Mike the Usurper wrote:

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

I seem to remember saying something like this was going to happen a while back. If people thought the current recession hurt, wait until this gets stacked on.

This should be news to no one. It's been on the radar since at least 2000 when Iraq switched their oil pricing to the Euro. I remember the tremors caused by that. Speculation over what would happen if all of OPEC switched. Iran announced its oil bourse plan in 2004. By 2006 more than half of their oil export income was received in Euros.

This latest development is part of a logical progression.

RE: The demise of the dollar - Business News, Business - The Independent

Decius wrote:

This is not due to a lack of money available to lend, Ms. Schwartz says, but to a lack of faith in the ability of borrowers to repay their debts. "The Fed," she argues, "has gone about as if the problem is a shortage of liquidity. That is not the basic problem. The basic problem for the markets is that [uncertainty] that the balance sheets of financial firms are credible."

...

"They're toxic because you cannot sell them, you don't know what they're worth, your balance sheet is not credible and the whole market freezes up. We don't know whom to lend to because we don't know who is sound. So if you could get rid of them, that would be an improvement." The only way to "get rid of them" is to sell them, which is why Ms. Schwartz thought that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's original proposal to buy these assets from the banks was "a step in the right direction."

The problem with that idea was, and is, how to price "toxic" assets that nobody wants. And lurking beneath that problem is another, stickier problem: If they are priced at current market levels, selling them would be a recipe for instant insolvency at many institutions. The fears that are locking up the credit markets would be realized, and a number of banks would probably fail.

Ms. Schwartz won't say so, but this is the dirty little secret that led Secretary Paulson to shift from buying bank assets to recapitalizing them directly, as the Treasury did this week. But in doing so, he's shifted from trying to save the banking system to trying to save banks. These are not, Ms. Schwartz argues, the same thing. In fact, by keeping otherwise insolvent banks afloat, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have actually prolonged the crisis. "They should not be recapitalizing firms that should be shut down."

Paulson's shift in strategy received a lot of praise. Here is Ritholtz arguing for the shift pre-shift. But, apparently there are critics out there.

You should be reading economicpolicyjournal.com.

He was on this from day one.

RE: The Weekend Interview - WSJ.com

Dagmar wrote:
So, I'm already looking into transferring a significant amount of my assets into gold. Anyone got any suggestions/pointers?

Something to keep in mind.

Private Gold Ownership

People who scoff at the suggestion that the government might restrict private gold ownership should remember that many other countries have restrictions on (or absolute prohibitions against) private gold ownership. They should also remember that, in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt dealt with a monetary and banking crisis by confiscating all privately owned gold; paying for the gold at $20.67 per ounce; immediately devaluing the dollar by 40 percent; and setting the price of gold at $35.00 per ounce. At a single stroke, Roosevelt increased the government's gold assets, stabilized the monetary system and increased wholesale prices by more than 33 percent. However, he also inflicted losses of 40 percent on gold owners and stripped them of the gold that they saved to insure their financial futures.

RE: Wake up to the dangers of a deepening crisis

"We wanted to stake a claim in the fast-growing security space, and the best way to do that is to acquire a leader," Jonathan Rende, vice presidents of products at Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP, said today on a conference call.

...

I liked the name SPI Dynamics a lot better. So, how's it feel to (soon) work for HP Billy? :)

HP joins security convergence trend with SPI Dynamics buy

Natural-foods grocer Whole Foods Markets Inc. on Wednesday said that it agreed to acquire smaller rival Wild Oats Markets Inc. for about $565 million, beefing up its store base as it grapples with competition from larger conventional supermarkets.

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Cool. Maybe they can get their supply chain scale of economy thing kicking and get some of the outrageous prices down. Love my Wild Oats but definately don't shop there exclusively because it is so expensive.