European Highlights: October 29
by Zero Hedge - October 29th, 2009 8:43 am
Courtesy of Cheeky Bastard
Good morning Zerohedgers
The two year long saga concerning the nationalized UK bank, Northern Rock, has finally ended. The main economic body of the European Union gave its consent for the bank to be broken into two smaller parts and sold off to the interested parties. This gave new incentive to the ailing British financial sector, and plans are being made, by Gordon Browns cabinet, to restructure the other two nationalized banks; Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds. Cabinet members stand united in their hope that by selling the nationalized banks, in a much milder economic climate, it will be possible to miss the losses which would have been generated, if the banks were sold months earlier.
Amid the rumors of Lat devaluation ( yet again ), Valdis Dombrovskis, the prime minister of Latvia, said that his country is in a grave economic situation, but that the plans for currency devaluation are not being taken into regards by his government. Just to remind you; Latvian government was instructed, and was given guidelines, by the IMF, on how to meet the necessary requirements of the 11 billion dollar bailout loan which the IMF is ready to provide. The symbolic currency peg between the Lat and the Euro is being taken into question by the recent measures which where underdone by the Latvian government. Latvian government proposes a regulation which would allow the Latvian banks to collect only the current value of the property, and not the original one, and will thus wipe out almost 70% of the losses which the citizens would endure, if the old regulations would be kept in place. A number of analyst are, among them Neil Sharing, an emerging market analyst at London based Capital Economics, taking a contrarian view, and think that the currency devaluation is due to happen for several reasons. One of the reasons is that the devaluation will impact the Latvian economy severely on the short run; but with a weaker currency Latvia’s exporting potential could be fully materialized and the country could start building its economy on a much sounder foundations. The economic situation in Latvia is a direct consequence of the lending standards and practices the European banks impose on the countries which emerged from Communism in the beginning of the 90s. A complete " silent moratorium " on business loans, and a full concentration…
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Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?
by ilene - September 9th, 2009 3:31 pm
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Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?
Courtesy of ELLEN BROWN at Web of Debt
A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, questions still swirl around its collapse. Lawrence MacDonald, whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense came out in July 2009, maintains that the bank was not in substantially worse shape than other major Wall Street banks. He says Lehman was just “put to sleep. They put the pillow over the face of Lehman Brothers and they put her to sleep.” The question is, why?
The Lehman bankruptcy is widely considered to be the watershed event that changed the rules of the game for those Wall Street banks considered “too big to fail.” The bankruptcy option was ruled out once and for all. The taxpayers would have to keep throwing money at the banks, no matter how corrupt, ill-managed or undeserving. As Dean Baker noted in April 2009:
“Geithner has supposedly ruled out the bankruptcy option because when he, along with Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, tried letting Lehman Brothers go under last fall, it didn’t turn out very well. Of course, it is not necessary to go the route of an uncontrolled bankruptcy that Geithner and Co. pursued with Lehman. . . . [But] the Geithner crew insists that there are no alternatives to his plan; we have to just keep giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks . . . , further enriching the bankers who wrecked the economy.”
Although Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Monday, September 15, 2008, it was actually “bombed” on September 11, when the biggest one-day drop in its stock and highest trading volume occurred before bankruptcy. Lehman CEO Richard Fuld maintained that the 158 year old bank was brought down by unsubstantiated rumors and illegal naked short selling. Although short selling (selling shares you don’t own) is legal, the short seller is required to have shares lined up to borrow and replace to cover the sale. Failure to buy the shares back in the next three trading days is called a “fail to deliver.” Christopher Cox, who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2008, said in a July 2009 article that naked short selling “can allow manipulators to force…
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