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POPSMajor Banks Supporting Corrupt Regimes Barclays helped oil-rich Equatorial Guinea long after clear evidence emerged ruling family were looting state oil revenues. Hong Kong bank helped Republic of Congo ruling family spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in oil revenues on designer shopping sprees. Citibank facilitated the funding of two vicious civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia by enabling the warlord Charles Taylor, now on trial for war crimes in the Hague, to loot timber revenues. Deutsche Bank assisted the late president Niyazov of Turkmenistan, a notorious human rights abuser, to keep billions of dollars of state gas revenues under his personal control and off the national budget. Dozens of British, European and Chinese banks have ignored laws and used loopholes to aid criminal and atrocious acts of human rights violations, money-laundering and theft. We speak out against crimes agains the poor while the rich are aided by banks to carry out their crimes. Disgusting.
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POPSEconomic Crisis Just Beginning It seems like a hundred years ago but it was less than twelve months, that politicians and their Believers were scorning the idea of any sort of recession. The economic collapse here predicted will, if right, be a further factor in the conditions that make totalitarianism on a dreadful scale ever more likely.
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POPSObama Orders Pay Limits at Banks Getting Future Aid As the public outcry over Wall Street pay escalated, top executives at Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have agreed to forgo bonuses. Governments in the U.K., Switzerland and France have pressured banks, including UBS AG and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc to limit executive pay after taxpayer-funded bailouts.
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POPSNow Hiring: Lehman Behind the scenes is Mr. Fuld, the firm's former chairman and chief executive, who was widely vilified when Lehman collapsed in mid-September. Though Mr. Fuld was removed from the payroll on Jan. 1 and relieved of his company-provided black Mercedes, Lehman has agreed to let him keep an office at the firm. He's just around the corner from Mr. Marsal, who says he picks Mr. Fuld's brain about Lehman's business several times a week. "We asked him to stay if he has nowhere better to go," says Mr. Marsal. "He's been very good about making himself available for questions about Lehman assets." Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Fuld declined to comment. Mr. Marsal says the goal is to dissolve the firm in 18 to 24 months from now, though several restructuring experts say that's an aggressive timetable. Alvarez & Marsal got the gig in September after Lehman's board appointed it to administer the bankrupt company's estate.
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POPSsay that 'he who owns the gold makes the rules'.
Why would anyone want to manipulate the gold price? Well, despite the fact that is is of barely any industrial use, gold is a highly political metal and a runaway gold price – which, by the way, we will eventually see, I am sure – tells you 'something is rotten in the state of Denmark'. If people are rushing to buy gold, it shows they do not trust the government to maintain the value of paper currency. So the aim of the manipulators, the theory goes, is to devalue gold and preserve the status of unbacked government currencies such as the dollar. And certainly, the remarkable trading pattern of the London PM and AM fix adds more weight to the theory that the West is selling gold during Comex opening hours, possibly to suppress the price. In September 1919 when the gold price was £4 18/9d per ounce. It's now more than £600. And the reception to the latest banking bail-out suggests it won't stop falling any time soon. there's no evidence that bear market is anywhere near its end.
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POPSBarclays Online Video Our online video portal channel will help you find movies on a variety of banking topics that can answer your questions from the comfort of your own home.
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POPS Barclaycard Takes Over £2000 From Barclays Bank Customer's Account Barclaycard Takes Over £2000 From Barclays Bank Customer's Account Barclaycard shows no mercy if one of its customers goes into arrears on its credit card account. If the unfortunate person happens to have a Barclays bank account Barclaycard just helps itself and takes the money out of the account, leaving the helpless account holder unable to pay the bills. The unfortunate victim was unaware his account was even in suspension. Nobody had bothered to tell him.
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POPSIf Entire Countries Go Broke, We'll Go With Them
The root of today's credit crisis is not that the world lacks money; the world is awash in cash, with $6 trillion sitting idly in global money markets alone. But if countries start to fail, the remainder of the world's investment capital could be spooked out of productive investments as well. Nor do we have the tools to avert disaster. The International Monetary Fund's resources are a pittance compared to the financial exposure of the countries in most danger. And as a result of the industrialized world's government bailouts and bank guarantees, there won't be any more capital for emerging markets that are still flailing. Take, for example, a country as large and powerful as Germany: Deutsche Bank's assets represent 80 percent of the nation's GDP. In Switzerland, the assets of the bank UBS represent 450 percent of the country's GDP. The financial exposure of the British banks is similarly alarming: Barclays PLC's assets amount to more than 100 percent of the United Kingdom's GDP,
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POPSDon't blame deregulation Indeed, exactly contrary to Obama’s claims, the repeal of Glass-Steagall has helped to counter the current crisis. It allowed Bank of America to buy out Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase to buy out Bear Stearns, and Barclays Bank to work on buying up the remains of Lehman Brothers. It allowed investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to take up refuge as bank holding companies. If investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers had diversified more into commercial banking, taking commercial deposits — as the Act’s repeal made possible — that might have provided them with the superior capital cushions needed to survive.
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POPSUK Rushes Bailout Plan for Troubled Banks UK moves to nationalize struggling banks. Sounds like a run on a few banks in the UK could strap them for cash. Do they have the equivalent of FDIC, are the people accounts insured by the government? The moves are to provide enough "cash on hand for day to day operations"--i.e. consumer withdrawals: To address the collapse of confidence in money markets, the standby facility should ensure big banks have enough cash to fund day-to-day operations.
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POPSBernanke, Paulson, Trichet May Act to Unblock Lending (Update1)
Rates are also surging in the commercial paper market that many U.S. companies use to finance their day-to-day operations. Yields on overnight U.S. commercial paper jumped 0.94 percentage point to 3.68 percent. `The Federal Reserve must now act as a clearing house'' for banks and ``must also take another bold step: outright purchases of commercial paper, said Bill Gross, manager of the world's biggest bond fund at Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co. Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index having its steepest intraday decline since 1987 and emerging markets, until now the locomotives of the world economy, hit particularly hard: exchanges in Russia and Brazil halted trading. One less complicated step would be for central banks to lower rates in concert. Traders are betting that the Bank of England will lower rates at a meeting this week, and that the Fed will cut its benchmark by at least half a point at or before an Oct. 28-29 gathering.
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POPS$2.5 billion bonuses for bankrupt Lehman employees THis is obscene. Company that goes bankrupt should pay off debts to investors first before "bonuses". This is another indication of the greed that has taken over the investment and banking system. Contemplate what China does with their corrupt greedy executives.....
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