell 2000, 0.2% and the Nasdaq 100, 0.7%. Cyclicals rose 2.6%; transports 3.8%; consumers 1.7%; utilities 1.3%, as banks fell 0.3% and broker/dealers fell 0.6%. High tech fell 0.2% semis 1.1%; bitoechs 1.9% and Internets rose 0.2%. Gold bullion rose $3.00 and the HUI was unchanged, but up 47.5% on the year. The USDX, the dollar index fell 1.1% to 75.62. Read the rest of this entry »

(CNN) – The latest bubble is about to burst, but this time it’s in the commercial market. Here’s how to see it coming. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2000, America was described as the sole remaining superpower – or even the world’s “hyperpower”. Now we’re in real trouble (at the very least, you have to admit that we’re losing power and wealth in comparison with China).
How did it happen so fast? Read the rest of this entry »

The Wall Street Journal ran a post over the weekend about a new credit crunch among low income borrowers, noting it is now ‘payback time.’ What they didn’t go into is that their primary interviewee is drowning not on expensive cars loans but student loans. This former student’s debt is far from extraordinary. It is, in fact, tragically ordinary, as student loans have become the 21st century version of indentured servitude. Read the rest of this entry »

Reining in the financial industry’s power and greed will be a long, hard-fought war. But it is one that must be fought Read the rest of this entry »

Consumer credit is falling fast. In July, consumer credit plunged by $19 billion, followed by an August drop of $12 billion, a 5.8 percent annual rate. Credit card spending decreased by nearly $10 billion in August, while non-revolving debt, including auto loans, fell by $2 billion. Credit has shrunk for 7 consecutive months, the longest period of decline since 1991. Read the rest of this entry »

The Origin of the Dilemma

The Federal Reserve (Fed) and other central banks currently face a dilemma. A strong central-bank balance sheet is essential for the quality of a currency and the stability of a financial system. Unfortunately, the financial crisis has seen substantial changes in the balance sheets of the world’s major central banks. Read the rest of this entry »

The Origin of the Dilemma

The Federal Reserve (Fed) and other central banks currently face a dilemma. A strong central-bank balance sheet is essential for the quality of a currency and the stability of a financial system. Unfortunately, the financial crisis has seen substantial changes in the balance sheets of the world’s major central banks. Read the rest of this entry »

(BusinessInsider) – More proof that the commercial real estate
crash is coming: hotel foreclosures in California have more than tripled in the first nine months of this year, according to Bloomberg. Read the rest of this entry »

The slight rebound in housing looks a lot different when one considers how much the Fed is meddling in the market. Fed chair Ben Bernanke has purchased $240 billion in US Treasuries to keep long-term interest rates artificially low while–at the same time–buying $740 billion in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to provide the financing for new home buyers. It’s the double-whammy; and that’s not all. Read the rest of this entry »

(BobChapman) – In 2009, China opened up various exchanges for investment in both gold and silver to the Chinese public, which previously was not allowed to invest in gold and silver. The opening of silver exchanges to the Chinese public is the most recent development and was accompanied by a ban on silver exports. The Chinese government is actively touting both gold and silver as an investment to the Chinese public, and with good reason. Read the rest of this entry »

Never in our country’s history have Americans witnessed the travesty of such an anti-constitutional administration and congress. And a great deal of the responsibility falls on both major political parties and the media. However, there are others, including American voters who refuse to intelligently discuss the issues and critically analyze what the administration is doing. As a result, the likelihood of another civil war or second revolution increases with each passing day and each new power-grab by the Obama administration. Read the rest of this entry »

What are derivatives? Some investors describe them as “dormant economic weapons of mass destruction”. They essentially are large leveraged bets on top of stocks, bonds and commodities. Money can be made within months or seconds by betting if a stock will go up, down or even remain the same. With no credit rating you can place a bet worth double your account balance. Big time investors get greater leverage with these instantaneous loans. Read the rest of this entry »

Webster describes what the meaning of Jingle Mail as the retail – commercial and real estate market is on the verge of collapse.. Read the rest of this entry »

(WSJ) – Federal Reserve and Treasury officials are scrambling to prevent the commercial-real-estate sector from delivering a roundhouse punch to the U.S. economy just as it struggles to get up off the mat. Read the rest of this entry »

The banking system has taken the country to the financial edge of the greatest recession since the depression.  The enormous number of bad loans floating out in the economy only complicates the unemployment situation.  When we look into the latest banking data, we realize that over 1,000 of current banks will fail or merge with a too big too fail bank.  In fact, the total number will be over 1,000 simply because the “not too big” to fail banks heavily bet on commercial real estate loans that amount to $3 trillion. Read the rest of this entry »

In the last few months the world economy has been saved from a near-depression. That feat has been achieved by a range of extraordinary government stimulus measures: In the U.S. and in China, and to a lesser extent in Europe, Japan and other countries, governments have pumped liquidity, slashed policy rates, cut taxes, primed demand and ring-fenced and back-stopped the financial system. All of this has worked, but at a cost. Governments have been spending and borrowing like never before. The question now is: how do they stop? Read the rest of this entry »

(MSNBC) – Economists estimate 1.8 million borrowers will lose their homes this year Read the rest of this entry »

Entirely unsuspected, except by a few astute observers, they cunningly and patiently wove a web in which they have entrapped mankind. — Emanuel Josephson, 1968
Most of the real history of the world has been hidden from us by the same people who commit the crimes, gigantic crimes on the scale of world wars , manufactured pandemics and massive tax ripoffs that ruin our health, kill our children and obliterate our peace of mind. Read the rest of this entry »

(Bloomberg) – More than 150 publicly traded U.S. lenders own nonperforming loans that equal 5 percent or more of their holdings, a level that former regulators say can wipe out a bank’s equity and threaten its survival. Read the rest of this entry »

(Mike Whitney) – We’re making this way too complicated. It’s simple really.

The Fed has only one tool at its disposal; to create more money. Typically, the way the Fed adds to the money supply is by lowering interest rates. When the Fed lowers rates below the rate of inflation; they’re basically selling dollars for under a buck. That’s a good deal, so, naturally, speculators jump on it and trigger a credit expansion. What follows is a frenzy of market activity that ends in a housing, credit, tech or equity bubble. Eventually, the bubble bursts and the economy goes into a tailspin. Then, after a period of digging-out, the process resumes again. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s always the same. Read the rest of this entry »

(Google) – US President Barack Obama defended his administration’s response to the economic crisis over the last six months, declaring: “The fire is now out.” Read the rest of this entry »

The latest Treasury auction of $19 billion of 10-year notes was at a yield of 3.365%. The bid to cover was 3.28 to 1, the highest ever. This was the third of four sales this week totaling $73 billion. Read the rest of this entry »

(aljazeera) – Wall Street and the City of London – the world’s two major financial centres – declare it is “business as usual” again… They are hiring, poaching each other’s staff and their profits are soaring. Read the rest of this entry »