Neueste Meeting Minutes des Arbeitskreises

nach dem Meeting von gestern. Neu: Seiten 73-85, 108.

Föhrenberg-Kreis Financial Economy III 10-02-02

5 Thesen des Föhrenbergkreises zu sofortigen Massnahmen

Wenn das selbständige Denken aufhört, verfällt die Ordnung

Ein Mail von Monika Samu:

In der Zeitschrift lebensART fand ich zum Thema Geld einen Hinweis auf den Föhrenbergkreis. Ein hochinteressantes Forum, “bemannt” mit Menschen, die selbständig denken. “Wenn das selbständige Denken aufhört, verfällt die Ordnung.” (Konfuzius)

 Ich habe Menschen kennengelernt, deren Denken und Handeln von einem hohen Verantwortungsbewußtsein ausgeht. Sie haben erkannt, dass die Wurzeln allen Übels im Geldsystem zu finden sind.

 ”DIE SEIT JAHREN LAUFENDE GIGANTISCHE LIQUIDITÄTSMASCHINE DER STAATEN TÄUSCHT EINEN REICHTUM AUF PUMP VOR, DER UM DEN UNENDLICH BITTEREN UND HOHEN PREIS KÜNFTIGER VERARMUNG VORFINANZIERT WIRD. DIESER GEPUMPTE UND GETÜRKTE REICHTUM FÜHRT ZU EINER RESSOURCENVERSCHWENDUNG, WIE SIE KEINE NOCH SO “WILDE” FREIE MARKTWIRTSCHAFT ERZEUGEN KÖNNTE. DAS STAATLICHE BELIEBIGKEITSGELD IST DER GRÖSSTE UMWELTVERSCHMUTZER DER WELTGESCHICHTE.” (Roland Baader – Freiheitsfunken)

Should the EMU Bail Out Members in Trouble Despite No-Bail Out Clause? Should the IMF Intervene?

On RGE’s Europe EconoMonitor, Michael G. Arghyrou and John Tsoukalas propose a last-resort plan for devaluation that would prevent moral hazard. The plan involves “the temporary implementation of a two-currency EMU, with both currencies run by the Frankfurt-based ECB. The core-EMU countries will continue to use the present currency, the strong euro. The periphery countries, on the other hand, will adopt, for a certain period of time, another currency, the weak euro. Crucially, the bonds and external debt of the periphery countries will stay in strong-euro terms. Transition from the weak to the strong euro should be made conditional upon meeting a suitably defined criterion referring to the current account balance [rather than the fiscal position], a more accurate indicator of long-term competitiveness developments.”

Markets hate uncertainty

Now, this week’s Outside the Box is from my friend Simon Hunt, based in London. Simon travels to China many times a year, is an authority on copper and the Long Wave theory of cycles. John Mauldin. February Economic Report.

by Simon Hunt This will be a shortened version of our usual monthly economic reports, since we have posted several short notes on the economic and financial markets. This year is likely to be a year of surprises. Global economic growth will disappoint. The intrusion of governments into all matters financial, economic and even personal is a cause for uncertainty associated with policy risks; and markets hate uncertainty. It is these policy risks which could have the biggest impact on the potential global recovery in the economy and financial markets. 2010 should also be the year when many countries from the USA to the UK to China will experience the first moves towards policy tightening and the gradual withdrawal of financial and monetary stimulus. Moves by China to begin tightening monetary policy, even though they are only tinkering with the problem of excess liquidity, are a leading indicator to world markets of this changing environment. The consequences of this tightening are not yet visible, but could well become far reaching.

Who’s Killing Financial Reform?

Thursday, February 4, 2010, Robert Reich

Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms” needed by the public. “The fact is,” Dodd said, “I am frustrated, and so are the American people.” He charged that Wall Street’s intransigence was the reason for Congress’s failure to pass any bill to regulate the Street. “The refusal of large financial firms to work constructively with Congress on this effort borders on insulting to the American people who have lost so much in this crisis.”

After Greece, and Portugal, Does Spain Come Next?

Edward Hugh

Jan 31, 2010 4:16PM

Well, the Spanish government are due to announce their 2009 fiscal deficit number this morning, together with their adjustment plan for reducing the annual fiscal deficit to below 3% of GDP by 2013. This rather distasteful news will be presented to the Spanish people later in the same day on which they opened their morning newspapers to discover that they were all going to have to work two years longer – no crisis comes free – since the Labour Minister Celestino Corbacho has announced that the retirement age will be raised from 65 to 67 (in two-month-per-year installments) between now and 2025.

Volcker Rule: Dead on Arrival? And is Obama a Lame Duck?

Yves Smith

Feb 2, 2010 12:32PM

We’ve argued that the “Volcker Rule,” which would limit “proprietary trading” by banks, is in theory a very good idea, but the proposal put forward by Volcker/Team Obama goes wide of the mark by defining any customer trade as not being part of proprietary trading. That’s a spurious distinction; large-scale position-taking well beyond what was needed for market-making dates back to the 1980s, long before firms had separate proprietary trading desks or in-house hedge funds. As a result, they looked likely to have little impact. As we noted:

 You can drive a supertanker though the loopholes in this proposal, which are:

1. If a firm does not own a bank, it can do proprietary trading

2. Trades with customers are not proprietary trades

These are so silly that I’m astonished anyone is treating this proposal seriously.

Let’s dispatch them in order.

Medicine for Europe’s sinking south

By Nouriel Roubini and Arnab Das

Published: February 2 2010 20:33 | Last updated: February 2 2010 20:33, FT.com

A nother Great Depression may have been averted but the crisis is far from over. Credit is tight and contagion is spreading to all highly leveraged points in the global economy: mortgage-ridden households (Iceland, the US, the UK, Spain, Ireland, central and eastern Europe); banks (Iceland, the US, the EU, Russia and the former Soviet Union); quasi-sovereign debt (Ukraine’s Naftogaz, Dubai World); and now Greece and other weak links in the eurozone.

Greece has long been an accident waiting to happen due to heavy public debt and lack of competitiveness. But its problems are not unique. On their resolution rides the fate of its neighbours, the eurozone and perhaps the European Union itself.

China’s Current Account Narrowed in 2009

As China’s trade surplus narrowed in 2009, so did the current account surplus, of which trade is the largest component. It was the first year in almost a decade in which the current account surplus narrowed as growth of imports, particularly commodities, outpaced that of exports. China’s current account surplus fell to 6% of GDP from the 10% recorded in 2008. However, many economists and institutions, including the IMF, believe that China’s surplus will widen again in 2010 and beyond, unless China takes further steps to encourage domestic consumption.

G7 Ministers Focus on Financial Reform, Not Currencies

In recent meetings of the G7 leaders, there have been few direct mentions of exchange rates, despite concern about their volatility and consensus that the renminbi (RMB) has to appreciate against the dollar to promote global demand. This trend continued at the February 2010 meeting in Iqaluit in Canada’s Nunavut territory. The G7 finance ministers pledged to continue stimulus as needed, but their primary focus was getting closer to a consensus on financial reforms, including a proposed bank levy that will be proposed to the G20 and new capital requirements to be imposed on a global level. The ministers also supported debt relief for Haiti.

A Bubble in Search of a Pin

John Mauldin, 6 Feb 2010.

Should Greenspan and Bernanke have seen the bubble in housing and other assets and acted, or should we accept their defense that you can’t know whether there is a bubble until after the fact? We will look at research that suggests they should have known, and, at the least, policy makers should no longer be allowed to say, “How could I have known?”

Of course, the employment numbers came out this morning, and the results are mixed; but that is better than they have been for the past two years. We dig into the numbers to see what they are really saying. And finally, we examine why the markets are so volatile. Is it just Greece, or is there more? There’s a lot of very interesting, and important, material to cover.