Well, it's not true that of you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys. According to this chart from reuters, the monkeys get expensive cashew nuts grown from the soil fertilized by the soot of burnt cash.
click to enlarge
I'm glad to not see Singapore anywhere.
click to enlarge
Bernie Madoff's New York City penthouse has finally gone up. The duplex penthouse with an elliptical staircase, living room with triple exposures and oh-so-much beige is listed at USD$9.9 million. The listing pics are a bit prettier than the other slideshows of the home we've seen recently but it still has a vacant, un-loved feel. The master suite is downstairs and has a huge walk-in closet and a marble bathroom. The small library has custom built-ins and one of Madoff's beloved bull statues slouches in the corner. The home has four wood-burning fireplaces and a total of three bedrooms. Will anyone pony up the cash for Madoff's pad of shame? A little livening up and this place could be beautiful.
Check out the full suite of pics here
http://www.luxist.com/2009/09/12/bernie-madoff-in-new-york-city-estate-of-the-day/
Magnificent Article on National Debt: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Debt
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/grand-debt-illusion-faqs-about-national-debt
One couple bought a historical church in Kyloe, Northumberland.
They invested a lot of money to maintain its exterior and interior. The exterior remains almost intact. They made a restoration, instead of a renovation (which would be 3 times cheaper).
If it were not for them, who knows what would have happened to this church as it was in a poor condition. The couple however readapted the interior to give it a home atmosphere.
The New York Times published a pretty creepy article on Saturday (September 5th). The article focuses on Wall Street's new plan to make money. What's so bad about Wall Street making money?
Well, their new plan is to buy life insurance plans from elderly and sick people for cash. The example that the New York Times gives is someone selling a million dollar policy for a $400,000 payout, but the payout amount would all depend on the seller's life expectancy. These "life settlements" would then be bundled together to form bonds that can be sold to investors. The investors would start paying for the person's policy from then on. When the person dies, the investors collect on the policy. Apparently, the faster the person dies, the more money the investors make. However, regardless of whether you die sooner or later, Wall Street firms will profit off of fees collected from creating the bonds and facilitating transactions. You could say that Wall Street is planning to "securitize" people's lives (or deaths, as it may be) into a kind of CDO. And we all know how great that whole CDO adventure played out for Wall Street, right? What could be dangerous about creating a similar class of financial products with sick people's life expectancy as the focus?
Apparently, these type of "life settlement" investments aren't new for banks. They already exist in a lot of portfolios. Whats new is the plan to securitize these "life settlements" and market them as a big-time asset class of their own. Keep in mind, this isn't something banks are just talking about potentially doing. The Times states that Credit Suisse is "building a financial assembly line to buy large numbers of life insurance policies, package and resell them — just as Wall Street firms did with subprime securities." Estimates are putting the market for this class of investment product at $500 Billion, according to the article. I don't doubt it one bit. Considering how many people are losing their jobs or facing pay cuts and how high medical bills are these days, does anyone really doubt that there are awhole lot of elderly and sick people out there who would be eager to sell their life insurance policies for an immediate cash payout? Especially if they foresee a future inability to pay their premiums?
So whats the upside? Right now a lot of people just let their life insurance policies lapse. If they're lucky they'll still get a small payout but its usually not much compared to the premiums they've payed up to that point. Under this "life settlement" proposal, policy sellers get a bigger payout and eventually investors get their payout too. So insurance companies end up paying out on their policies more often than they do now. But, insurance companies could end up just raising rates and premiums to make up for the difference, which could end up leaving the average policyholder worse off. Wall Street profits. Insurance companies profit. The consumer pays up.
Still, its hard to really get that angry over a proposal like this. As I pointed out, these type of "life settlements" are already held in a lot of investment bank portfolios. And, who am I to say what kind of financial relationships elderly and sick people should or shouldn't engage in?
But there are so many disturbing ramifications that come out of this proposal that I can't help but be worried. The article mentions that investors lost out on these type of investments in the '80s when people with AIDS ended up living longer thanks to new medications. It also mentions that risk managers are planning on diversifying these bonds based on illness type. If one bond happens to represent too many people who all have one type of illness, then that bond could prove to be unprofitable if a cure for that illness is ever discovered. Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that it'll now be in the interest of some Wall Street investors for sick and old to people to die faster and for certain medications or medical procedures to be suppressed or kept inacessible to the public if they're too successful at actually making people live longer? I mean, don't some of these major banks also have large stakes in pharmaceutical and healthcare companies? Couldn't that present a very serious and disturbing conflict of interest? The article doesn't address these questions.
Then theres this:
Goldman Sachs has developed a tradable index of life settlements, enabling investors to bet on whether people will live longer than expected or die sooner than planned. The index is similar to tradable stock market indices that allow investors to bet on the overall direction of the market without buying stocks.So, not only will investors be making money when some people die but some investors will also be making money by simply placing bets on life expectancy in a kind of virtual market. Great. Thank God we bailed out these banks, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to come up with these great investment products that will surely work to make America more economically competitive with the rest of the globe.
Seriously, how predatory can Wall Street get? Whats the thought process here? "I guess if the American consumer is too tapped out to buy our junk we'll just reap profit from his death and place secondary bets on the over/under for his life expectancy"? I mean, people aren't going to sell their policies for "life settlements" just because. Usually its because they have too much debt, lost their job or because they simply can't afford the medical costs of staying alive otherwise. So the American consumer is really being squeezed for every last cent he can cough up here. All of this almost sounds like a slur a communist would attack American capitalism with ("Wall Street profits off of death!") but its reality. I guess that's how deranged and parasitical some aspects of American so-called "free enterprise" have gotten.
Welcome to the Brave New World, I guess? So let me know, how do you feel about this whole plan?
You can find the article here: 'Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance'
Working for the Yankee dollar: Beijing is said to be dismayed by the Fed’s recourse to ‘credit easing’ Photo: Reuters Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China’s green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed’s recourse to “credit easing”.
“We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again,” he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.
Related Articles
Analysis: China’s ‘Beijing Put’ on the gold price “If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies,” he said.
China’s reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world’s largest.
“Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets,” he added.
The comments suggest that China has become the driving force in the gold market and can be counted on to
buy whenever there is a price dip, putting a floor under any correction.
Mr Cheng said the Fed’s loose monetary policy was stoking an unstable asset boom in China. “If we raise interest rates, we will be flooded with hot money. We have to wait for them. If they raise, we raise.
“Credit in China is too loose. We have a bubble in the housing market and in stocks so we have to be very careful, because this could fall down.”
Mr Cheng said China had learned from the West that it is a mistake for central banks to target retail price inflation and take their eye off assets.
“This is where Greenspan went wrong from 2000 to 2004,” he said. “He thought everything was alright because inflation was low, but assets absorbed the liquidity.”
Mr Cheng said China had lost 20m jobs as a result of the crisis and advised the West not to over-estimate the role that his country can play in global recovery.
China’s task is to switch from export dependency to internal consumption, but that requires a “change in the ideology of the Chinese people” to discourage excess saving. “This is very difficult”.
Mr Cheng said the root cause of global imbalances is spending patterns in US (and UK) and China.
“The US spends tomorrow’s money today,” he said. “We Chinese spend today’s money tomorrow. That’s why we have this financial crisis.”
Yet the consequences are not symmetric.
“He who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing,” said Mr Cheng.
It was a quote from US founding father Benjamin Franklin.
China alarmed by US money printing
The US Federal Reserve’s policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in Cernobbio, Italy
Published: 9:06PM BST 06 Sep 2009
Comments 8 | Comment on this article
Working for the Yankee dollar: Beijing is said to be dismayed by the Fed’s recourse to ‘credit easing’ Photo: Reuters Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China’s green energy drive, said Beijing was dismayed by the Fed’s recourse to “credit easing”.
“We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again,” he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.
Related Articles
Analysis: China’s ‘Beijing Put’ on the gold price “If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies,” he said.
China’s reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world’s largest.
“Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets,” he added.
The comments suggest that China has become the driving force in the gold market and can be counted on to
buy whenever there is a price dip, putting a floor under any correction.
Mr Cheng said the Fed’s loose monetary policy was stoking an unstable asset boom in China. “If we raise interest rates, we will be flooded with hot money. We have to wait for them. If they raise, we raise.
“Credit in China is too loose. We have a bubble in the housing market and in stocks so we have to be very careful, because this could fall down.”
Mr Cheng said China had learned from the West that it is a mistake for central banks to target retail price inflation and take their eye off assets.
“This is where Greenspan went wrong from 2000 to 2004,” he said. “He thought everything was alright because inflation was low, but assets absorbed the liquidity.”
Mr Cheng said China had lost 20m jobs as a result of the crisis and advised the West not to over-estimate the role that his country can play in global recovery.
China’s task is to switch from export dependency to internal consumption, but that requires a “change in the ideology of the Chinese people” to discourage excess saving. “This is very difficult”.
Mr Cheng said the root cause of global imbalances is spending patterns in US (and UK) and China.
“The US spends tomorrow’s money today,” he said. “We Chinese spend today’s money tomorrow. That’s why we have this financial crisis.”
Yet the consequences are not symmetric.
“He who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing,” said Mr Cheng.
It was a quote from US founding father Benjamin Franklin.
The recession is a good excuse for employers to introduce a pay freeze, but what if you think your hard work deserves greater financial reward? Four experts share their tips for getting a pay raise during the downturn.
1. Knowledge is power, so before you pursue a pay increase, do some research."Compare your salary with that of your colleagues and with job adverts so you know the market salary for your position," says Sherridan Hughes, occupational psychologist with Career Analysts.2. "You need to justify a pay raise," says Corinne Mills, managing director of Personal Career Management. She says you need to show your boss that you are exceeding your job requirements."You need to demonstrate that you have brought in business or have taken on additional responsibility. Perhaps redundancies mean you have been doing the jobs of two people," says Mills.3. Don't work harder for that pay increase, work smarter -- and work in line with the goals of management. So says Robert Weil, president of Institute for Coaching. "Increased pay and bonuses go first to those who impact the bottom line or impact what is most important to management," he says.4. Weil says you must make sure your actions and daily plan are aligned with your company goals. "If the company, for example, wants more business from existing clients, then make sure you are putting all of your energy into that. If your company wants to cut costs, make sure you are doing that," he says. "Think outside the box, get creative and be resourceful".5. It's not all bad news. David Randall, a career consultant with Career Energy, says that even in the depths of the downturn, some businesses are giving pay raises."Firms need talent and talent costs money -- if they don't pay then people will go elsewhere. That applies in large measure to executives, who are by definition talented," he says.6. Randall says that when you approach your boss for a raise you need to create a win-win deal for both of you. You should say that your goal is to have a higher salary and you want to know what to do to perform to a higher level that justifies that salary."It could be you can do that by working in a different way, by taking on more responsibility or by meeting certain targets that your manager can set," he says. "Whatever it is, a deal can usually be worked out that will create the extra value to justify a pay increase."7. Ask nicely. Mills says it's important to discuss your request in a pre-arranged meeting. She says that even if your boss says no, they might be able to set a date for a pay review, perhaps in six months. If a date is set for a future review, confirm it in writing, even if it's just an email.8. Remember, not all jobs are equal and not all are suffering from the downturn. Randall says, "Businesses need to keep up with the state of labor market supply. In shortage areas they will have to pay people in order to retain them."9. It can seem extreme but sometimes threatening to leave is what it takes to make your boss realize your value to the company, says Hughes. But she adds, "If you threaten to leave your job if you don't get a pay raise, you must be prepared to follow through with your threat."10. "Manage expectation," says Mills. "Times are tough and if it's not in your contract that you will get a salary raise each year, don't think you have an automatic right."
via cnn
The more money you print, the less it's worth, that's the price of inflation.
click to enlarge
Subscribe to:
Comment Feed (RSS)
