THE ECONOMY-HEADLINES: Let’s begin with a brief article by Marc Faber over at moneynews.newsmax.com/street talk on 10/22/08 entitled “Faber: U.S. Credit Fix Will Not Work”.
Marc Faber is the publisher of the Gloom & Doom Report (and a Swiss fund manager) and he opines that the recent moves by the U.S. Treasury will only temporarily bring confidence back to the market leaving the longer term prospects looking much worse.
The global economy won’t fare any better for a while and the Western world and governments are trying to ignite credit growth, but their efforts will probably not succeed.
CNN.com on 10/23/08 notes in its short piece “Banks hit high on Fed borrowing” that commercial banks, suffering from the credit crunch, borrowed a record $105.8 billion/day from the Fed’s emergency lending window eclipsing last weeks rate of $99.7 billion/day.
RGE Monitor (rgemonitor.com) of 10/23/08 presents an interview from Bloomberg with Nouriel Roubini, NYU Professor, in which he states that the financial crisis has reached the point of sheer panic, producing …”massive dumping of assets” and “hundreds of hedge funds are going to go bust.” Professor Roubini continues noting that systemic risks are increasing in size and we’re seeing the start of a run on a large portion of the hedge funds which may encourage policy makers to shut down markets for up to a couple of weeks in the near future.
THE ECONOMY-’WELCOME’: We’d like to welcome the Sec. of The treasury, the “Head of the Fed“, the “Private Wealth Managers” from the big banks, and most of economic gurus from the “Stealth and Wealth” funds interviewed on business TV, et al,: welcome!
Our party’s been running for about six months at least down here at the “Where the Rubber Meets the Road” Lounge. There’s a few jugs of screw-cap wine left along with some Velveta and crackers over by the punch bowl (where the lady with the walker’s adding another “sweetening” of ‘grain‘); help yourself.
We’re glad you could finally find some time with your busy schedules and demanding jobs (some of us haven’t worked for sixteen months) to stop by and tell us how it was that the recession just started. You see, in between comparing tattoos, we’ve been exchanging info on job possibilities (networking I think you’d call it), new bus schedules, the length of the lines at several of the local food banks, and got to wondering what it was that finally threw us into a recession?
We really wouldn’t understand? Well, you’re probably right there but if we start to go into a depression, could you maybe give us a heads-up so that we could line up some tent space at our local nature preserve?
GEO-POLITICS: “ Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss”. This Staff article over at Energy Bulletin on 10/23/08 indicates that Pakistan may be going through its worst crisis in history. A burgeoning conflict between the Pakistani government and the Islamic militants along the Afghan border in conjunction with general economic degradation has forced the country to call on the IMF to avoid financial collapse. Pakistan, the only Muslim nation with nuclear weapons, is described as being “on the edge.”
FOOD: Energy Bulletin of 10/23/08 in its Food & Agriculture section article “Why we can’t pump faster” points out that “…easily extractable phosphate may have hit The Overshoot Point (TOP). And we have no new conventional sources. And phosphate essentially feeds the world..”
Until next week, keep your eyes on the horizon.
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