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.