The ECB has prepared  a report stating procedures and reasons why they should supervise all banks within the region.

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“Saddle them with debt, blow them up with derivatives, and then refinance for the crown jewels”

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“Congressional Democrats and Republicans are working to push back the fiscal cliff set to hit at the beginning of 2013, Bloomberg’s Roxana Tiron reports.

The new plan would have the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts go into effect in March, several months after first planned.

Sources tell Tiron that the extension would include temporarily prolonging the Bush tax cuts, as well as funding the government through spring of 2013.”

Source

Thankfully, small business and U.S. citizens have credit unions and small regional banks to fall back on as the big banks continue to hoard all the liquidity given to them by you the tax payer.

IT IS TIME TO BREAK UP THE BIG BANKS !!!

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“KKR & Co. (KKR), the private-equity firm run by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, has gathered about $4 billion to invest in infrastructure and energy deals as the firm looks beyond corporate takeovers.

KKR completed raising about $1 billion for infrastructure investments and $1.25 billion for natural resources, the New York-based firm said today in a statement. That’s combined with $1.3 billion in separate accounts for infrastructure, and $350 million for natural resources contributed by affiliates of KKR.”

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We’re fucked. These people are imbeciles.

In August 1763, northern Europe experienced a financial crisis with numerous parallels to the 2008 Lehman Brothers episode. The 1763 crisis was sparked by the failure of a major provider of acceptance loans, a form of securitized credit resembling modern asset-backed commercial paper. The central bank at the hub of the crisis, the Bank of Amsterdam, responded by broadening the range of acceptable collateral for its repo transactions. Analysis of archival data shows that this emergency source of liquidity helped to contain the effects of the crisis, by preventing the collapse of at least two other major securitizers. While the underlying themes seem to have changed little in 250 years, the modest scope of the 1763 liquidity intervention, together with the lightly regulated nature of the eighteenth century financial landscape, provide some informative contrasts with events of late 2008.

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(working paper link not working yet)

“BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is considering splitting its business in two, separating its struggling handset manufacturing division from its messaging network, The Sunday Times reported.”

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Feel the gravity of Europe’s woes as France is on deck for debt problems unless the EU decides to create a banking union.

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“Greece  is struggling to cope with a collapse in corporate tax receipts, according to the latest figures from the Greek finance ministry.

The steep fall in corporation tax income – from €737m (£590m) between January and May 2011 to €448m in the same period this year – is likely to weigh heavily on the new coalition government as it prepares for a European summit later this week.

Without the ability to tax company profits, the government will be forced to step up its demands on households for tax income at a time when most families are already suffering cuts in wages and falling living standards.

The figures will also undermine the message from Greek leaders that the new government is capable of arresting the country’s decline and paying the interest on a new tranche of debt funding from Brussels.”

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Here is a recent interview to get a little more understanding of what Germany is thinking ibn terms of the debt crisis and the Euro’s fate.

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“Federal Reserve policymakers still see a “pretty high hurdle” before they would unleash a third round of quantitative easing, or QE3, a top Fed official said on Friday.

Speaking two days after the U.S. central bank decided to take a more modest policy step to help the flailing economic recovery, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said the Fed has done “what it can do.”

“QE3 I think is viewed as still having a pretty high hurdle. We can do that, and I think it would be effective, but we would be taking a lot more risk on our balance sheet and we’d be going further into unchartered territory,” Bullard said on Bloomberg TV.”

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“Brazil and China will sign an agreement in the coming weeks to swap as much as $30 billion in their two currencies, Brazil Finance Minister Guido Mantega said.

The currency swap, worth 60 billion reais or 190 billion yuan, will be the first step in a broader agreement with Russia, India and South Africa to allow members of the so-called BRICS group of emerging markets to pool resources to better weather the global financial crisis, Mantega told reporters yesterday in Rio de Janeiro.

The agreement, which was discussed this week by leaders of the BRICS at a Group of 20 summit in Mexico, marks another step in a deepening trade between the world’s two largest emerging markets. China overtook the U.S. in recent years to become Brazil’s biggest trading partner, though Mantega said yesterday that the $76 billion in bilateral commerce last year, 17 percent of Brazil’s total, is just the beginning.”

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Did anyone expect Merkel to be agreeable ?

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“Brazil, Russia, India and China, the BRIC countries, are back to talking about creating a unified financial system where they can avoid euro and dollar volatility.  This time, a pooling of Central Bank dollars from the countries in case liquidity dried up as the world tracks the West’s crisis momentum.

Regardless of the amount of difficulty involved, the big four emerging markets plus South Africa said earlier this week they were considering setting up a foreign-exchange reserve pool and a currency-swap arrangement in an effort to avoid any credit crisis stemming from the advanced economies.”

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“The Federal Reserve’s monetary easing has reached its limit and it is now time for the government to put fiscal policy to work, according to Robert Heller, former governor of the U.S. central bank.

“Monetary policy, the foot is on the gas pedal, has been there for a long time, three years now,” Heller, who served on the Fed’s board from 1986 to 1989, told CNBC Asia’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. “And I think the Fed has done what it can do. It’s now the time for fiscal policy to do its part.”

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“French President Francois Hollande pushed German leaders to use the European Union’s permanent rescue fund to buy debt from countries such as Italy that have taken steps to revamp their economies.

“Italy has launched an idea that deserved to be looked at,” Hollande told reporters after a summit of Group of 20 leaders in Los Cabos, Mexico. The proposal is for “virtuous countries like Italy,” which have improved their public finances, to “be able to get funding for their debt” at better rates than countries that didn’t make the same efforts.”

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“Bank of England Governor Mervyn King was overruled for the first time since 2009 as he joined a push to expand stimulus that’s gaining momentum amid rising jobless claims and growing risks from Europe’s debt crisis.

The Monetary Policy Committee voted 5-4 to keep its bond- purchase target at 325 billion pounds ($511 billion) this month. That defeated votes by King, Adam Posen and David Miles for a 50 billion-pound expansion, and Paul Fisher’s bid for 25 billion pounds. A separate report showed jobless-benefit claims climbed climbed 8,100 in May from the previous month to 1.6 million, the Office for National Statistics said.”

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Rio Tinto will expand mines under use in Australia and Guinea to meet future China demand.

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Unlike other Etfs this new class seeks total portfolio replication.

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