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As more than 75% of Americans express concerns about the economy, recent holiday spending signals potential trouble ahead. Over 18 million Americans defied uncertainty, hitting stores during the Thanksgiving weekend, with a record-breaking 200.4 million consumers making purchases. Despite a surge in online shopping, worries persist as experts warn of a looming credit card debt crisis. The National Retail Federation reveals that 44% of consumers favored online platforms, emphasizing the shift towards digital transactions. “I buy a lot of stuff on TikTok and stuff like that, so I do believe people use their phones to buy stuff more than in...

No Solution To The Global Credit Crisis, Rising Gold And Silver Prices ? Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis Jul 03, 2011 - 05:56 AM By: Bob Chapman World markets and especially US markets are in a state of uneasiness and it is only a matter of time before they degenerate further. The real question is will everything break loose between now and the end of the year? The answer in part is yes, and it is currently in process. “The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets,” along with elitist insiders normally have the ability to make the stock and bond...

Are you better off than you were two years ago? For most people, the answer is no. Compared to two years ago, more people are unemployed, the credit markets are still a mess, businesses are still being stymied by further federal regulation, and the global community has no idea what we stand for with our foreign policy. What if we could roll the clock back? Roll it back a little more than two years to September 2008. At that time, the United States was at one of our more critical inflection points. We had military actions in both Iraq and...

The superdollar is back folks! Another hit on the US financial crisis. Yesterday I wrote a piece in the epidemic of credit card fraud. Now we are getting hit with "superdollars". Flooding the market! If you don't recall the "superdollar" is a fake US 100 dollar bill manufactured in North Korea and elsewhere. Aparently the quality is so good that they are making there way INTO ATM machines!

Greetings my fellow FReepers. Before anyone complains that this post in "unsourced" let me say that as a recent VICTIM of Credit Card Fraud as well as a law enforcement officer I am very concerned about this epidemic that is hitting our nation HARD ! My main concern about this is....... WHO is paying for it? When a victim of credit card fraud reports unuathorized transactions to their bank they are reimbursed immediately for the unlawful transactions. The bank then becomes the victim, but who reimburses the bank? Is it US the taxpayers? If so what is the DAILY cost...

Much to the frustration of U.S. regulators and legislators, and despite rumours of criminal charges, the grandstanding over Goldman Sachs this week was upstaged by the cacophony coming from Greece. The EU debacle definitely couldn’t be blamed on “unfettered capitalism,” a mythical creature that is part unicorn, part scapegoat. In fact, the Greek situation provided a useful reminder that there is nothing as dangerous as subprime government. ... A Congressional subcommittee on finance tried to suggest on Thursday that Greece’s situation may have been caused by credit default swaps, CDSs, the form of insurance that drove AIG into the arms...

EXTEND & PRETEND: Uncle Sam, You Sly Devil! Interest-Rates / Credit Crisis 2010 Apr 30, 2010 - 10:20 AM By: Gordon T Long The modus operandi (MO) of deviant behavior aids investigators in doing criminal profiling. Forensic accounting takes a similar approach and leads us to some unnerving conclusions about Uncle Sam. As Tax Payers we place our sacred trust in our elected officials and government. Is that trust being handled similarly to how Goldman Sachs apparently has been handling its fiduciary responsibilities? Has our government been playing accounting games like European tax payers discovered in Greece and like many...

Are You 100% Sure They Saved the Financial System? Politics / Credit Crisis 2010 Feb 01, 2010 - 10:38 AM By: Mac Slavo Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday, that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousands points the first day, another couple thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no. House Representative Brad Sherman (D-California) Debate on the House Floor, October 2, 2008 Consider this: If the system...

Save The Middle Class Whilst Fixing The Banks For Good Politics / Credit Crisis 2010 Jan 28, 2010 - 09:50 AM By: Michael Pento While I’m disgusted with the level of banker’s bonuses and with the obscene leverage practices financial institutions undertook, I do not think the answer to how we clean up them up now is to pile on yet more regulation. To be sure, banks that helped bring down the world economy and then subsequently got bailed out by the taxpayers should not be making billions of dollars in bonuses, especially while the middle class is suffering so...

Americans Walking Away From Mortgages Politics / Credit Crisis 2010 Jan 11, 2010 - 07:56 AM By: Andrew Abraham It seems now almost acceptable that Americans can walk away from their mortgages. Why not? So many are upside down, owing more money on a house than the house is actually worth. Many Americans are just walking away and renting virtually the same homes for half or a third of their previous mortgage payment. What does this mean for the banking industry? How healthy can these banks really be with non performing loans both on the residential side and commercial side?...

Chinese and U.S. regulators are negotiating a pact aimed at encouraging Chinese financial institutions to buy into small and medium-sized banks in the United States, bankers briefed on the plan said on Tuesday. Chinese bankers have complained that it's been difficult for them to set up branches or invest in banks in the world's leading economy, due partly to U.S. regulators' tough supervision and strict approval process for financial deals. But the global financial landscape has been revamped by the credit crisis, and cash-rich Chinese banks are now bigger players on the world scene and are scouting around for investment...

Once again, Washington's so-called deposit insurance program is faced with the possibility of running out of cash. Bank failures have multiplied as a result of mounting loan losses. Thus far in 2009, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has been obliged to take over 81 institutions. Reimbursing depositors at the busted banks has reduced the FDIC's insurance fund from a March 2008 peak of $52.8 billion to just $10.4 billion. That compares with combined assets of $299.8 billion at the 416 banks that the FDIC currently classifies as leading candidates to go broke. As Chairman Sheila Bair emphasizes, the FDIC is...

Remember the looming Social Security crisis? If you don’t, you’re not alone. The credit crisis and economic downturn have monopolized public attention to such an extent that the Social Security crisis that was at the center of the policy debate during President George W. Bush’s second term now seems forgotten. This is unfortunate, for not only has Social Security not been fixed, but reform, if done right by tapping into the power of the market, can help provide new capital, which American businesses now desperately need. To see how this could be done, it’s worth looking at the experience of...

This is starting to feel like amateur hour for aspiring magicians. Another day, another attempt by a Wall Street bank to pull a bunny out of the hat, showing off an earnings report that it hopes will elicit oohs and aahs from the market. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and, on Monday, Bank of America all tried to wow their audiences with what appeared to be — presto! — better-than-expected numbers. But in each case, investors spotted the attempts at sleight of hand, and didn’t buy it for a second. With Goldman Sachs, the disappearing month of December didn’t quite...

<p>Series: ShortcutsPrevious | Next | Index The question that flummoxed the great orator John Crace The Guardian, Friday 3 April 2009 Article historyBarack Obama, the World's Greatest Orator (™all news organisations), didn't exactly cover himself in glory when the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson asked him a question about who was to blame for the financial crisis. Normally word perfect, Obama ummed, ahed and waffled for the best part of two and a half minutes. Here, John Crace decodes what he was really thinking ...</p>

You can't be a successful investor unless you can overcome your fears. So what's bothering you? Maybe, after reading one too many stories about investigations of Ponzi schemes, you are fearful that your entire portfolio may have been embezzled. Huge and scary! Yet I've seen nothing addressing this well and simply. There is one foolproof, easy way to be sure this never, ever happens to you. If you hire anyone to make investment decisions for you, be sure it, he or she is separate from whoever has custody of your money. That's it. Have your assets held at a major-name...

The government is putting its printing press into overdrive. Congress passes new legislation every week that either bails out auto companies or bails out banks; the Federal Reserve has lowered its rates to zero and opened up the borrowing window; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has increased the amount of insurance it allows each bank account to be insured for. In your own life, when confronted by a budget crunch, don’t you look for some free ways to alter your lifestyle to make things better? Our government can do the same. Here are two suggestions as to how...

We are in financial and economic trouble.  And by "we", I mean just about everybody, from the US to Iceland  and Latvia.  Isn't it worth, say, ten minutes to try to figure out how this happened?  That is, while we throw virgins into volcanoes and go into debt at a rate of about one trillion dollars every two months in frantic attempts to save ourselves, shouldn't we also try to figure out what's really going on? Since I don't have a PhD in economics, I won't convince Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) of anything .  But I think it worth a...

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Tuesday unveiled a new bank rescue plan that includes a "new consumer business lending initiative to leverage up to $1 trillion dollars to kick start the secondary lending markets." The department also announced plans for "a new website, FinancialStability.gov, to detail where federal funds are going and whether they are succeeding in stabilizing the financial system and promoting new lending." The administration has already begun posting contracts on the Internet. Here are details of the program, as released by the Obama administration:

Thursday, January 22, 2009 COF: "Strikingly high FICO customers" Defaulting by CalculatedRisk on 1/22/2009 08:27:00 PM From the Capital One conference call, on Closed End Unsecured Loans (hat tip Brian): Analyst: When you look at the closed in loans that are clearly under performing at this stage, what is it about either the underwriting or the characteristics of that group of loans which makes that different than say a normal revolving credit card or what would you suppose is maybe leading to the worse than expected performance at this point? COF CEO: There are several factors involving the closed in...