¿La Reserva Federal, agotando sus recursos?

La crisis de solvencia sólo fue contenida por un tiempo inyectando volúmenes inmensos de dineros públicos a los "mercados" supuestamente libres. Y claro, algún día tenía que acabársele los recursos. En mi opinión, falta la fase más dura de esta crisis, de la que no estamos preparados cuando menos en México, donde su secretario de Hacienda declara que sólo es un "catarrito" (una leve gripa).

But there are now concerns that the Fed itself may be exhausting its $800bn (£399bn) stock of assets. It has swapped almost $300bn of 10-year Treasuries for questionable mortgage debt, and provided Term Auction Credit of $130bn.

"The steep rise in swap spreads this week is ominous," said John Hussman, head of the Hussman Funds. "The deterioration is in stark contrast to what investors have come to hope since March."

El presidente del Banco Central Europeo: La economía se dirige hacia una muy significativa "corrección"

Después de más de DOS BILLONES DE DOLARES "inyectados" a los principales mercados en el mundo, la crisis no ha cedido. Este es el resultado de un capitalismo desbocado en plena decadencia.

Fears of a sustained downturn in world economies was back on the agenda today after Jean Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, gave warning that the worst of the credit crunch has not passed and the economy was still heading for a "very significant market correction".

Mr Trichet, who has fiercely resisted following other policymakers by making interest rate cuts, insisted in an interview today that acting to restrain rampant inflationary growth was the best way to ensure stability and job security.

El hambre de los agronegocios

Junto a los que dominan más del 80 por ciento del comercio mundial de cereales: Cargill, ADM, ConAgra, Bunge, Dreyfus; todas han tenido ganancias absolutamente impúdicas, gracias a la escasez de alimentos, la promoción y subsidios a los agrocombustibles y el alza de los precios del petróleo (los agrotóxicos son petroquímicos). Un excelente informe de Grain (El negocio de matar de hambre, www.grain.org), da cuenta de estas ganancias: para el 2007, Cargill aumentó sus ganancias 36 por ciento; ADM, 67 por ciento; ConAgra, 30 por ciento; Bunge, 49 por ciento; Dreyfus, 77 por ciento, en el último trimestre de 2007. Monsanto obtuvo 44 por ciento más que en 2006 y Dupont-Pioneer 19 por ciento.

A esta situación se suma el hecho de que los grandes fondos de inversión especulativa –frente a la crisis financiera e inmobiliaria– trasladaron millonarias sumas de dinero a controlar los productos agrícolas en el mercado internacional o commodities. Actualmente, se estima que estos fondos controlan 60 por ciento del trigo y altos porcentajes de otros granos básicos. La mayor parte de la cosecha de soya de los próximos años, ya está comprada como “futuro”. Estos alimentos se han convertido en un objeto más de especulación bursátil, cuyo precio se modifica (y aumenta) en función de los jaloneos especulativos, no de los mercados locales o las necesidades de la gente.

UBS, el banco suizo más grande, reporta pérdidas por $10 mil 900 millones de dólares

May 6 (Bloomberg) -- UBS AG, the European bank with the highest losses from the U.S. subprime crisis, said it will cut as many as 12 percent of jobs at the securities unit after an 11.5 billion-franc ($10.9 billion) first-quarter loss.

UBS will eliminate as many as 2,600 jobs at the division by the end of the year, the Zurich-based bank said in a statement today. Headcount at the company overall will fall by 5,500 by mid-2009. The quarterly loss, which follows writedowns of $19 billion, is in line with the bank's estimate on April 1 and compares with a 3.03 billion-franc profit a year earlier.

Rescates bancarios se mantendrán en secreto

Sorpresa, sorpresa. No sólo se pagan estos "rescates" con dinero público, sino que se mantendrán en secreto. Este es socialismo para los ultraricos. Es decir, privatizar las ganancias, socializar las pérdidas.

The Bank of England has imposed a permanent news blackout on its £50bn-plus plan to ease the credit crunch.

Ferocious and unprecedented secrecy means taxpayers will never know the names of the banks that have been supported through the special liquidity scheme, which was unveiled by Bank Governor Mervyn King last week.

Requests under the Freedom of Information Act are to be denied. Details will be kept secret even after 30 years - the period after which all but the most sensitive state documents are released.

Any Bank of England employee leaking the names of institutions involved will face court action for breach of contract.

Even a figure for the overall amount advanced will not be published until October. Meanwhile the Bank is expected to issue at least £50bn of Treasury bills to banks in exchange for their mortgages - entirely in secret.

Los bonos gubernamentales japoneses se desploman

Nop, esto definitivamente no ha acabado.

It takes a lot to rattle Japanese government bonds. But on Friday, the world’s biggest bond market went into freefall. The yield on 10-year JGBs jumped 12.5 basis points to 1.6 per cent. Futures trading screeched to a halt – the first enforced stoppage since new systems were introduced at the start of the year.

Part of the rush for the exits can be explained by global concerns about higher inflation. The $6,700bn JGB market has a habit of selling off when US interest rates bottom. Many expect a cut next week by the US Federal Reserve to be the last in this cycle. Against this backdrop, foreigners were keen to reduce their positions.

¿Por qué el alza brutal en los precios de los granos?

La respuesta, tan sencilla como demencial, es la siguiente:

There is a global excess of dollars, and holders are transferring them to markets and products wherever sustained price increases indicate good prospects for making profits, he said.

O lo que es lo mismo, los BILLONES de dólares inyectados a los "mercados" los últimos 6 meses han resultado en un mar de dinero que los financieros están colocando para especular y obtener aún mayores ganancias. Estos son los mismos que han perdido miles de millones de dólares por su corrupción en el manejo de fondos hipotecarios, rescatados por sus gobiernos y ahora invierten ese dinero para obtener mayores ganancias. Increíble. El capitalismo salvaje en su expresión más despiadada.

La anexión de México

Nuestros próceres timbiriche no saben, o no quieren saber, la historia de invasiones y anexiones que México ha sufrido. Y no les importa, siendo unos apátridas neoliberales ultraderechistas.

If you liked Plan Colombia, you are going to love Plan Mexico.

Like Plan Colombia, Mexico will be gifted with tons of military equipment, whiz-bang technology, and billion buck grants to battle the cartels, although U.S. troops will be held out of the package (for now) because of Mexico's long-standing resistance to such deployment. The U.S. military has invaded Mexico eight times since both countries won their independence from Europe 200 years ago...

But Calderon was not done yet with converting his regime into a doppelganger of the Bush administration's perversion of justice. This April, the President, who, much like George Bush, is considered a usurper by over 50% of the Mexican electorate, foisted a constitutional amendment on his congress that would grant him carte blanche powers to tap phones and break into private homes without first obtaining a search warrant from a court. The amendment, which has not yet passed the legislature, bears a startling resemblance to George Bush's unconstitutional eavesdropping and surveillance of millions of U.S. citizens but with one notable caveat - Calderon, at least, went to his congress to modify the Constitution to allow such intrusions. Bush simply imposed his illegal operation in violation of his country's Magna Carta.

...Since the U.S. and Mexico achieved nationhood two centuries ago, Washington has had designs on annexing its nearest neighbor to the south. The United States invasion of 1846-48, the so-called Mexican War, deposed Mexico of all of its northern territories that today comprise 13 U.S. western states. Since then, Washington has invaded and annexed Mexico from afar. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement in effect annexed Mexico's economy. Beginning with World War II and extending through the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and now the War on Terror, the U.S. has sought to annex Mexico's security apparatus. Plan Mexico is, in fact, a plan to lock in the annexation of Mexico.

Europa pierde la paciencia con el colapso del dólar

Una nota muy importante de este artículo: Lo que Evans-Pritchard destaca aparte del colapso del dólar y la evidente preocupación de Europa, es la descarada especulación de los "commodities" por los fondos de cobertura de riesgo. Es decir, la escalada de precios en los granos básicos (arroz, maíz, trigo...) es sólo un efecto de la especulación con ellos. Nada más. La brutal realidad del capitalismo salvaje.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU's 'Mr Euro', has given the clearest warning to date that the world authorities may take action to halt the collapse of the dollar and undercut commodity speculation by hedge funds.

Momentum traders have blithely ignored last week's accord by the G7 powers, which described "sharp fluctuations in major currencies" as a threat to economic and financial stability. The euro has surged to fresh records this week, touching $1.5982 against the dollar and £0.8098 against sterling yesterday.

"I don't have the impression that financial markets and other actors have correctly and entirely understood the message of the G7 meeting," he said.

Bancos extranjeros escapan de la deuda hipotecaria española

¡Shhhhhhh! ¡No se lo digan a nadie! Es uno de los "secretos" que los multimedia mafiosos mexicanos jamás dirán a micrófono abierto. A España se le ha "vendido" como el milagro económico a seguir... Pero NINGUN comentarista de los medios masivos en México se atreverá a informar que España es el segundo país con mayor déficit comercial del mundo (con una brutal deuda de $126,000 millones de dólares) sólo superado por Estados Unidos. Es decir, su crecimiento económico ha sido resultado de endeudamiento sin precedentes y que al parecer comienza a derrumbarse. Hay que preguntar cuál es el estado de los bancos españoles en México, Satander (¿Santander?) y Bancomer (BBVA).

International banks are scrambling to sell their holdings of Spanish mortgage debt at a steep discount, fearing that the country may be sliding into the worst economic downturn in its modern history.

A blizzard of grim data has soured the mood, capped yesterday by a plunge in PMI purchasing managers' index to an all-time low of 40.9. Car sales fell 28pc in March, and even Madrid's legendary tapas bars seem to have lost their late-night sparkle.

Inmobiliaria Colonial - once the country's biggest property group --is in emergency talks with banks after Dubai's Investment Corporation pulled out of a rescue deal.

Developer Martinsa Fadesa is struggling to restructure €5bn of debt to stave off insolvency.

Traders says the market price for Spanish mortgage securities has begun to slide abruptly, replicating the pattern seen in the US last year. Large French and German funds and insurers appear to be liqudiating assets in a pre-emptive move, afraid being caught yet again in a violent downturn.

Todos estamos pagando por la avaricia (rapacidad) de los banqueros

En México, hemos pagado varias veces el valor real de los bancos extranjeros que han venido a saquear nuestro país. El gobierno sólo observa, lo permite y les da más.

It's an extraordinary irony that savers and borrowers are both being expected to pay to rescue banks and building societies from a crisis of their own making.

Our Money Mail investigation highlights the widening gap between low interest rates paid to savers and spiralling loan repayments demanded from borrowers.

And who gets to pocket the difference? Why, the very bankers whose greed and incompetence caused the credit crunch in the first place.

To shore up their crumbling profits and bonuses, financiers are refusing to pass on the Bank of England's base rate cuts to hard-pressed home-owners, while slashing the rates they pay to savers.

La "Fed" destruyó el capitalismo de mercado en 2 meses

La Reserva Federal y los bancos centrales europeos se han visto forzados a negar con sus acciones todo lo que por más de treinta años han insistito en sus peroratas ultraneoliberales esquizofrénicas: La desregulación crónica de todos los organismos gubernamentales han resultado en la brutal crisis financiera actual y han debido rescatar con dinero público instituciones financieras que de otra manera se hubieran hundido. Su teoría dictaba "manos fuera" del gobierno en el funcionamiento de los "mercados"... Pues bien, esto funcionó de maravilla, hasta que hubo que rescatar a tales instituciones con un mar de dinero -más de DOS BILLONES de dólares hasta el momento-.

So "kudos" indeed to the Fed for achieving in a couple of months what the Soviet Union could not muster in its seven decades of existence - namely to destroy global market capitalism, chiefly through the demise of the Anglo-Saxon system.

In rescuing Bear Stearns, the Fed was in good company, following the Bank of England and the European Central Bank (ECB) in bailing out large financial institution using taxpayers' money that they strictly did not have to account for to anyone. Yes, the details are somewhat different, namely that shareholders got different outcomes in each case and the level of oversight responsibility was different, but the inescapable conclusion from all this is that Group of Seven (G7)central bankers are utterly corrupt besides being terrifyingly incompetent.

Fecha de la muerte del capitalismo global: 14 de marzo 08

Martin Wolf, editor de economía de The Financial Times, portavoz del neoliberalismo global, decreta la fecha de las exequias de la desregulada globalización financiera neofeudal cuando Ben Shalom Bernanke rescató de su quiebra al quinto banco estadunidense, Bear Stearns: “Recuerden el viernes 14 de marzo de 2008: fue el día en que el sueño del capitalismo del libre mercado global feneció” (25/3/08).

Fulmina que “con su decisión para rescatar Bear Stearns, la Reserva Federal (Fed), la institución responsable de la política monetaria en EU, principal protagonista del capitalismo de libre mercado, declaró que su era había concluido”. Agrega como último clavo en el féretro del putrefacto capitalismo neoliberal, las declaraciones de Joseph Ackermann, jerarca de Deutsche Bank, el principal banco de Alemania: “No creo más en el poder autocurativo de los mercados. La desregulación alcanzó sus límites”.

Apoya la Fed de NY con 30 mil mdd a comprador de Bear Stearns

Esta es la verdadera cara del "capitalismo": Privatizar las ganancias, socializar las pérdidas.

Washington, 24 de marzo. La Reserva Federal de Nueva York asume el control de una cartera de valores de Bear Stearns estimada en 30 mil millones de dólares para “facilitar” la oferta pública de adquisición de JP Morgan. Los beneficios, si los hubiera, serían de la Fed. No obstante, el banco JP Morgan asumiría la responsabilidad por los primeros mil millones de dólares de esa cartera, algo que no hacía antes.

La Fed indicó que creará una estructura ad hoc para garantizar eventuales pérdidas vinculadas a la operación. El control de la cartera de activos de Bear Stearns se hará “mediante una empresa de responsabilidad limitada creada con este fin”, indicó la Fed en un comunicado.

Cómo funcionan en realidad los "mercados"

El TLC (NAFTA), el PEOR acuerdo que Canadá ha firmado

No sólo los mexicanos deploran el TLC, los canadienses y aún los americanos saben que las únicas beneficiadas han sido las grandes corporaciones, porque en general el salario del trabajador común en términos reales ha declinado (en México esto ha sido brutal ya que la inflación ha sido mucho mayor sin aumentos salariales correspondientes) y los empleos mejor pagados tanto en EU como en Canadá se han movido a otros países.

In the aftermath of Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's threats to "renegotiate" NAFTA — or pull out — the usual suspects have been activated to tell the world how wonderful the deal has been for Canada and the United States.

There is no doubt that the sector that devised the scheme in the first place and sold it to politicians have benefited greatly from this investors' rights agreement and its predecessor. The continent's largest corporations have greatly reduced regulatory impediments to their profits, radically lowered labour costs, gutted Canada's sovereign capacity to pass new environmental legislation and, in terms of investment restrictions, virtually erased the borders.

But even if NAFTA were responsible for increased trade, Canadian workers have paid a huge price. Throughout the 1990s, federal governments trumpeted the need to be "competitive" under NAFTA as an excuse to implement some of the most Draconian rollbacks of Canadian social programs ever undertaken. In the name of "labour flexibility," Paul Martin implemented drastic changes to EI eligibility, and repealed the Canada Assistance Plan, freeing the provinces to gut their welfare programs. His extreme low-inflation policy deliberately kept unemployment at high levels (8 per cent to 9 per cent) for most of the 1990s.

That meant that, throughout the decade, workers' real wages actually declined. They still have not caught up to 1981 levels. And the highly paid 220,000 industrial jobs lost as a result of NAFTA are gone forever, replaced by lower-paid jobs.

Bear Stearns, el 5o. banco más grande de EU, se hunde

El capitalismo salvaje, el neoliberalismo y las "fuerzas del mercado" hacen agua. Es un sistema insostenible en las condiciones actuales. Pero nuestros fanáticos ultraneoliberales en el "gobierno" mexicano no se quieren dar cuenta.

With JPMorgan Deal to Rescue Bear Stearns, Market Wonders Which Investment Bank May Fall Next

NEW YORK (AP) -- With a deal in place to save Bear Stearns from bankruptcy, the company's shares traded above the offer price Monday even as investors began turning a critical eye to other investment banks amid worries about how far the credit contagion could spread.

Despite the weekend agreement for JPMorgan Chase & Co. to buy Bear Stearns for a fraction of its value last week, worries that other banks had sizable exposure to troubled credit markets sent global markets tumbling. The uncertainty was evident on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones industrials sank by more than 100 points.

Bear Stearns, el 5o. banco más grande de EU, al borde del colapso

Sólo con oooootra inyección de capital por parte de JPMorgan, se ha salvado momentáneamente del colapso a Bear Stearns. Lo que significa que técnicamente está quebrado. ¿Cuántos más? ¿En cuántos países?

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Bear Stearns Cos., teetering on the brink of collapse from a lack of cash, got emergency funding from the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the largest government bailout of a U.S. securities firm.

La Reserva Federal de EU inyecta aún más miles de millones de dólares al "mercado"

Esto demuestra la gran mentira que es el supuesto "libre mercado". Uno de los principios fundamentales del neoliberalismo es la no-intervención del gobierno, ni siquiera para establecer reglas básicas en el "mercado"... Pero en la crisis presente, los gobiernos llevan inyectados más de DOS BILLONES de dólares a los "mercados". Nada más falso.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve and four other central banks on Tuesday teamed up to get hundreds of billions of dollars in fresh funds to cash-starved credit markets, allowing financial firms to use securities backed by home mortgages as collateral for central bank loans...

...The Fed expanded its securities lending program, offering up to $200 billion of highly liquid U.S. Treasuries to primary dealers, secured for 28 days, and said it could increase the size of the program if needed. It also significantly expanded the types of securities that can be used as collateral for the loans. In effect, the plan allows banks to exchange unwanted mortgage notes for easy-to-sell government securities.

La Reserva Federal de EU "inyecta" $200 mil millones más al "mercado"

Este artículo menciona que hay "temores persistentes" de colapso de una institución financiera mayor... ¿Se referirán a Citibank?

The global credit crisis plunged to new depths yesterday as persistent fears over the collapse of a large financial institution caused funding markets to dry up and forced the US Federal Reserve to make available up to $200 billion (£99.3 billion) of emergency financing.

... Bankers said that the moves underscored the deepening severity of the crisis, which was triggered last June by the collapse of the American sub-prime mortgage market and has got progressively worse since. One senior banker in London said: “This is the beginning of the real credit crisis and it’s not going to end without a major casualty."