So there I am sat in a room with central bankers, ex-central bankers, central bank lawyers, people from the IMF, Canadian Development Bank, Federal Reserves of a couple fo US states, and assorted financial academics, and I am clawing at my ears to make it all stop. ...
In the week a report established that 97.1% of scientists publishing on the subject have concluded that man-made climate change exists, it seems the right have re-opened an old front in their war on reality. In Saturday’s Financial Times the normally sober paper...
A much remarked upon feature of the Global Financial Crisis ('GFC') has been the recourse of governments to permanent states of exception, purportedly justified by the need to protect financial stability. We have seen everything from prime ministers being...
The European Commission has been forced to rebuff a proposal by the Eurozone's new bailout fund, the ESM, that Greek assets be transferred to a new Luxembourg-based special purpose vehicle as a part of a wider privatisation scheme. The proposal, mooted by Finland in...
Come again? Cypriots discover the debt jubilee? Well yes actually, that is basically how depositors at Cypriot banks have been treated by the Troika, even if the decision to grab up to 9.9% of cash deposits to finance a bail out of the finance sector is being...
On Wednesday night prime German television channel ARD broadcast undercover reportage concerning the treatment of foreign workers at...
From top to bottom: German net private wealth; wealth of top 10% (who own 63% of all wealth); wealth of poorest 10% A group of German trades unions, academics, and militants have attempted to seize back the clock as a powerful mode of political expression with their...
From 15 November 2012, a part of the Occupy Movement in the U.S. led by Strike Debt will be operating a "Rolling Jubilee" which their website describes as: A bailout of the people by the people. We buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting...
The Amendment of the German Bankruptcy Act, which came into effect six months ago, has opened the door to widespread abuse alleges the...
Martin Wheatley, British financial regulator charged with solving the LIBOR crisis, has returned from his Crusade carrying, we are told, a splinter of the True Cross which he assures us is capable of procuring miracles. Not common or garden miracles involving the...
Yesterday's publication of further dismal GDP data for the UK is an opportunity to reconsider its basis as the justification for many aspects of the current neoliberal order. Bracketing out the question of whether economic growth is a valid lodestar for any just...
In my previous post I asked somewhat rhetorically what else banks had felt able to do during the credit crunch if the belief had arisen that "market stability" (sc. bank survival") trumped criminal law. The U.S. Securities and Exchnage Commission ("SEC") has...
What's the difference between Monaco and the City of London? One is a micro-territory governed by absolute fiat, hollowed out by property speculation, gambling, and the concealment of great crimes of wealth, and the other is Monaco. In case your wondering, Monaco...
As partners and associates of 190 equity partner US law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf filed out of their 6th Ave. New York office, cardboard boxes of desk clutter in hand, one could not help noticing the similarities with the images of the collapse of Lehman Bros. The...
At this week's UK Treasury Select Committee hearing on the Budget of 2012, attendees were invited to draw parallels between George Osborne's view of economics and the military stratagems of Field Marshall Haig. It seems that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer has...
Greg Smith's resignation letter in the New York Times yesterday, announcing a bridge-burning departure from his position as Executive Director of...
Some quick thoughts on Standard & Poors' downgrading of the U.S.'s credit rating from the previously bullet-proof AAA to AA+. We can moan about S&P's miscalculation that led to a US$2tn error, and rigtly note with Paul...
The inevitability with which global markets would fall off their to-date unrealistic levels did nothing to mollify the depth and panic of the spasms. It has become a truism that nothing in the structure of international finance has changed, save that the losses of...
The suffering spreads Our notional executive’s assumption about how industry would help the banks and the economy out of the Credit Crunch was in one element correct. Borrowers had bailed out the banks, but it was only by means of workers’ redundancies, the stripping...
At whatever time our industrial borrower first took on the credit agreement with which it found itself, in 2009, chained and broken before its financial masters, it is likely it only had a vague inkling that anyone beyond its relationship bank was, or was to be,...
With the Credit Crunch in the finance sector now causing deleterious effects in the ‘real’ economy (see Part 1), concerned Finance Directors (“FDs”) turned to their relationship banks with a view to agreeing how best to muddle through what appeared to be a temporary...
In this series of four articles this week I examine the course of the Credit Crunch from the perspective of the interface between the hyper-financialised world of collateral debt obligations and securitisation, and the more familiar world of industrial corporate...