Matthew 11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

: http://plutarch.blogdrive.com/ =>backup blogsite.

 

Goldman Sachs Crime Watch: Big Three to Pay $30 In Bonus, Plus Windfall Stock Option

The banks don’t have to mark their assets to market thus profits that are not real and they transfer more money to their executives, all on the backs of the taxpayers paying for fraudulent derivative contracts. And this article does not mention that these executives regranted themselves stock options as their shares and the markets were on the bottom, so they will also be able to cash in on the option lotto, except they rigged the lotto to give the a rebounded stock price on the fraudulent accounting.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=au.pavWlxfZg

nov. 9 (Bloomberg) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley andJPMorgan Chase & Co.’s investment bank, survivors of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, are set to pay record bonuses this year.

The firms — the three biggest banks to exit the Troubled Asset Relief Program — will hand out $29.7 billion in bonuses, according to analysts’ estimates. That’s up 60 percent from last year and more than the previous high of $26.8 billion in 2007. The money, split among 119,000 employees, equals $250,400 each, almost five times the $50,303 median household income in the U.S. last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The three will award more in stock and defer more cash payments under pressure from regulators to tie pay to long-term results, compensation experts said. They may still face public wrath over the size of bonuses after the government injected capital into all the major financial institutions followingLehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse in September 2008.

“Wall Street is beginning to resemble Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in the film ‘Gone With the Wind’: ‘Quite frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,’” Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate on compensation at the Portland, Maine-based Corporate Library, said in an e-mail. “It doesn’t seem as if even political threat, disastrous PR, envy, rising unemployment rates and home repossessions is enough to get any of these people to refuse the bonuses they have ‘earned.’”

 

UST $81 Billion This week

Next week’s auction of $81bn in new debt by the Treasury will raise $42.5bn of new money after refunding $38.5bn in expiring maturities. The Treasury will sell $40bn three-year notes next Monday, followed by $25bn in 10-year notes on Tuesday and $16bn worth of 30-year bonds on Thursday..

 

soros says farmland one of the greatest investments of our times

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/08/food-commodity-prices-land-grab

 

Russian Central Bank Looking to Cut Rates, Buy Gold, Dumps FHA/FRE Debt

MOSCOW, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Russia’s central bank does not exclude further rate cuts before the end of 2009 and may buy gold from the state repository, Gokhran, the bank’s first deputy chairman, Alexei Ulyukayev, said on Monday. “We will buy (gold) only if conditions are adequate,” Ulyukayev told reporters. Last month, Russian media reported that the government planned to sell 25 tonnes of gold, possibly on the local market, from the repository. [ID:nLT717764] Ulyukayev said Monday that the regulator may further cut its benchmark lending rates this year. The central bank has administered eight cuts this year, bringing its benchmark refinancing rate to annualised 9.50 percent. Easing inflationary pressures have been the main factor allowing the regulator to facilitate its monetary policy and provide a stimulus for domestic lending. On Friday, Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach said inflation may return to single digits and be as low as 9 percent this year — significantly below the government’s earlier official estimate of around 11 percent. Separately, Ulyukayev said the central bank has bought more than $1 billion in November on the foreign exchange market to cap the appreciation of the rouble. The vast majority of the purchases came on Monday amid increased interest from investors in the rouble and its instruments, pressuring the Russian currency to firm further. Early on Monday, the central bank shifted its intervention bid level to 35.25 roubles per euro/dollar basket , used for guiding the rouble’s nominal exchange rate policy, from the previous 35.30, after buying as much as $700 million on the forex market, dealers said [ID:nL9157417]. At 0940 GMT the rouble traded at 35.26 against the basket, nearly 8.5 percent stronger from the levels seen early September when the rouble’s rally began. Ulyukayev also said the central bank had no plans to invest again in U.S. mortgage agency bonds. “We have fully exited from them and we have no plans to go back,” Ulyukayev said. (Reporting by Yelena Fabrichnaya, writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Toby Chopra) larger | smaller Business Printable version

 

Rabbi Issues Jewish Fatwah To Kill Any Gentile Who Offends Israel ;Sanctions Infanticide For Gentiles

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book “The King’s Torah” that even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation. Shapiro based the majority of his teachings on passages quoted from the Bible, to which he adds his opinions and beliefs.

“It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation,” he wrote, adding: “If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments – because we care about the commandments – there is nothing wrong with the murder.”

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126890.html

 

Brokers/Banks Still Freezing Customers Auction Rate Security Accounts

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/business/economy/08gret.html?_r=1&ref=business

What a nightmare, yet the party on Wall Street goes on and on as those shysters suck the life out of middle America. Getting the pound of flesh that was never their due, but their desire. Shakespeare had it right to portray the zionist bankster as a human consumer of human flesh and human heart. One of the most profound intellects of all time.

 

 

Black Mamba -My Old Nemesis-On PBS

I was intrigued to see PBS had a show about Black Mambas, most of the times I turn these African shows off as the people have never lived in the Bush, they are disrespectful of the natives, or the shows are just hosted by silly twits on Safari or tourists or egghead anthropologists. I was fortunate to spend several years living in the African bush, mainly on the Eastern Plains when Africa was sparsely settled. Most of these times I turn these shows off as it some herpetologist or other ‘Gaia’, the earth is god pumping how friendly the Mamba is. I still have nightmares about that snake.

Now the show was interesting as it was an Afrikaner women married to an English Jew and the woman did all the snake catching , not her timid husband. It was interesting  to see a paved road in Africa, as if there was a road back when i worked there, it was a track at best and I never saw a paved road where I worked in Africa. It was kind of a shock to see a paved road in Africa but this woman was down in Swasiland, a rather beautiful country well inhabited. Where I worked it was common to see enormous herds of elephants and lions and game that had never seen man and had no fear of man and you were often a few hundred miles from the nearest small village. Needless to say  the intervening 40 years African population has exploded. So I was also shocked at the number of people. But the Africans measure their wealth by the number of wives, children, cattle and land they have. So I guess that was to be expected as modern irrigation and other agricultural techniques were introduced and they got wealthy by African standards.

This is the first documentary I have seen where they did not try and underplay the number of people killed every years by Mambas. I never visited a village where every spring, or what passes for spring after the rain and during the mating season, at least one villager was not killed by a Mamba. The vaccine is very recent, and must be refrigerated and those remote village simply dont have electricity so a Mamba bite is fatal. If a worker was bitten the firm I worked for was certainly not going to fly a helicopter in, ex, except as whiteman they would fly a helicopter in to pick your body up so it did not rot, if you got bit by a Mamba.

This woman was quite brave in that she went out with her timid husband wanting  to catch these mambas and release them away from the villages. Now she was living in a very populated country with good roads and could carry a vaccine in her car so she is relatively safe unless the mamba injects right into a major artery or vein, in which case the vaccine probably wont help unless you’re hospitalized quickly  with an artificial lung to breath for you and some tranfusions. I felt somewhat sorry for her as despite training, she did not really have the skills to catch a mamba even with the snake sticks, and its only a matter of time, I think before she and her husband will be bit. Im more disappointed in her husband letting her do that dangerous work.

Now one thing she did show is that the africans are absoluteys terrified of the Mamba, which is the king of snakes, and by far. Mambas do everything well, they can easily chase down a man, or a child or even a horse, they climb when they are young nearly like a bird, and are excellent swimmers and are masters of disguise and hyperintelligent for snake. Now the woman was more perceptive than most  people as she recognized how curious the mambas are and how intelligent. She did manage to find one black police officer she trained to help her and he was quite good as he had those excellent african reflexes combined with an inherent respect for the snake. He wont ever get bit. So hopefully she can eventually train some of the local police, but I was never able to. Now I don’t like snakes in particular as I have had too many close calls with them, but I dont have the Africans 3000 years or 50000 years of DNA programming and instinctual fear of them.

In villages, as they store their grains, they attract rats and the mambas as they get bigger want bigger prey and the birds and field mice, toads and other snakes are not enough so they come in looking for the big rats. In addition they like to crawl under houses which are cool and dark and if you’re lucky enough to have a swamp cooler or air conditioning, which I never was, they love to come into cool houses during the hot seasons. It is the only snake I have ever encountered without an inherent fear of man. Their other ‘bad habit is that they will climb into the rafter as often the roof if it is thick enough is relatively cool compared to the ground sometime. Nothing is worse than having a mamba swing down into your face from the rafters.

Now ‘back’ then, you had no choice but to go in, if some Mambas had invaded the village and just shoot them, as they are very territorial especially during the mating season or if you’re unlucky enough to have one lay her eggs under your house. Now if the snake was a cobra or a small mamba, say under 3 feet, I would just catch it and put it in a box and take it out into the bush and let it go. Now if the town has a police officer the police are supposed to come but they back then they seldom had guns, and were as afraid of the Mamba as any other african , so to stay on good terms, I used to come out and take the mamba out, either with a shotgun or stick if I happened to be staying in a town with local police in it, which was not very often.

Now the oddest thing was a pair of Mambas that were terrorizing some cattle, and they had killed so many, they were out of venom, yet they were still striking at the cattle, and they seemed to enjoy chasing the cattle around and striking them. I did not believe it when the blacks describeD it to me, but when I saw it for my own eyes I can see why the entire village had been abandoned. I thought ‘what a cheeky couple’ their trying to drive the entire village out and claim the village rat nests for their own.

Now the Mamba is the only snake that when it moves and at high speed, it is so strong its head is up quite high. This pair must have recognized I was the killer and the male made a move towards, me and I blasted him, then the female started to come after me and I blasted her, as they were an enormous pair of Mambas.

In the area where I working if the locals lost their cattle it meant starvation, so you have to give them some money and pay for them to butcher the cattle and jerk it.  So for the locals the mambas are often a matter of life or death. I figured this pair must have nested nearby and the female was pregnant with eggs. They say the Mambas are solitary but I dont believe it as you often see them in pairs and not just during the mating season.

This woman did not know much about the snakes as she did not live in the bush, but at least she was the first white person I have ever seen on TV that had a more sympathetic attitude towards helping the locals, but she was I think they said a 4 th generation african.

Oddly enough the safest time to be out snake wise in the bush is during the mid day heat during the height of summer. You dont know heat until you lived in the bush of Eastern Africa. Its too hot to wear anything but a pair of boots, and shorts and straw hat.  I was fortunate to spend most of my career on the plains rather than in the hill country with a lot of rain, now the Mambas are smaller there, but nearly impossible to detect and you have to constantly be scanning both the ground and trees you’re walking under. In the plains the mambas tend to be a lot larger and to hunt mainly at night and are in general too big to climb much.

Oddly curious Mambas you build a fire thinking your going to be safe from animals, but not the Mambas, the fire and heat will attract them on  a cool night and your just as likely to have one come slithering in from the bush to park his sorry snakes butt next to your fire or they are curious and come to check you out. So you learn to build three fires and sleep in the middle…pdq..lol.

And it does not matter how good your house is, although I mainly lived in a tent, the Mambas seem to find a way to get in.

African mongoose and if you can find one and tame it, or  the honey badger some of the villages will keep them and the mambas will at least give a house with a mongoose a wide berth or the honey badger. The honey badger is probably the most amazing animal in Africa, although few people will ever appreciate that, you have never seen an animal with tenacity until you see a honey badger. Before they built the Suez, and broke the bridge to the European continent, the middle east used to have quite a bit of African wildlife, like Lions, honey badgers, cobras. I was always surprised they did not make a land bridge for the animals to migrate over, but such is man, eh, thoughtless.

The mamba can be a very beneficial snake as it is much more active than the cobra and other snakes and is a voracious hunter of field mice and other snakes.

You get a different perspective on nature when you get out and sleep in the bush. To be frank, I have never cared for tents much, and slept outside a lot, but with a gun in my boot. The whole purpose of going to africa is to watch the stars every night and meet the wildlife. Human company is vastly over-rated imo. When Im out in the bush in the Americas, I never sleep in a tent. Seems to defeat the whole point of going out into the bush.

Nice to see a more realistic portrayal of what the Africans locals have to go through with the Mamba. So I was quite pleased to allocate some time to watch the show.

Funny to see this brave Afrikaner women married to this timid somewhat cowardly prissy J. I took it he was rich as they owned a big tourist spread, but other than that  hard to see what she saw in the man. He was ugly as sin and quite prissy  and she was a handsome woman.

Lol, still you got to love those Mambas, as they are such a fearless predator.

 

Hasan Depicted As Islamic Mad Man

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6526030/Fort-Hood-gunman-had-told-US-military-colleagues-that-infidels-should-have-their-throats-cut.html

Well if this is true, then the USA Army has enormous potential exposure to criminal negligence. Hard to imagine a group of Shrinks,most of whom were probably Js would not have reported this.

Now they are continuing the line that he attended the same Mosque as the 911 Hijackers, and we know there were in reality, not Hijacker and these people were double agents in the CIA employ who thought they were testing the USA security system for the government on 911, and instead were hijacked electronically by an Israeli company and flow to their death on 911. And if that sounds strange to you, its as you have no phd in engineering or physics and don’t know how guidance systems on jetliners work.

And good, old Obama, Hossein, Obama said don’t rush to judgement, yet because of just this crapulous , political correctness  in the military there are orphans, and windows, and dead and maimed and wounded.

To be frank a lot of his actions and the lack of a normal blink rate in a video I saw of him on youtube indicates he was probably one of these mind and drug controlled people that are ticking bombs waiting for their progamming trigger to be set off . I have to wonder what type of medications he was on. The CIA code name was ‘monarch’ slaves for these people.

I’m struck by the coincidental timing and the total break down in Military Security at Fort Hood. The General from Fort Hood should be busted back down to Major and forced into early retirement. There is a price to be paid for failure and the military leadership in this country has seldom borne it, in Iraq, or Vietnam or Korea. About the last two military men we had who accepted responsibility for their actions were Patton and MacArthur. I really don’t think you can name a military General from the USA, since that time who has distinguished himself.

At least the way it used be in the military if you were the least bid ‘odd’ you never got promoted to Major, staying at Capt was the militaries way of telling you, you were not wanted anymore. And this guys looks like he had a very, very short amount of time left on his contract with the military, which makes this suicide and death by Jihad act very, irrational for a man educated in science.

To be frank I have expected a lot more Islamic blowback than we have seen given the war criminal Obama is like Bush mainly bombing civilians.

 

 

How Zionists Captured The Obama Whitehouse

http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=461

Go back to England Obama where you’re a citizen of, or Kenya, where you were born. Real Americans don’t want a zionist puppet in office. Good expose by Brother Kapner.

 

FRB Crimewatch- Bernanke Continues To Stonewall $12 Trillion Dollar Loan Disclosure

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve said a U.S. judge erred in ruling that the central bank should identify companies that received emergency loans last year, according to court papers filed to overturn the decision. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska improperly used the standard of “imminent harm” to a borrower’s competitive position rather than a lesser standard of “likely harm,” according to papers filed yesterday by Fed lawyers led by Senior Counsel Yvonne Mizusawa. Bloomberg News, a unit of Bloomberg LP, the New York-based company majority-owned by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, won a ruling in Manhattan federal court on Aug. 24 affirming the right of U.S. taxpayers to know about the financial firms that borrowed money. Bloomberg’s response to the Fed’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan is due Dec. 7 and a hearing is expected to be held the week of Jan. 4. The information sought by Bloomberg would demonstrate the central bank’s tactics in its bailout of the U.S. banking system. The Fed last year began extending credit directly to companies that weren’t banks for the first time since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Divulging specifics about the loan program might touch off a run by depositors, unsettle shareholders and hurt the central bank’s “ability to perform important statutory functions at a time of economic upheaval,” Fed lawyers have said in legal filings. Harm to Board The Fed, in its court papers, also said Preska erred in refusing to recognize that harm to the board’s ability to administer the program should be grounds for not disclosing the information. The Fed’s lawyers also said customers’ names, loan amounts and the terms on which they borrow are all information obtained from the banks and therefore not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. The Court of Appeals on Oct. 6 granted the Fed’s motion to keep borrower information confidential while it seeks to overturn the lower-court ruling, according to Thomas Golden, a lawyer at New York-based Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, who represents Bloomberg in the case. David Skidmore, a Fed spokesman, declined to comment on yesterday’s filing. The central bank contends that 231 pages of daily reports summarizing lending activity, which were prepared by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for the Board of Governors in Washington, aren’t covered by FOIA. The statute requires federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and public. The suit doesn’t seek money damages. Bank Group The Fed was joined in the litigation by a banking cooperative, The Clearing House Association LLC, which also opposes disclosure. Preska on Sept. 21 ruled that the organization may intervene in the action so that it could participate in the appeal, clearing the way for the group to pay lawyers to argue against disclosure. The Clearing House also filed a brief. The case is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-09595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=adB2HN_jgpuE

 

Why gold is shining brighter

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-petruno7-2009nov07,0,5653323.column?page=1&track=rs

The American public has no say in Federal Reserve policy.

But the gold market might.

The metal hit yet another record high on Friday, gaining $6.40 to $1,095.10 an ounce. It jumped $55 for the week and is up $211, or 24%, year to date.

This cannot be comforting to Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. The classic view of gold is that it is the best inflation hedge. That’s a faulty assumption, but still: Given the record sums the Fed has pumped into the financial system — and the fear that that money mountain could eventually power a surge in inflation — Bernanke doesn’t need rising gold prices reinforcing investors’ doubts.

Coincidentally, gold’s latest rally occurred as Fed policymakers met this week to affirm that they expected to hold short-term interest rates near zero for an “extended period.”

Early in the week the metal got a big boost from India’s decision to pay $6.7 billion to buy 200 tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund’s reserves. Instead of keeping that chunk of national wealth in dollars that have been losing value all year, India’s central bank opted for something tangible and immutable.

Investors who’ve been swapping dollars for gold since the start of this decade are a happy lot. After declining for most of the 1980s and ’90s, gold finally bottomed in 1999 around $250 an ounce.

Since early 2001 the metal has been on a bull run that has mocked the U.S. stock market. Gold has risen for nine straight years, and is up 300% since Dec. 31, 2000.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index’s return is negative since that date, including dividends.

Gold, a silly artifact to many investors in the 1990s, has become the great “if only” investment: “If only I’d bought it nine years ago, or four years ago, or six months ago.”

But even now there are plenty of people who can’t bring themselves to consider gold as an investment. It pays no interest, and if you’re buying bars or coins (versus owning shares of a mutual fund that holds the metal or stocks of mining firms), it costs money to store safely.

And if your reason for owning gold has something to do with the end of the world as we know it, shotguns and canned food probably would be more practical investments.

Yet over the last year or so gold has attracted fans far afield from the lunatic fringe.

Some investors expect rising inflation to be the inevitable outcome of the Fed’s policy of incredibly easy money and of the Obama administration’s complementary borrow-and-spend strategy.

Those gold buyers are counting on the metal to hold its value against the inflation they believe is on the horizon.

Other gold fans are focused on the risk of another bubble developing in global stock, bond and commodity markets, as investors and speculators borrow at rock-bottom short-term interest rates to take a flier on other assets.

But a large contingent of gold’s new champions see it in the role it had played through the ages, until the last century: a form of currency, and one that can’t be devalued by spendthrift governments.

So-called fiat currencies, like the dollar, are backed only by the promises of the government that issues them.

“The alternative to fiat currencies is gold,” notes Edward Yardeni, an economist and chief of Yardeni Research.

David Einhorn, who as head of hedge fund Greenlight Capital earned kudos for warning of last year’s financial mayhem, is among the Wall Street pros who have turned to gold as a partial replacement for cash in their portfolios.

I have seen many people debate whether gold is a bet on inflation or deflation,” Einhorn said in a speech last month. “As I see it, it is neither. Gold does well when monetary and fiscal policies are poor and does poorly when they appear sensible.

“Gold did very well during the Great Depression when FDR debased the currency,” he said. “It did well again in the money-printing 1970s, but collapsed in response to [Former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker’s austerity. It ultimately made a bottom around 2001 when the excitement about our future budget surpluses peaked.”

In Einhorn’s view, gold isn’t just an antidote for the weak dollar, which has mostly been sliding since 2001. With major governments and central banks worldwide creating money from thin air to try and bolster the global economy, the dollar’s chief paper rivals — the euro and the yen, for example — might turn out to be more in danger of devaluation than the greenback, Einhorn said.

“So I conclude that picking one these currencies is like choosing my favorite dental procedure,” he said. “And I decide holding gold is better than holding cash.”

Officially, the Federal Reserve isn’t supposed to worry about the dollar. But if faith in the U.S. currency suddenly were to plummet and global investors were to balk at buying Treasury securities, the Fed would be expected to step in and raise short-term interest rates — the quickest way to defend a fiat currency’s value.

With U.S. unemployment now above 10%, the Fed clearly doesn’t want to tighten credit soon. And that’s why gold’s continuing rally is a threat to Fed policy: If investors increasingly see gold’s ascendance as a sign of waning confidence in the U.S., it could become self-reinforcing.

Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of bond giant Pimco in Newport Beach, believes there’s little chance of the Fed tightening credit before the second half of 2010. But by keeping short-term rates near zero, El-Erian notes, the Fed is encouraging investors to borrow in the U.S. and buy risky assets around the globe.

El-Erian said he doesn’t believe markets are yet in a new bubble phase, but he is worried. “The risk is that the Fed is pursuing short-term stability at the cost of longer-term instability,” he said.

Gold may yet prove to be poor insurance against instability, but for now it’s outshining many alternatives.

tom petruno LA Times

 

120 th Bank Shuttered, Including Large SF Bank With Chinese Branches

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) – UCBH Holdings Inc.’s United Commercial Bank, a San Francisco-based lender with $11.2 billion in assets, was seized by regulators, becoming the 120th U.S. bank to fail this year.

United Commercial was bought by East West Bancorp of Pasadena, California, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said. United Commercial was the fifth U.S. lender to be seized by regulators yesterday as banks fail at the fastest rate since 1992.

East West paid a premium of 1.1 percent to acquire United Commercial’s $7.5 billion in deposits, and picks up 63 U.S. branches as well as banking operations in China. East West said it is now the second-largest independent bank based in California, and the largest in the U.S. specializing in serving Asian-Americans.

“This is a transformational event,” East West Chief Executive Officer Dominic Ng said in the statement. “The transaction strengthens our presence in key markets throughout the U.S. and Asia.”

Banks are buckling under the weight of souring real estate loans caused by the worst recession in more than 25 years. The Labor Department said the unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent in October, a 26-year high. Banks shut yesterday had total assets of $11.6 billion and deposits of $7.9 billion.

East West and the FDIC will share losses on $7.7 billion of assets. The agency agreed to share losses on other deals, including Ameris Bancorp’s acquisition of United Security Bank of Sparta, Georgia. Based in Moultrie, Georgia, Ameris paid a premium of 0.36 percent to purchase $150 million in deposits. The loss-sharing agreement covers $123 million of assets.

…………

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ayPwsBV1DI3c

 

 

Zhou Seeks to Deflect European, Japanese Calls For Yuan Gain

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNCHUAsSr65Y

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) — Chinese central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said he doesn’t think his country is facing too many foreign demands to let the yuan strengthen, deflecting calls from Europe and Japan to do just that.

“The pressure from the international community to allow yuan appreciation is not that big,” Zhou told Bloomberg News yesterday as he arrived in St. Andrews, Scotland for a meeting of finance chiefs from the Group of 20 nations.

China has kept a lid on the yuan since July 2008, irritating foreign policy makers as exporters such as France’s Sanofi-Aventis SA shoulder the pain of the dollar’s slide this year. Zhou’s comments came as Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda told reporters before the G-20 meeting that the yuan’s exchange rate should be more “flexible.”

A day earlier, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet called for an “orderly and progressive appreciation” of the Chinese currency.

“The eurozone and other G-10 nations wish to see the yuan strengthen, somewhat in contrast to Governor Zhou’s view,” said Geoffrey Yu, currency strategist in London at UBS AG. “We believe the yuan will remain stable.”

G-20 finance ministers and central bankers including Zhou, Trichet and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are gathering in the golf resort for their last meeting of the year. They will conclude talks today by releasing astatement about 4 p.m.

Lopsided Flows

Topping their agenda is devising a framework to help them even out the lopsided flows of trade and investment that some economists blame for helping cause the financial crisis.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a Nov. 3 interview that he expects China will address its “undervalued” currency. Yuan forwards rose this week as signs that exports are improving fueled speculation officials will allow the currency to resume its rise next year.

Twelve-month non-deliverable yuan forwards rose 0.3 percent to 6.6305 per dollar as of 5:30 p.m. in Shanghai, signalling appreciation of 3 percent. The contracts rose 0.4 percent this week.

Declines in the dollar and yuan are causing consternation from Japan to France. Sanofi-Aventis Chief Executive Officer Chris Viehbacher says the weaker dollar is a “problem” for France’s largest drugmaker. Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., maker of the world’s best-selling diabetes drug, Actos, last month cut its revenue outlook because of the stronger yen.

Turning the Screws

“This pressure will grow on China next year,” said Peter Frank, a currency strategist at Societe Generale SA in London. “In a few months, if its economy and exports are still strong, you’re going to see the screws turned on it.”

The G-20 dispute on currencies contrasts with their common resolve to keep implementing stimulus measures. U.K. Chancellor Alistair Darling said steps to shore up demand and repair the financial system should be maintained, echoing comments from Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming. Chen said last month that withdrawing stimulus measures risked provoking another slump.

“The biggest risk to recovery would be to exit before the recovery is real,” Darling said in a speech last night. “We cannot yet be sure the global recovery has sufficient momentum to be sustained and durable.”

Fragile Recovery?

The potential fragility of the rebound was highlighted yesterday by a report showing the U.S. unemployment rate soared more than economists expected in October, climbing to a 26-year high of 10.2 percent. In the euro region, joblessness may rise to 11.7 percent next year, the IMF forecast Oct. 1.

“This is not a self-sustained recovery,” Swedish Finance Anders Borg told Bloomberg Television yesterday in St. Andrews. The G-20 must continue “expansionary policies for a substantial time period.”

Policy makers need to balance the need for ongoing economic support against concerns that ample liquidity could stoke asset bubbles as traders avail of near zero interest rates in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Nouriel Roubini, the economist who forecast the financial crisis in 2006, said Nov. 4 that investors are milking the “mother of all carry trades.”

Gold futures jumped to a record yesterday, topping $1,100 an ounce, theMSCI World Index of stocks has risen more than 60 percent since March and China’s Shanghai Composite Index posted its biggest weekly gain in more than three months yesterday. Still, Zhou said that asset bubbles are not as “serious” a problem in China as some economists say.

Darling, who is hosting the meeting, said Nov. 5 that the G-20 had to develop a way of tackling bubbles, adding to similar calls from the IMF, and from developing nations including Brazil. Egyptian Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali urged the richest nations to tighten rules to prevent future crises.

“I am asking the West to regulate themselves so that we don’t sink with them again,” he said in an interview.

 

NYT- ‘Inside The Gold Frenzy’

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/business/global/08gold.html?_r=2&ref=business

 

Prayer and Fasting Goals For This Week

I was meditating on what to fast and pray for this week, and got the leading to fast for Prisoners. Now coincidently I watched the arch-Zionist and arch Rockfeller mouthpiece interview Dr. Mohammed El Baredi , head of the IAEA and Rose completely lost it attacking El Baredi over Iran and showing his extraordinary bias towards the zionist/racist state of Israel. But after El Baredi, the American Lawyer turned novelist John Grishom was on so I listened to him for a bit, although I am no fan of ‘lawyers’ as hero fictions. Turns out he some pro-Bono work and stated about 1/4 people in prison are innocent, victims of corrupt police, bribes, frames, prosecution misconduct, and corrupt Juries and Judges. So think about that, 1/4 people we put to death in this country are innocent, statistically. That is why I have always opposed the death penalty. Americans, and it is primarily American women have a ‘lock em up and throw away the key’ society and a police society and it is an outgrowth of feminism. So let us first pray the innocent are set free from Prison, that people world wide will want to reform their penal systems. And let us pray for the victims of crimes that they will learn to forgive, and choose to forgive. I will also be praying and fasting for all the orphans and Widows and relatives of this horrific shooting in Fort Hood.