EU DATA PROTECTION OVERHAUL TO IMPOSE NEW BURDENS ON BANKS
Financial services firms and credit card processors will be obliged to report incidents of lost or stolen data within 24 hours of a breach, according to new EU rules set to be introduced Wednesday. Full story: http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=23347
EUROPEAN EXCHANGES AND VENDORS DEVELOP POST-TRADE STANDARDS
A consortium of exchanges and technology suppliers have developed a set of common standards designed to restore post-trade transparency in the European equity markets.
Full story:http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=23348
COMMERZBANK AND CAPCO BID TO MODEL IT COMPLEXITY
Commerzbank has embarked on a project with consultancy Capco to develop an ‘IT complexity model’ that can be used by CIOs to measure and then master their organisation’s technology.
Full story: http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=23346
MASTERCARD MOBILE APP LETS AUSSIE MOVIE-GOERS ORDER FOOD FROM THEIR SEAT
MasterCard has teamed up with Commonwealth Bank and cinema group Hoyts to pilot a mobile payments application that lets movie-goers order food and drinks directly from their seats.
Full story: http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=23345
The people of India are signing their own death warrants as they agree to sign up to their governments ID card system, claiming it will help cut fraud for benefit payments. The real reason is to help the New World Order with population control and access to money, so the 1% can steal it al. For a supposed poor country which the UK shovs billions to, India has lots of other people’s money to waste.
It’s worth remembering that this is the EXACT same system that the crooked New Labour government tried to force on the British people, to comply with New Labour’s NWO agenda.
Ann Barnhardt and I (Warren Pollock) have an open conversation organized to provide background to this crisis, the setting of legal precedent, netting, settlement, and future trends including a potential bank holiday. We talk about MF Global as it applies to savings and commercial banking, brokerage, insurance, and commodities. We talk about numeric impossibility of solving the problem, incest between government and finance, having the victim of the crisis pay rather than the fraudster. We explain how the MF Global bankruptcy process will define how customer funds will be treated in a bank holiday. We talk about the idea of having an honest bank holiday to root out fraud vs an economic crisis which plays to looting and criminal activity of vested interest.
Italy, France, and Portugal will go belly up soon. This tragedy will collapse the European Union economy. Riots will go worldwide–if we aren’t there already. Now, this is what will happen in the United States during 2012:
The unemployment percentage will start rising again and approach 15%.
The national debt will breeze by $15 trillion and will approach $20 trillion.
Chrysler Corporation will go belly up.
Bank of America (BoA) will go belly up because it is run by a bunch of incompetent crooks. They cheated us over 40 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten that. I have a very long memory. So, take your money out of BoA and put it in smaller, local banks and savings and loans. That will help small businesses increase job creation.
The Stock Market will crash. Get out of the Stock Market, now! Buy precious metals (gold, silver, etc.).
The economy will collapse because of Obama’s ridiculous, idiotic fiscal policies. A presidential challenge will be made to Obama soon by a patriotic, moderate Democrat. Obama will be railed out of town.
The Fed will continue to counterfeit (print) funny money not backed by gold, which will start hyperinflation.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will go under due to incompetent, criminal management.
The housing market will get even worse than it currently is.
Don’t make any large purchases and obtain any long-term repayment loans. Live by cash and carry.
The U.S. dollar will sink to become worthless.
A double-dip recession will commence followed by a full-blown recession worse than The Great Depression.
Major rioting, vandalism, and killings will occur in all major cities across America. Obama will declare martial law.
A world war will commence.
The Congressional Super-committee is a bunch of worthless, gutless lawbreakers. They WILL NOT do what is necessary to solve the United States’ fiscal problems. Mark my words. They are all driven by politics, not for the good of the country and “We the People.” Idiots!
Gerald Celente - The Regular Guys – 24 Oct 2011 : there is no saving the system not as long as they continue the policies that they do …the whole system is corrupt from top to bottom , Gaddafi was hot o Condoleza Rice , what it all boils down to regarding the protests is just a lot of angry people as the system is rigged , the big guys can get away with everything that’s what makes people angry explains Gerald Celente , these banks are ripping off everybody not one head rolls.
Kerry Lutz Exclusive Interview with Darryl R. Schoon 10-5-11
Kerry Lutz Exclusive Interview with Darryl R. Clean 10/05/11
Below is a a chart of Italian bank equity performance. Countrywide bank run next?
Whether the reason for the sell off is due to a typoed GOFO 12M SocGen print or there is a fundamental reason, remains to be seen, but US equities are not taking the risk. US stocks have wiped out all of yesterday’s last minute gains.
“With all the mess going on at the moment, I thought it was worth while stepping back a little and trying to look at the bigger picture.” So begins Andy Lees’ latest must read letter to clients whch explains succinctly virtually the entire story of where we were, how we got to where are now, how the current trajectory is unsustainable, why due to decades of capital misallocation anything that the Fed does now is essentially irrelevant, why our untenable debt pile does nothing but perpetuate an unsustainable ponzi scheme which will result in an unseen explosion in the true cost of capital: gold, and why the bond market will eventually, and inevitably, force an epic repricing in the cost of non-gold capital absent the arrival of the deux ex machina of real, actionable innovation that the Fed, and all global central planners, keep hoping for. Because the longer we keep plugging away with that worthless substitute, financial innovation, which is anything but, the greater the final collapse. Andy’s conclusion: “Until the debt is cleared and capital starts to be properly allocated, economic growth per unit of additional debt will continue to sour. Until we get some real breakthrough technology, requiring large amounts of capital to both innovate and then roll out, we have no chance of supporting the economy.” Too bad than that this absolutely spot on observation reflect precisely the opposite of what the Fed is pursuing.
Why are we here: simple – years of central planning resulting in the greatest experiment in capital misallocation in history.
We are in this mess because of excessive leverage and excessive consumption, financed by excessively cheap real capital – (not just Bernanke & Greenspan but further back to the end of the gold standard, and in fact even before that as it was this misallocation of capital that forced us off the gold standard in the first place). If capital had been allocated productively, then by definition debt would fall as a percentage of GDP. Total debt may rise, but efficient allocation of capital would always mean the economy would grow faster than the debt as it means you are making a positive rather than negative real return on that capital.
Whichever way you look at it, capital has been massively misallocated for years.
Corporate profits… or massive debt-funded ponzi scheme?
How can that be when corporates report massive profits? The profits are based on paying their workers a salary that meant they could only buy the goods they made by borrowing; in other words, a massive unsustainable ponzi scheme that could only ever end up with default. Without the household debt accumulation, there would be no market to sell their products to, and without paying the workers sufficient, the debt would always have to default.
This required a massive increase in financial innovation to keep the illusion of corporate profitability alive – (household debt was a way of delaying putting the true costs through the corporate P&L account and recognising the costs). Financial sector innovation is itself another form of capital misallocation, taxing people away from real innovation – (to keep the illusion alive, an ever greater percentage of economic output had to be allocated to this illusion machine) – helping add to the resource constraint we are in today.
If financial innovation, which we have so much of is not needed, what is the right kind? And why is it so sorely missing.
LONDON/DETROIT (Reuters) – In a rundown patch of Detroit, enclosed by a cyclone fence and barbed wire, stands an unremarkable warehouse that investment bank Goldman Sachs has transformed into a money-making machine.
The derelict neighborhood off Michigan Avenue is a sharp contrast to Goldman’s bustling skyscraper headquarters near Wall Street, but the two operations share one important element: management by the bank’s savvy financial professionals.
A string of warehouses in Detroit, most of them operated by Goldman, has stockpiled more than a million tonnes of the industrial metal aluminum, about a quarter of global reported inventories.
Simply storing all that metal generates tens of millions of dollars in rental revenues for Goldman every year.
There’s just one problem: only a trickle of the aluminum is leaving the depots, creating a supply pinch for manufacturers of everything from soft drink cans to aircraft.
The resulting spike in prices has sparked a clash between companies forced to pay more for their aluminum and wait months for it to be delivered, Goldman, which is keen to keep its cash machines humming and the London Metal Exchange (LME), the world’s benchmark industrial metals market, which critics accuse of lax oversight.
Analysts question why London’s metals market allows big financial players like Goldman to own the warehouses which store huge quantities of metal even as they trade the commodity.
Robin Bhar, a veteran metals analyst at Credit Agricole in London says the conflict of interest is so acute he wants U.S. and European anti-trust regulators to weigh in.
“I think it makes a mockery of the market. It’s a shame,” Bhar said. “This is an anti-competitive situation. It puts (some) companies at an advantage, and clearly the rest of the market at a disadvantage. It’s a real, genuine concern. And I think the regulators have to look at it.”
Goldman said its warehouse subsidiary Metro International Trade Services has done nothing illegal, and abides by the LME’s warehousing rules. “Producers have chosen to store metal in Detroit with Metro,” a Goldman spokeswoman said. “We follow the LME requirements in terms of storing and releasing metals from our warehouses.”
The London Metal Exchange defends its rules. “There is a perception that consumers have not been able to get to their metal when the reality is that it is big banks, financing companies and warehouses that are not able to get to their huge tonnages of metal fast enough,” said LME business development manager Chris Evans.
BUSINESS MODEL
Goldman’s warehouse business relies on a lucrative opportunity enabled by the LME regulations. Those rules allow warehouses to release only a tiny fraction of their inventories per day, much less than the metal that is regularly taken in for storage.
The metal that sits in the warehouse generates lucrative rental income.
Little wonder that so many want in. Metro was acquired by Goldman in February 2010, while commodities trading firm Trafigura nabbed UK-based NEMS in March 2010, and Swiss-based group Glencore International acquired the metals warehousing unit of Italy’s Pacorini last September.
Financial messaging network Swift and the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) have won two separate industry data management mandates, for the development of a Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) utility and electronic foreign exchange repository.
Industry group XBRL US has launched a Facebook competition, offering $20,000 to the person or group that comes up with the best open source analytical application for investors that uses the format. Full story: http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22760
COMMBANK MAKES BIG MOBILE PUSH
Buoyed by impressive user stats, Commonwealth Bank of Australia has released a suite of tablet and phone apps across multiple platforms, and promised regular upgrades for up-and-coming functionality across social media and NFC payments. Full story: http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22758
Small-business owners have a dim view of the future, according to a gauge of their optimism for June that stands “solidly in recession territory,” the National Federation of Independent Business reported Tuesday.
The NFIB’s barometer ticked down for a fourth consecutive month in June, reflecting pessimism about future business conditions as well as expected sales. The survey’s participants, most of whom have fewer than 40 employees, are concerned about the government, among other issues, said Bill Dunkelberg, NFIB’s chief economist, in a statement.
Small businesses say, ‘What recovery?’
A huge force in this economy is being left out of the picture two years into the economic recovery.
“Between the deluge of new regulations and a Washington policy agenda that is largely ignorant of Main Street needs, stubbornly low consumer spending, and grave concern among small firms about the federal budget, there is not much to be optimistic about as a small-business owner,” Dunkelberg said.
Roughly 63% of middle-class Americans surveyed by a consumer psychology consulting firm believe the U.S. economy slipped into a double-dip recession, up from 50% one year ago.
First Command Financial Services commissioned Sentient Decision Science to survey roughly 1,000 U.S. consumers between the ages of 25 to 70 with annual household incomes of at least $50,000 for the quarterly First Command Financial Behaviors index.
Three-quarters of those consumers who believe a double-dip recession is underway believe it will be more than one year before the economy begins to recover. One in five consumers said it would be take more than three years.
“Americans aren’t looking for a meaningful recovery any time soon,” said Scott Spiker, CEO of First Command Financial Services. “The Index reveals a widespread belief that the U.S. has already experienced a recession and a short-lived recovery and is now experiencing a second recession. This conviction is being fueled by a host of pressing economic worries that do not come with quick resolutions, further intensifying consumer uncertainty and concern.”
