While some are hopeful for financial
stability in the Euro area, others remain skeptical. We talk to Klaus
Regling, the head of EFSF; and Professor Marcus Kerber, Technical
University of Berlin.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
French regulator says miracle needed to save AAA
On Friday, credit ratings agency Fitch lowered the outlook on France's triple-A sovereign rating to negative, joining Standard & Poor's, which put France and 14 other euro zone countries under review at the start of the month.
Moody's, the other major ratings agency, said in October it was reviewing its stable outlook on France's AAA rating.
"Keeping it would need a miracle, but I want to believe it can happen," Jean-Pierre Jouyet told a meeting with financial journalists......read on
Why Irish Eyes are Crying
Ireland's Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan learned banking and finance at the kitchen table, two days after Lehman failed. All he knew when he first sat down was that Alan Greenspan was God.
The incompetence of central bankers and finance ministers over the past few years has been breath-taking, but Ireland's Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, takes the golden biscuit for sheer ineptitude.
From David McWilliams' recent book, Follow The Money: The Tale of the Merchant of Ennis, we learn that Lenihan, a lawyer by training, received his first lessons in banking and finance at McWilliams' kitchen table - on the 17th of September 2008.
Before that, McWilliams tells us, Lenihan had learned everything he knew about finance from a biography of Alan Greenspan(!) that he had picked up over the summer. We learn that Lenihan had no idea that Irish banks were in trouble until after the failure of Lehman Brothers just two days before.
Less than two weeks after that late-night cram session at McWilliams' kitchen table, Ireland announced to the world that it would fully guarantee its banks liabilities -- for both depositors and bondholders.
We now know that this hasty decision would lead to national bankruptcy and the specter of sovereign default. But at the time, Lenihan -- not unlike a number of other clueless politicians scattered throughout the formerly industrialized world -- was only following the advice being offered by the "experts" who surrounded him. Shockingly, among those "experts" were none other than a team of advisors from Merrill Lynch.
Turns out that a week after the Finance Minister's introduction to basic finance, the Irish government paid Merrill Lynch $10M for a seven-page report that told them:
"All of the Irish banks are profitable and well capitalised.”
No wonder Irish eyes are crying - what was billed as a costless way to avoid a banking panic ended up bankrupting the nation......read on
Keiser Report: Victims of Banking Terrorists
By
RussiaToday
on Dec 20, 2011
This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss the Maxinator,
downgrade rampages and food fights between Sarkozy and Cameron. In the
second half of the show, Max and Stacy look at the victims of banking
fraud, from the Alabama poor cut off from water supplies to the small
ranchers who lost it all when MF Global was run into the ground by
former Goldman Sachs banker and ex-New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine.
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