financial crisis

The Fed’s easy money policies have pushed margin debt on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to record levels laying the groundwork for a severe correction or another violent market crash.

Mega-banks might be too big to fail. According to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, they might even be too big to prosecute. But they are not too big to abandon as depositories for government funds.

Manipulation of the gold price is a foregone conclusion. The question is: why is the Fed tapering? The official reason is that the recovery is now strong enough not to need the stimulus. There are two problems with the official explanation. One is that the purpose of QE has always been to support the prices of the debt-related derivatives on the balance sheets of the banks too big to fail. The other is that the Fed has enough economists and statisticians to know that the recovery is a statistical artifact of deflating GDP with an understated measure of inflation.

If and when uncertainty spreads to the dollar, the real crisis will arrive, likely followed by high inflation, exchange controls, pension confiscations, and resurrected illegality of owning gold and silver. Capitalist greed aided and abetted by economists and policymakers will have destroyed America.The post How Economists and Policymakers Murdered Our Economy appeared first on BSNEWS.

A big chunk of the trillions of dollars that it pumped into the financial system over the past several years has flowed into emerging markets. But now that the Fed has decided to begin "the taper", investors see it as a sign to pull the "hot money" out of emerging markets as rapidly as possible. This is causing currencies to collapse and interest rates to soar all over the planet.

The banks and corporations have not used the handouts from governments and central banks for productive investment—to rebuild crumbling infrastructures or expand the productive forces. The Financial Times reported Friday that US capital spending is expected to grow this year at its slowest pace in four years.

According to the statistics from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the number of under-25s without a job for a year or more increased from 266,000 in 2012 to 282,000 in September 2013, The Daily Mirror reported on Saturday.

Last year’s figure is just under the 285,000 recorded in 1993, when John Major was British Prime Minister.The post UK’s long-term youth unemployment hits record high appeared first on BSNEWS.

On Friday, a group of young Stratford mums occupied the East Thames Housing Association building (and showroom) and Newham council's housing offices as part of their ongoing fight for decent social housing in Newham.

Michael Hudson sees a parasitic financial industry that looks only to determine how much wealth it can extract via fees, interest income, and tax breaks, rather than providing capital to increase.The post The “Iron-fisted Kleptocratic Financial Oligarchy” 95% Income Growth Goes to the 1% appeared first on BSNEWS.

In crucial ways – the scale of its attacks on social security, service privatisation and falling living standards for the majority – Cameron's coalition has outdone even Margaret Thatcher. Its austerity programme halted recovery for four years and has cut most people's real terms pay deeper and over a longer period than at any time since the 19th century.