3 out of 4 say we are in a recession

[seanx]

...........of course Big Jim and satellite radio say that this is exactly what the country needs..............everything is great.........

Poll finds broad pessimism over economy
Tue Mar 18, 12:31 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than three in four Americans think the United States is in a recession according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Tuesday.

Not since September 1992, two months before President George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid, have so many Americans said the economy was in such bad shape, USA Today reported.

Seventy-six percent of to those polled said the economy is in recession, compared to 22 percent who said it is not, USA Today said.

Asked if the United States could slip into a depression lasting several years, 59 percent said it was likely and 79 percent said they were worried about it, the newspaper reported.

The poll was completed on Sunday, the same day the U.S. Federal Reserve offered to extend direct lending to security firms for the first since the Great Depression and backed the JP Morgan Chase buyout of investment bank Bear Stearns.

The poll results reflect a slide in confidence that economists say could make the U.S. economy worse, the article said.

Brian Bethune of economic forecaster Global Insight said the pessimism "creates more problems."

"When people experience higher gasoline prices, higher heating costs, fewer employment opportunities, housing prices going down, the common sense conclusion is things aren't very good," Bethune told the newspaper.

The poll of 1,025 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points

[seanx]

...finally someone has a clue why we are in a "recession":

(by the way, I think the last paragraph of this article refers to Gestapo Jim)

A leading economic journalist has described the current financial crisis as a "gigantic fraud", the fallout of a deliberate and preconceived profit agenda to enslave the middle classes in a debt bubble.

The economics editor of the London Guardian, Larry Elliott, has hit out at the global financial elite in a refreshing piece that marks a rare shift away from the establishment hackery we are used to from the corporate media.

In an article titled America was conned - who will pay? Elliot writes:

Indeed, it is somewhat surprising that there is not already rioting in the streets, given the gigantic fraud perpetrated by the financial elite at the expense of ordinary Americans.

[…]

Business, of course, needs consumers to carry on spending in order to make money, so a way had to be found to persuade households to do their patriotic duty. The method chosen was simple. Whip up a colossal housing bubble, convince consumers that it makes sense to borrow money against the rising value of their homes to supplement their meagre real wage growth and watch the profits roll in.

As they did - for a while. Now it’s payback time and the mood could get very ugly. Americans, to put it bluntly, have been conned. They have been duped by a bunch of serpent-tongued hucksters who packed up the wagon and made it across the county line before a lynch mob could be formed.

Elliot also states that the debate is now not about whether the US faces a recession, but is about how deep it will be and how long it will last, comparing the downturn to the South Sea Bubble crisis in 1720, and declaring that the "Ponzi securitisation scam has been exposed."

A Ponzi scheme, named after Charles Ponzi, is one that offers abnormally high short-term returns in order to entice new investors. The high returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays require an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going, meaning it is inevitable that it will eventually collapse.

Elliot, like former chief economist of the World Bank turned whistleblower, Joseph Stiglitz, points a finger of blame squarely at former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, stating:

"In the longer term, lessons must be learnt from the turmoil. One is that you don’t solve the problems of a collapsing bubble by blowing up another, which is what Alan Greenspan did after the dotcom fiasco in 2001 - the most irresponsible behaviour of any central banker in living memory."

Last week we highlighted the fact that Greenspan, instead of trying to act to reverse the damage he has done to the US economy, is actively encouraging its further demise by urging foreign states to abandon their dollar peg.

Another cogent point Larry Elliot makes is the following:

"If this is, heaven help us, The Big One, one of the only consolations will be that the repugnance at the orgy of speculation that has sapped the strength of the US economy will put a new New Deal on the political agenda."

Last week we highlighted the fact that Greenspan, instead of trying to act to reverse the damage he has done to the US economy, is actively encouraging its further demise by urging foreign states to abandon their dollar peg.

It should be added that, given that this crisis has been engineered by a financial elite Ponzi scheme, we should be extremely wary of any "new deal" that is brokered by the financial and political elite posing as our saviors.

There are already talks of a "new world order" emerging from the fallout of the current economic meltdown. A consolidation among the big financial institutions does not spell good news for ordinary Americans and people across the world who have been effectively herded into this current crisis by the financial elite.

We, along with others such as Stiglitz, have repeatedly warned of the quickening of an agenda of economic catastrophe allied to the "solution" of predatory globalism.

Nevertheless, while CNN and other mainstream outlets continue to parade economic "experts" who ludicrously suggest that the destruction of the dollar and the economic downturn is "not necessarily a bad thing" for America, it is a refreshing change to read a mainstream report that actually hints at the reality of the situation the US and the rest of the world now faces at the hands of the elite.

[freddyv]

seanx said:

Nevertheless, while CNN and other mainstream outlets continue to parade economic "experts" who ludicrously suggest that the destruction of the dollar and the economic downturn is "not necessarily a bad thing" for America

since when is diminished purchasing power a good thing?

[freddyv]

it kind of feels like something shady is going on...akin to the NWO talk mentioned in the second article. this odd consolidation of "power."

more likely I suppose it's just a case of these investment companies reaping what they've sewn in the subprime lending debaucle.

perhaps greenspan is trying to collapse the dollar in order to topple the fed and get us back to the gold standard. wishful thinking ha

is the other shoe about to drop?

AP
Lehman Brothers Drops on Investor Fears
Monday March 17, 3:09 pm ET
Lehman Brothers Plunges; Analysts Doubt the Investment Bank Is Next Credit Crisis Victim

NEW YORK (AP) -- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. lost nearly half its value on Monday, as the investment bank was swept up in a crisis of confidence following news of JPMorgan & Chase's government-backed takeover of Bear Stearns.
In afternoon trading, Lehman shares plunged $14.83, or 37.8 percent, to $24.43. At one point on the day the stock fell to $20.25, its lowest since June 2000. The stock plunge slashed Lehman's market capitalization to $12.96 billion, compared with about $20.8 billion at the close of trading on Friday.

As Wall Street absorbs Bear Stearns' sudden and dramatic downfall, investor attention has turned to the question of who might be next. Lehman, which has substantial exposure to the subprime debt that brought down Bear Stearns, is the target of much of that speculation. The bank is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings Tuesday.

Fears about Lehman were stoked by news reports that DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Southeast Asia's largest bank, instructed traders in an e-mail early Monday not to do business with the bank. According to Dow Jones Newswires, DBS Group later told traders to disregard the earlier e-mail. Lehman denied there were any problems with DBS.

Lehman Chief Executive Richard Fuld denied Monday that the firm was facing similar liquidity issues to Bear Stearns and, in several research notes released Monday, analysts tended to agree with that assessment.

Buckingham Research Group analyst James Mitchell said Bear Stearns "was in a somewhat uniquely challenging situation when the market's confidence in the company vanished," as compared to other investment banks.

Specifically, analysts noted that Lehman's liquidity position is the strongest of the group.

The liquidity review, Mitchell said, "does seem to point to a somewhat unique failure at Bear Stearns, which gives us some comfort that other firms are in relatively good position."

Mitchell also said Bear going away would free up market share for competitors.

"Lehman is not Bear," said Deutsche Bank analyst Mike Mayo, who maintained the company's "Buy" rating. "The industry issue seems more liquidity than solvency, and Lehman protected itself more fully after it's problems similar to (Bear) in 1998," Mayo said.

UBS Investment Research analyst Glenn Schorr downgraded Lehman shares to "Neutral" from "Buy" along with other companies in the sector, reflecting the perception that it may be "next on the list" -- though he was quick to offer a caveat.

"For what it's worth," Schorr said, "we think Lehman is an excellent company that is far more diversified (by product & geography) than Bear, has a deeper capital base and far better liquidity position, and has done a great job managing risk in this incredibly challenging environment."

[sayten]

Did you know that I have been using Canadian change for the past two weeks at sheetz....

yep.... almost 15 bucks worth

fucking rebel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[HBGOnline]

You guys don't have a god damn clue what's going on with the economy. You happily cut and paste articles written by liberals (it's been proven most journalist are liberals). Don't forget we are in an election year.

Their doom and gloom twisting of the facts, only helps in their minds of getting a Democrat in the White House.

Perhaps if you would educate yourself more you would understand what that last paragraph meant.

The Fed could raise interest rates to any higher level they want. However doing so would practically wipe us out for years. (Think Carter admin) So for now we will have a lower dollar, but when we get thru this credit crunch, Europe and other countries will be starting theirs.

Our economy will always be going up and down. My beef was that the 7 years of unheard growth levels was never reported. That growth level has stalled for the time being and now everyone thinks the country is doomed.

Our economy is the greatest in the world, regardless of what our liberal and conspiracy media wants you to believe. And if you think things are bad now, you ain't seen nothing yet if Hillary or Obama take control.

[freddyv]

this is not a party issue. we have a dem controlled legislative branch with the worst approval rating pretty much in history. we have a republican president with just about the worst approval rating in history. sure, there are people in the liberal media that are reporting that the economy is bad...but guess what...so are glenn beck and other conservative media types.

the economy stinks right now. the euro is worth over 1 and 1/2 times the usd. oil is at a record high. gold is at a record high. about the only thing that isn't at a record high is unemployment, which is still relatively low.

it is very close-minded of you to assume that we haven't researched this matter at all simply because we have a different opinion than you. I personally have taken several college courses on economics, have read books, have read up on current events, have researched the topic on the internet. I've worked and lived in the real world. just because I don't happen to own a satellite radio doesn't mean that I don't know anything about the economy.

sure, the article I most recently posted says that lehman is not in as dire of a situation as bear stearns was. their stock still lost like half its value in a few days. that's not a good thing. they were also heavily involved in the subprime lending debaucle, so it's expected that they would take a hit.

apparently everyone else seems to realize that the economy is not kicking ass except for you and the people in charge of programming on satellite radio. we live in a global economy...we run huge trade deficits, which means that we buy a lot of our goods abroad. that's how we get strawberries out of season in the winter...we get them from south america. so the argument that "we live in america, we buy american so it's not a big deal" doesn't hold.

if the dollar is worth less...we can't buy as much "stuff" as we could say even a year ago. of course the economy will rebound. it rebounded from the stock market crash of 1929 too. that doesn't mean that it isn't performing poorly right now.

you think all of these mega-corporate write-downs are a good indicator of a thriving economy?

no one is saying that the fed should crank up the interest rates...they should stop lowering them though. I posted a link to an in-depth article on the fed a few weeks back or a month ago. it's common knowledge that when you try to constantly stimulate an economy or stimulate it too much too quickly you are going to have tremendous inflation. this is the phenomenon that we are experiencing right now. greenspan tried to solve the dot.com bubble by blowing up the housing bubble...it's time for us to take our medicine...suck it up, deal with it being shitty, and let the markets correct themselves.

goverment intervention is what got us into this mess in the first place. rebate checks are not going to solve this problem. nothing but time and staying out of the way is going to fix this.

[freddyv]

p.s. of course hillary or obama in office is going to be bad...they'll balance the budget, but they'll tax the crap out of us in the process. I started other threads showing how the dem's new budget is going to stick it to us.

unfortunately, mccain is pretty liberal with his policies too, so it seems any way you slice it we're in for trouble.

[HBGOnline]

Freddy you're a smart guy. Why do 3 out of 4 people think we are in a recession? Because of the media reports that's why!!!

We are in a slow down, not a recession.

Sure Lehman dropped half their value. You know why? Because of rumors. They also gained the loss back yesterday. You would have doubled your money if you would have bought their stock on the dip.

Our financial system is in a meltdown right now because of a 6% problem. 94% of all home loans are ok. Since the 6% is mixed in with the 94% they are assuming the whole mortgage wrap is a bust. The Fed has taken unheard of action never seen before, over the weekend, to start putting stability back in the markets. You're seeing billions in write downs, but what they aren't saying is once they know how to price mortgage back securities, these same companies will be adding billions of dollars back on the balance sheet.

I said before, stop watching the "news" and reading the liberal news. Watch CNBC a few times and you'll get a better understanding from people in the business of what's really going on. Their coverage and reporting is pretty eye opening.

[freddyv]

3 out of 4 people are dumbasses. to be honest, I don't really care if americans think we are in a recession or not. things I care about...I'd say not even ten years ago when I was still living at home my parents would go grocery shopping for our family of four and spend $200 and get an over-flowing cart full of groceries. I now shop for my family of four that includes two children under 3 years old and doesn't eat a whole lot of food and I can't seem to get out of there without spending at least closer to $400. only a couple years ago gas was around $1/gallon. I filled up two days ago and it was like $3.30/gallon. my 401k is like a sieve...every quarter I get my statements and see how much more money I've lost...even though my investments aren't particularly aggressive.

I was looking to buy a home about a year ago. we placed a bid on a small 3-bedroom ranch. the house appraised for like $30k less than the asking price, so the seller's agent and our agent tried to convince us to go with a different, local bank because they would appraise the house for the asking price. at the time I was bummed, but now I'm glad things fell through with the way the market has turned.

the housing market is a mess. I've seen reports that due to collusion between banks and appraisal companies, most houses have been appraised for at least 10% more than they are actually worth. so people with bad credit are getting loans for more money than they can afford to buy houses that aren't even worth near what they are paying for them. foreclosures are at an all-time high...I don't know that your statistic about only 6% of mortgages being bad is accurate.

consumer and investor confidence is down, and rightly so. calling this a slowdown is nothing more than spin. america may not be facing a collapse like the soviet union had in the early 90's, but we are hardly at the pinnacle of our greatness. I agree with you, america has the best system around and probably the best economy around. that still doesn't mean that things are going well right now, or that our monetary policy hasn't directly led to malinvestment that has caused our economy to take a turn for the worst.

is greenspan a part of the liberal media? he doesn't seem to think that we're doing very well right now. here's a clip from cnbc of a gentleman that feels that a US recession is inevitable:

www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=687278522&play=1

at the end, he echoes your sentiment that europe is not in the clear either.

here's another article from cnbc that contends that the fed's actions are directly influencing the public's perception and could possibly be making the situation worse:

www.cnbc.com/id/23696547/for/cnbc/

[freddyv]

also, I don't think that so many people think that the economy is bad because the media tells them so...I'd venture to say that most people are too busy living their lives to pay attention to that stuff. they notice that the price at the pump is way up...or that their heating bill is way up this winter because the price of their heating oil has gone way up...or that it costs an arm and a leg to feed their families.

most people are probably watching sports and drinking beer, not watching the news. it's the rest of their lives that's making them think that times are tough right now.

[freddyv]

I know you don't appreciate the cut-and-paste, but this article is pretty succinct in telling the story that it's not necessarily the media that is making Americans feel badly about things.

www.cnbc.com/id/23704293/for/cnbc/

Americans in sour mood over economy: Reuters poll
March 19, 2008
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans are in a sour mood over the sagging U.S. economy, worried about their jobs and overwhelmingly of the opinion the country is on the wrong track, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

The Reuters/Zogby Index, which measures the mood of the country, fell sharply to 87.7, down from 99.3 in February, putting it at the lowest level since the index was first measured last July.

President George W. Bush's approval rating fell to 32 percent, down from 34 percent last month, while positive ratings for the U.S. Congress were at 15.5 percent, slightly below an anemic 17 percent last month.

Concerns about jobs, personal finances, safety from attack and the direction of the country were on the increase after easing slightly last month, proof that Americans were in foul spirits.

Only 19 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction. And only 40 percent felt very secure about their jobs, down from 50 percent last month.

Pollster John Zogby said it was the first time all 10 of the measures used in the poll to take the temperature of the country were down. "The index is not simply down, it's down dramatically," he said. "It's the largest move we've seen since we inaugurated this."

Americans over the past month have watched a topsy-turvy stock market pounded by a mortgage crisis. Recession fears abound and Democrats are locked in a protracted battle over who will be the party's presidential nominee.

A separate Reuters/Zogby poll found that nearly three in four Americans thought the U.S. economy was in a recession, and saw little hope for a swift improvement in the housing market.

The Reuters/Zogby Index is released on the third Wednesday of each month. The survey of 1,004 likely voters was conducted March 13-14.

The Index combines responses to 10 questions on Americans' views about their leaders, the direction of the country and their future. Index polling began in July, and that month's results provide the benchmark score of 100.

A score above 100 indicates the public mood has improved since July. A score below 100, like the one this month, shows the mood has soured since July.

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at blogs.reuters.com/trail08/

(Additional reporting by Emily Kaiser, editing by Todd Eastham)

Copyright 2008 Reuters. Click for restrictions.
URL: www.cnbc.com/id/23704293/for/cnbc/


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MSN Privacy . Legal
© 2008 CNBC.com

[seanx]

....hey freddy, pull some of your magic and show Gestapo Jim who CNBC is owned by............

.........it seems like his head is as thick as his gut..................

[seanx]

.....you all do realize that what goes on in the UK is simply a foreshdowed microcosm for what will go on here in the US at a later date, right? The London Telegraph (newspaper) had an article showing that 9 out of 10 new jobs in Great Britain are now being outsourced to foreigners........this is where the heart of our economic problems lie.......the elite only want the masses to be used as a service industry, no more manufacturing or production within the countries.....this will make the citizens less in control of their lives and abilities to subsist on their own........therefore we will need the government for everything........bullshit..........

[seanx]

.......are we even ALLOWED to post three times in a row? I'm doing it! f*ck off. ......... in regards to the Gestapo's numbers posted on this topic, freddy, I wouldn't take them at face value. I've been to a couple of shows and noticed that the attendance stated and those actually there were slightly askew......I attribute this malady to WTS (wishful thinking syndrome)........I still love the guy though.......

[freddyv]

seanx said:

....hey freddy, pull some of your magic and show Gestapo Jim who CNBC is owned by............

cnbc is owned by nbc/universal which is owned by general electric. Jeffrey R. Immelt is the chairman of the board of directors and principal executive officer. you can check out his profile on forbes www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/personinfo/FromPersonIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedPersonId=871917

he made about $40MM in salary and stock options last year. the guy is 52 years old and worth about $50B. GE produces transportation equipment, aircraft engines, kitchen appliances, lighting and plastics to name a few, and is a world leader in financial services.

[HBGOnline]

I doubt that's the answer he was looking for. I'm assumming it's some NWO type thing/connection. Time will tell.

Fox Business News, Bloomberg and others report the same thing as CNBC. Each have both sides. I used to like politics, but this business stuff is some really cool shit.

Plus let's not forget how this started, with a poll. Polls are slanted based upon what results they want. I can't remember any poll that had republicans winning the White House in recent memory. Remember 4 years ago when everyone had egg on their face because polls showed Bush lost. Assholes were calling states before votes were even close to be counted.

Speaking for myself. I just got an almost 10% raise and my day job company just hired 3 people and getting ready to hire 3 more full time and 2 part time. They will also be investing about 1/2 a million on expansion in the next few months. Just like the rest of service company's our revenues and profits continue to rise. So if this is a recession, I can't wait for the recovery!!!

[freddyv]

admin said:

I doubt that's the answer he was looking for. I'm assumming it's some NWO type thing/connection. Time will tell.

I started to, but it was taking way too much work. even without knowing the puppet master you can still see that they have their hands in everything...involved in the military industrial complex...involved in the global warming scam (they had nbc doing their green thing a few months back...turning the lights off during the broadcast to conserve energy...using the new lightbulbs that use less power and last longer but contain mercury, which just causes another problem when we need to dispose of them)...controlling a HUGE segment of the media....etc...

[freddyv]

Gasoline Sticker Shock Shocks Tourists Along Highway One

POSTED: 7:21 am PDT March 25, 2008
UPDATED: 10:04 am PDT March 25, 2008


If you think you're paying a hefty price at the pump, wait until you see what we found at a gas station just south of the Bay Area.

NBC11's Bob Redell traveled to the city of Gorda where a gas station is charging $5.40 for a gallon of full service premium. It just might be the most expensive gas in the country, Redell reported.

Gorda is in Monterey County along Highway 1 and the closest gas station is 40 miles away.

Tourists couldn't believe what they were seeing, NBC11 reported.

Many said they would never pay that much for a gallon of gas. Others said they had no choice.


SLIDESHOW: Why Are We Paying So Much Per Gallon?
www.nbc11.com/slideshow/news/15502968/detail.html

The gas station's owner said one customer told him to go to hell and another said he should be shot for charging that much for gas.

Redell said the reason the gas costs so much is because the town gets all its power from a generator and they use the extra profits from the pumps help pay that bill.

The other reason is that they can. They're the only game in town.

"If you're out in the desert without water and you want a jug of water and they charge you 30 bucks for a jug of water, I wouldn't feel sorry for you. Look before you leap, right? said gas station attendant James Willman.

Willman said most people just pay it. He said he's actually run out of regular and mid-grade gasoline thanks to tourists who don't plan ahead.

One person said they should rename the city of Gorda Gouge-ya.

[freddyv]

Brace for $1 Trillion Writedown of `Yertle the Turtle' Debt
Review by James Pressley

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Be it ever so devalued, $1 trillion is a lot of dough.

That's roughly on a par with the Russian economy. More than double the market value of Exxon Mobil Corp. About nine times the combined wealth of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

Yet $1 trillion is the amount of defaults and writedowns Americans will likely witness before they emerge at the far side of the bursting credit bubble, estimates Charles R. Morris in his shrewd primer, ``The Trillion Dollar Meltdown.'' That calculation assumes an orderly unwinding, which he doesn't expect.

``The sad truth,'' he writes, ``is that subprime is just the first big boulder in an avalanche of asset writedowns that will rattle on through much of 2008.''

Expect the landslide to cascade through high-yield bonds, commercial mortgages, leveraged loans, credit cards and -- the big unknown -- credit-default swaps, Morris says. The notional value for those swaps, which are meant to insure bondholders against default, covered about $45 trillion in portfolios as of mid-2007, up from some $1 trillion in 2001, he writes.

Morris can't be dismissed as a crank. A lawyer, former banker and author of 10 other books, he knows a thing or two about the complex instruments that have spread toxic debt throughout the credit system. He once ran a company that made software for creating and analyzing securitized asset pools. Yet he writes with tight clarity and blistering pace.

The financial innovations of the past 25 years have done some good, Morris notes. Collateralized mortgage obligations, invented in 1983, saved homeowners $17 billion a year by the mid-1990s, according to one study.

Slicing and Dicing

CMOs transformed the business by slicing pools of mortgages into different bonds for different risk appetites. Top-tier bonds had the first claim on all cash flows and paid commensurately low yields. The bottom tier was the first to absorb all the losses; it paid yields resembling those on junk bonds.

What began as a good thing, though, soon spawned a bewildering array of new asset classes that spread throughout the financial system, marbling balance sheets with what Morris calls inflated valuations, hidden debt and ``phony triple-A ratings.'' The more the quants fine-tuned the upper tranches of CMOs and other collateralized debt obligations, the more dangerous the bottom slices grew. Bankers began calling it ``toxic waste.''

Guess where the toxins wound up? That's right: Credit hedge funds are now the weakest link in the chain, Morris says. Their equity stands at some $750 billion and is so massively leveraged that ``most funds could not survive even a 1 percent to 2 percent payoff demand on their default swap guarantees,'' he writes.

`Utter Thrombosis'

Morris sketches a scenario in which hedge fund counterparty defaults would ripple through default swap markets, triggering writedowns of insured portfolios, demands for collateral, and a rush to grab cash from defaulting guarantors. The credit system would suffer ``an utter thrombosis,'' he says, making the subprime crisis ``look like a walk in the park.''

As bankers and regulators try to prop up the ``Yertle the Turtle-like unstable tower of debt,'' Morris points to two previous episodes of lost market confidence.

The first was the 1970s inflationary trauma that prompted investors to suck money out of the stocks and bonds that finance business. Confidence returned only after Fed chief Paul Volcker slew runaway inflation by ratcheting up interest rates.

The other precedent is the popped 1980s Japanese asset bubble. In that case, politicians and finance executives tried to paper over their troubles. Two decades later, Japan still hasn't recovered, Morris writes.

We should be as bold as Volcker, he suggests: Face the scale of the mess, take a $1 trillion writedown and shore up regulatory measures. His recommendations include forcing loan originators to retain the first losses; requiring prime brokers to stop lending to hedge funds that don't disclose their balance sheets; and bringing the trading of credit derivatives onto exchanges.

What he fears is that the U.S. will instead follow the Japanese precedent, seeking to ``downplay and to conceal. Continuing on that course will be a path to disaster.''

[freddyv]

if enacted, this would be the most wide-sweeping change to the financial system since the great depression (according to reports). probably not a good idea to have the government more involved...the new deal hasn't worked out so well for us.

Fed System Overhaul: The Basics
Monday , March 31, 2008



The Goal

— To craft a far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system
— Change how the government regulates thousands of businesses



Among the potentially affected

— The nation's biggest banks
— Investment houses
— Local insurance agents
— Mortgage brokers



Highlights of the plan

— Seeks to trim a hodge-podge collection of overlapping jurisdictions
— Give the Federal Reserve more power to protect the stability of the entire financial
— Merge day-to-day bank supervision into one agency
— Create one super agency in charge of business conduct and consumer protection.
— Proposes to eliminate Office of Thrift Supervision and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, merging their functions into other agencies.
— Asks Congress to establish a federal Mortgage Origination Commission to set recommended minimum licensing standards for mortgage brokers
— Asks Congress to establish an Office of Insurance Oversight inside the Treasury Department.