Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Treasury Warns Congress (and Investors): This Financial Creature Could Sink the System

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Treasury Warns Congress (and Investors): This Financial Creature Could Sink the System

Click here to access article by Wolf Richter from Wolf Street.

I'm a bit out of my league when it comes to the endless gambling methods that capitalists have created to accumulate ever more wealth and power. And, I have lingering doubts about Richter's judgement after gleaning from his articles that he seems to be a "goldbug", and I regard gold as an archaic fetish. But, assuming his data are correct, this article made sense to me. Then I checked with "Yves Smith's" blog and found that she had posted this same article at the top of her list today. Because I have a lot of respect for her analysis of financial issues and for her integrity, I decided to post this article.

According to Richter's data and analysis, the banks are once again gambling on loans which they package together and refer to them with the fancy name "Collateralized Loan Obligations" and sell them apparently to gullible investors. This time the loans consist of what he describes as "leveraged loans...issued by junk-rated corporations already burdened by a large load of debt." He has come up with data that suggests the banks have blown an even bigger bubble than what they did with the mortgage scam and thereby threatening another collapse of their capitalist economy.