The ECB loans money at low rates to the banks – hoping to encourage consumer and business lending. In June, for example, the banks borrowed 442 billion euros at a fixed interest rate of 1%. But lending to business and households is at its lowest level since record-keeping began…
July 30th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 1 comment | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "ponzi scheme"
Geithner’s Trip to China Was, At Best, a Draw
His goal was to bluff and bamboozle the world’s investors – notably China – into believing that the US had its finances under control. Once we’re out of this mess, he told China’s top man, we’re going straight.
June 5th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
The United States: The Largest Ponzi Scheme in the World
The United States is now the largest Ponzi scheme in the world. The only way to pay off the old lenders is to bring in new ones – or run the printing press. That’s all lenders have to worry about – inflation. And for the moment, prices are going down. They’ll keep going down too – until they go up…
February 20th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 6 comments | Continued
Wall Street Gets the Boot
Yesterday, President Obama, seeing Wall Street on the mat, walked over and gave it the boot. The $18 billion in bonuses, paid out on to Wall Street honchos last year, were “shameful,” said he. It was the “height of irresponsibility” to take so much capital out of the system when it was losing money, he pointed out. Of course, he’s right. It was certainly irresponsible. And the Wall Street crowd deserves the boot, no doubt about it. But it’s a shame no one mentioned it in 2006 or 2007 – not even Mr. Obama – when the bonuses and the irresponsibility were even higher…
February 2nd, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
A Country of Madoffs
This week began with a squabble. John Thain was sacked as head of Merrill Lynch after giving out $4 billion in bonuses – just before announcing $15 billion in losses for the 4th quarter of ‘08. (…)Then Citigroup announced that it had bought a new corporate jet for $50 million. Seemed a bit rich for a company that had just lost $8.3 billion. What sort of devilry is this? Where can you can lose billions…take billions in handouts from taxpayers… and still coddle executives with new planes and million-dollar ‘bonuses?’ Penalties would seem to be more appropriate…
January 30th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
The Baddest Bank in the West
The world’s full of bad banks already – banks that did just what Bernanke is proposing to do; they bought financial assets, notably mortgage market derivatives, for cash. Now, they turn to the taxpayer, desperate for a handout to keep them from going under. And the baddest bank of all? Next to the Central Bank of Zimbabwe it’s the U.S. Fed…
January 15th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 2 comments | Continued
Wall Street has a bit of Ponzi in Them
As we pointed out at the end of last week, all the latest products of Wall Street had a bit of Ponzi in them. Ponzi was a schemer from the early 20th century who figured out that he could pay people a high rate of return…
February 20th, 2008 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued