[Fishman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')merican companies are making record amounts of profits and sitting on gigantic cash piles. Yet unemployment increases. Maybe what we need is a massive infrastructure jobs program.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fishman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Maybe what we need is a massive infrastructure jobs program.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')A collapse of the European social safety net will sure be interesting to watch. They're simply not prepared to live with the uncertainty Americans do. They have no idea what a million dollar medical bill feels like. Europeans have never avoided the doctor because of the cost involved.

[Pops]

We don't do anything about changing medicine because the US is not a country of individualists as we try to tell ourselves, we are very conformist and of course the doctor knows best and the corps that giv us jobs must make money.

The only changes we've made are to protect the drug companies profits (Bush drug bill) and protect the insurance cos profits (Obama "reform" bill) and as usual have done nothing to protect the consumer from a broken medical system.

We pay more and die sooner (if we make it past infant-hood) than most other industrial nations...

I guess that's because we're post-industrial.

[Timo]

Pops, i've thought about the life expectancy issue quite a bit recently, and i have an unanswered question about what the human natural life expectancy really is. How long are we supposed to live given a natural state of being? IMO, life expectancy has been artifically extended by medicines and regulated business practices. I'm all for these inventions/regulations, but what is the natural life expectancy for a human left without these elements of life extension? I suspect we're expecting too much from our natural bodies in terms of the duration of life.

[Timo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')A collapse of the European social safety net will sure be interesting to watch. They're simply not prepared to live with the uncertainty Americans do. They have no idea what a million dollar medical bill feels like. Europeans have never avoided the doctor because of the cost involved.

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Timo', 'P')ops, i've thought about the life expectancy issue quite a bit recently, and i have an unanswered question about what the human natural life expectancy really is. How long are we supposed to live given a natural state of being? IMO, life expectancy has been artifically extended by medicines and regulated business practices. I'm all for these inventions/regulations, but what is the natural life expectancy for a human left without these elements of life extension? I suspect we're expecting too much from our natural bodies in terms of the duration of life.

[Pops]

What is a natural lifespan is a good question, in my case it was 52.

I'm going through my second childhood I suppose because 52 is when I developed "childhood onset diabetes"

hehe... Call me a recombinant DNA zombie!

But that's another thread.

[AdTheNad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Timo', 'O')n the other hand, the prices we pay have allowed for an astronomical degree of medical research to occur that the rest of the world can benefit from without having to spend the money to develop, themselves. It's hard to rationally quantify or qualify the benefits of this situation. Some good. Some bad.

[eXpat]

The ECB throws Italy and Spain to the wolves
The European Central Bank has abandoned Italy and Spain to their tortured fate
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')ts refusal to act in the face of an existential threat to monetary union has set off violent tremors across the global financial system, raising the risk that the crisis will spiral out of control.

Bank shares crashed in Madrid and Milan, with Intesa Sanpaolo down 10pc and Italy's MIB index reduced to its knees with a one-day fall of 5.2pc. Share trading was suspended at a string of bourses across Europe.

Yields on 10-day US debt fell to zero in a replay of panic flight to safety seen during the onset of the Lehman-AIG crisis three years ago.

Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB's president, said the bank had purchased eurozone bonds for the first time since March but this token gesture was confined to Ireland and Portugal, countries that have already been rescued.

Professor Willem Buiter, Citigroup's chief economist, said the apparent ECB action was pointless. "The warped logic of intervening in two countries that don't need it is as strange as it gets."
Mr Buiter said Europe risks a disastrous chain of events and the worst financial collapse since the onset of the Great Depression unless Europe's central bank steps in with sufficient muscle to back-stop the system.

"The ECB has yet so show it understands that it is the only institution that can save Italy and Spain from fundamentally unwarranted defaults. Everybody is afraid and real money investors are dumping their holdings. The ECB must step in to cap the yields at 6pc or 6.5pc and put a floor under the market," he said.

Italian yields spiked to 6.21pc yesterday after a relief rally wilted. Spanish yields hit 6.3pc. The debt of both countries is hovering near 400 basis points over German Bunds, 50 points shy of the level used by central clearing house LCH.Clearnet to trigger margin calls. This was the point where the debt crises of Greece, Ireland and Portugal crossed the line of no return. Spain has cancelled further debt auctions in August.

"As long as the ECB stays on the sidelines, a speculative, fear-driven withdrawal of market funding can feed a self-fulfilling insolvency. Any number of banks and insurance companies would take huge hits. The ECB will have to come in, or accept the biggest banking crisis since 1931," Mr Buiter said.

He said the "fundamental design flaw" in economic and monetary union is the lack of a lender of last resort.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Timo', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')A collapse of the European social safety net will sure be interesting to watch. They're simply not prepared to live with the uncertainty Americans do. They have no idea what a million dollar medical bill feels like. Europeans have never avoided the doctor because of the cost involved.

[Leutnant]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leutnant', 'I') don't understand, Timo, the fed is soon gonna launch QE3, would'nt it make sense for you to leave your dollar-denominated debt as it is and let inflation eat into it, and use your retirment savings to buy gold?

[eXpat]

Societe Generale and UniCredit Banca in dire need of help too:
France and Italy stand by to bail out biggest banks as euro crisis worsens
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')ears are growing this weekend that two of Europe’s largest banks may require a bailout, having been hugely damaged by the worsening crisis across the eurozone.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is having to confront the possibility that the country’s second-biggest bank, Societe Generale -commonly known as SocGen - is on the brink of disaster after huge losses over loans made to Greece.

The chilling possibility of the largest bank in Italy, UniCredit Banca, suffering a similar collapse if a bailout is not implemented comes as Silvio Berlusconi already faces an increasingly dangerous national economic situation.

As ministers of the G7 nations - Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, the U.S. and Canada - prepare to meet to discuss the mounting euro crisis, the French and Italian governments are believed to be standing ready to rescue the banking giants.

But it is thought the mechanisms they have in place to rescue financial institutions are less developed than those in Britain, which was far worse affected by the credit crunch in 2008 and as a result put in place fuller contingency plans.

The merest hint a major bank might fall is likely to reignite panic tomorrow in the stock market, which is already feared to react badly to the credit downgrade of the U.S. by rating agency Standard & Poor’s.

Last night Chancellor George Osborne, whose Treasury officials have ‘war-gamed’ various scenarios ahead of the markets opening, was due to discuss the crisis with Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

SocGen reported a loss of £350million on Greek debt last week. It has a total of £2.2billion of Greek debt and also owns 88 per cent of the Greek bank Geniki, whose value has collapsed in recent months.

For Italy, damage to UniCredit, in which Barclays has a two per cent share, would be a bitter blow. Its strategy of caution has led it to invest heavily in Italian government bonds which were until recently seen as safe, but as these have come under pressure the bank’s shares have plummeted.

Experts fear that if any single bank is seen to be in trouble, all lending could freeze up in the resultant climate of fear, with devastating consequences. It was a similar situation which led to the run on Northern Rock in 2007 that required a Government bailout. The European Central Bank has already reported banks unwilling to trust each other with overnight funds.

[eXpat]

if this is true
SocGen, Unicredit On "Brink Of Disaster"?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ver the past 48 hours we had heard pervasive rumors that at least one, maybe more, banks in Europe are on the verge of collapse. Our thought was, naturally, Dexia, which is the modern equivalent of AIG, not to mention the bank most rescued by none other than the Federal Reserve. Well, we were wrong. And if the Daily Mail is correct, the two banks about to kick the bucket are French SocGen and Italy's UniCredit. While the fact that these two banks are in trouble has not been lost on the market, which has been sending their CDS to near record highs, the speculation that they are far closer to implosion likely means that the equity value of the European banking sector is about to be decimated. As the News reports: "The merest hint a major bank might fall is likely to reignite panic tomorrow in the stock market, which is already feared to react badly to the credit downgrade of the U.S. by rating agency Standard & Poor’s." Well, it's now tomorrow.

More from the UK mag:
Fears are growing this weekend that two of Europe’s largest banks may require a bailout, having been hugely damaged by the worsening crisis across the eurozone.
In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is having to confront the possibility that the country’s second-biggest bank, Societe Generale -commonly known as SocGen - is on the brink of disaster after huge losses over loans made to Greece.
The chilling possibility of the largest bank in Italy, UniCredit Banca, suffering a similar collapse if a bailout is not implemented comes as Silvio Berlusconi already faces an increasingly dangerous national economic situation.

Next up: bank runs.
In Britain, a senior Government source described the position of the two banks as ‘perilous’, although an official Treasury spokesman declined to comment. Should either bank collapse, British customers with deposits of up to about £85,000 would be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Naturally, no depositors will wait for this to happen, or for these news to be confirmed or denied. They will merely walk up to the teller window, submit a withdrawal ticket and proceed to close their accounts.

And here is where the story gets downright surreal:
David Cameron last night broke off from his holiday in Tuscany to talk to President Sarkozy about the crisis in the markets.
News of the planned talks emerged as Business Secretary Vince Cable appeared to back calls from China for the dollar to be eventually replaced as the main global reserve currency by a new international currency unit to be based around the IMF.

He said: ‘It would be a sensible way for the world to move but it’s not something to do overnight.’

But Mr Cable added: ‘In the short run, the U.S. dollar is the key international currency and although, frankly, the American legislators made a terrible mess of things a few weeks ago, they have now got back on track. They have undertaken to manage their debt in a prudent way.’

Remember where we said that the last thing left is for China to float the CNY? Well, pushing for the SDR is pretty much the same thing.

In the meantime, keep an eye on the price of Unicredit and SocGen tomorrow. Despite SocGen's and UniCredit's repeated statements that the article in Mail on Sunday was “false, irresponsible” the damage may have already been done. And something tells us the downside limits will be hit very quickly, leading to a Lehman-like self-fulfilling prophecy.

[eXpat]

World Bank chief Zoellick says markets in danger zone
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')orld markets have entered a "new danger zone", the president of the World Bank has warned.

Robert Zoellick said investors had lost confidence in the economic leadership of several key countries.

Speaking at the Asia Society's annual dinner in Sydney, he also said that the global economy was going through a "multi-speed recovery".

Developing countries were now the source of growth and opportunity, Mr Zoellick said.

In the past two weeks, global stock markets have suffered massive falls on fears about the state of leading economies.

The US had its AAA debt rating cut for the first time in its history by the rating agency Standard & Poor's, following a long and bitter row in Congress over a plan to raise the US debt ceiling to ensure the country avoided a default.

In Europe, rumours emerged that France would also have its top-notch rating downgraded, although this was widely denied, while Italy announced its second austerity plan in as many months.
'Fragilities of recovery'

"What's happened in the past couple of weeks is there is a convergence of some events in Europe and the United States that has led many market participants to lose confidence in economic leadership of some of the key countries," Mr Zoellick said.

"I think those events combined with some of the other fragilities in the nature of recovery have pushed us into a new danger zone. I don't say those words lightly."

[eXpat]

The Great Collapse Has Officially Begun
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')’ve been warning of this for well over two years. My primary warnings were:
1) That 2008 was just a warm-up
2) That the REAL Crisis had yet to unfold
3) That the REAL Crisis would make 2008 look like a picnic

Well, the period I’ve been warning of is now here. What’s happening right now is not just a market crash, bear market, deflation, or any other item related to just one asset class.

Instead, this is a collapse of the entire US monetary and political system and the mentality of spending one’s way to wealth.

For 80+ years, the US has operated under a crony capitalist system in which politicians dole out political and economic favors to the chosen few whose bribes/donations funded their campaigns.

This system was aided and abetted by the US Federal Reserve, which dealt with any and all economic issues by printing more money. Whether it was the Asian Crisis, Long Term Capital Management, or the 2008 Crash, the Fed dealt with the issue by opening the floodgates and flooding the financial system with liquidity.

Aside from making moral hazard (the notion that those large firms who screwed up were never actually allowed to fail) the bedrock of the financial system, the Fed also blew a credit bubble which in turn funded bubbles in virtually every asset class: bonds, stocks, real estate, emerging markets, even some commodities.

Indeed, the vast majority of US economic growth over the last 40 years has been fueled by the Fed’s loose money policies. Bill King, an analyst and investor whom I admire, shared the below chart with me a while back. It charts US GDP growth in nominal terms (the dark blue line), the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (the black line), and REAL GDP growth or growth that accounts for inflation (the light blue line).

[Daniel_Plainview]

Market crash 'could hit within weeks', warn bankers
A more severe crash than the one triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers could be on the way, according to alarm signals in the credit markets.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Insurance on the debt of several major European banks has now hit historic levels, higher even than those recorded during financial crisis caused by the US financial group's implosion nearly three years ago. Credit default swaps on the bonds of Royal Bank of Scotland, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Intesa Sanpaolo, among others, flashed warning signals on Wednesday. Credit default swaps (CDS) on RBS were trading at 343.54 basis points, meaning the annual cost to insure £10m of the state-backed lender's bonds against default is now £343,540.

The cost of insuring RBS bonds is now higher than before the taxpayer was forced to step in and rescue the bank in October 2008, and shows the recent dramatic downturn in sentiment among credit investors towards banks. "The problem is a shortage of liquidity – that is what is causing the problems with the banks. It feels exactly as it felt in 2008," said one senior London-based bank executive. "I think we are heading for a market shock in September or October that will match anything we have ever seen before," said a senior credit banker at a major European bank.

Telegraph

[nobodypanic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', '[')url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8721151/Market-crash-could-hit-within-weeks-warn-bankers.html]Market crash 'could hit within weeks', warn bankers[/url]
A more severe crash than the one triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers could be on the way, according to alarm signals in the credit markets.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Insurance on the debt of several major European banks has now hit historic levels, higher even than those recorded during financial crisis caused by the US financial group's implosion nearly three years ago. Credit default swaps on the bonds of Royal Bank of Scotland, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Intesa Sanpaolo, among others, flashed warning signals on Wednesday. Credit default swaps (CDS) on RBS were trading at 343.54 basis points, meaning the annual cost to insure £10m of the state-backed lender's bonds against default is now £343,540.

The cost of insuring RBS bonds is now higher than before the taxpayer was forced to step in and rescue the bank in October 2008, and shows the recent dramatic downturn in sentiment among credit investors towards banks. "The problem is a shortage of liquidity – that is what is causing the problems with the banks. It feels exactly as it felt in 2008," said one senior London-based bank executive. "I think we are heading for a market shock in September or October that will match anything we have ever seen before," said a senior credit banker at a major European bank.

Telegraph

[oiless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Timo', 'P')ops, i've thought about the life expectancy issue quite a bit recently, and i have an unanswered question about what the human natural life expectancy really is. How long are we supposed to live given a natural state of being? IMO, life expectancy has been artifically extended by medicines and regulated business practices. I'm all for these inventions/regulations, but what is the natural life expectancy for a human left without these elements of life extension? I suspect we're expecting too much from our natural bodies in terms of the duration of life.

[Daniel_Plainview]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oiless', 'M')y conclusion is that the ultimate span of human life has not been increased one iota by modern medicine, we conflate individual results to the whole.