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POPSUS Studying Features Of Islamic Banking Oct. 26 RIYADH ----He said that experts in the US Treasury Department are currently learning the important features of Islamic banking. However, he added that his country is focusing on activities of various governments and central banks in tackling the economic issues. He pointed out that the member countries in the G-20 also includes Islamic countries such as Indonesia and Turkey, besides the Kingdom which has been a member for the past 10 years. Representatives from these countries could present their experiences of Islamic banking in the light of the prevailing situation. He hoped the G-20 summit will provide an effective platform for the member countries to exchange their views on the current economic problem and lay out a plan for the countries to draw out their respective national plans to ease the situation.
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POPSU.S.Treasury Submits To Shariah-Compliant Finance While in Riyadh, Mr. Kimmitt announced: "The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis." "Islamic banking" is a euphemism for a practice better known as "Shariah-Compliant Finance (SFC)." And it turns out that this week the Treasury will be taking officials from various federal agencies literally to school on SFC. The department is hosting a half-day course entitled "Islamic Finance 101" on Thursday at its headquarters building. Treasury's self-described "seminar for the policy community" is co-sponsored with the leading academic promoters of Shariah and SCF in the United States: Harvard University Law School's Project on Islamic Finance. At the very least, the U.S. government evidently hopes to emulate Harvard's success in securing immense amounts of Wahhabi money in exchange for conforming to the Islamists' agenda.
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POPSThe Next Card to Fall: Credit Cards? If the credit card industry is the next to fall, perhaps the silver lining will be restrictions on how much they can charge customers interest. As it is, current credit card interest rates, especially for those who fall behind in their payments, constitute usury.
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POPSThe battle for Obama's economic soul Will it be Rubin and Summers - the Clinton-era advisors who abetted Greenspan and Gramm? Or will it be Volcker and Buffett, who, five years ago, called the new instruments "financial weapons of mass destruction?" Let's hope for the latter - the more Democratic - pair.
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POPSIf Entire Countries Go Broke, We'll Go With Them
The root of today's credit crisis is not that the world lacks money; the world is awash in cash, with $6 trillion sitting idly in global money markets alone. But if countries start to fail, the remainder of the world's investment capital could be spooked out of productive investments as well. Nor do we have the tools to avert disaster. The International Monetary Fund's resources are a pittance compared to the financial exposure of the countries in most danger. And as a result of the industrialized world's government bailouts and bank guarantees, there won't be any more capital for emerging markets that are still flailing. Take, for example, a country as large and powerful as Germany: Deutsche Bank's assets represent 80 percent of the nation's GDP. In Switzerland, the assets of the bank UBS represent 450 percent of the country's GDP. The financial exposure of the British banks is similarly alarming: Barclays PLC's assets amount to more than 100 percent of the United Kingdom's GDP,
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POPSHealth insurers reinvent themselves as money managers "Federal tax rules for HSAs were liberalized in 2003, making them very attractive to well-heeled taxpayers. Commercial banks such as Bank of America and Mellon Bank, seeing the opportunity to collect management fees on the accounts, jumped into the business. "Every bank wants to increase its share of HSAs," said John Casillas, director of the Medical Banking Project, a Franklin, Tenn., organization that helps medical administrators develop financial service systems. "There's fees for managing the account, transaction fees, fees for investing the funds," Casillas said. "You're going to see many billions of dollars moving from premium payments to professionally managed investment funds under HSA rules. Some people think that banks are going to threaten health plans by replacing them in the marketplace.""
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POPSDon't blame deregulation Indeed, exactly contrary to Obama’s claims, the repeal of Glass-Steagall has helped to counter the current crisis. It allowed Bank of America to buy out Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase to buy out Bear Stearns, and Barclays Bank to work on buying up the remains of Lehman Brothers. It allowed investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to take up refuge as bank holding companies. If investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers had diversified more into commercial banking, taking commercial deposits — as the Act’s repeal made possible — that might have provided them with the superior capital cushions needed to survive.
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POPSCapital Gains tax issues Obama is on the right track but any rise in capital gains taxes should be targeted to people like me who "churn" stocks instead of invest. He's on the wrong track in high capital gains tax on all investment. We should tax consumption instead of investment. Hopefully, Obama, when elected, will listen to guys like Davis, who understand the difference. McCain, respectfully, is clueless (remember "I don't really understand economics") and listening to the rich and the elite on this issue. Lowering capital gains tax will cause more people to CHURN, rather than invest. P.S. I do both.
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POPSMarkets Fall: Government Throws Away More Money
You don't have to be a lawyer to know if someone is lying -- But when a lawyer catches a witness in a lie it is often the beginning of the end. What caught my eye in this clip is: the government (USA) "will begin paying interest on the reserves that banks leave on deposit." Humm....we print the money...we give the money to the banks at super low interest rates...now the banks can give us back the money and charge us interest!? The next big part of the plan is to buy unsecured loans for threatened banks that may go out of business. Humm...Note: Other countries are buying assets or Number One Preferred Stock...meaning they get paid first if these banks fail. Also, rather than seeking to "inspire confidence," some suggest it would be better to dole out the cash for every new loan the banks make...which is what we want them to actually do. Other lies: "optional," warrents; & "mark to market," valuations. While our house burns, these alleged "firefighters," are steali
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POPS"Wolf" Named to head $700 billion oversite buy out! With apologies to four-legged wolves - why Wolf? If it looks like a wolf, walks like a wolf, then the sheep - us - better look out. Prior to joining the Treasury Department, Mr. Kashkari was a Vice President at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in San Francisco, where he led Goldman's IT Security Investment Banking practice, advising public and private companies on mergers and acquisitions and financial transactions. If being in charge of advising public and private companies on mergers and acquisitions and financial transactions is a qualification, then maybe he needs someone who specialized in selling bad mortgages as his aide!!
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POPSPrevent bailouts? Prohibit campaign contributions We must advance to a system where elections are publicly funded and private donations are prohibited. Both of our candidates are connected by money to the banking industry. The industry's influence toward killing regulation far exceeds the public's influence in preserving it. Separating money from politics - as other nations have long done - is the only way home.
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POPSThe Next Financial Bailout Bill Will Not Work
The truth is often so politically-incorrect. You will note that this was published in the UK, not in a US newspaper, and certainly not from the MSM. In other words get ready for a second hard sell since the first bailout bill was rejected (due to pressure from average citizens). Bush will bully-pulpit, Pelosi and Ried will scream again, and even republicans will line up, both Obama and McCain will push the same pitch and try to get wary Americans to sign on the bottom line. But the plan would not work. He says this is why bank stocks, not just investment firms are falling too: traditional banking – collecting retail deposits and making loans to ordinary customers – is barely profitable. Compared with the potential gains from a day at the currency-swap races, or a night in the derivatives casino, current accounts are cold potatoes. That is why bonus-hungry executives, at what we used to think of as boring banks, were so keen to spin the red-hot wheel of fortune. [/quo
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POPSThe Hill: Soros Floats Bailout Plan with Dems Story, by The Hill's Alexander Bolton, picks up on George Soros' opinion piece in the Financial Times today http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d68e10cc-8f45-11dd-946c-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1 The Hill story speculates that Soros "could jumpstart congressional negotiations in a new direction, especially now that some strategists believe the Paulson-based plan that failed Monday will be difficult to revive." Here's more on George Soros: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/10/billionaires08_George-Soros_L9II.html
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POPS Thoughts on the Bailout Defeat "A number of Republican House members and staff, along with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today in the House. As this scenario goes, the House Democrats need 218 votes, and they have to pick up a number of black and Hispanic House members who jumped ship because the Wall Street provisions, in their view, were too benign. So things like the bankruptcy judges setting mortgage terms and rates, the ACORN slush-fund spending, the union proxy for corporate boards, stricter limits on executive compensation, and much larger equity ownership of selling banks through warrants will all find itself back in the new bill. Of course, this scenario will lose more Republican votes. But insiders tell me President Bush will take Secretary Paulson’s advice and sign that kind of legislation."
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POPSCEO pay: What those involved in the financial meltdown made
Amazing. "If George W. Bush, John McCain, or Barack Obama had any honesty and integrity, they would approach the current banking malady in much the same way that President Andrew Jackson did. In discussing the Bank Renewal bill with a delegation of bankers in 1832, Jackson said, "Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out."" ~ Chuck Baldwin, Constitution Party Presidential Candidate.
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POPSChina Determines American Banks Are Unsafe Investment Thanks to America's unethical corporate practices, inattentive regulators and distracted politicians whose favors are being bought by corporate lobbyists, it only took Bush/Cheney and their gang less than eight years to destroy foreign relations so completely that countries are beginning to back away from the U.S. banking system.
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POPSWall Street Executives Scored $3 Billion as Banks Rose and Fell ......per employee, including an average bonus of $211,849. The five firms had combined net income of $93 billion during the five years through 2007. CEO Pay Doubled The $3.1 billion paid to the top five executives at the firms between 2003 and 2007 was about three times what JPMorgan spent to buy Bear Stearns. Goldman Sachs had the highest total, with $859 million, followed by Bear Stearns at $609 million. CEO pay at the five firms increased each year, doubling to $253 million in 2007, according to data compiled from company filings. Corporate Governance Rather than government regulation, the solution is in better corporate governance, Elson said. Companies should negotiate more aggressively with executives and should establish rules that encourage shareholders to protest excessive pay. The rescue package is not the place to have that debate, he said.
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POPSLARGEST BANK FAILURE IN US HISTORY Now everybody is waiting for the fall-out. What about the investment industry, those that got to depend and make a living around the industry? Unemployed financiers. This is a catastrophe.
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POPSBush: "Taxpayers Will Happily Agree to Bailout Financial Fat Cats." "America needs my help," Says recently unemployed auto worker Cliff Tonwsend. "So I'm going to dig deep and help her out. It will be a sacrifice for my family and the entire next generation to pay for the excess of the last eight years year, but as an American I am proud to do it. And I know my kids and their kids will be proud to pay as well. The poor and middle class have always supported the rich in this country, so I don't see how this time is any different." The President and The Republican Party should be glad that Americans are greeting the plan with an open mind. The bailout plan is expected to create an additional 2 trillion dollars of debt for future generations to pay off.
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POPS$2.5 billion bonuses for bankrupt Lehman employees THis is obscene. Company that goes bankrupt should pay off debts to investors first before "bonuses". This is another indication of the greed that has taken over the investment and banking system. Contemplate what China does with their corrupt greedy executives.....
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