Finance

= go to NFU pages

                     . 

Shadowstats                    PerotCharts

The real bailout

 World wide toxic GM corn pollen cloud and ConAgra    

= go to NFU pages

Cost, abuse and danger of the dollar, By Rudo de Ruijter, Netherlands, 

• Bank Information Center provides info to NGO's and social groups on IMF
• Citizenworks Stipanovich, Abramoff
• Credit default swaps are contracts to protect bondholders against default. An increase indicates worsening perceptions for credit quality.
• EIR Florida land bubble of 1926 was warning to 1929 crash, Great Depression, and leading the way in 2007 mortgage bubble meltdown,  counties and municipalities tax receipts down, sinking home prices, real estate taxes, mass foreclosures, value of short-term investments of state agencies' funds collected but not spent, backed by MBS, evaporating ... and EIR
• Global Policy search
• Guardian, short term public investment default, downgrade
• Guardian, Standard Chartered
• SeeingTheForest
• Citigroup, off balance sheet, SIV,  'legal' fraud.  
• Citigroup, bankrupt? SIV accounting fraud, Bloomberg Bloomberg
• Public Citizen Bush, Enron, Stipanovich, 2002 article  "Coleman Stipanovich, brother of J.M. "Mac" Stipanovich, a Republican political consultant and lobbyist who ran Bush’s gubernatorial campaign in 1994..."
• Sourcewatch Blackwater USA, mercenaries, DeVos
• Sourcewatch Blackstone Group
• notes, Blackstone Group FGIC, Illinois Housing Development Agency dropped bond insurer FGIC, Frank J. Bivona, CEO, higher risk, so bonds could be sold at lowest interest rate.  Quarterly results, derivatives, loss, volatility in structured credit markets, Howard Pteffer, president, excellent results from non-US operations, uses three non GAAP measures, Core Net Income, Adjusted Book Value, Adusted Gross Premiums, refunding activity, cost recognized, timely, loss expenses, case reserves, watchlist reserves, default probable, impaired, negative, deterioration, Hurricane Katrina, credit enhancement, infrastructure finance, monoline financial guarantors, guarantees the scheduled payments of principal and interest on an insurer's obligation, Moody's rating is AAA, SIV, offshore companies created by banks and other firms to sell low-yielding shor-term debt to buy higher-yielding mortgage securities and finance company bonds.
• Vulture Capitalist, ...beware. ... $$$ to limited hangout news websites.  His $$ support of  'left' sites do affect the news.  No reporting on reopening 911 investigation, Russian Israeli mob, 'left' gatekeeper,  and see  Carnaby CIA murder in Houston. 
• Enron, Bush, campaign contributions, Florida's state pension program lost $335 million, because of Enron holdings, Jeb Bush one of three trustees, Richard Kinder, Enron president, deregulate Florida electric utilities, Alliance Capital Management, continued to buy Enron shares even after SEC probe started, after Fastow ousted bought another $16 million, rode it down to 28 cents, Coleman Stipanovich was deputy executive director of the pension fund 1999 (Enron losses) New York Times
• notes: ABX Index ... "Understanding the ABX At a time when almost nothing about subprime securities seems certain, the ABX index is a key point of reference for investors navigating the world of risky mortgage debt. ... The ABX, launched in January 2007, serves as a benchmark of the market for securities backed by home loans issued to borrowers with weak credit. ... Ben Logan, a managing director at Markit Group, a London-based company that specializes in credit derivative pricing and administers the index. ... Underlying the mortgage mess has been the fact that "no one knows what subprime securities are really worth ...  Underlying the mortgage mess has been the fact that "no one knows what subprime securities are really worth ...  Underlying the mortgage mess has been the fact that "no one knows what subprime securities are really worth ... betting tool, gauge of demand ... Underlying the mortgage mess has been the fact that "no one knows what subprime securities are really worth ... The ABX has five separate indices based on the rating of the underlying subprime securities, ranging from AAA to BBB-minus. A new series is issued every six months to reflect the 20 largest current deals. ... tracks S&P Banking index. CNN
• Ambac, the second-biggest bond insurer, guarantees $546 billion of securities. MBIA stands behind about $652 billion of municipal and structured finance bonds, while FGIC Corp., parent of Financial Guaranty Insurance Co., insured $314 billion.
• Moody's, Fitch and S&P, criticized throughout the credit slump for giving excessively high ratings to asset-backed debt, took a second look at the bond insurers in the past few weeks after sweeping downgrades of CDOs. The companies had issued reports as recently as October that said the insurers were unlikely to face capital constraints because of the subprime mortgage crisis.  Bloomberg

• Summary, Meltdown LGIP - Florida Local Government Investment Pool locked down, to avoid mass redemptions, discovery of SIV infection. The fund's value is 'undetermined'.  Bloomberg and Bloomberg, Stipanovich, Lehman, Jeb Bush cesspool file $2 billion was quarantined out and the fund was reopened with limits. New York Times Jeb Bush one of trustees of State Board of Administration when SIVs purchased  from Lehman Brothers, Jeb Bush then hired Lehman as consultant after he left office in Aug 07... Forbes Coleman Stipanovich was the deputy director of the Florida State Pension fund when it lost $335 million from Enron losses.  His brother is J. M. Mac Stipanovich who ran the Jeb Bush 1994 gubernatorial campaign.  Public Citizen  He recently resigned from the SBA  under Blackrock Inc. plan. New York Times California, SIVs face downgrades, $460 million ...not as volatile as Florida? Bloomberg and  Massachusetts $134 million, face downgrade, not as volatile as Florida? Boston.com Montana Connecticut  $100 million was invested in an SIV known as Cheyne Finance, that has defaulted. no mass withdrawals.  Boston.com

   
• Accrued Interest. blog, money markets, smelled bad, CDOs, 
• Economic Research   Paris, London, NY, Tokyo economists
• AccessMyLibrary PMI
• BillingsGazette, Florida, Montana, investment pool meltdown
• Bloomberg  LGIP, Florida, 
• Bloomberg fire sale and 
• go to NFU poverty, billionaires page
• Bloomberg Connecticut, Montana
• Chron, Arizona investments 'safe'
• Congress, Credit Rating Agency Reform Act, from Enron meltdown, gave SEC authority to designate, regulate and investigate rating agencies, prohibits notching, the threat of unsolicited bad ratings unless an agency is hired to assess a security,  disclose conflict of interest.
• Florida, Government Investment Pool, FGIC, assets fell 48%, shut down, Crist,   Sink and McCollum are the trusties.  ... had $2 billion in defaulted SIVdebt, 2A-7 rules, many funds bought asset backed commercial paper, ok, FSBA
• Financial Security Assurance, FSA, minimal exposure to asset-backed securities,  and CDOs, 
• Florida Retirement System, owns more than $1 billion of defaulted debt, subprime infection FSBA  School districts and towns relied on SBA to boost returns on funds that pay pensions, home insurer and treasury also at risk, 
• Florida State Board of Administration and its Local Government Investment Pool, Trustees, not accept or process deposit or withdrawal requests, LGIP advisory committee, other funds include FRS Pension Plan, FRS Investment Plan, CAT fund, Pooled Funds, Chiles Endowment, 
• Florida CFO, Chief Financial Officer, Alex Sink,  Attorney General William,  McCollum, $25 billion state treasury, unknown risk
• Financial Times
• Flapolitics, blog
• Financial Times Alphaville, bond insurers default
• GlobalEconomicAnalysis Florida, SIVs, State Board of Administration
• Housing Derivatives blog, ABX index
• Inside B&C Lending, industry newsletter
• InvestorWords
• Markit, ABX Index  and CNN ABX
• New York Times Enron, Bush, Florida's state pension fund lost $335 million from its Enron holdings, 2002
• Northern Rock may be nationalized if no buyers found
• Reuters 
• Stew Webb, Blackstone, Iraq, MI6, Sensenbrenner, Abramoff, money laundering scheme not investigated by Congress.  Hillary Clinton
• TampaBay "Stipanovich, who has worked for the state since 1999, earns $181,964 as executive director of the state Board of Administration. ... he began his professional career as a sheriff's deputy in Gainesville ... " and blog Stipanovich, Crist, Rubio
• Teamsters Local 282 Pension Trust Fund, sued Moody's, New York district court,  misled investors,  ... rating opinions are protected by the free-speech provisions of the First Amendment, Constitution, 
• Toomre Capital Markets
• Washington State bonds, Ambac, FGIC, Blackstone
• Wikipedia Blackrock Inc
• Wikipedia Blackstone Group
• Wikipedia Blackwater USA
• notes: Jeb Bush involvement?, Florida, government money market crisis, majority of paper sold to SBA my Lehman Brothers, Bush served on three-member board that oversaw the SBA, Florida has weak disclosure laws, many other states have weaker still disclosure laws.  Orange County was one of early withdrawers, $370 million, Crozier Bank, Riggs Bank, MZM, EDS,
• Is there a connection between Clinton, Bush, Florida,  Blackwater, IHT  Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, Hillary Clinton.
• 

• Giuliani, Mukasey, Kerik, Blum, Feinstein, Advent, Adelson, Schumer  research,

• ABC News, owned by Disney
• 'Your money is 'safe', 'the bank is 'open'.
• ACA, FGIC and Security Capital Assurance, smaller than MBIA, Ambac, bond insurers, risk of default higher.
• Accenture, Arthur Andersen, Enron
• Ambac Insurance downgrade ? by Fitch ... FGIC Corp downgrade possible and CIFG Guaranty downgrade possible, sending interest rates through the roof
• AIG, Hank Greenberg
• American Enterprise Institute
• Axon Financial Funding LLC, downgraded, cut to junk,  in Florida LGIP,  
• BlackRock Inc, largest publicly traded money manager, FGIC hired it to analyze / salvage the fund, temporarily manage it. 
• Blackstone Group, parent of FGIC, capital injection
• Bloomberg  CDS, Credit Default Swaps, fancy name for insurance on mortgage backed securities default, Lehman (Richard Fuld), Goldman Sachs
• Cato Institute  
• Conservative Republicans, Bush has killed the Republican brand name
• Centauri Corp's CC USA Inc  issued Orange County CP under review
• Center for Global Development partially funded by Citigroup, CP, Microsoft, World Bank
• CIFG Guaranty downgrade possible ? sending interest rates through the roof, registered in Bermuda,
• Citigroup, Five Finance Inc, issued Orange County CP under review, 
• CNN
• CNN 101 dumbest executives
• Costa Mesa, Quick Loan Funding, California, Daniel Sadek
• Countrywide, bankruptcy ? Market Oracle
• Cypress, parent of FGIC
• Fed, 
• FGIC Corp downgrade possible, Financial Guaranty Insurance Company downgrade ? 4th largest bond insurer.  parents: Blackstone, Cypress, PMI, registered in New York, 
• Fitch Ratings,  owned by Paris-based Fimalac SA, spokesman James Jockle, Bloomberg,  Fitch, S&P, Moody's  bond ratings were a joke, rated about 51% of subprime, 
• Forbes   'Where was Jeb?'
• Harris, Kathryn, 2000 Bush election stolen: "“Katherine Harris ...moves ...” said J.M. “Mac” Stipanovich, a Republican strategist who advised Harris during the 2000 presidential recount."
• Hill & Knowlton, Niger  offices in Vatican City, Prague, Czech and Washington, D.C.
• KKR Atlantic Funding Trust, cut to default by Fitch, in Florida LGIP. 
• Lehman Brothers, sold majority of paper to Florida LGIP,  Jeb Bush hired as consultant.  about $900 million of Florida debt in default.  Stipanovich, fund manager resigned as part of Blackrock Inc. plan.
• video
• Marketwatch funds risk, soaring international bank lending rates pared demand for higher yielding assets, 
• MarketWatch, Dow Jones company, watch for a stock market rally right at the beginning of the recession. Oct 2007
• MBIA, largest bond insurer symbol MBI
• McGraw-Hill Cos, S&P is one of their units, issued ratings on 98% of subprime mortgage bonds, 
• Minyanville
• Moody's Investor Service   Bloomberg,  Fitch, S&P, Moody's  bond ratings were a joke
• Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index, 
• National Review  search, Greenspan, Bush family, CIA, 
• NBC News owned by GE, General Electric Corp.
• News Corp, Rupert Murdoch
• New York Times, Run on Montana fund
• Olive Group, Blackstone
• Ottimo Funding, cut to default, in Florida LGIP
• PMI  parent of FGIC, largest stockholder,
• SEC, Chairman in 2006 Christopher Cox, 
• SEC Executive Compensation Reader
• Sedna, Citigroup.  SIV, off-balance sheet vehicles set up mainly by banks, issue a mixture of short-term senior and longer-term subordinated debt and invest the proceeds in long-term securities, mainly bank debt and asset-backed securities.  Reuters
• Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, 
• Standard & Poors, rated as sound billions in loans to people with no jobs, assets ...  Bloomberg,  Fitch, S&P, Moody's  bond ratings were a joke
• ShortSalesMagic
• Standard Chartered PLC's Whistlejacket Capital Ltd, Orange County, California, CP, under review.
• Tango Finance Corp, issued Orange County CP under review
• Thompson Financial earnings 4th quarter 2007 on 1.4/% increase, worst in 5 years.
• USNews, Recession that didn't happen
• Washington Mutual, Cuomo issued subpoenas, information about Fannie and Freddie, improper pressure on appraisers to provide inflated values.
• According to the most recent Treasury International Capital report, a monthly reading on foreign investment flows, net foreign purchases of long-term U.S. securities were $69.1 billion in December, down from net purchases of $70.3 billion in November and $118 billion in October.  If this trend continues and overseas investors actually start selling more securities than buying, that could hurt the economy since a sell-off in Treasuries would lead to higher long-term bond rates. That would be a problem since longer-term bond yields have an influence on mortgage rates. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.

   

• Truthout  and  By Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2245.  Former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (pictured), then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke made the initial decision to bail out AIG. (Photo: Elizabeth Dalziel / AP) It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full. Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars? ... For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman's collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG's inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG's trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already. ... Also see below: Hedge Funds May Be Getting a Bailout via AIG's Payments • It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure. The payments to AIG's counterparties are justified with an appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG's contracts turned out to be shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system would collapse. ... But wait a moment, aren't we in the midst of reopening contracts all over the place to share the burden of this crisis? From raising taxes - income taxes to sales taxes - to properly reopening labor contracts, we are all being asked to pitch in and carry our share of the burden. Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won't be laid off. Why can't Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn't we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren't they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? Haven't we been told recently that they are beginning to come back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn't they have accepted a discount, and couldn't they have agreed to certain conditions before the AIG dollars - that is, our dollars - flowed? ... The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation. ... So here are several questions that should be answered, in public, under oath, to clear the air: What was the precise conversation among Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, and Blankfein that preceded the initial $80 billion grant? Was it already known who the counterparties were and what the exposure was for each of the counterparties? What did Goldman, and all the other counterparties, know about AIG's financial condition at the time they executed the swaps or other contracts? Had they done adequate due diligence to see whether they were buying real protection? And why shouldn't they bear a percentage of the risk of failure of their own counterparty? What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and AIG? Didn't they almost merge a few years ago but did not because Goldman couldn't get its arms around the black box that is AIG? If that is true, why should Goldman get bailed out? After all, they should have known as well as anybody that a big part of AIG's business model was not to pay on insurance it had issued. Why weren't the counterparties immediately and fully disclosed? Failure to answer these questions will feed the populist rage that is metastasizing very quickly. And it will raise basic questions about the competence of those who are supposedly guiding this economic policy. Hedge Funds May Be Getting a Bailout via AIG's Payments Wednesday 18 March 2009 New York - The fact that some payments made by American International Group Inc. (AIG) to hedge funds are coming from government bailout money raises a question: Are hedge funds receiving a de facto bailout? ... If the answer is yes, it would signify the first taxpayer money yet to reach hedge funds since the financial crisis began back in late 2007. Hedge funds - investment pools made up primarily of high net worth individuals, pension funds and university endowments - have suffered like most during the crisis, but have pointed out with pride that as of yet their industry hasn't requested any government handouts. ... Officially, of course, any payments made by AIG to hedge funds wouldn't change that fact. It was AIG that requested the bailout, not the hedge funds. The insurance giant is now simply meeting its contractual obligations. ... In some cases, AIG has already paid out fairly hefty amounts to hedge funds with U.S. taxpayer funds. AIG said in a press release Sunday that it paid $200 million each in "public aid" to Citadel Investment Group and Paloma Securities. These payments were made to settle short-term trades last year in which the hedge funds loaned AIG cash in exchange for bonds. ... Also, as reported Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, AIG reportedly may be paying out many different hedge funds for bets in which the hedge funds waged that the housing market would crater against AIG's bets that it would remain robust. ... It isn't clear how much in total that hedge funds stand to gain through the AIG payments, but the payments call into question the government's decision, whether out of haste or for any other reason, to allow the AIG bailout money to be dispersed to any counterparties, including hedge funds. ... "Taxpayer money is being paid to hedge funds by a Treasury that could have limited the payments to domestic banks but decided not to risk letting anyone big fail," said John Coffee, a professor of securities law at Columbia University. "In short, everyone of importance is being protected." ... Not all observers see a problem. While Edward Altman, a professor of finance at New York University's Stern School of Business, questions the use of taxpayer funds to pay huge bonuses to AIG executives (another controversy surrounding the AIG bailout), he doesn't see a problem with the hedge-fund payments. ... "The 'bailout' funds are doing exactly what they were intended to...pay off [ AIG's] bills on a timely basis so as not to cause any further harm to the system," he said. "Otherwise, what's the purpose of the bailout? It should have been clear that this involves [payments to] hedge funds."

• CNN KPMG improper accounting practices Michael J. Missal concluded that New Century engaged in at least seven improper accounting practices that led the company to report incorrect financial information to Wall Street for fiscal 2005 and the first nine months of 2006.  Missal also found that senior management at the Irvine, Calif.-based lender failed to take appropriate steps to manage rising risks caused by the company's aggressive approach to originating loans, often to borrowers who couldn't afford them.  "New Century had a brazen obsession with increasing loan originations, without due regard to the risks associated with that business strategy," Missal's report said. "The increasingly risky nature of New Century's loan originations created a ticking time bomb that detonated in 2007."  In addition, the examiner found that New Century's accounting firm, KPMG LLC, enabled some of the improper accounting practices to continue.  "As an independent auditor they're supposed to look very skeptically at any client, and here they became advocates for the client and in fact even suggested some improper accounting treatment that ultimately started New Century down the road it's taken," Missal told The Associated Press.  The accounting also led to higher bonuses for key executives, the report said.  

• notes: subpoenas, New York, Wall Street firms face NY probe, violation of law, packaging and selling debt tied to high-risk mortgages, AG Andrew Cuomo, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns (started it all), Deutsche Bank, high ratings not substantiated, underwritings, due diligence firms, securities firms, credit-rating firms all suspect.  Bloomberg  Fitch, Moody's, Standard & Poors bond ratings a joke.  S&P Chief Economist David Wyss, and Managing Director Thomas Warrack, Managing Director Susan Barnes, responsible parties during this period, and Bear Stearnes, Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers sold $1.2 trillion in subprime securities in 2005 and 2006.  The big three credit ratings firms had to be complicit.  80% of the subprime debt carried AAA ratings, the same as U. S. Treasury bonds.  Implied that they couldn't fail.  the trust is gone.  Ratings agencies are not impartial, 

• Depression 2009 coming  Boycott ABC, Boycott NBC, Boycott CBS, Boycott Fox    Between 1929 and 1933, U.S. GDP growth declined by around 30 percent, the stock market lost almost 90 percent of its value, and a whopping 40 percent of the nation's banks failed

• Bloomberg: "Among the places caught up in the SIV and subprime snarls are Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Montana and King County, Washington. Public funds hold $1 billion of defaulted asset- backed commercial paper, including $273.5 million from SIVs."

• Financial Times "Florida fund freeze leaves schools body 'flat broke' By Andrew Ward and Stacy-Marie Ishmael in New York.   Dec, 2007 ... School districts and local governments in Florida are scrambling to raise cash to pay wages and bills after state officials suspended their access to a state-run investment fund. Counties, cities and school districts across Florida had entrusted as much as $27bn (£13bn, €18bn) to the Local Government Investment Pool, which is managed by the Florida State Board of Administration.  But the pool has now shrunk to around $15bn, as investors worried about its exposure to subprime-tainted securities demanded their money back.  ... The Florida fund invested $2bn in so-called structured investment vehicles and other debt linked to the stricken subprime mortgage market.  Around $1.5bn of these securities have since been downgraded to levels which do not meet the fund's minimum investment standards.  On Thursday, board trustees led by Governor Charlie Crist voted to halt redemptions, hoping to stem the tide of withdrawals and prevent the forced sale of assets. ... And Montana, run on the fund New York Times

• Conduits, trouble...  what are they? Conduit debt: setup to provide debt financing to borrowers, asset collateralized, off-balance sheet unless investors stop buying the debt, similar to CDOs, and demand has now shrunk (Dec 2007), every major bank has exposure, but they're mum, see 'variable interest entities', VIE, see FIN 46-R, sham reporting, and see Asia Times and terms: the first investors to withdraw funds get %100, last get less, ...state-run  investment pools,  Local Government Investment Pool, run on the fund, no one who takes money out will put it back in,  Hillsborough County Public Schools, public accounts, modeled after private money-market funds, 'safe', liquid, short-term debt, State Board of Administration, Crist, Sink, McCollum, 

• WMR  "From 1989 to 1996, Jackson was President of the Housing Authority of Dallas. Jackson's predecessor at HUD was Mel Martinez, now a Republican Senator from Florida. Jackson and Martinez are both long time supporters of George W. Bush and Jeb Bush campaigns, respectively. Jeb Bush has been involved in a number of questionable land deals in Florida, mostly involving the influential St. Joe Company, the Growth Management Study Commission (members appointed by Jeb Bush), and various home building companies. During the 1980s, the Reagan-Bush administration transformed HUD into a political slush fund. Under HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce and Deborah Gore Dean (nicknamed "Robin HUD"), private contractors embezzled $4 billion from HUD. HUD became a "political reward program." Under Martinez and Jackson, HUD has reverted to its 1980s persona with the only difference being the increase in embezzlement, from $4 billion to $56 billion."

• and  WMR  Jessica Mixon, FDLE, "But there may be much more to this story . . . which implicates Jeb Bush's banana republic regime and his major supporters. The scandal is the one surrounding native American casinos and Florida-based "cruise to no where" casino ships in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic and the laundering of cash into political campaign coffers of top GOP officials, including Tom DeLay, Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC), Jeb Bush, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), and others, most notably GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Taylor has been discovered to be the owner of Ivanovo Bank in Russia. Many Russian banks have been linked to organized crime activity involving the RUIM (Russian-Ukrainian-Israeli Mafia). Florida investigators are focusing on how gambling ships operating in an area of the Gulf of Mexico known as the "Flower Gardens" were illegally used to raise cash for GOP campaign coffers. Stay tuned on this one. This could be the financial Watergate of the Republican Party."   go to Tom DeLay page or more

• Wikipedia "A credit default swap (CDS) is an instrument to transfer the credit risk of fixed income products. Using technical terms, it is a bilateral contract, in which two counterparties agree to isolate and separately trade the credit risk of at least one third-party reference entity. The buyer of a credit swap receives credit protection. The seller 'guarantees' the credit worthiness of the product. In more technical language, a protection buyer pays a periodic fee to a protection seller in exchange for a contingent payment by the seller upon a credit event (such as a default or failure to pay) happening in the reference entity. When a credit event is triggered, the protection seller either takes delivery of the defaulted bond for the par value (physical settlement) or pays the protection buyer the difference between the par value and recovery value of the bond (cash settlement). Simply, the risk of default is transferred from the holder of the fixed income security to the seller of the swap. For example, a mortgage bank, ABC may have its credit default swaps currently trading at 265 basis points (bp). In other words, the annual cost to insure 10 million euros of its debt would be 265,000 euros. If the same CDS had been trading at 7 bp a year before, it would indicate that markets now view ABC as facing a greater risk of default on its mortgage obligations. ... Credit default swaps resemble an insurance policy, as they can be used by debt owners to hedge, or insure against credit events such as a default on a debt obligation. However, because there is no requirement to actually hold any asset or suffer a loss, credit default swaps can also be used to speculate on changes in credit spread. ... Credit default swaps are the most widely traded credit derivative product.[1] The typical term of a credit default swap contract is five years, although being an over-the-counter derivative, credit default swaps of almost any maturity can be traded."

• Alternet "A generation of conservative propaganda, arguing that markets make wiser decisions than government, has been destroyed by these events. The interventions amount to socialism, American style, in which the government decides which private enterprises are "too big to fail." Trouble is, it was the government itself that created most of these mastodons -- including the all-purpose banking conglomerates. The mega-banks arose in the 1990s, when a Democratic President and Republican Congress repealed the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented commercial banks from blending their business with investment banking. That combination was the source of incestuous self-dealing and fraudulent stock valuations that led directly to the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed."

• Lehman

• TopBlacks Raines
• Mail Tribune  "Raines names as task force members Assistant Treasury Secretary Wayne Abernathy; presidential economic adviser Keith Hennessey; Kevin Warsh, a special assistant to President Bush for economic policy; Jeffrey Kupfer, who served in 2003 as special assistant to Bush's chief of staff; Associate White House Counsel Reginald J. Brown; and Stephen S. McMillin, an official in the president's budget office.  ... He accuses the task force of influencing an investigation by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Raines is also seeking documents related to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card."
• Wikipedia Horatio Alger 
• Notes: Fannie Mae, charge fees on loans that thy have securitized into MBS bonds, no government guarantee of being repaid, 

• 
• DiversityInc
• CNN Shareholder lawsuit
• Horatio Alger Association, Raines
• Jurist
• Wikipedia Franklin Raines
• Wikipedia Fannie Mae, public-private hybrids, government sponsored enterprises, exempt from normal securities regulations, as well as state and local income taxes, lower default reserves, 

• 80% of Christian right voters vote for Bush ... only about 5% of Blacks vote for Republicans, GOP ... 
• CNN Raines names as task force members Assistant Treasury Secretary Wayne Abernathy, Associate White House Counsel Reginald J. Brown and members of the National Economic Council.   file   Raines  accuses the task force of influencing an investigation by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight
• CEI Fred Smith, president, 
• JewishWorldReview, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, 'homebuyers' best friend', American Dream, feeding on the public trough, subsidized, created during the Depression, 1938, they expand the pool of money for home purchasers by buying the loans that lenders make to homebuyers,  creating mortgage-backed securities, for investors 
• Lehman Brothers, Jeb Bush, Florida, Stipanovich?

• CNN The former chief executive officer of Fannie Mae says the Bush administration helped orchestrate an accounting scandal that cost him his job and that he wants to use White House documents to defend himself in a shareholder lawsuit.  Franklin Raines, who served as President Clinton's budget director, argues in court documents that the Bush administration felt the quasi-government agency wielded too much power in the mortgage industry.  His attorneys say the White House pushed regulators to weaken Fannie Mae and triggered a $6 billion accounting scandal.  Raines subpoenaed the White House for documents in July.  Justice Department lawyers will go before a federal judge Thursday to fight it.
•  

• Bank Information Center provides info to NGO's and social groups on IMF
• Global Policy search
• Skolnick's Report  Bush family, CIA, 

• Economic Research   Paris, London, NY, Tokyo economists
• Federal Reserve  Greespan bios, Federal Open Market Committee
• RePEc  University of Connecticut, Dept of Economics, Ideas
• Stern School of Business, New York University, Nouriel Roubini  writings, Current Account and the Real Exchange Rate

• American Enterprise Institute
• Cato Institute  
• Center for Global Development partially funded by Citigroup, CP, Microsoft, World Bank
• National Review  search, Greenspan, Bush family, CIA, 

• Lawful Path Ownership of the Federal Reserve
• News With Views Federal Reserve to begin hiding information pertaining to the U.S. dollar money supply
• World News Stand THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK IS A PRIVATE COMPANY

• FRB San Francisco, Fed in Print - a comprehensive index to Federal Reserve economic research
• Financial Sense Is the Federal Reserve preparing for Iran?
• Gold-Eagle
• Middle East North Africa Financial Network, MENAFN global indexes,
• Wikipedia, FED

• Bush Whitehouse  
• Federal Reserve  
• Federal Reserve Online
• FRB NY,  St Louis, Atlanta, Chicago,  Minneapolis, Dallas, San Francisco,  Richmond, Kansas City, Cleveland, Philidelphia, Boston
• Rothschild Bank of London, Warburg Bank of Hamburg, Rothschild Bank of Berlin, Lehman Brothers of New York, Lazard Brothers of Paris, Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York, Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy, Goldman, Sachs of New York, Warburg Bank of Amsterdam, Chase Manhattan Bank of New York

• American Prospect searchE
• Economic Policy Institute
• Information Clearing House Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China, Venezuela, Sudan, Iran, Russia among first countries to sell dollars, fall 2007 
• ISANet International Studies Institute
• Madison Institute, the
• Nation search renmimbi, yuan. news.
• New Economy Index  Progressive Policy Institute
• New Left Review analysis, reviews

• Atlanta Fed Trade_Weighted Dollar Index foreign exchange value of the dollar
• Business Times, Singapore.
• Channel News Asia  Business News
• Cleveland Fed Bank
• Channel News Asia  English Service
• Chicago Fed Strong Dollar, Weak Dollar? Foreign exchange rates and the US economy
• China Radio International English Service, search yuan, renmindi
• Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
• Currency Market World News Network
• EconPapers Access to RePec, worlds largest collection online Economics
• ECB European Central Bank,  Euro, info, policy
• Economagic data collections, Euro, US, Asian, 
• Financial Express Indian Express Group
• Forex
• Institute of Asian Research University of British Columbia
• Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
• QIndex, USD Index   
• RePec  worlds largest collection online Economics
• Stern School of Business, New York University, Nouriel Roubini  writings, Current Account and the Real Exchange Rate
• Tom Paine
• US National Debt Clock
• US Treasury  press releases, online
• WebPro Wire internet professionals newswire, search Forex, dollar

• Bank for International Settlements on flexible exchange rates
• Bloomberg  (Reserves increase) The increase follows steps last week by India's stock market regulator to check foreign investment that drove the share index to a record and pushed the rupee to a 9 1/2 year high. Governor Yaga Venugopal Reddy said inflows rose after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut rates to stem subprime mortgage defaults, increasing the risk of ``financial contagion.''  Summer / Fall  2007
• Brady Net forum, the world of bonds, search
• CEI Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Council of Economic Advisors
•  
• Empower America Jack Kemp, Bill Bennet, Cohen
• Forbes search
• IMF International Monetary Fund  US
•  
• Ino  Global Foreign Exchange
• International Economics.net 
• MMS International  Global markets
• Pacific Business News business news, yuan, renminbi
• Polyconomics supply side economics
• US Dept of Treasury  Outstanding public debt
• WTO World Trade Organization

• Bloomberg "India's central bank unexpectedly ordered lenders to set aside more reserves for a fourth time this year to prevent ``unacceptably high'' inflows of foreign cash from reigniting inflation. The Reserve Bank of India raised the ratio of deposits lenders must put aside by half a point to 7.5 percent, up from 5.25 percent at the start of the year. Interest rates were kept unchanged, the central bank said in a statement in Mumbai today.  ...  The increase follows steps last week by India's stock market regulator to check foreign investment that drove the share index to a record and pushed the rupee to a 9 1/2 year high. Governor Yaga Venugopal Reddy said inflows rose after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut rates to stem subprime mortgage defaults, increasing the risk of ``financial contagion.''  more terms: Sensitive index, Bombay Stock Exchange, Sensex,  restricting bank lending to prevent asset bubbles, barred issuance of offshore instruments tied to derivatives, spread between 2-year Indian government bonds and similar U. S. Treasury Notes, discourage arbitrage, India has prevented its state-run refiners from raising local fuel prices even as crude oil has risen 47%. 
• KYIVPost "As the US Dollar continues its slide, Ukraine’s central bank is likely to strengthen the country’s national currency, a move that would boost the purchasing power of average Ukrainians while taking a bite out of the margins of export-oriented big business tycoons."

• Calculate M3 REFERENCE DATA AND STATEMENTS
• Discontinuance of M3, Fed statement H.6 historical data  and H.6 releases 
• Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. economic accounts stats, including GDP, Personal Income, Corporate profits, Balance of Payments.
• Federal Reserve, Statistical supplement, 2006 
• Fed Reserve, H.6 Historical data, M3 discontinued 3/06
• Current Release H.8
• H.6 Money Stock Measures
• H.6 table 13 MMF, RPS, Eurodollars
• H.4.1 Fed Open Market operations, M3 component Repurchase Agreements, 
• Z.1  Flow of Funds
• MZM
• Bank Call Reports
• Gold-Eagle, M3
• Gold-Eagle, Benson, 04
• GoldPrice
• Economic Resources on the Internet Flow of Funds
• Europe2020
• M3 Calculate details
• MSI Monetary Services Index, St. Louis Fed
• Gold Price, M3 calculation, Bank Call Reports
• Financial Sense on M3 Bud Conrad, long term charts
• SilverSeek, How Low Can Gold Go

• Monetary Report to Congress
• Federal Reserve Statistical Releases, 
• Flow of Funds data, Z.1, H.8
• Gold-Eagle, David Chapman, Z.1, H.8
• Money Stock Measures, H.6
• Historical Repos, Eurodollars (MS Excel)
• Culture of Life, blog, Federal Reserve Will Conceal m3 Monetary Aggregate To Hide Inflation.
• Macroblog Federal Reserve and Monetary Policy
• Cleveland FED, Fed Funds, info...
• Current Account data, St. Louis FRB  chart

Sources:  Paul van Eeden (for the above explanation)

• H.8
• M2 - St. Louis Fed, Research (data)
• Institutional Money Market Funds (data)
• Line 11  Security loans  (data)
• Line 13  Interbank loans  (data)
• Line 17  Deposits   FR 2415 report  data
• Reverse Repurchase agreements? H4.1
• Line 20  Large Time Deposits   (data)  
• EuroDollars (use Interbank loans * .75)   (data)
• Federal Reserve Statistical Releases, Consumer Credit, Factors Affecting Reserve Balances, Industrial Production, Capacity Utilization, Money Stock Measures
• see also AmosWEB search: M3

• Large time deposits, FRB discont
• H.8
• Z.1  Flow of Funds
• SafeHaven Is M3 Really Gone?
• TIESWeb, Newropeans M3 ceased to be published.

M2. Measure of the U.S. money stock that consists of M1 plus savings deposits (including money market deposit accounts), small-denomination time deposits (time deposits-including retail RPs-in amounts of less than $100,000), and balances in retail money market mutual funds. Excludes individual retirement account(IRA) and Keogh balances at depository institutions and money market funds.

M3. Measure of the U.S. money stock that consists of M2 plus large-denomination time deposits (in amounts of $100,000 or more), balances in institutional money funds, RP liabilities (overnight and term) issued by all depository institutions, and Eurodollars (overnight and term) held by U.S. residents at foreign branches of U.S. banks worldwide and at all banking offices in the United Kingdom and Canada. Excludes amounts held by depository institutions, the U.S. government, money funds, and foreign banks and official institutions  FRB

The large-denomination time deposit component of M3 includes time deposits with balances of $100,000 or more. Certificates of deposits (CDs) held by MMMFs as well as the nontransaction deposits of the U.S. government, U.S. and foreign depository institutions, and foreign official institutions are subtracted from gross large time deposits at commercial banks. Gross large time deposits are reported on the FR 2900, and, for institutions that do not file an FR 2900 report, are estimated using quarterly Call Reports. The nontransaction deposits of the U.S. government, U.S. and foreign depository institutions, and foreign official institutions are estimated using the quarterly Call Reports. Monthly data on CDs held by MMMFs are collected by ICI from approximately 700 funds.¹⁰  FRB

The RP component of M3 includes those repurchase agreements that are issued by depository institutions and purchased by: (1) nonbank brokers and dealers in securities; (2) individuals, partnerships, and corporations (including bank holding companies and their nonbanking subsidiaries); (3) nonprofit organizations; (4) nondepository financial institutions; or (5) state and local governments in the U.S. and their political subdivisions. RPs are reported on the "Report of Repurchase Agreements (RPs) on U.S. Government and Federal Agency Securities with Specified Holders" (FR 2415; OMB No. 7100-0074), shown in Attachment 7. This report collects one data item: Repurchase agreements in denominations of $100,000 or more, in immediately-available funds, on U.S. government and federal agency securities, transacted with specified holders. The FR 2415 is filed by depository institutions at one of three reporting frequencies (weekly, quarterly, or annual). In general, the larger the respondent's level of RPs, the more frequent its reporting. The weekly panel reports daily data once each week. The quarterly panel reports daily data for four one-week reporting periods that contain quarter-end dates. The annual panel reports daily data only for the week encompassing June 30 each year.  FRB

The Eurodollar component of M3 includes Eurodollar deposits payable to nonbank U.S. addressees. The primary data source for this component are the reports of foreign offices of U.S. banks that are filed weekly or quarterly. The "Weekly Report of Eurodollar Liabilities Held by Selected U.S. Addressees at Foreign Offices of U.S. Banks" (FR 2050; OMB No. 7100-0068), shown in Attachment 8, contains two data items:

(1) nonnegotiable liabilities payable in U.S. dollars only to U.S. addressees other than depository institutions and MMMFs, regardless of maturity ("nonnegotiable Eurodollars"); and

(2) negotiable certificates of deposit payable in U.S. dollars only that are held in custody accounts for U.S. addressees other than depository institutions and MMMFs ("negotiable term Eurodollars").