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Daily Reports are Highlighted in Red. They will proceed chronologically down the page and onto the next page each week or so as space is required. Quotations of newsfacts are highlighted in blue or grey. Namron Soar Editorial is in Black with notes in Grey. Daily pictures are posted in Gallery, click ’Pix’ button at top.

~~~~~~ 2008 Tuesday March 18 The sound of Shit hitting Fans ~~~~~~

Since we are entering what I consider to be a very interesting time in our history, namely an American ~slash~ World economic crisis created primarily by the misuse of power and basic economics (chicanery) (dishonesty) (greed), the institute will indulge itself in a literary "I told you so" portrayed as a newscast.

This is one area that will probably show a distinct lack of non-theoretical science, at least in the area of personal human bias. There is no guarantee that the principles of INTS will be compromised within these news posts but the possibility remains that considerable editorializing will take place.

Ancient Buddhist Kharmic principles, if applied to one of Americas’ most unpopular Presidents, namely Bush Jr would, in a worldwide sense, condemn him to some considerable historic grief and it seems by the most recent newscasts, that this is about to happen. Bush is taking the blame, not only for the present crisis but for the greed of the American public and his absence of moral principles. This refers, of course, to Americas war footing based largely on the perceived need for oil and it’s subsequent conquest of the oil rich areas in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the world applies this Kharma to Bush then the Americans will suffer along with him and indeed have already begun to do so through rampant repossessions of their mortgaged housing.

Actually this story began some time ago and apart from the Military Industrial advancements of the US war machine, that we are all a party to, Canadians included.. we should keep our comments to the Economic Crisis alone. Bush’s unpopularity, deserved or otherwise exacerbates the crisis and the world will cheer it on, until it bites them too. You can bet that Osama and indeed all of Islam is now glued to the news media hoping that Allah will topple the Americans once and for all. For once the rest of the world is on their side and nary a soul on the face of the earth save the bankers themselves hope that Bush will solve this issue gracefully. No one really knows just how this bit of rottenness came about. Somehow some great number of instruments (ill-conceived massively profitable mortgages) were sold and then failed ’en masse’ and countries around the world, as of today are just beginning to find out just what got pulled off. The fact is that investors and government got into bed on this one and the general public got the screwing but nobody has the facts just yet and it’s 1:48am Tuesday March 18.

The foreclosures occurred some months ago and whole blocks and indeed entire neighborhoods became vacant as the erstwhile owners were given the boot because they couldn’t afford the new terms of their recently resold contracts. Somebody missed the boat on this one. How are you going to capitalize on a windfall if you disable those that are supposed to pay it?

An Online Newsmag Ha’aretz, Israel, Nehemia Shtrasler says this: From 2001 through July 2007, the American economy acted like it was crazy. They bought like crazy, and took on enormous debts - citizens as well as the government. During those happy years, credit was cheap. Banks handed out expensive mortgages to poor borrowers. The entire American economy was like a giant pyramid scheme.

Huge demand led to two large bubbles: in real estate and stocks. Sooner or later they had to implode. And that is the difficult process we are witnessing now. Inflated prices are falling, risky investments are being wiped out, excess profits are disappearing, and the overly adventurous banks are being replaced. That is why it is not a panic, but a hard and vicious process where all of us are paying the price. Because when the U.S. economy catches a cold, the entire world falls sick.

That ends the first day of this emerging crisis.

Nsoar

~~~~~~ Wednesday March 19 Talk of Depression ~~~~~~

Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik : And, as in the Great Depression, the financial system is in disarray. It was symbolized back then by the failure of thousands of banks, mostly small local outfits - 2,300 in 1931 alone. The parallel today is the crippling of one-time giants such as Bear Stearns Co., Countrywide Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Co. Many economists believe the U.S. will find it almost impossible to avert a recession, if one has not started already. Housing remains mired in a deep slump, with some analysts projecting that Southern California home values could plunge 40% from their peaks last year. The Commerce Department reported this week that new residential building permits nationwide plummeted 36.5% in February from a year ago.

The resolution was in stark contrast to the Fed’s role in the 1930 collapse of the Bank of the United States, a New York bank largely serving Jewish immigrants. The failure was then the largest in American history, and the Fed’s inability to arrange a rescue by Wall Street banks -- including J.P. Morgan & Co., predecessor of the "white knight" in the Bear Stearns case -- caused a cataclysmic loss of confidence in the entire national banking system. That fueled a banking panic that modern historians regard as a key cause of the Depression

Montreal Gazette, William Watson: Over the weekend the Fed forced the firesale of investment bank Bear Stearns to J. P. Morgan for $236 million, not that much more than Paul McCartney’s divorce settlement and just one-fifteenth of Bear’s market value last Friday. (Talk about a Bear market!) Banks make their living borrowing short-term and lending long-term and because, more or less en masse, Bear’s lenders had cut it off it seemed headed for bankruptcy. Also on Sunday - not a usual banking day - the Fed lowered one of the interest rates it charges banks. And it’s expected to lower the target for overnight interbank loans by as much as another half percentage point today. All of which has many people thinking that if Chairman Bernanke is this worried, things must be even worse than they seem. The academic never falls far from his research. Someone who believes bank failures caused the Great Depression will do almost anything to prevent such failures today. Unfortunately, a downside of such action is that it gets people thinking Depression. Because economics is partly self-fulfilling, if enough people think bad times are coming, everyone hunkers down and bad times arrive.

Atlantic Online, Marc Ambinder: It’s been so long since we’ve had a good bank run that we lack the language to describe how the Bear Stearns collapse translates into our politics.

Bear had weathered the vagaries of the markets for 85 years, surviving the Depression and a dozen recessions only to meet its end in the rapidly unfolding credit crisis now afflicting the American economy. It was the investment bank most exposed to the credit crisis, but still... There’s an argument, of course, that successive Fed interventions, starting with the Russian bond crisis, have turned bankers into ever-greater risk takers, making each crisis bigger and more expensive than the last. The thinking goes that we need to draw the line here, whatever the cost, because if we let the financiers go on their merry way, eventually they’ll create a wave that will swamp the Fed’s power to intervene. Possibly so, but from what I hear, the people on Wall Street are pretty much scared right down to the tips of their Gordon Gekko underoos.

Economist.Com: THE marvellous edifice of modern finance took years to build. The world had a weekend to save it from collapsing. On March 16th America’s Federal Reserve, by nature hardly impetuous, rewrote its rule-book by rescuing Bear Stearns, the country’s fifth-largest investment bank, and agreeing to lend directly to other brokers. A couple of days later the Fed cut short-term interest rates again to 2.25%, marking the fastest loosening of monetary policy in a generation.

It was a Herculean effort, and it staved off the outright catastrophe of a bank failure that had threatened to split Wall Street asunder. Even so, this week’s brush with disaster contained two unsettling messages. One is analytical: the world needs new ways of thinking about finance and the risks it entails. The other is a warning: the crisis has opened a new, dangerous chapter. For all its mistakes, modern finance is worth saving and the job looks as if it is still only half done.

Rescuing Bear Stearns and its kind from their own folly may strike many people as overly charitable. For years Wall Street minted billions without showing much compassion. Yet the Fed put $30 billion of public money at risk for the best reason of all: the public interest. Bear is a counterparty to some $10 trillion of over-the-counter swaps. With the broker’s collapse, the fear that these and other contracts would no longer be honoured would have infected the world’s derivatives markets. Imagine those doubts raging in all the securities Bear traded and from there spreading across the financial system; then imagine what would happen to the economy in the financial nuclear winter that would follow. Bear Stearns may not have been too big to fail, but it was too entangled.

San Francisco Chronicle: The sudden and shocking overnight collapse of Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street’s most storied investment banks, has exposed the great dangers that lie ahead for America’s post-housing bubble economy. If you’re wondering whether or not you should be worried, the answer is yes. But maybe not for the reasons you think you should be.

This mess is confusing. Even the major players in this game have no idea what’s going on: We do know that a bunch of loans in the subprime end of the American housing market started going bad about eight months ago, and now the financial system is imploding. We have no idea if the cost of the disaster is going to be $400 billion worth of bad debt (that’s one current estimate of the subprime portion), $600 billion (that’s another estimate of the losses in credit markets), or a number much higher than that. Nor do we know for how much the American taxpayer is going to be on the hook, while in the midst of a recession.

Several predictions arize from this and prior history. The U.S. is now considered the world’s only super power since the demise of the USSR and the simple fact that no other country has been allowed to obtain and keep nuclear weapons, not that they really present a threat anymore. A lot of resentment has been heaped on Bush and subsequently the great free country U.S. of A. The federal election is ten months away and that’s a long time to go down hill in a depression with a hated President. There is a small chance that the great savior of the Americas’ Barack Obama will come to power prior to this ten month period when Bush is forced out of office by impeachment. There are plenty of reasons to impeach him. I won’t get into the reasons but when the economy begins to seriously fail the deficit and two unsupported wars will weigh largely and he and his admin will be found responsible. Actually I fear an attempt on Obama’s life sponsored by the powers that be and the Military Industrial Complex but I sincerely hope he escapes this fate.

America is sick and tired of their bad rap in the world when they think of themselves as people represented by JFK, Martin Luther King and recently; Barack Obama. Even Hilary Clinton is a chip off the old boys block and whoever represents the other party in the election is a total nobody that even American citizens refuse to acknowledge since he was endorsed by the evil Bushmeister. If the U.S. goes in the wrong direction and somehow destroys Barack either reputation-wise or by their penchant for firearms or some foul conspiracy then the public will loose hope that they can repair the economy and the Dr Evils of the world will continue to be in power and then it just gets worse.

The deficit is now 15 figures and closing on ten trillion (9,414,777,101,939.76) and has been growing for decades without ever going in the other direction since it began. There are also estimates that this figure is actually 23 trillion but has been construed by the admin to be only nine point five. (Click on ’Debt’ button to follow progress) The prediction here is that the world’s only super power will begin to fail on it’s obligations in the very near future and is in fact doing so now by pressing this ridiculous concept of solvency. Could You or I keep borrowing ad infinitum and print money on the basis of our own demand with no restraint and keep doing this forever? I think not. Today or yesterday is the day the fan blades showed brown and everyone is going to notice this very soon.

The main prediction is that the phrase ’Debt Moratorium’ will be heard around the world and everyone and everything will be ostensibly set free of debt and the entire global network will begin anew with a fresh piece of paper. Those that the money is owed to will be very upset by this but all others will welcome it with open arms. Prior to this the U. S. will go through a series of ’corrections’ such as those on the market today and they will be touted as ’recoverable’ and ’no big deal’. Then more chicanery will be exposed such as the rumors that cause investors to react (See Britain today) for the sake of profit and the very precariousness of their system will be exposed. A world financial panic will freeze the system and this may also be managed once or twice but eventually it’s doomed to fail for two major reasons. One: the books don’t balance in the largest shareholders household and Two: those responsible for the rules are mostly cheats.

There are good things that will come out of this. First of all it’s the seeking of profit that causes all manufacturing and if it fell into hard times, even for awhile the atmosphere would benefit. We may get a chance to study the causes of both the foulness of letting profit control all things including the environment and our very obsession with money itself. We may even realize that all pollutants come from manufactured items that we mostly don’t need but then I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for earthlings to see the light. Anything bad that happens to money and the panderers of it and only it is all good news to me. Hopefully this will drag on for a very long time and the rich will be in pain for the loss of their ill gotten gains. People like myself have little to loose in the material sense since we are the ones that have been used by the taxers and profiteers, all our lives, to produce their great riches and seeing their downfall is just deserts. That’s all we do in this world is play their stupid money game, day in and day out. People are so used to it that they don’t even realize that there really is another way to live. The almighty dollar is dooming our habitat and the companies are playing at being ’Green’ and pretending that their product is actually a benefit to society. Others are blatantly raping the environment such as the Alberta Oil Sands project and doing this as if by royal accent from the great God of cash. Greed is the ruination of our air and now it’s the ruination of the system of money as well and damn well time.

~~~~~~ 2008 Thursday March 20 Crisis Dealt with temporarily ~~~~~~

New York Times: Obama Links Effects of War Costs to Fragility in the Economy while campaigning in West Verginia. "No matter what the costs, no matter what the consequences, John McCain seems determined to carry out a third Bush term," Mr. Obama said. "That’s an outcome America can’t afford. Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned."

A Story within a Story: Ben S. Bernanke, the boss of the Federal Reserve and financial crisis wizard. March 18 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may be readying the deepest interest-rate cut in a generation as the central bank struggles to prevent a meltdown in financial markets and a recession.

The Big news here as we enter the 4 day long weekend (Easter) in Canada is no news at all. The Fed reactions have worked miraculously to pull this recession back from the brink and the first of several corrections to come has occurred.

~~~~~~~ 2008 Quiet Interval from Mar 20 to Mar 31 ~~~~~~~

Everyone is holding their breath. The boom times of 2001 to 2007 have gone away, the environment crisis in on everyones’ mind, the Chinese and many other developing countries are looking for gas as their populations graduate to cars by the million. Everyone in Canada and the US have autos but only 2% if eastern block countries are into such luxury as yet although Japan, being the a major car manufacturer seems to have a higher population percentage of auto owners.

~~~~~~~ Sunday, March 30, 2008; 1:51 PM ~~~~~~~

Uncertain Economy Awaits Next President - By TOM RAUM - The Associated Press

WASHINGTON POST -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain have diagnosed the swooning U.S. economy and have come up with rival plans to revive it. If the downturn lasts as long as some economists predict, one of the three will get a chance to try to sell his or her proposal to Congress as president.

Or if the economy hits bottom before Inauguration Day and then turns up, the victor may be handed a rare gift: the chance to begin a presidency presiding over the early stages of a rebound.

Take your pick. Who knows where the economy will be in nine and a half months?

As economic clouds darkened last week, all three candidates delivered major speeches on the economy while the Bush administration prepared a plan to give the Federal Reserve new regulatory powers over the financial system.

~~~~~~~ The Canadian Press says Bank of Canada signals economic woes, slashes interest rates by half-point ~~~~~~~

OTTAWA - The Bank of Canada slashed interest rates by half a percentage point Tuesday amid worrying signs that the economic slowdown could be steeper and longer than previously thought.

It was second time in as many months that new bank governor Mark Carney has moved aggressively on interest rates, bringing down the key overnight rate to three per cent, one-and-a-half points below where it was at the start of December.

Global Insight Canada’s Dale Orr noted that "monetary easing in the U.S. has been almost unprecedented in recent months." The Fed has cut its key rate by 300 basis points - from 5.25 per cent to 2.25 per cent - since last summer.

While avoiding using the word recession, the bank’s statement presented a gloomy picture of the global, U.S. and Canadian economies as they struggle to overcome the ongoing turmoil in financial markets caused by the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.

The global economy has weakened, the bank said, and because of the slump in the U.S., Canadian exporters will find many of their traditional markets have dried up. But tight credit conditions and softening confidence will also slow down business investment and consumer spending, it added.

As a result, the bank now says Canada’s economy won’t fully recover until mid-2010.

In the meantime, it projects growth at 1.4 per cent this year and 2.4 per cent next year, a significant downward revision from last January’s modest growth expectations of 1.8 per cent and 2.8 per cent.

~~~~~~ NEW YORK, April 22 (Reuters) ~~~~~~

A weekly gauge of consumer confidence in the United States fell on Tuesday to its lowest level since July 1993 as rising gasoline prices and a struggling economy contributed to Americans’ grim outlook, according to a report.

The ABC News/Washington Post Consumer Comfort Index dipped to -40 in the week ended April 20 from -39 the previous week. The index ranges from -100 to +100.

"Confidence is buckling under the weight of housing and credit crises and rising retail gas prices -- $3.51 a gallon this week, up 12 cents from last -- to the highest price on record," the report said.

Two of the index’s three components are exceedingly grim. Eighty-five percent of Americans say the economy is in bad shape, unchanged from last week, while 77 percent of respondents call it a bad time to spend money, up from the previous week.

By Nick Carey

~~~~~~ LIVONIA, Michigan (Reuters) ~~~~~~

Realtors in many U.S. states say lenders are demanding excessively high prices before allowing distressed borrowers to offload their homes in "short sales," making the housing crisis worse.

In a short sale, a borrower dumps the home at below-market value and the bank forgives the rest of the debt. The borrower’s credit rating is hurt but for less time than in a foreclosure. Such sales have been touted by banks as a way out for homeowners unable to pay their mortgages.

But Realtors complain many lenders harm their own interests by refusing to accept bids below internal targets, even though that may eventually force lenders to sell homes in foreclosure, where bids are usually far lower.

In addition, many lenders simply do not have the people or processes in place to handle a swelling tide of short sales around the country, Realtors say. As a result, lenders are taking far too long to evaluate offers, leading many would-be buyers to walk away from deals.

"The system is broken," said Ron Rosen, a Realtor in Lighthouse Point, Florida. "The only question banks should ask is can they make more in a short sale than in foreclosure."

By Simon Rabinovitch

~~~~~~~ QUITO (Reuters) ~~~~~~~

Chinese cars have been on Quito’s roads for barely a year but they are fast becoming a force in the snaking lines of traffic that clog Ecuador’s hilly capital.

China’s auto makers have set their sights on becoming the next exporting powerhouse on the world’s roads and they have made emerging markets, from Latin America to Russia, their proving ground.

They have reason to be satisfied so far: China sold 612,700 cars abroad last year, up nearly 80 percent, mostly in the developing world, according to the commerce ministry.

But like the Japanese and Korean car companies that went before them, Chinese firms are finding they have to win customers with cut-price deals before they can establish their names.

By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer

~~~~~~ Last Updated: April 22, 2008: 5:05 PM EDT ~~~~~~

NEW YORK (CNN Money.com) -- Among the nightmares lurking around the corner for the already battered housing and credit markets would be a meltdown at mortgage financing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Although few are predicting an imminent need for a bailout just yet, credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s recently placed an estimated price tag on this worst case scenario -- $420 billion to $1.1 trillion of taxpayer’s money.

This dwarfs how much it cost to help banks during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. That cost taxpayers about $250 billion in today’s dollars.

S&P added that saving Fannie (FNM) and Freddie (FRE, Fortune 500) might cost so much that the federal government’s AAA credit rating, the top possible rating, might even be at risk. If that was lost, then all federal government borrowing would become more expensive.

~~~~~~ Merco press Monday, April 21, 2008 ~~~~~~

US banks report more write downs and hunt for fresh funds US banks continue in turmoil reporting lower profits, write-downs and hunting for fresh funds Bank of America reported a 77% drop in profits in the first three months of 2008, hit by trading losses and a 6 billion write-down to cover bad loans. National City Corporation from the Midwest admitted it was looking for 7 billion US dollars.

The Wall Street giant said net profits fell to 1.2 billion in the quarter to March, from 5.26 billion the year before.

Bank of America has been caught up in the global credit crisis, rooted in the collapse of US sub-prime home loans. Banks invested in this area were hit, but there are signs that defaults on loans are spreading beyond mortgages.

Further bad news came from the long list of US banks seeking fresh funds. This time it was one of the US Midwest leading banks with a staff of 32.000. National City Corporation said it was seeking to raise 7 billion US dollars from investors to shore up its finances after bad home-loan losses mounted.

The firm has set aside another 1.4 billion to cover the cost of mortgage loans unlikely to be repaid. To raise funds, National is selling a stake to private equity firm Corsair and issuing shares to other investors.

Bank of America’s earnings report came after rivals Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, unveiled net losses last week and announced aggressive job cuts to cut costs.

Wachovia, the fourth-largest bank in the US, also reported a loss of 393 million US dollars in the first quarter.

The International Monetary Fund has forecast that potential losses from investments linked to the precipitous decline in the US housing market as well as sour loans related to commercial property, consumer credit, and company debt could extend to almost one trillion US dollars.

~~~~~~~ Friday May 16, 2008 The Height of Brinkmanship ~~~~~~~

A lot of the Fed actions and the Bankers responses seem to make sense at this point and the brinkmanship is exemplary...