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My post title is an ode to Yves Smith, who likes to feign surprise when the blindingly obvious finally comes into plain view for all to see. The latest sign that underneath the surface weakness remains at large financial institutions comes courtesy of Standard & Poors. According to the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, S&P believes many [...]

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Video embedded below.

See also Democratic Rep. DeFazio Calls for Geithner and Summers to Be Fired – Yves Smith

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Hat tip Rolfe Winkler.

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This excerpt comes from the blog News from 1930 which gives us a day-to-day account of what was being reported in 1930 before the worst of the Great Depression hit.
“The unemployment situation in New York is critical. Unless it is speedily met, we face a winter of hunger and distress for families whose bread-earners are [...]

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The US Department of Agriculture highlights how the United States in the last decade, despite increased aggregate wealth, slid back significantly in terms of food insecurity as measure of poverty. With everyone now focused on the unemployment situation, it bears noting that even before the downturn in the economy there had been a large surge [...]

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Hong Kong’s leader Donald Tsang has come out with a scathing criticism of U.S. monetary policy, comparing it to Japan’s which he believes contributed to 1997’s Asian crisis. This is the most direct and strident criticism of the U.S. Federal reserve’s monetary policy from a major international politician yet.
Bloomberg reports:
The Federal Reserve’s policy of keeping [...]

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I have said on a number of occasions that a sovereign nation that issues debt in its own fiat currency cannot default involuntarily.  The case most people point to as a counterfactual is Russia in 1998.  I mentioned Russia in a recent post:
Countries that have gone bust, Russia, Mexico, and Argentina were borrowing in foreign [...]

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The following is a re-print of the latest monthly newsletter from Niels Jensen of Absolute Return Partners, published with the express permission of the author. Visit www.arpllp.com to learn more about Absolute Return Partners. You can reach the firm by email at info@arpllp.com.
This post on taxes and budget deficits should remind one of three recent [...]

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This article by Peter Tasker, a well-regarded financial analyst in Asia, comes via the Financial Times (hat tip Marshall). He sees an enormous bubble forming in China – and parallels to Japan circa 1987:
Emerging markets, it seems, have had a good crisis. In contrast to the debt-ridden G7 economies, they have quickly resumed their growth [...]

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This comes via the NYTimes:
To the Editor:
Re “Volcker’s Voice, Often Heeded, Fails to Sell a Bank Strategy” (front page, Oct. 21):
As another older banker and one who has experienced both the pre- and post-Glass-Steagall world, I would agree with Paul A. Volcker (and also Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England) that some kind [...]