The CDO Market Continues Onwards, Limping Along

An obscure story in Bloomberg News sets me off on a little business about how the current financial collapse is far from done and far from being fixed.  Indeed, it seems clearer and clearer to me that the problems we had in the past are very much still there and waiting to explode in our faces a third time.  This is due to the governments of the G7 nations saving the very criminals who destroyed international finances and who are now bankrupting the planet as they strive to renew debt increases that are wholly unsustainable due to natural market forces moving in the wrong direction.

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ΩΩOf course, this ‘force’ I speak of is simple: the G7 are being rapidly overtaken and destroyed by the BRIC nations and OPEC.  Nothing that was broken was fixed, all the G7 nations did was try to resume ‘business as usual’ and while doing this, whine about the BRIC nations and accuse them, of all people, of committing ‘economic crimes’ while crooks and pirates continue to run the G7 nation’s financial houses!  There are many things that must be corrected and at the very top of the list is the incredible ability to create far too much credit based on far too little a capital base!

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ΩΩThis is due to many people not understanding or refusing to understand what ‘capital’ is.  It is not gold, it isn’t silver, it isn’t paper money, it isn’t credit, that is certain!  It is the industrial base, the agricultural base and the condition of the finances of the populace at large.  When all three are falling deeper and deeper into debt, JUST TO STAY THE SAME, this is a sign of economic collapse.  It means, there isn’t a rotating value of capital to keep things running.  If people have to borrow today for consuming today, this is a pit, it builds nothing.

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ΩΩThe US borrowed epic amounts of money to shrink its own industrial base.  This is pure madness. There is no ‘money’ created in all of history that can fix this.  This is a social problem, not a financial problem. This is a trade problem when the reduction in the industrial base, while creating more debt, is accompanied by a rising trade deficit.

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ΩΩSo first, let’s look at this obscure news story and follow the logic here to see how the present situation is totally whacked out: CDO ‘Samaritan’ Hildene Duels Funds Over Collateral (Update2) – Bloomberg.com

Hildene Capital Management LLC, the $150 million hedge fund that gained 33 percent last year, is fighting firms 100 times its size to preserve the value of collateralized debt obligations holding bank securities.

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You see, this organization was formed fairly recently to take advantage of the biggest balloon in all financial markets: the CDO securitization and selling systems. These guys were betting that these paper products based on too much easy credit, would retain their value. This was a fool’s errand. They are now angry that this garbage is losing value every day. They want this fixed the same way Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan fixed their own losses: the government must restore the value of these things.

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In the Tulip Mania, people who bet on tulip values wanted the city-states to make good on these things. The same thing happened to war bonds issued in Northern Italy 100 years earlier than the Tulip Mania. Everyone wants someone else to make good on games they play. Preferably, unknown people who don’t know the ugly truth: these things are fixed by looting other savers and taxpayers. Here are two news stories posted at Hildene Capital’s home page:

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Hildene Capital Management, LLC

Ex-Marathon Manager Starts Hedge Fund to Buy Distressed CDOs
February 14, 2008

“The entire securitization market is broken and the dealers aren’t in a position to be taking on more risk, they’re in the position of getting out of risk, and it’s a great opportunity to buy,’’ said Jefferson, 42, who is based in New York.

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2008 was right when the world was about to fall off a cliff.  There was a slight bobble in the markets and CDO values were teetering on the edge.  I seriously doubt the geniuses who started Hildene had the slightest idea they were about to go into a market about to go into free fall.

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Hildene Capital Management, LLC

Wall Street Abandons Neediest Clients, Cuts Credit
February 20, 2008

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) — A year ago $20 million would have gotten Luminent Mortgage Capital Inc. access to $640 million in loans to buy top-rated mortgage-backed securities. Now that much cash gets the firm no more than $80 million.

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Yes, in 2007, thanks to the Japanese carry trade, traders in securities could get $640 million in LOANS for SPECULATING IN CDOs while in February, they could get ‘only’ $80 million based on $20 million capitalization!  Poor babies!  Note that they were pissed that this happened.  They wanted this free money that was huge compared to their ability to pay off bad loans if their bets didn’t take well!  Back to today’s Bloomberg story:

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Hildene is part of a lawsuit seeking to prevent a TPG Credit Management LP affiliate from buying trust preferred securities from CDOs for pennies on the dollar. The firm tried to fire Cohen & Co. from managing deals in which Hildene invests. It’s attempting to block BankAtlantic Bancorp from retiring debt held by CDOs at a fraction of face value.

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Poor babies.  They lost their shirts due to being UNABLE TO BORROW IMMENSE SUMS.  I will shed a tiny tear for them and then go, ‘HAHAHAHA.’

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The moves by TPG Credit and BankAtlantic have in part kept the $50 billion market for CDOs backed by the trust securities, known as TruPS, from rebounding, according to Citigroup Inc., even as credit markets recover from the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Since 2000, 1,813 banks and thrifts sold TruPS and other debt that were packaged inside the deals, according to Fitch Ratings.

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See??? They want this stupid market to RETURN. It should be banned. It was ridiculous on every level.

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“It’s scary,” said Brett Jefferson, the chief investment officer and founder of New York-based Hildene, which posted a half dozen letters in the past six months complaining about the deals on the Irish Stock Exchange, where CDO debentures are listed. “We’ve got all our eggs in this basket and I’m less worried about bank failures than people doing these roundabout things.”

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ΩΩThis is just too silly.  They ran off to Ireland, which decided to become a pirate island, and gambled.  Now, they lost their shirts and have to  walk the plank.  Good riddance.  How dare they think they can play money securitization games with borrowed money????  Arrest them all.  First, here is TPG Credit’s home page:

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About Us – TPG Credit

TPG Credit Management is a global distressed credit investment organization. The firm manages private investment portfolios with a focus on opportunities in the global distressed and undervalued credit space. Our investment and operations professionals maintain offices in Minneapolis and London.

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ΩΩThe Minneapolis location shows us where the entire derivatives market first saw the light of day: to fund farmers who have seasonal credit needs and thus, have to place orders for credit based on potential future harvest values and whatever capital gain they might get from selling commodities.  London, of course, is the brain center of the old global imperial British system which ties together all of the various pirate coves located in Crown islands.

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ΩΩNow, for the TRUTH about all of this, we go back to my blog, in this same time frame of February, 2008, to se what I predicted and how I figured things out:  Money Matters: Markets Go Down On Bad News

Just want to thank everyone for the new systems here. I stopped cartooning for a while because of so many malfunctions. It was very disturbing, trying to do things that jerked around or didn’t even show up. Now, all is easy and smooth! If only our economy were that easy to repair! Everyone who has no idea what is going on, is aghast at the stock markets of the world all going down as the US Titanic sinks. The Bernanke rate cuts aren’t cutting it anymore.

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Here is the MarkIt web page that was set up to let the banks learn how well their various funds were doing in a real-time market:

Abx_aaa_funds_fall

So basically, we went from a record market to a complete melt down in less than three weeks. The fact that these funds started floating or rather, deflating rapidly in July when the DOW was at 12,000, is a sign to us that the fall here isn’t due to commerce ending or even slowing down. Consumer spending was still forging ahead, after all. The only things that were different were all banking-related. The Basel II Accord rules were taking effect and the banks, who were pretending for the previous year to have great equities in their vaults had to suddenly expose all of this to the cruel light of day. They had to open the books. And all the ‘off the books’ accounts had to be put on the books. This was the doom that cast everything into the depths of despair!

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Abx_a_funds_fall

Oh my god. The investors holding these AAA, AA and A bonds were supposed to make a profit if it rose above 100. If it fell, their losses accumulated very rapidly. Losing is very dangerous in this derivative game! And they lost. Big time. The plunge was very rapid from the end of July till the end of October. Then, Bernanke stepped in first, with the usual magic wand waving of rate cuts. Then he went in for a massive injection of funds to stop this decline. Incidentally, the stock market’s nightmare ride downwards had barely begun at this point! After all, it reached its all-time high [excluding inflation, of course] of 14,100 in early October, 2007.

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The banks cannot give more loans if they have no reserves and if their existing equities are losers, they have to add reserves, not make more and more loans. They cannot make money totally out of thin air. They have to have a pay-back system somewhere. As well as some savings. Once they were forced to start telling the truth, the whole thing has been impossible. Look at those charts! The losses are staggering. All the AAAs, AA and A ABX CDOs are all moving towards the same place: zero. The BBB papers are now at slightly higher than 10¢ to the dollar. But the others are barely better. All but the AAA papers are now below 30¢ to the dollar. They stabilized briefly from the Bernanke money injection day in mid-November and desperately clung to life until the second half of February. This is when all systems, the Stock Markets, the muni bond markets, the interbank lending markets, you name it, all have decisively turned downwards. The news that the Federal Government was going to hand out a bundle of goodies temporarily buoyed up the markets, the financiers, the bankers, but now that has faded. Even the Japanese are now accepting the idea that the $150 billion Xmas gift from Santa won’t save the global economy.

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ΩΩAll of this silly stuff was launched in 1999 when Congress stupidly removed the last controls preventing the derivatives beast from taking over everything and destroying it all.  Now, the US public is torn into shreds, trying to escape this stupid trap.  But look at the votes below for the Gramm-Leach bipartisan bill to gut all the rules constraining making money via doing insane, stupid and reckless things in international pirate coves:

File:Gramm-Leach-Bliley Vote 1999.png – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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ΩΩALL of the Democrats voting ‘nay’ were LIBERALS.  The tiny sliver of GOP nay votes were the right wing libertarians.  Mostly, Ron Paul and his very few friends in Congress and exactly one GOP Senator.  Now, the liberals knew this was a stupid bill.  But the GOP which is going around screaming that they will save us from financial collapse, embraced this bill and kissed it to life, big time.  To talk about this stupid bill and how it spawned the mess that Hildene and TPG credit are trying to EXPLOIT, here is Ron Paul discussing this bill back in 1999:  From Ron Paul’s webpage:  CR: CONFERENCE REPORT ON S. 900, GRAMM-LEACH-BLILEY ACT

Government policy and the increase in securitization are largely responsible for this bubble. In addition to loose monetary policies by the Federal Reserve, government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have contributed to the problem. The fourfold increases in their balance sheets from 1997 to 1998 boosted new home borrowings to more than $1.5 trillion in 1998, two-thirds of which were refinances which put an extra $15,000 in the pockets of consumers on average–and reduce risk for individual institutions while increasing risk for the system as a whole….

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…What is troubling with the hedge fund bailout was the governmental response and the increase in moral hazard.

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This increased indication of the government’s eagerness to bail out highly-leveraged, risky and largely unregulated financial institutions bodes ill for the post S. 900 future as far as limiting taxpayer liability is concerned. LTCM isn’t even registered in the United States but the Cayman Islands!…

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…The better alternative is to repeal privacy busting government regulations. The same approach applies to Glass-Steagall and S. 900. Why not just repeal the offending regulation? In the banking committee, I offered an amendment to do just that. My main reasons for voting against this bill are the expansion of the taxpayer liability and the introduction of even more regulations. The entire multi-hundred page S. 900 that reregulates rather than deregulates the financial sector could be replaced with a simple one-page bill.

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ΩΩOnce the bill was passed, absolutely everything Ron mentions in his speech, happened.  Is he honored for this?  Nope.  No more than I am honored for figuring out and correctly explaining stuff long before things happen!  HAHAHA.  Well, one thing is wrong with Ron: due to his ideology, he has no idea how Libra operates and why She is totally necessary if we don’t want to be destroyed by our own greed.  Weights and measures must be controlled and kept in clear balance!  The sacred number of 16 must be honored, not ignored.  The knowledge that all things must be kept restrained is most important to Libra.

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ΩΩJust as you don’t let horses run wild when pulling a carriage, you have to have a bit and reins in hand and to talk to the horses in a reassuring voice or a commanding voice, or the horses will take off and run until the wheels literally fall off…this actually happened to me once when a bear came out of the woods and spooked Sparky!

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ΩΩHere is a tidbit about Phil Gramm who jumped from the DNC to the GOP:  Phil Gramm – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1981, he co-sponsored the Gramm-Latta Budget which implemented President Ronald Reagan’s economic program, increased military spending, cut other spending, and mandated the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut….

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…In 1984, Gramm was elected as a Republican to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. He defeated Congressman Ron Paul, former gubernatorial nominee Henry Grover, and several other contenders in the primary….

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….Some economists state that the 1999 legislation spearheaded by Gramm and signed into law by President Clinton — the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — was significantly to blame for the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis and 2008 global economic crisis.[9][10] The Act is most widely known for repealing portions of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had regulated the financial services industry.[11]

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Gramm responded to criticism of the act by stating that he saw “no evidence whatsoever” that the sub-prime mortgage crisis was caused in any way “by allowing banks and securities companies and insurance companies to compete against each other.”[12] The Act passed the House by an overwhelming majority and passed by unanimous consent in the Senate, though it was introduced on the last day before Christmas holiday and never debated by either congressional body.[13]

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Gramm’s support was later critical in the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which kept derivatives transactions, including those involving credit default swaps, free of government regulation.[14]

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ΩΩGramm now works for a foreign international bank that was central to the global financial collapse.  He should be sent to China and punished.  Heh.  As for Clinton, he collected his own $100 million making ‘speeches’ to very rich financiers and of course, Bush is their good buddy, too.  We have had a succession of corrupt politicians in both parties who built this insane system and who seem totally indifferent about our trade crisis, the rise in debt in the US, government overspending and everything else that is wrong.  Content to get richer and to become part of this mess, they don’t regulate anything and note that NO real reforms have seen the light of day due to everyone who controls both parties are eager to restore the destructive status quo so they can get richer.

sunset borger

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20 Comments

Filed under .money matters

20 responses to “The CDO Market Continues Onwards, Limping Along

  1. roger

    among other things I can identify 4 components of capital.
    constant ,variable, circulating
    and fixed capital,all interacting on each other

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    ELAINE: The FOREX holdings of other people’s currencies and gold hoards, the floating currency/credit markets and factories, farms and mining operations, ports, etc: this is all ‘capital’ but there is yet another ‘capital’ you left out due to ideological training: LABOR. Trust me, it is the #1 capital item of them all although in modern times, robots increasingly are replacing this.

  2. It’s good to have an update on CDOs and the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act. The vote was 92 for repeal and 8 against. More than defecit spending for the wars, more than sending our factory jobs overseas, more than NAFTA, more than the Security and Prosperity Agreement of North America, yes more than anything else, this repeal has destroyed America.

    Part of the funny money made its way into funding Alt-A and Option Arms loans; and many took out second and third mortgages on their homes; all without income verification as the loans were “stated income loans”, and have not made a payment; they used the money as an ATM machine, that is as mortgage equity withdrawl; so yes, many gamed the system as well as the Senators.

    I wish I would have known what “deregulation” meas — it means profiteering at the expense of ordinary Americans. You know the term deregulation is doublespeak, meaning communication that deliberately disguises, distorts, and reverses the meaning of words.

    I sure would have invested differently — I had no idea of the windfall that was coming to the financial sector. At that time I met a broker and he told me he was invested in financial stocks, it has taken me eight years as to why he was so adament about them. I hope he sold out at the top of the market.

    I’ve provided a link to the Stephen Lendman Selling Out America To Wall Street article.

    You know, sometimes, well many times, when I read your blog, I go somewhere and weep; but then I always recover, because it is best to know the truth, as painful as it is.

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    ELAINE: In the Senate it was the handful of liberals, the socialist from Vermont and one Republican. And I do applaud Ron Paul’s accurate predictions which he issued just before the vote.

  3. KO

    it is best to know the truth.

    and thankfully, bloomberg lp is fighting the good fight, among many others, elaine and mike ruppert included.

    http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/03/victory-for-bloomberg-in-freedom-of.html

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    ELAINE: Goody goody gum drops!!!! I can’t wait for them to release the raw data.

  4. ron_o

    What is amazing is how many politicians voted to improve regulations for banks and then after the banks got rich off of screwing over everyone, the politicians went to work for them.

    Where are all the headlines about this? Sure, you can find it on the Internet, but you can also find the bacteria count in an gram of bat poo too. The only people who are informed anymore are those who either have the time or care to look to be informed.

    Things will get worse before they get better.

  5. payAttention

    ‘This is due to many people not understanding or refusing to understand what ‘capital’ is. It is not gold, it isn’t silver, it isn’t paper money, it isn’t credit, that is certain! It is the industrial base, the agricultural base and the condition of the finances of the populace at large.’

    No. You do not understand the meaning of capital either. Germany rebuilt itself in less than ten years, twice. The first time without any outside help, so your thesis is wrong. Germany did not need American markets to reindustrialize. The Soviet also modernized itself in about that much time to prepare for the war. They did it again after the war. Japan also reindustrialized twice with extreme speed. Again your thesis is wrong, the first time Japan did not use American markets to build productive capacity. The things you mention are side effects – industrial, agricultural capacity.

    You make sweeping statements to prove some point, but you never bother to look closely at what your toy models represent. India, the I in BRIC is fighting a spreading rebellion and is flailing against the inflation that the Bernanke/Geithner faction spewed its way. They have stopped export of all foodstuffs to stop the rebellion from spreading from Bengal. That was smart, as the rebels are now losing support. You may tout call centers in Bangalore to investors, however it is obvious that the rebellion has a visceral sympathy here.

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/slideshow/ALeqM5gVYJ3b7R81b3wh6DYclNadU7RUIQ?index=0

    The Congress party, like you idol Hu, got drunk on greed and went with Bernanke, instead of cutting him off. Now the Bharatiya Janata will be back. This incidentally is bad news for Hu, since the BJP is nationalistic at the core, and would consider diversion of water resources, or spreading colonialism by Hu to be acts of aggression.

    Brazil is putting on a magic show and the thirtiest of investment vampires are now sucking the country dry. The great agricultural power is exporting food to greedy Hu and fat USA, while half of the country is undernourished and burning off the only six inches of topsoil in the plains with nitrates to keep that charade going.

    While I try to explain what is going on beneath the surface to you, I do not know if you are learning from my efforts. It’s always some China worship here.

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    ELAINE: HAHAHA….pray tell, who did industrial Germany after WWI export to? Take a wild guess! The US had to increasingly put up trade barriers because German heavy industrial goods was cheaper than US goods and Germany demanded to export to the US after the Weimar hyperinflation in order to pay off US loans which were given to Germany to pay to Britain and France and Belgium!

    Germany did NOT rebuild its industries after WWI, they were never wrecked in the first place! Germany and Japan rapidly rebuilt their industries after WWII because the US helped them immensely and let them export to the US constantly in order for the US to make both ‘bulwarks against communism’! Your capsule history is typically poorly thought out, Pay no Attention!

  6. Gus

    The Fed won’t say how much more toxic “garbage” is in the Fed’s “warehouse” and that also concerns Grayson.

    “The Fed’s balance sheet is a cartoon version of what’s actually inside,” said Grayson. 
”We only get to basically do autopsies on the carcasses of the Fed’s failures, but what we don’t find out is when they show favoritism to companies that do not end up in bankruptcy.”

    The Fed won’t say how much more toxic “garbage” is in the Fed’s “warehouse” and that also concerns Grayson.
    “The Fed’s balance sheet is a cartoon version of what’s actually inside,” said Grayson. 
”We only get to basically do autopsies on the carcasses of the Fed’s failures, but what we don’t find out is when they show favoritism to companies that do not end up in bankruptcy.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/22/new-york-fed-warehousing_n_508443.html

  7. EconCurious

    Elaine,

    I finally think I get what you mean by “capital”. Kind of makes sense. If I were stranded on the proverbial desert island, would I be happy with $1MM in $100 bills? Not really. How about $100MM in gold coins? Not so good either. How about a bunch of tools and a machine that extracts the juice from coconuts? Now we’re talking.
    So in that sense, we may have lost capital in our nation, notably many of the factories that made “stuff” as well as the human capital / know-how that goes into making stuff. Presumably we have added capital that allows us to provide more services as some offset to this (computers and software and the technical understanding of these things).

    Payattention has brought up an interesting point — what’s to stop us from rebuilding those things if/when we need to? Germany was in the dumps in 1923, and 16 years later they were taking on Europe. I don’t know as much about Japan (pre- WWII), but it certainly seems like nations have been able to (re-) industrialize when called upon to do so.

  8. emsnews

    Germany was never ‘in the dumps’ as far as being DEINDUSTRIALIZED. Germany had tons of real capital after WWI: immense amounts of labor as well as well educated labor and a huge industrial base that was located inside Germany, not shipped off to trade rivals. Germany was destroyed in WWII but rebuilt…with US money! Just as Germany got restarted with US loans after WWI.

    The US loans after WWI flooded Europe with US dollars and this made the dollar stronger than all other currencies including the British pound which began its great decline after WWI from being the world’s #1 international trade currency to its present position of being a minor currency.

    ANY nation can ‘reindustrialize’ but ONLY IF ALLIES ALLOW THIS. Do any of our ‘allies’ want a trade deficit with the US?

    The answer is obvious: NEIN, no, nyet!

  9. EconCurious

    Elaine,

    Thanks for the clarification. What do you think of the health care legislation?

  10. Duski

    Hehe… Health care legislation… Rebublicans fought against everything, so things got only messier, not better. So there you have it, everyones forced to buy insurance, oh boy insurance providers must have loved the new legislation. Now to ramp up prices even more, no one can escape!

  11. emsnews

    Correct: it turned into a bail out of the insurance guys. Totally different from any other sane first world industrial nation.

    Israel, by the way, has full public health for Jews in Israel thanks to Congress.

  12. roger

    Startling but true, labor as no value,only the products of labor have that quality.Labor can not be displayed in a window to resale with a profit. A worker does not get payed for 8 hours work its the product that he made that is bought by the retailer,this is the reality,a pay check only mask the real relationship of the transaction. And the resale of objects made by labor is the source of all capital.

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    ELAINE: Roger, please explain slavery and how slaves are VALUABLE. I am all ears.

  13. Colin

    Roger,

    Surely labour is a verb, not a noun? The word labour names no object or thing, but rather the word labour names the relationship between a worker and the goods he produces. Labour is inseprable from the creation of a product. But i think your point was other than that: i think it was that the unsold products of labour recieve no pay.

    You are entirely right of course that the labour may make a product that will not be sold, and so recieve no pay. But is his pay capital or money?

    If someone labours on a good for no pay and without the potential for pay does that make the thing they laboured on worthless in terms of capital?

    Consider a mother; she works for no pay, she does not ask her children to reimburse her for her services. But she provides a tremendous basis for the growth of socitey. Is that not capital? It is never monitised into payment, but it is as vital to production as a bridge or a railway line. You might say that it gets monatised in the paychecks her children will grow up to earn, but i would really resist that, as being too divorsed from the actions intention, and the causal link being too distant.

    But could we not also say the same thing about infrastructure, and so called capital goods? Take the factory full or robots ready to make cars, but it is sitting idle because the maunfacture has went bankrupt. Would you deny that that factory is capital? After all it is not producing cars – so the goods that it has the potential to make are not being sold. Or take a bridge, is it capital only when the lorry driver (sorry truck) drives over it with goods to go to the store – does it cease to be capital when he is not driving over it? If he drives the van back empty was the bridge capital going out and not capital comming back? Yet most economics defines even an empty factory and bridges as ‘real capital’.

    Of course we dont want to confuse the separate things of land, labour and capital. But i think elaine meant that skilled labour is capital in so far as it is skilled.

    Now i agree that labour could do something futile, or worse destrctive like bombing a country, and that certainly would be labouring that was not producting capital.

    And i agree that the resale of labours production is the sourse of capital, and not, as adam smith argued, capital that is the source of labour. Perhaps you are a Georgist?

    I suspect that what is going on here is that we are using the word capital only to mean ‘financial capital’ and not ‘real capital’ or by captial you only mean money? Would not a more general and more accurate definition of capital be ‘goods and services used, or potentially able to be used, to generate other goods and services’?

  14. roger

    @ Colin.
    You make a very good point.
    Serious discussions require a
    firm agreement on the definition of words,very little space to do that here,but as an example: the word value.use value is one thing,exchange value is quite another and in my mind involves social labor time a very complex idea. It’s a common belief that workers get paid for their “time” to me this is nonsense ,they get paid for the product and only because value can be increased by the process of resale. Thanks for your comment

  15. emsnews

    The definition of ‘capital’ that is the very best is from ‘Das Kapital’ by Herr Karl Marx himself. And labor IS capital. Proof is easy to find: slavery. Slaves, themselves, had great financial value because they created capital improvements and peasants are also valuable, vast wars have been waged to gain control over slaves and peasants! Everyone wanted peasants alive, not dead but the slaves and peasants would per force, get killed while violent men fought over them and the land which they lived on and turned into productive systems.

  16. emsnews

    Not one building in ancient Rome, not one marble edifice would have existed if it wasn’t for slavery. Slaves cut up the stones in the quarries. Slaves moved this massive stones to the major cities and then raised up and built the wonders we now gape at.

    The great art of the 1600-1700 period in Europe was paid for by Indian and African slaves toiling to death in mines in the New World and then working in the indigo, sugar cane and rice fields of the New World, the great wonders of that time came from slaves.

  17. Pingback: Dow 11,000 is insanity! - Business, Finance, and Investing - Page 2 - City-Data Forum

  18. Wu Wei

    “current financial collapse far from done and far from being fixed”

    Did it ever occur to you that perhaps, just maybe, they don’t want to fix it?

    And the Hegelian Dialectic plan no. 19937834584943573498578594349 continues.

    ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

    ELAINE: They want to fix it so the mess can continue as it was in the past: making themselves richer with little effort and producing nothing.

  19. justiceatsqualor

    The false meme that free trade has no downside because, among other things, the U.S. will be able to re-industrialize painlessly whenever it might be necessary is part of the rationalization for treason pitched to our politicians by their handlers.

  20. Ohh that is pretty sweeet. Thanks for sharing. Nice to see a cool site again in this industry.

    –BurnList–

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