Friday, October 29, 2010

Dollar at risk of becoming “toxic waste”

The dollar's slump could get far worse if the dollar index takes out last year's low, Robin Griffiths, technical strategist at Cazenove Capital, told CNBC. "If the (dollar index) takes out the low that was made roughly a year ago I really think that will not only encourage more sales, it will cause a little bit of minor panic," Griffiths said. "A year ago it was deemed too cheap, if it goes any lower than that it's actually become toxic waste."

The dollar resumed its recent downtrend in the wake of a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations at the weekend. The meeting failed to yield a definitive agreement on currencies, putting selling pressure on the greenback.

"The dollar is being trashed, we've actually had effectively devaluation of about 14 percent in the last two months," Griffiths said.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Mass mortgage document processing, dubbed “robo-signing”

According to RealtyTrac, in September banks repossessed a home roughly every 30 seconds. Every 30 seconds, banks—many that received funds from the Bush administration’s TARP, and that may be using fraudulent practices—foreclose on an American family’s dream of home ownership. 

Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, GMAC and other big mortgage lenders recently suspended most foreclosure proceedings, following revelations that thousands of their foreclosures were being conducted like “foreclosure mills,” with tens of thousands of legal documents signed by low-level staffers with little or no knowledge of what they were signing.

[One example of “robo-signing, whereby a lower level overseer] received 10,000 mortgage foreclosure documents to process in one month. Based on an eight-hour workday, he would have had to read, verify and sign, in the presence of a notary, about one document per minute. He admitted to signing documents without reading them or checking the facts about homeowners said to be in default. And [he] was just one of many “robo-signers.”

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Why so many U.S. jobless and underemployed?

Why are so many jobless and underemployed in America? One clue is that US corporations are now hoarding all their cash instead of investing it. How much cash? More than $1.6 trillion. Read more

And US companies continue to move manufacturing operations to a low-wage country, manufacture the product there using ultra cheap labor, with no regulations or environmental concerns, and then ship the product to the US for consumption, paying no tariff or tax on that shipment into our country. Up to 60% of our imports come from this kind of operation. This is what has cost our country so many jobs.

And from a purely business and profits point of view, why on earth would America's biggest banks and corporations make any of their money available for loans to new and small businesses in the USA when they can "earn' so much more with that money by either building new factories in China, or using it to gamble on derivatives and stocks in the great Wall Street casino?