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Roger Altman: The deal to avoid a US fiscal crunch

from FT:

Barack Obama might prefer to focus his energies on immigration, gun control and education. But it is the tax and spending wars that still paralyse Washington, and the US is on the verge of a dismal solution – the sequestration. Unless a new budget deal can be agreed within the next few days, almost all forms of so-called “discretionary” spending, departmental budgets that the US Congress sets each year, [...]

The Market Sell-Off Is Accelerating: The Spending Crunch Is Official And Global Growth Slowdown Confirmed By Caterpillar, Housing Starts And Homebuilder Sentiment Starting To Decline, And 800,000 Set to be Unemployed by Government

The Market Sell-Off Is Accelerating

Dow

13,965 -71 0.50%
 

Nasdaq

3,180 -34 1.05%
 

S&P 500

1,518 -13 0.85%
 

GlobalDow

2,104 -13 0.61%
 

Gold

1,566 -38 2.38%
 

Oil

94.85 -1.74 1.80%

The Spending Crunch Is Official: “We Are Confident There Is An Issue With The Consumer”

Think the Walmart “disastrous” sales memo was a one-off event, which net of Walmart’s damage should be completely ignored (something the market has been perfectly happy to oblige with)? Then listen to a separate perspective on the US consumer, this time from [...]

20 ways to become more self-sufficient before ‘the crunch’ arrives

Mike Adams
Natural News
Jan 22, 2013

One thing you don’t want to be during the coming “crunch” — a polite word for “collapse” — is dependent on the system. The more you can take care of yourself, the better off you’ll be physically, financially, emotionally and even spiritually. Here are 20 ways to become more self-sufficient while you still can:

1) Get a small solar system that can be used to run a laptop [...]

NYC to begin rationing gasoline

YAPHANK, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — New York City and Long Island are following in New Jersey’s footsteps in instituting an odd-even gas rationing system.

In an effort to ease long lines associated with the the fuel crunch taking place in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a rationing system will go into effect on Friday.

Beginning at 6 a.m., those with license plates ending in an odd number will be able to buy gason odd [...]

NYC GAS DOOM: NYC Taxi Firms Run Out of Gas, Up to 75 Percent Stations Are Not Able To Sell Gasoline, Troopers Deployed To Gas Stations, Shortages May Not End for Another Week

breaking

NYC taxi firms run out of Gas “In New York City over 50 percent of stations are not able to sell gasoline and it could be up to 75 percent,”

Could this be the thing that suspends the election ? or time to raise the Gasoline prices nationwide !

Gasoline crunch deepens, NYC taxi firms run out of fuel

“In New York City over 50 percent of service stations are not able to [...]

The European Disunion: The Richest Increasingly Want To Fragment From The Poorest

Europe, and its apparent Union, is rapidly fragmenting as tensions mount on large and small scales across all of its regions and nations. From Scotland’s independence referendum to Flanders’ autonomy and now Catalonian separatism on the rise once more, this is no longer a north-south divide, but a rich/poor, debt/no-debt divide. As the NY Times notes, this seems to emerge from the ebbing of the concept of shared sovereignty (richer – or less [...]

Founders – In the Near Future the Entire Social, Political, and Economic Infrastructure of America Has Collapsed

Mac Slavo
September 27th, 2012
SHTFplan.com

 

Sometime in the near future the world as we know it will change drastically. The financial and economic systems we have come to depend on will finally buckle, and when they do, those things that we take for granted today – our ability to conveniently engage in commerce, to depend on police and medical responders to be there in an emergency, and even turning on our lights [...]

On GPS Sunday: Is the Republican Party too angry? And is a global food crunch coming?

Fareed looks at why the optimistic Republican Party of Ronald Reagan seems to have swapped places with the glum Democratic Party of the 1970s and 1980s. Today it is the Republican Party that often seems angry with America, Fareed says. Read the best-selling books by conservatives these days, watch Fox News or attend a Tea Party rally. They are filled with rage, often combined with a powerful nostalgia for an [...]

Spaniards slam govt. economic policies

Spaniards have taken to the streets in the capital Madrid to voice their anger at Germany’s role in blocking moves to share European sovereign debt.

The rally was staged against Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is currently on a visit to Spain as the fourth-largest economy in the eurozone is striving to tackle a debt repayment crunch and a bailout threat.

 

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/09/06/260192/spaniards-slam-govt-economic-policies/

Peter Schiff: “We’re headed for a real economic collapse”

Mac Slavo
August 30th, 2012
SHTFplan.com

 

Our incumbent President says that things are getting better, jobs are being created, and America is on the road to recovery. His opponent, Governor Mitt Romney, says the opposite, but claims he has a plan that will turn things around and bring prosperity back.

According to free market proponent Peter Schiff, it doesn’t matter who wins, because the crunch is coming – and it’s going to become apparent [...]

The Crunch: “It’s Going to Happen In the Next Administration; Regardless of Who Wins This Election”

Mac Slavo
August 30th, 2012
SHTFplan.com

 

Our incumbent President says that things are getting better, jobs are being created, and America is on the road to recovery. His opponent, Governor Mitt Romney, says the opposite, but claims he has a plan that will turn things around and bring prosperity back.

According to free market proponent Peter Schiff, it doesn’t matter who wins, because the crunch is coming – and it’s going to become apparent [...]

Sony announces big layoffs

Sony will lay off some 1,000 employees within its mobile operation, or 15 percent of the unit’s staff. Most of the cuts will hit its headquarters in Sweden.

The crunch among handset makers who are not Samsung and Apple continues apace. Today, Android OEM Sony announced that its loss-making mobile handset division Sony Mobile Communicationswould be laying out 15% of its workforce — 1,000 people approximately — as part of a bigger restructuring. It will [...]

Italy Sovereign Debt Held By Domestic Banks Rises To Record

Italian banks’ purchases of the country’s sovereign debt rose to a record in June as concerns that Italy may be forced to seek a bailout discouraged foreign investors.

Banks boosted their holdings of Italian government bonds by about 14 billion euros ($17 billion) in June to 316 billion euros, according to a Bank of Italy report today.

Italian banks “have been holding the fort at government debt auctions in the absence of foreign investors,” said Nicholas Spiro managing [...]

Foreigners Reduced Their Investment In Spanish Debt

Foreign investment in Spanish public debt has decreased by 78.168 million in the first six months of the year, standing at 203.271 million euros, compared to 281.439 million which reached the end of 2011. This is a break of 27.7% over last year.

According to the General Secretariat of the Treasury and Financial Policy,foreign investors piled at the end of June the 35.24% of the Spanish sovereign debt, compared to 50.48% which amounted last year.

The largest decreases [...]

Peak Oil Guru Robert Hirsch Gives A Dire Outlook For The Future

A year and a half ago, we featured a presentation by Robert Hirsch, the author of the first major US government report on peak oil. 

Peak oil is the theoretical point in time when oil production peaks and begins to fall.

He recently reiterated his argument at this year’s Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference in Vienna.

Before he began his remarks, Hirsch made sure to clarify that while he still believes the world faces a [...]

China Developers’ Survival at Threat as Funding Dries

The funding crisis for mainland Chinese property developers is intensifying, ratings agencies say, with real-estate builders facing spiking borrowing costs and a limited ability to raise cash at a time when sales and economic growth are slowing.

With Beijing still talking tough on keeping property prices in check, 2012 is likely to be a crunch year in the industry.

Financially weak property developers “are likely to face a test of their survival [...]

REUTERS: Europe could sink Obama

The busy shop floor at Miller Weldmaster Corp could make a great location for an Obama campaign ad.

As workers assemble the family-owned company’s hot-air fabric welders, used to manufacture everything from inflatable rafts to truck tarps, it’s hard to know the recession of 2007-2009 ever happened.

Ten clocks on the wall of the plant in Navarre, Ohio, show local time from Norway to New Zealand and tell Miller Weldmaster’s comeback story [...]

Same Deja Vu… Different year.

by Tyler Durden

 

We have been pounding the table that 2012 will be a replica of 2011 since before January 1: after all the central planners’ script book has only so many pages. Sure enough, here is yet another indicator. Job gains remain anchored in the low cost labor sectors of the economy – retail, temporary, leisure, and hospitality – a pattern, as Bloomberg Brief points out, that has characterized growth during [...]

ECB’s LTRO Plan Flops As Banks Cut Lending

www.telegraph.co.uk

The European Central Bank (ECB) said loans to the real economy fell in February, scotching claims that radical long-term refinancing operation (LTRO) would stem the crisis.

Open Europe’s Raoul Ruparel said: “The LTRO has succeeded in avoiding a severe funding crunch…[But] it does not tackle the underlying lending risks which the banks are still keen to avoid, particularly with the looming recession in Europe.”

As Spain faces a general strike on Thursday, [...]

IMF sees $160 oil risk despite Libyan boost

he Libyan state oil company NOC said it will export almost 1.4m barrels a day (b/d) next month as key oil fields come back on stream.

The announcement came after Saudi Arabia said it had boosted output to a near record level of 9.87m b/d in January and stood ready to cover any shortfall as European sanctions against Iran bite deeper.

“I want to assure you that there is no shortage of [...]

This could be the chart that’s driving Ben Bernanke’s insane money-printing

Earlier we described why it is clear that the Fed will need to print exponentially to fill the void of the crunch in consolidated credit money but why does Bernanke remain so hedged and guarded in his optimism when the market is tearing bears’ arms-and-legs off and every talking head from here to Tokyo is claiming we have reached the nirvana of self-sustaining recovery (with, we note one such reconstituted deal-maker claiming “we don’t need [...]

Environmental crunch ‘worse than thought’: OECD

Pressures on Earth’s ecosystem are now so great that future generations could be doomed to falling living standards, the OECD said on Thursday in a report looking to the mid-century.

“Providing for a further two billion people by 2050 and improving the living standards for all will challenge our ability to manage and restore those natural assets on which all life depends,” it warned.

“Failure to do so will have serious consequences, [...]

OECD chief urges ‘mother of all firewalls’ for eurozone

From breitbart:

The debt-wracked eurozone needs to build “the mother of all firewalls” to prevent the crisis spreading throughout the bloc, the head of the OECD said on Saturday ahead of a crunch G20 meeting.

“We still have to build the mother of all firewalls,” Angel Gurria, Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, told bankers ahead of the gathering of top ministers and central bankers.

“To be strong, we have to have a thick [...]

Refinery Crunch In Europe

ZerHedge article covering this

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/refinery-crunch-europe

And a press release from Petroplus

http://investors.petroplusholdings.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=157968&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1643071&highlight=

 

What Gold Supply Crunch?

by Louis James of Casey Research

What Gold Supply Crunch?

We have reported on changes in global gold demand, from booming investment demand in Asia to European and US debt concerns that have re-solidified gold’s long tenure as the ultimate safe-haven asset for turbulent times. In fact, with investment demand from private and institutional buyers continuing to grow and central banks increasing their gold reserves, total demand reached a record US$57.7 billion in [...]

JB Slear Weighs in on the PM Smash, $2,000 Gold

JB Slear weighs in for SD readers this morning on the fear gripping the PM market today, the liquidity crunch, and Roubini’s call that we’ll never see G2K. 
There’s a difference of opinion in everything. Take for example Mr. Roubini, he posts his opinion and is willing to defend his paradigm, I wish him the best. I’ll listen to the real people who have been thru this fiasco back in the [...]

The core problems of the Eurozone are fiscal (banks, sovereign backstops) and structural (ECB, treaties)

0. IMF does not buy sovereign debt. It makes loans to sovereigns and with highest seniority. This idea has also been completely squelched by ECB head Draghi’s most recent conference stating EZ NCB’s will not be involved (think about it: it deliberately bypasses ECB’s monetary system and European treaty).

1. Europe’s collateral crunch is a lot larger than just sovereign debt. Moving this little bit around different balance sheets would change nothing. In fact, they [...]

While policy-makers focus on the big bazooka top-down, it is the smallest fund manager ‘cog’ in the chain of re-pledged collateral that will inevitably bring the system down.

by ZH

To better comprehend the chaos that is currently viciously circling in European funding markets, its critical to understand the difference between ‘linear’ collateral needs and the highly non-linear self-destroying re-pledging collateral crunch that is about to occur. Perry Mehrling, of INETeconomics, does a good job of explaining, in his chalkboard-style video, the three lending-based demands for collateral among the European banks and their central banks (Interbank, National Central Bank, and TARGET-2). [...]

One London-based executive at a major global bank: “If anyone thinks things are getting better then they simply don’t understand how severe the problems are. I think a major bank could fail within weeks”

The eurozone banking system is on the edge of collapse as major lenders begin to run out of the assets they need to keep vital funding lines open.

By Harry Wilson, Banking correspondent

(Telegraph) Senior analysts and traders warned of impending bank failures as a summit intended to solve the European crisis failed to deliver a solution that eased concerns over bank funding.

The European Central Bank admitted it had held meetings about providing emergency [...]

Italy and Spain are also now relying on the extra $270 Billion on top of the already existing Bailout, taking the bailout fund over $1.3 Trillion, that they have been told and announced today that they can have from other countries such as US, UK and Europe, via the IMF to keep them afloat:

The markets have been reacting this morning to the news of a joint ECB and IMF plan to save the eurozone. According to Bloomberg:

A European proposal to channel central bank loans through the International Monetary Fund may deliver as much as 200 billion euros ($270 billion) to fight the debt crisis, two people familiar with the negotiations said.

Here’s how the plan would work:

Under the proposal, national central banks would recycle funds [...]