Archive for July, 2008
Whether you call him Senator John McCain or Presidential candidate John McCain, the man is correct regarding his assement of Wall Street and the subprime mortgage crisis. “Wall Street is the villain in the things that happened in the subprime lending crisis and other areas where investigations and possible prosecution is going on,” McCain said during a taped appearance on ABC’s “This Week” program. When you look at the ratings companies, insurers, reinsurers, collateralized debt obligations, speculators, and short sellers, Wall Street is so wrapped up in the crisis it is not funny.
Should we balance the nation’s budget or should we pay down the national debt? It would be nice to do both but that is not going to happen. Instead, thanks the most inept bipartisan government in history, we have mortgaged our future and the future of our children for generations to come. I’ve said for years that the real money makers are those who finance a nation’s debt. Here in the United States that entity is the Federal Reserve Board itself, owned by its member banks. The Federal Reserve Board lends money to the Treasury by printing federal reserve notes and selling them at face value.
It looks like Lehman is forming a relationship with non-performing loans and the debt collector. Italian bank Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena said on Wednesday it would sell a 30 percent stake in a unit that manages and recoups non-performing loans for 30 million euros ($47.20 million) to Lehman Brothers’ European arm and finance firm Caf. Caf specializes valuing, buying and recouping bad loans. (A debt collector by any other name is a debt collector, regardless of the country they are in.)