Posted on 12/30/2011 8:39:38 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Italian PM Mario Monti has pleaded for the eurozone to expand its "big bazooka" bail-out fund as an expensive Italian bond auction suggested that even last week's flood of cheap loans from the European Central Bank (ECB) has failed to stem the crisis.
The Italian prime minister used his end of year press conference to warn that indebted countries will be "in difficulty" unless the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is boosted with "significantly greater" firepower.
Italy raised €7bn (£5.9bn) in the first big test of the bond markets since the ECB opened its doors with €489bn of cheap loans in an attempt to inject liquidity into Europe's arid banking system. Rome paid 5.62pc to sell €2.5bn three-year debt – a much lower yield compared to the record high of 7.89pc paid a month ago. It paid 6.98pc to shift its 10-year bonds, compared with 7.56pc in November.
The total amount raised in the auction fell short of the €8.5bn target and the cost was still deemed to be unsustainable. The yield on Italian 10-year bonds closed at 7.06pc – stubbornly above the 7pc level seen as signifying the need for a bail-out.
The auction doused the optimism that followed Wednesday's auction of Italian six-month bills when the borrowing costs were halved from a month ago. Analysts said the auctions showed the ECB's action had eased pressure on shorter-term debt, but investors were still wary of longer-dated bonds.
Kathleen Brooks at Forex said the auction "reminds us that stresses remain, and although today's debt was always going to be a hard sell as it comes at the end of the year, Italy has a mountain to climb next year, as it tries to sell €400bn of debt – half of which needs to be sold to
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
“I have $500,000 in credit card bills and 3 mortgages on my house, I only earn $12.50 per hour, and I can’t make the payments. Can we PLEASE have a $1,000,000 loan so we can keep the lights on?” .......
Loan?
The Obammunist is promising debt forgiveness, if you reelect him.
yitbos
The question remains, if the people vote the treasury to themselves, and vote to borrow future generations treasure, and refuse to tax themselves but vote to confiscate the wealth of others, what is the answer to the inevitible economic failure?
Perhaps some in EUSSR are trying to head off the voters by setting up a Committee (sanctioned by elected national representatives) that has no constituency but the power to enforce austerity rather than meltdown?
yitbos
Freepers should not be nitpicking if socialism, capitalism etc etc will work or not because we are in the midst of paper currency breakdown. Desperate times means desperate measures by our gov and bankers. Remember in the eyes of our elites, the customer will lose his entire savings if the banking system implodes. Thus if a severe crisis hits, customer accounts can be used as collateral for loans to cover losses and if the bank goes bankrupt, customer accounts can be taken to make good on bankrupt company’s debts. Even if this means existing regs and laws are broken. MF Global is the canary in the mine. FREEPERS should be concentrating on protecting their existing wealth from the chaos or will wake up finding their entire life savings frozen or taken no matter who is POTUS. That is how bad our system is structurally. The MSM, gov and Wall Street have done their utmost to hide these facts, but time is running out as the EU crisis, Japan’s debt and utlimately US debt will unravel the system. When a system fails, remember ALL PROMISES WILL BE BROKEN no matter who is POTUS!!!
That includes confiscation of gold and other “alternative” forms of wealth.
The voters don’t have a say either way. This is socialism from the top down.
The best way to do that is to devote time and treasure to electing Conservattives.
yitbos
Central banks own over 80 percent of the world gold. 1930’s gold was used in coins and convertible to paper certificates. In order for gov to control it they had to take it out of circulation. There are ways to avoid confiscation. Buy gold jewelry in lieu of bullion. Gov cannot outlaw jewelry stores if they decide to confiscate all forms of gold. Since most of the world gold is in the hands of bankers, there is no need to seize it. Seizing it will make foreigners dump dollars even faster because most of the USD is stored in overseas foreign banks. IMHO a major currency collapse will lead to a currency reset and a new asset will be used to back the currencies of the world. If the dollar is not the reserve currency it will be devalued after the bank holiday is over. Look at what happen in Argentina and Mexico recently. People who owned hard assets were able to exchange it for more of the new reset currencies thus preserving the buying power of their wealth. People who stuck to paper money ended up exchanging all their savings based on paper currency for a smaller amount of the new reset currency. In Mexico people lost 20 percent in the first reset (and it happened several times) and it happened several times. In Argentina people lost up to 90 percent of their buying power in the first reset. Today the Fed Reserve has up to 10 folds of US dollars in circulation or digital form. If US lose world reserve currency status and must reset to how much USD exist vs its gold reserve in Ft Knox and Central Banks, you may find the reset currency may be 1/7 or 1/12 (depending how one calculates it) of today’s worth. Savers and pensioners will be in big trouble, and anyone in debt will be in big trouble.
What are Conservatives going to do to the bankers. Five banks in the US control 2/3 of US GDP. They come to the Conservative reps and tell them if they do not do X or Y the economy will crash and they will be voted out of office. Worst the bankers can crash the economy and cause social chaos and the public will blame the Conservatives and they never will be elected to power for at least 40 years. Conservatives can save us if they round up the bankers, confiscate their ill gotten wealth and shoot them and their entire family. Close Havard, Yale and other elite business schools, have their professors imprisoned and never allowed to teach the business models that lead to the corruption of gov and Wall Street. Then conservatives can save the US. Otherwise they will be as powerless as the Dems when the bankers come to Washington DC and make their demands. Obama is suppose to be a leftwing anti business person, yet no one on Wall Street went to jail, instead he goes to them and ask for campaign donations. Now that is power, and the bankers are demonstrating it to all of us, and yet many do not even have a clue on what they see is going on!!!!
"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."
Ayn Rand
Italy denies report Merkel phoned to ask for Berlusconi's removal
Reminds me of when Ireland's budget somehow turned up first in Berlin....
Budget 'leak' in Berlin sparks complaint by Government
And just for giggles, from a few years back...
The reason the central banks own so much gold is because there is so little of it. The precious metal supplies have grown at an average rate of less than two per cent per yr for the last 500 yrs (which includes the precious metals taken from the New World by the Spaniards.
It is precisely that low growth rate which has driven nations away from gold as money since it pretty much ensures constant recession and prices falling, deflation. Unless the money supply grows at a rate sufficient to keep unemployment in control political conflict and failure ensues.
I don’t know what you mean by “reset”. In the past (under fixed exchange rates) currencies were revalued up or down in a sort of “reset”. However, for the last three plus decades we have been on a floating exchange rate regime which continuously resets the values of currencies relative to each other. Or do you mean changing prices of the precious metals as a reset?
“Today the Fed Reserve has up to 10 folds of US dollars in circulation or digital form.” I have no idea what this means.
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