NightBlogger

The Automatic Earth
I’m convinced that whatever anybody says to the contrary, Fannie and Freddie have been used for at least 2 years to dump losses incurred by Wall Street’s largest lenders, including Countrywide. I’m equally convinced that the Treasury and the Federal Reserve knew about this, and gave their permission. Perhaps the scheme even originated there. The key line in the Washington Post article is this one: “Fannie Mae Executive Vice President Thomas A. Lund said the company pursued the purchase of subprime loans in 2006 and 2007 at the request of lenders, who wanted Fannie Mae to take the loans off their books.”. They don’t even try to hide it much. And why should they? After all, they can continue to claim, as the Post quotes from an internal Fannie document, that “The company recognized the already weak performance of subprime loans but predicted that they would get better in 2007″. More

James Turk
The Federal Reserve did not suddenly contract the amount of dollars in circulation. Its latest H.6 report shows that both M1 and M2 expanded in recent weeks, so there was no shortage of supply. The Federal Reserve did not raise interest rates during this period. Consequently, inflation adjusted interest rates remain negative. In other words, the annual inflation rate is higher than the amount of interest one can earn on a 1-year dollar deposit, which is highly inflationary and a major disincentive to holding dollars. There has not been any news exceptionally favorable to the dollar. In fact, the banking problems in the United States continue to mount, while the federal government’s deficit continues to soar out of control. On July 28th Reuters reported that “The Bush administration on Monday plans to project the U.S. budget deficit will soar to a new record…because of the slowing economy and an economic stimulus plan approved this year.” So what happened to cause the dollar to rally over the past three weeks? In a word, intervention. Central banks have propped up the dollar, and here’s the proof.

When central banks intervene in the currency markets, they exchange their currency for dollars. Central banks then use the dollars they acquire to buy US government debt instruments so that they can earn interest on their money. The debt instruments central banks acquire are held in custody for them at the Federal Reserve, which reports this amount weekly. On July 16, 2008 (the closest date of the weekly reports to the July 15th low in the Dollar Index), the Federal Reserve reported holding $2,349 billion of US government paper in custody for central banks. In its report released today, this amount had grown over the past three weeks to $2,401 billion, a 38.4% annual rate of growth. To put this phenomenally high growth rate into perspective, for the twelve months ending this past July 16th, assets in the Federal Reserve’s custody account grew by 17.3%, which is less than one-half the growth rate experienced over the past three weeks.

So central banks were accumulating dollars over the past three weeks at a rate far above what one would expect as a result of the US trade deficit. The logical conclusion is that they were intervening in currency markets. They were buying dollars for the purpose of propping it up, to keep the dollar from falling off the edge of the cliff and doing so ignited a short covering rally, which is not too difficult to do given the leverage employed in the markets these days by hedge funds and others. So central banks pushed in one direction and funds and traders then stepped on board. In other words, central banks ignited the fuse of a bear market rally. With this intervention, central banks have bought some time. More

Is the U.S. Banking System Safe?
Our economy and banking system is so complex and intertwined that no one knows where the next shoe will drop. Politicians and government bureaucrats are lying to the public when they say that everything is alright. They do not know. Therefore, it is in our best interest to cut through all the crap and examine the facts with a skeptical eye. Last week, bank stocks, which had been falling faster than President Bush’s approval rating, soared higher based on earnings reports that were horrific, but not catastrophic. Again, the talking heads, like Larry Kudlow, were calling a bottom in the financial crisis. The bank with the largest increase in share price was Wells Fargo. Their earnings exceeded analyst expectations and the stock went up 22% in one day. Wells Fargo (WFC) has $84 billion of home equity loans, with half of those in California and Florida.

Coincidently, Wells Fargo decided to extend its charge-off policy in the 2nd quarter from 120 days to 180 days, in an effort to give troubled borrowers more time to reach a loan workout. A skeptical person might think that they did not change this policy out of the goodness of their hearts. Maybe, just maybe, they changed this policy to reduce their write-offs for the 2nd quarter, to beat analyst expectations. There are many stories of people who are still living in houses, twelve months after making their last mortgage payment. Their banks have not started foreclosure proceedings. Is this due to incompetence by the banks, or is this a way to avoid writing off the loss? The FASB has joined the cover-up gang by delaying the implementation of new rules that would have made banks stop hiding toxic waste off-balance sheet. The new rule would have made banks put these questionable assets on their balance sheet and would have required a bigger capital cushion

What a surprise that bank regulators, the Treasury and Federal Reserve urged a delay in implementation. Manipulate the facts because the average American doesn’t understand or care. Sounds like Enron accounting standards to me. During the S&L crisis in the early 1990s, 1,500 banks failed. So far, seven banks have failed in 2008, the largest being IndyMac. The FDIC has about $53 billion in funds to handle future bank failures. The IndyMac failure is expected to use $4 to $8 billion of those funds. Average Americans will lose $500 million in uninsured deposits in this failure. The FDIC says that they have 90 banks on their “watch list”. They do not reveal the banks on the list, so little old ladies with their life savings in the local bank will be surprised when they go belly up. Based on the fact that IndyMac was not on their “watch list”, I wouldn’t put too much faith in their analysis.

There are 8,500 banks in the U.S. Based on an independent analysis by Chris Whalen from Institutional Risk Analytics, they have identified 8% of all banks, or around 700 banks as troubled. This is quite a divergence from the FDIC estimate. Should you believe a governmental agency that wants the public to remain in the dark to avoid bank runs, or an independent analysis based upon balance sheet analysis? The implications of 700 institutions failing are huge. There is roughly $6.84 trillion in bank deposits. It is almost beyond belief that $2.6 trillion of these deposits are uninsured. There is only $274 billion of the $6.84 trillion as cash on hand at banks. This means that $6.5 trillion has been loaned to consumers, businesses, developers, etc. The FDIC has $53 billion to cover $6.84 trillion of deposits. Does that give you a warm feeling? More

(Reuters) - The United States is in the second inning of a recession that will last for at least 18 months and help kill off hundreds of banks, influential economist and New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini told Barron’s in Sunday’s edition. Taxpayers will pay a big price for helping bail out the rest of the financial services industry as well, Roubini said — at least $1 trillion and more likely $2 trillion. The banks will become insolvent because of mounting losses as a result of the housing bust and because they have only written down their subprime loans so far, he said. Still in front of them are their consumer-credit losses, for which they lack the reserves, Barron’s reported. He also said there are hundreds of millions of dollars outstanding in home-equity loans that could be worth zero, too.

U.S. consumers, meanwhile, are “shopped out” and saving less, while the Federal Reserve’s performance in handling the crisis has been poor, Roubini said, because it failed to see that the problem extended beyond subprime mortgage debt. Now, Roubini told Barron’s, the government is overregulating, bailing out troubled participants and intervening in every market. “The regulators should investigate themselves for bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the creditors of Bear Stearns and the financial system with new lending facilities. They have swapped U.S. Treasury bonds for toxic securities,” he told Barron’s. “It is privatizing the gains and profits, and socializing the losses as usual. This is socialism for Wall Street and the rich.”

He said that sometimes it is necessary to use public money to rescue institutions, but in a way that does not bail out the people who made the mistakes. “In each one of these episodes, the government bailed out the shareholders, the bondholders, and to some degree, management,” Roubini told Barron’s. As for the banks that will go bankrupt, they will include community banks that finance homes, stores, downtown areas, commercial real estate and other mainstays of U.S. towns and cities, Roubini said.

“Of three dozen or so medium-sized regional banks, a good third are in distress,” he told Barron’s, saying half of the group could go bankrupt. Some big banks could wind up insolvent, he added, but said they might be deemed too big to fail. Nouriel stressed that he is “quite bullish” about the state of the global economy and that he is positive about the medium and long term.

Joseph Y. Calhoun, III
Over the last 50 years (at least) but especially the last 30, every economic problem has been buried under another layer of credit and government intervention. The Federal Reserve and Congress have worked together to promote an economic environment where failure is deemed a threat to the “system” and all economic ills are “solved” by reducing the cost of credit. The result is plain for all to see. The US has moved from creditor to debtor nation. Debtors are bailed out through the tax code while savers are consigned to a prison of low interest rates. It is no surprise that we must import capital to cover our debts when we encourage debt and discourage saving.

The long term problems facing our economy will not be solved painlessly. Nor will they be solved by providing more of the same policies that got us to this point. While the Federal Reserve sits at the center of our problems the institution itself is not at fault. They have been given an impossible dual mission to maintain economic growth and to limit inflation. Having control only over the money supply, it is beyond the capabilities of the Fed to create growth. Inflation and credit expansion do not add anything to the amount of resources available or the capital stock. The Fed cannot create universal prosperity by creating more money. Inflation consumes precious capital by misdirecting resources into non economic investments. If you have any doubts about that, think of all the empty houses sitting around the country which attracted so much investment over the last decade. The capital devoted to housing was diverted from more productive uses and is now being destroyed as banks are forced to write off the bad loans.

The villains in this story are the inhabitants of our political institutions. They seek to buy our votes with our own money and when they find that is not enough, they turn to the Federal Reserve and the banking system to create more. Rather than raise taxes to pay for the goodies they promise or the wars they deem necessary, they depend on debt and inflation. They do not create jobs, but destroy them. They do not create equality but exacerbate the divide between the haves and have nots and manipulate the divide to accrue more power. They do not create capital but rather destroy it. They are not special but mere mortals susceptible to the same failings as all men. They are self interested actors acting on a stage of their own design in a play written for their own benefit. More

(Reuters) - Banks borrowed a record amount of funds from the Federal Reserve in the latest week as the year old credit crisis took a persistent toll, while the commercial paper market continued to contract, signaling tough conditions for short term borrowers. Banks’ primary credit borrowings averaged $17.45 billion per day in the latest week, the second straight week this had hit a record and up from $16.38 billion the previous week, Fed data showed on Thursday. “It shows there’s a shortage of liquidity in the system,” said Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York. Secondary credit the Fed extended, which is usually taken out by banks in need of emergency cash, rose to $89 million in the latest week, from $34 million the week before. Although these numbers are still very small compared with primary credit, “What that tells you is that there’s an increasing number of banks that the Fed is classifying as ‘unsound’ or inadequately capitalized,” Low said. More

Minyanville.com
For the last twenty years the Federal Reserve has used the banking system to expand the credit base of the economy. They kept interest rates low to encourage borrowing. Beginning in 2001 and 2002 the Federal Reserve went into overdrive, driving real interest rates negative and thus encouraging massive speculation in credit. The result is a money supply six times normal relative to GDP but more importantly one bloated with debt with virtually no relative savings to support it.

The system is now broken as evidenced by the TAF facility: the very definition of this is “the financial system has no more capital left and the TAF is the only way the Federal Reserve can get capital back in the system. So the Federal Reserve has taken bad debts in exchange for capital onto their balance sheet. This makes them very nervous. It’s not a far fetched thought to believe that the new SEC rules were specifically implemented to drive financial stocks up in order to allow them to raise capital through stock offerings. The capital would make it more probable that these banks are eventually able to take the bad debt back from the Fed. This serves as a warning to those who are tempted to fall for this and buy financial stocks on these secondary stock offerings.

Again, we hear from apologists that banks selling stock will “heal” the system. But again that’s not how it works. It only transfers wealth from one part of the system to another because wealth is not being created. There’s no production, only transfer. It’s a hallmark of deflation that companies sell stock. That is deflationary. People have to use cash to buy stock. So cash goes from investors who have less cash to buy things with, to banks who use it to write down debt. But the point is banks selling stocks to investors reduces liquidity, it does not increase it. The government’s strategy is to buy time. It always is. Time allows it to slowly drain wealth from the poor/middle class and re-distribute it to the rich who own the financial system. More

* Cost of the various US housing bail-out programs to date, through the Federal Reserve, the Federal Home Loan Banks, the Federal Housing Administration and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.: $1.46 trillion.
* Increase from 2006 to 2007 in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac part of the bail-outs: $621 billion (expected to be much higher this year)
* Total new financing the Fed has made available to markets: $446 billion
* Cost for (non-Fan and Fred) housing part of the The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. a new program at the Federal Housing Administration for refinanced 30-year fixed loans: $300 billion. Homeowners “rescued”: 400.000. Cost per home: $750.000.
* Increase in US debt limit to accommodate the bill: $800 billion, to $10.6 trillion from $9.816 trillion .
* Time the bill will be implemented: Summer 2009
* Taxpayers cost for explicit government guarantee for Fannie and Freddie: more than $1 trillion
* 2008 salary Fannie Mae CEO: $13.4 million .
* Increased amount of what FHLB calls “advances” to member banks: $274 billion,
* Total advances: $914 billion (second quarter of 2008).
NOTE: the FHLB has a “Superlien” with the FDIC. When banks go belly-up, they get their money first, before depositors do. The FHLB boasts that it has never lost a penny on a loan to its member banks.
* Decrease in average home value in the past two years in South Florida: $100,000, $4,100 a month, $136 a day, or $5.70 every hour.
* New record US budget deficit for period starting October 1: $490 billion
* George W. Bush February deficit forecast: $407 billion
* Funds required to meet the US transportation infrastructure demand: $225 billion a year
* Current spending: $100 billion per year
* Bridges in the U.S. that are either “functionally obsolete” or “structurally deficient: 25%
* Budget for House bill passed Wednesday for highway and mass-transit projects: $8 billion
* Expected 2009 Congress transportation bill $400 billion over 6 years.
* Worldwide asset writedowns and losses: $469 billion in the past year
* Capital raised: $345 billion
* Cost of payments distributed under US economic stimulus package: $168 billion
* Cost of invasions Iraq and Afghanistan: $10 billion to $12 billion a month
* Decrease in miles driven by Americans in past 7 months: 40 billion, 3.7%.
* Number of days one third of UK adults can survive on savings: 11
* Forecast increase UK unemployment: 1.6 million to 2.5 million over the next two years.
* U.S. Treasury securities outstanding: $4.67 trillion
* Amount held by Japan and China: more than $1 trillion combined.
More

Ron Paul talks about Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony in front of the House Financial Services Committee yesterday. Our economy faces enormous difficulties and one of the biggest culprits is the inflation tax for which the (privately owned) Federal Reserve is largely responsible.

The Market Oracle
…I wanted to make a special point to the folks who are viewing this week’s two-day rally as the potential start of a massive bull-market upswing. And that point is this: None of the factors that we were worried about before the rally have changed or gone away. Nor have any of the other potential pitfalls that we’ve repeatedly warned you about. The U.S. Federal Reserve is still scrambling to deflate the asset bubble it created - and is trying to do that in an orderly manner (a mistake on both counts). But the backstory isn’t pretty. Banks are still taking big write-offs, and in some cases also are under investigation. And there still are many reasons to be worried about commercial real estate, the U.S. housing market, inflation, stagflation, soaring food and commodities prices, and stratospheric energy costs.

The other thing that concerns us is that the markets tend not to do well when bad news is interpreted as good news - as Citigroup Inc.’s ( C ) latest numbers were overnight. Somehow the Street thinks that Citi’s loss of a mere $2.5 billion this quarter is good because it was less than the $2.86 billion of red ink that the Street was expecting. Let’s not forget that the beleaguered banking giant has written off nearly $40 billion in the past 12 months, revenue has fallen 29%, and that it is laying off 15,000 employees. That brings us to the broader markets, and our belief that rallies like those we’ve had in recent days are suspect, at best. The data seems to support this.

The bottom line: As much as we wish this weren’t the case, the strength we’ve seen in recent days may be nothing more than a massive short-covering rally. [Interestingly, Money Morning Contributing Editor R. Shah Gilani said precisely the same thing in his “Inside Wall Street” column published earlier today (Friday).] While it’s true that we may have a tradable bottom here that takes us as high as 1,370 or thereabouts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (only about a 9% increase from current levels), such numbers are hardly impressive when viewed against the harsh light of history. More

Tom Raum
The nation’s leaders are running out of answers to America’s economic crisis. The Federal Reserve has no more practical room to push interest rates lower; there’s only so much taxpayer money for shoring up housing, and if depositors lose confidence there’s little officials can do to stop a run on banks. After years of seeming tame, inflation is again on the rise, led by higher food and fuel costs. But the Fed, which usually fights inflation by boosting interest rates, finds itself unable to use that weapon any more – it already has pushed rates down to 2 percent from 5.25 percent in response to the housing crisis – without threatening to undermine an economy that is either in recession or growing anemically. More

July 14 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Treasury Department’s plan to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is an “unmitigated disaster” and the largest U.S. mortgage lenders are “basically insolvent,” according to investor Jim Rogers. Taxpayers will be saddled with debt if Congress approves U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s request for the authority to buy unlimited stakes in and lend to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Rogers said in a Bloomberg Television interview. Rogers is betting that Fannie Mae shares will keep tumbling.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Daniel Zimmerman said the mortgage finance companies’ shares may fall another 35 percent and lowered his share-price estimate for Fannie Mae to $7 from $18 and for Freddie Mac to $5 from $17. Freddie Mac fell 18 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $7.57 at 11:16 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange trading, while Fannie Mae rose 13 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $10.38.

“I don’t know where these guys get the audacity to take our money, taxpayer money, and buy stock in Fannie Mae,” Rogers, 65, said in an interview from Singapore. “So we’re going to bail out everybody else in the world. And it ruins the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and it makes the dollar more vulnerable and it increases inflation.” The chairman of Rogers Holdings, who in April 2006 correctly predicted oil would reach $100 a barrel and gold $1,000 an ounce, also said the commodities bull market has a “long way to go” and advised buying agricultural commodities. More

Politics In The Zeros
Dealbreaker on the supposed $15 billion bailout of Fannie and Freddie:

It probably goes without saying that you should exercise extreme skepticism about this, especially after Friday’s triple head fake. You remember that, right? First we heard that the government was going to takeover the pair and wipe out shareholders. Then Bernanke was opening the discount window to both. And then he wasn’t. It’s all been very suspicious, very third-world and banana republic, very unfree market. Watching all this is like engaging in Kremlinology.

Then again, never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. Maybe the Fed has no freaking idea what to do, and no one is in control. Which is probably more unsettling than thinking we are being controlled by devious puppetmasters.

Joan Veon
NewsWithViews.com
We live in a globalized world—a world without barriers or borders, which means every aspect of our economic structure has to change. A private corporation, we call the Federal Reserve, controls the majority of our monetary system. To understand the new set of powers being advanced by the U.S. Treasury Department to the Federal Reserve, we first must recognize that the Federal Reserve Act passed in 1913 never gave them (the Feds) total power over our economy.

To appreciate the importance of what is currently taking place, we must first realize that as a private corporation, the Federal Reserve is not required to make public who sits on their board of Directors nor who or what banks and corporations hold stock in their private company. Additionally, they are not required to publish an annual report, and I am told, they pay no taxes. So why is it that the American people cannot forgive themselves the interest on their debt? It is because it is owed to a private corporation!

The entire financial and business cycle of market highs and lows is controlled by how much money the Feds pump into or glean from the banking system. When they add money to the system, interest rates fall and the market rises and when they take money out of the system, interest rates rise and the stock market falls or corrects. In doing so, this private corporate structure allows for an elite group of people to literally buy low and sell high, thus transferring the wealth into their pockets while those who continue to hold take the “hit.” More

Interview with Dennis Kucinich regarding the Federal Reserve and Impeachment. Kucinich explains his introduction of Articles of Impeachment is in no way symbolic. “George Bush has committed offenses that should cause him to be impeached and removed from office. On the Federal Reserve: “The Federal Reserve is not federal and whatever they have in reserve doesn’t belong to the people.The Federal Reserve is there to protect the position of the banks.”

James Howard Kunstler
Larry King had a particularly dreary debate Sunday night between Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and a grab bag of “drill drill drill” advocates. Kennedy took the position that the US could achieve a sort of energy independence by massive deployments of wind and solar equipment. It’s an understandable wish, I suppose, but not something I view as consistent with reality. The unfortunate part of the Larry King presentation is that it gives the public an idea that these two fantasies are the only possible responses to our predicament. No one is interested in changing our current behavior.

In the background of these energy conundrums is the sickening spectacle of the nation’s fatal insolvency, which remains partially disguised by the machinations of the Federal Reserve, using the various new loan “windows” to maintain the illusion that the major banks have not swindled themselves out of existence — and in doing so, caused at least $3 trillion (so far) in capital to vanish in a black hole. This three-card-monte game has gone on for a whole year now, and the consequences are hitting home. No more money can be lent into existence now.

The US economy is crumbling because the way we conduct the activities of daily life is insane relative to our circumstances. We’ve spent sixty years ramping up a suburban living arrangement that has suddenly entered a state of failure, and all its accessories and furnishings are failing in concert. The far-flung McHouse tracts are becoming both useless and worthless in the face of gasoline prices that will never be cheap again. The strip malls and office “parks” are following the residential real estate off a cliff. The retail tenants of all those places are hemorrhaging customers who have maxed out every last credit card. The lack of business is now leading to substantial layoffs. The airline industry is dying and will probably cease to exist in its familiar form in 24 months. The trucking industry is dying, threatening the entire just-in-time distribution system of things that even people with little money to spend still need, like food. More

In a special program looking at issues surrounding oil & the economy, trends analyst Gerald Celente appeared for the full show. He was joined by investment adviser Catherine Austin Fitts in the third hour, and oil expert Matt Savinar in the last hour.

The dollar has lost 41% of its value during the Bush administration, and we’re going to see company failures so big they won’t be able to be bailed out, like Bear Stearns, said Celente. He cited the Federal Reserve, which functions as a private company with no congressional oversight, as one of the major problems. Predicting food & gas riots, as well as tax revolts, Celente suggested diversifying your savings among a number of banks, if you have more than $100,000.

Catherine Austin Fitts commented that the demise of Bear Stearns may have been a hit job, “cannibalized” for the good of other finance companies. There is an effort underway to centralize the economy and shift assets away from local communities, she warned. Fitts described these efforts as “economic warfare” being conducted on a global scale that is fostered by technology and “invisible weaponry,” such as satellites. The US economy is purposely being “pumped and dumped,” she noted.

Matt Savinar said global oil supplies have plateaued, and with lessening oil reserves it becomes increasingly expensive to bring up the remaining oil. Prices will continue to skyrocket upwards, he suggested, as we enter the down side of “peak oil.” Tapping unused reserves in the United States and Canada will only postpone the problem for a short time, and the theory of abiotic oil is a kind of misinformation, Savinar argued. The oil crisis is an “economic 9-11,” and we’re going to see a crash worse than the Great Depression, Celente added.

Richard Daughty
There is only one way to “protect the financial system”, and that is to stop the damned Federal Reserve from creating all the excess money and credit that finances the inflated crap that ends up endangering “the financial system” because so many people have lied to so many people to have them invest so much money into so many over-valued things, and now losses are inevitable, and on a scale that dwarfs the economies of the world.

I tried to leap to my feet to shout, “No! No! No! The Fed is supposed to protect the value of the dollar, which it has completely failed to do, and now it has created so much money and so much inflation in asset prices that they created the ‘unacceptable systemic risk’ you are talking about, you moron! In fact, the Federal Reserve is so incompetent and stupid that the dollar has lost almost 98% of its buying power since 1913 when the Fed was authorized by a few corrupt Congressional politicians on Christmas Eve, 1913 when everybody else was away! And now you want to give the Fed more powers? You’re a freaking imbecile or insane! Or both!”, but I found that was frozen in outrage! I could not move!

Hell, the recent downdraft in the S&P500 index to just over 1300 means that anybody who bought shares in this index since October 2006 has lost money! And now, because so many people are getting ready to lose so much money, here is the Secretary of the Treasury wanting permission to take over the finances of every company in America! Hahaha! Un-freaking-believable! We’re freaking doomed! Ugh. More

Congressman Ron Paul comments on the Federal Reserve’s decision to maintain interest rates and raises concerns about inflation on June 25, 2008. “If you’re worried about $4/gallon gasoline you better worry about $8/gallon because they’re [the Fed] still inflating…we live in an age that’s very dangerous and it’s coming to an end.”

Too late, way over due. The damage is already done. This is a hail Mary attempt to control a rouge financial sector that’s spiraled out of control.

MSNBC
NEW YORK - The Federal Reserve and Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) are finalizing an agreement to start the process of redrawing how Wall Street is regulated, the Wall Street Journal said on its Web site on Sunday. The agreement, which could be announced this week, aims to fill gaps in regulatory oversight and will increase cooperation between the central bank and the SEC in the wake of the near-collapse of Bear Stearns Cos, the report said. More

Dr. Ellen Brown
Globalresearch

An earlier article by this author (”The Secret Bailout of JP Morgan”) summarized evidence presented by John Olagues, an expert in options trading, suggesting that JPMorgan, far from “rescuing” Bear Stearns, was actually its nemesis. The faltering investment bank was brought down, not by “rumors,” but by insider trading based on a plan drawn up much earlier. The deal was a lucrative one for JPM, handing the Wall Street megabank $55 billion in loans from the Federal Reserve (meaning ultimately the U.S. taxpayer). So how did JPM get away with it? Olagues notes the highly suspicious fact that JPM’s CEO James Dimon sits on the Board of the New York Federal Reserve.

In his latest post, Olagues discusses the fate of Lehman Brothers, the nation’s fourth-largest investment bank and the next faltering bank expected to fail. Unlike Bear Stearns, which got decimated by the JPM buyout using Federal Reserve money, Lehman Brothers is probably in line for a massive bailout from the Fed. At least, that’s what its CEO Richard Fuld seems to believe. The June 4, 2008 Financial Times of London quoted him as stating, “The Federal Reserve’s decision earlier this year to lend directly to investment banks should take questions about Lehman’s liquidity off the table.”

Whether Lehman can come up with the “liquidity” to meet its debts is no longer an issue, because it expects to be feeding at the trough of the Federal Reserve, just as JPM did when it bought Bear Stearns at bargain-basement prices. The difference between the two “bailouts” is that Lehman Brothers, unlike Bear Stearns, will actually get the money. Why is Fuld so confident of this rescue operation? Olagues notes that Fuld, like Dimon (and unlike Bear CEO Alan Schwartz), sits on the Board of the New York Federal Reserve. More

Bloomberg
FEDERAL Reserve Board Vice Chairman Donald Kohn raised the possibility of giving Wall Street securities firms permanent access to loans from the central bank, as long as regulators tighten oversight of the companies. Kohn also advocated continuing Fed auctions of funds to commercial banks and loans of Treasuries to Wall Street dealers even after markets stabilize. Such channels would stay open “either on a standby basis or operating at a very low level,” he said in a speech in New York yesterday.

“If you are a bondholder in one of these Wall Street firms, you know you have a big `Sugar Daddy’ now called the Federal Reserve that’s going to back you up,” said Jeff Pantages, chief investment officer of Alaska Permanent Capital Management in Anchorage, which oversees $1.8 billion in assets. “But if you are a stockholder this kind of worries you because investment banks will be more highly regulated and won’t be able to use leverage as much as before,” he said. More

Pic courtesy of klynslis

George Will at The New York Post writes:

“The Fed has no mandate to be the dealmaker for Wall Street socialism. The Fed’s mission is to preserve the currency as a store of value by preventing inflation. Its duty is not to avoid a recession at all costs; the way to get a big recession is to engage in frenzied improvisations because a small recession (aka, a correction) is deemed intolerable. The Fed should not try to produce this or that rate of economic growth or unemployment.

After the tech bubble burst in 2000, the Fed opened the money spigot to lower interest rates and keep the economy humming. And since the bursting of the housing bubble, the Fed has again lowered interest rates, which for now are negative - lower than the inflation rate, which the open spigot will aggravate”. Read more

Ron Paul, considered by many to be completely out of the loop, wrote this is 2002:

“Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy. In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people.”

From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the burst of the dotcom bubble last year, every economic downturn suffered by the country over the last 80 years can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial “boom” followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts”. Read more