MSM: AIG Told U.S. Failure May Cripple Banks, Money Funds

American International Group Inc. appealed for its fourth U.S. rescue by telling regulators the company’s collapse could cripple money-market funds, force European banks to raise capital, cause competing life insurers to fail and wipe out the taxpayers’ stake in the firm.

FDIC shutters four banks in one day

Oregon, Nebraska, Florida, Illinois bank failures bring year’s total to 13

MSM: Senior HBOS executive ‘sacked for warning of banking crisis’

Paul Moore, a senior executive at HBOS, was sacked by one of Gordon Brown’s favoured bankers after warning his bosses they were taking excessive risks, MPs were told.

Worse than the Great Depression

The mainstream media and Wall Street have reached the consensus that the current credit crisis is the worst since the post-war period. George Soros’ statement that ”the world faces the worst finance crisis since WWII” epitomizes the collective wisdom. The crisis is currently the ultimate scapegoat for all the economic evils that currently plague the global financial system and the global economy – from collapsing stock markets of the world to food shortages in third world counties. We are repeatedly assured that the ultimate fault lies with the Credit Crisis itself; if there were no Credit Crisis, all of these terrible things would never have happened in the economy and the financial markets.

RBS Slaughtered: “Full-Scale Nationalization” Next

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc said it may post a loss of as much as 28 billion pounds ($41 billion), the biggest ever reported by a U.K. company, as the credit crisis worsens. The stock slumped as much as 46 percent.

MSM: U.S. Stocks Fall on Treasury Strategy Shift, Best Buy Forecast

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell for a third day as the Treasury’s plan to use bailout funds to shore up consumer lending and Best Buy Co.‘s warning of a “seismic” slowdown in spending stoked concern the credit crisis is far from over.

The Economy Collapses: Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) Obfuscates Seriousness of Crisis

Today heralded the long awaited release of figures compiled by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. The latter is controlled by Banks amongst which are JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

From their Article..

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

The messianic fervor which has preceded Barack Obama’s expected ascension to the White House has alarming implications for freedom and is a painful reminder that most Americans have once again been suckered into believing that the two-party monopoly offers any kind of solution to the crisis that we face.

Worse than the Great Depression

The mainstream media and Wall Street have reached the consensus that the current credit crisis is the worst since the post-war period. George Soros’ statement that ”the world faces the worst finance crisis since WWII” epitomizes the collective wisdom. The crisis is currently the ultimate scapegoat for all the economic evils that currently plague the global financial system and the global economy – from collapsing stock markets of the world to food shortages in third world countries. We are repeatedly assured that the ultimate fault lies with the Credit Crisis itself; if there were no Credit Crisis, all of these terrible things would never have happened in the economy and the financial markets.

MSM: One in five US homeowners with mortgages underwater – Reuters

NEW YORK, Oct 31 (Reuters) – Nearly one in five U.S. mortgage borrowers owe more to lenders than their homes are worth, and the rate may soon approach one in four as housing prices fall and the economy weakens, a report on Friday shows.

About 7.63 million properties, or 18 percent, had negative equity in September, and another 2.1 million will follow if home prices fall another 5 percent, according to a report by First American CoreLogic.

House of Cards

The New York Times recently reported on page one that credit cards may be the next to go in the financial crisis. Danny Schechter published this similar warning last June in City Beat, a weekly newspaper in Los Angeles.

You thought the housing crisis was bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

How to Bankrupt a Nation

How would you bankrupt yourself? You’d want to get yourself into a position where you could not pay off your debts. You’d run up big credit card bills. You’d borrow heavily. You’d mortgage and re-mortgage your house. You’d splurge on your spending. The money would go – to clothes, restaurants, and hairdressers.

Down for the Count

“The great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or of blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men (who) felt no responsibility to the nation.”

From the 1945 UK Labour manifesto Let Us Face The Future

There are signs that the credit crunch is easing. Interbank lending in dollars has fallen for a ninth straight day. The various indicators of stress in the market–Libor, the TED spread, and the Libor-OIS spread–are all gradually returning to normal, but the damage to the broader economy has been substantial. Major corporations have had to stretch their credit lines just to get the money they need to cover routine operating expenses and a lot of retailers have not been able to get funding for their inventories for the holiday season, so they’ll either have to hire fewer workers or simply shut their doors for Christmas.

MSM: Worst slump since Great Depression

Major industrialised economies will suffer the worst slump since the 1930s, according to new research from Deutsche Bank.

The warning underlines the fact that policymakers have failed to prevent the financial crisis from turning into a full-blown economic slump. It comes as world leaders agreed to hold a summit in New York billed as the “Bretton Woods meeting for the 21st century”.

MSM: Dow Dives 508 – S&P Falls 60 – Worst Since 1937

Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index below 1,000 for the first time since 2003, on speculation banks and real-estate companies are running short of money as the credit crisis worsens.

Bank of America Corp. tumbled 26 percent after cutting its dividend in half and saying it plans to sell $10 billion in common stock to brace for a recession. Morgan Stanley, KeyCorp and JPMorgan Chase & Co. slid more than 10 percent as investors shrugged off signs the Federal Reserve will reduce interest rates. General Growth Properties Inc., a mall owner, plunged 42 percent on concern it won’t be able to repay debt.

Worst-case scenario is approaching rapidly

The credit crisis, which has been building slowly for the past year, is now moving so fast that governments around the world are finding it impossible to keep pace.

On Saturday Angela Merkel, the German leader, criticised last week’s decision by the Irish to guarantee all deposits in their leading banks without consulting other European countries. The Irish Government said that the move was forced on it by the threat of a run on one of its banks. Only a day later Ms Merkel was forced to take almost the same action in almost the same circumstances.

Video: MSM Lou Dobbs – The No Bailouts Act

A group of House Democrats are proposing an alternative to the failed bailout proposal.

US’s sixth largest bank Wachovia looking for buyers: Report

New York/London, Sep 27 (PTI) Financial turbulence in the US took yet another toll with America’s sixth largest bank, Wachovia, starting preliminary talks with potential buyers including Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Spain’s Banco Santander, media reports say.
The reports about Wachovia looking for a bailout buyer appeared in media a day after the collapse of Washington Mutual, the biggest bank failure of US history.

MSM: Ireland falls into recession

• Economy shrank in Q1 and Q2
• Germany and Spain could be next

Ireland has become the first country in the eurozone to slip into recession, official figures showed today.

According to the Central Statistics Office, the country’s once-booming economy shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year and by 0.5% in the second. The technical definition of a recession is two or more consecutive quarters of contraction. The European commission thinks that Germany and Spain could be next.

Full-Spectrum Breakdown

On Friday morning, Senator Christopher Dodd, the head of the Senate Banking Committee, was interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Dodd revealed that just hours earlier at an emergency meeting convened by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, lawmakers were told that “We’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system.” Dodd added somberly, that in his three decades of serving in public office, he had “never heard language like this.”

Financial Bailout: America’s Own Kleptocracy

The largest transformation of America’s Financial System since the Great Depression

Nobody expected industrial capitalism to end up like this. Nobody even saw it evolving in this direction. I’m afraid this failing is not unusual among futurists: The natural tendency is to think about how economies can best grow and evolve, not how it can be untracked. But an unforeseen road always seems to appear, and there goes society off on a tangent.

What a two weeks!

Impacts of the Financial Crisis: The U.S. Is Becoming an Impoverished Nation

Everything the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department are trying to do to stem the tide of the self-destructing U.S. financial system is a stopgap. They are locking the barn door after the horse—many horses—have already escaped, and they know it.

They also know the cause of the crisis is not subprime mortgage lending—that was just the trigger. Cries to re-regulate the failed financial industry are coming from Congress, the media, and investors around the world. But lax regulation is not the cause of the problem either.

MSM: Hey U.S., welcome to the Third World!

Dear United States, Welcome to the Third World!

It’s not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department’s request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisors willing to perform an emergency overhaul of your entire government.

Dodd: The United States May Be “Days Away from a Complete Meltdown of Our Financial System”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd says the United States may be “days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system” and Congress is working quickly to prevent that.

Dodd said Friday that Democrats and Republicans on the Hill are coming together to support the Bush administration’s developing plan to buy up bad debt from financial institutions and get the credit system working again. Dodd told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the nation’s credit is seizing up and people can’t get loans.

All Roads Lead To Hyperinflation

Losses and bankruptcies of the major banks that we predicted, trouble for the taxpayer who now shoulder a trillion in debt from bank failures, Why do we have to bail out Wall Street fraud? Lehman Brothers left to expire, We are watching our Zombie economy implode, Buy-outs are just throwing good money after bad, Toxic waste eats your equity capital, eats your stocks, your bonds, and eats your retirement funds. 1929 all over again

Video: MSM – Glenn Beck Interviews Ron Paul 9/18/08

Economy Will Collapse…

Run On The Bank? Americans Could Lose Their Deposits

You know things are bad when Yahoo.com, the most trafficked website in the world and usually a purveyor of mindless celebrity gossip, cooking tips and dating advice, features a top story about how Americans could lose their bank deposits following the collapse of Lehman Brother.

Let the bank runs begin!

The immediate aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy will be a massive and manic flight to liquidity and withdrawal of funds and credit from banks, S&L’s, insurance companies and brokerages, leading to more failures.

Nothing can stop it at this point.

9% of homeowners are late with bill or in foreclosure, study says

WASHINGTON — An industry group says a record 9.2% of American homeowners with a mortgage were either behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of June, as damage from the housing crisis continued to mount.

GM, Ford, Chrysler on Sales Collapse Risk Bankruptcy

The Wall Street Journal is reporting Auto Sales Tumble, But Industry Sees Signs of Hope .
Sales of cars and light trucks fell 15.5% to 1.25 million last month, down from 1.48 million a year earlier, according to Autodata Corp. The closely watched seasonally adjusted annualized selling rate was 13.7 million vehicles, up from 12.55 million in July, but down from 16.3 million in August 2007, Autodata said.

FDIC: Bank Profits Fell 86% in 2Q

U.S. banking industry profits plunged by 86 percent in the second quarter and the number of troubled banks jumped to the highest level in about five years, as slumps in the housing and credit markets continued.

Wachovia loses $8.9B, cuts 6,350 workers, dividend

Wachovia slashes dividend, jobs, to shut mortgage unit after $8.86B loss in second quarter

“Spain Faces Worst Economic Crisis In Its History” – Finance Minister

“This crisis is the most complex we have ever lived through given the plethora of factors on the table at the same time,”