After Cyprus Bailout Deal, Europe's Problems Worse Than Ever

Cyprus may have been saved from disaster, but don't be fooled: Europe is still a hot mess.

In the middle of the night on the continent, officials managed to hastily stitch together a plan to rescue Cyprus and keep it from leaving the eurozone. The deal came just hours before a European Central Bank deadline that could have left Cyprus cut off from short-term capital, beginning the potential unraveling of the entire currency union. It also came just about one week after another hastily stitched-together bailout deal sparked outrage in Cyprus and around the region and created the need for desperate last-minute talks in the first place.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, European policymakers always do the right thing, but only after exhausting every available alternative. As Quartz's Simone Foxman points out, this is no way to run a currency union, which together makes up the world's second-largest economy. And there are reasons to suspect this won't be the last bungled bailout.

The Cyprus debacle came about in part because the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund weren't on the same page about what to do with Cyprus from the start, the Financial Times reports -- an echo of their disagreements over helping Greece last year. This incident has left their relationship more fraught than ever, and it means we could very well get a repeat of the botched Cyprus bailout soon -- in Slovenia, or Italy, or who knows where else. Read more >>

European Union has confiscated 10% of private Cyprus Bank Accounts

While this kind of 'wealth tax' has been predicted, as we noted yesterday, this stunning move in Cyprus is likely only the beginning of this process (which seems only stoppable by social unrest now). To get a sense of both what just happened and what its implications are, RBS has put toegther an excellent summary of everything you need to know about what the Europeans did, why they did it, what the short- and medium-term market reaction is likely to be, and the big picture of this "toxic policy error."

As RBS summarizes, "the deal to effectively haircut Cypriot deposits is an unprecedented move in the Euro crisis and highlights the limits of solidarity and the raw economics that somebody has to pay. It is also the most dangerous gambit that EMU leaders have made to date." And so we await Europe's open and what to expect as the rest of the PIIGSy Banks get plundered. Read more >>

Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year

On television, in interviews and in meetings with investors, executives of the biggest U.S. banks -- notably JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon -- make the case that size is a competitive advantage. It helps them lower costs and vie for customers on an international scale. Limiting it, they warn, would impair profitability and weaken the country’s position in global finance.

So what if we told you that, by our calculations, the largest U.S. banks aren’t really profitable at all? What if the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from U.S. taxpayers?

Granted, it’s a hard concept to swallow. It’s also crucial to understanding why the big banks present such a threat to the global economy.

Let’s start with a bit of background. Banks have a powerful incentive to get big and unwieldy. The larger they are, the more disastrous their failure would be and the more certain they can be of a government bailout in an emergency. The result is an implicit subsidy: The banks that are potentially the most dangerous can borrow at lower rates, because creditors perceive them as too big to fail. Read more >>

Irish Banks May Need More Than Planned 6,000 Job Cuts, IMF Says

Ireland’s three surviving domestic banks may need to cut more than 6,000 jobs already planned as they struggle to return to profit, the International Monetary Fund said.

Allied Irish Banks Plc, Bank of Ireland Plc and Permanent TSB Group Holdings (IPM) Plc, based in Dublin, are lowering staff numbers after a real estate bubble burst in 2008. The lenders are aiming to reduce the 2011 combined job workforce of 30,000 by a fifth, the Washington-based fund said in a report on the nation’s bailout program yesterday.

Current plans “may still be insufficient,” the IMF said, adding costs for the banks are challenging. Ireland was forced to seek an international rescue in 2010, as its financial system came close to collapse. As the government seeks to exit the bailout program at the end of 2013, it’s pushing European leaders to deliver on pledges to improve the sustainability of its program.

“Given Ireland’s high public and private debt levels and uncertain growth prospects, inadequate or delayed delivery on these commitments pose a significant risk that recently started market access could be curtailed,” the IMF said. That could hinder “an exit from official financing at the end of 2013.” Read more >>

Strike to shut down Greece as EU leaders meet

The fourth such strike of the year is expected to paralyse train and ferry traffic, disrupt flights and shut down public services as unions seek to send a message to the government that they will not tolerate a third straight year of cuts. The coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is holding delicate negotiations with Greece’s so-called ‘troika’ of creditors — the EU, IMF and European Central Bank — to secure the release of loans needed to avoid bankruptcy.

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The government has been told by its creditors to jumpstart flagging economic reforms and lighten the budget by 9.2 billion euros ($12 billion) next year in order to secure a 31.5-billion-euro loan slice next month. The money is part of an overall EU-IMF bailout of 130 billion euros that is tied to Greek reform pledges, including a long-delayed privatisation drive.

Waves of prior austerity measures over the last two years managed to slash Greece’s runaway deficit by over six percent of output, at the cost of cuts to wages, pensions and benefits. One in four Greeks are officially unemployed — with the real number higher still according to unions — and the economy is in a deepening recession. Read more >>

IMF chief economist says crisis will last a decade

The world economy will take at least 10 years to emerge from the financial crisis that began in 2008, the International Monetary Fund's Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard said in an interview published on Wednesday.

Blanchard told Hungarian website Portfolio.hu, in an interview conducted on September 18, that Germany would have to accept higher inflation and a real strengthening of its purchasing power as part of the solution to Europe's problems.

But even though the focus was on Europe's troubles now, he said, the United States also had a fiscal problem which it had to resolve. "It's not yet a lost decade... But it will surely take at least a decade from the beginning of the crisis for the world economy to get back to decent shape," Blanchard said. Read more >>

Greece’s Rating Outlook Lowered By S&P

Greece’s credit rating may be cut again by Standard & Poor’s on concern the debt-burdened nation will need more support from European Union lenders.

The outlook on Greece’s CCC rating, already eight levels below investment grade, was revised to negative from stable, S&P said in a statement yesterday. The change reflects the risk of a downgrade if Greece is unable to obtain its next disbursement of bailout loans from the EU and International Monetary Fund rescue package, the rating company said.

Representatives from the so-called troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF return to Athens early next month to review Greece’s economic program, which will determine whether the nation will receive further funds from rescue packages, amounting to 240 billion euros ($297 billion), needed to remain in the 17-nation euro area.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has held meetings with the leaders of the two parties supporting his coalition government since it was formed following elections on June 17 to hash out a 11.5 billion-euro package of budget cuts demanded by the creditors for the next two years. Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said yesterday the government is still working on identifying almost a third of the cuts. Read more >>

The man who changed Iceland - the message for Greece

The man who forced the government of Iceland to resign and kicked out the IMF representatives from his country, Hordur Torfarson, is now teaching meta-modern democracy throughout Europe.The rest of the world would benefit from following the example set by Iceland: Arresting the corrupt bankers who are responsible for the current economic turmoil.

Full employment contributes above all to achieving human dignity."
''It's nice to be important ,but is more important to be nice.''

13,000 Greeks Homeless in Athens

Press TV
A new report says around 13,000 Greek people are homeless in the capital Athens and the number of the poor in the recession-hit country is on the rise.

The report by the charity organization, Praksis, which was published on Thursday says in the Greek capital of over four million, around 11,500 Greeks are living in abandoned buildings, while 1500 others live on the streets.

20,000 March at Frankfurt Occupy Protest Rally

At least 20,000 people held a major rally of the local Occupy movement in Frankfurt on Saturday to decry austerity measures affecting much of Europe, the dominance of banks, and what they call untamed capitalism. The protesters peacefully filled the city center of continental Europe's biggest financial hub on a warm and pleasant afternoon, said Frankfurt police spokesman Ruediger Regis. 

He said 20,000 people were there, while organizers put the number at 25,000. The protest group, named Blockupy, has called for blocking access to the European Central Bank, which is located in Frankfurt's business district.

Organizer spokesman Roland Seuss the protest is "against the Europe-wide austerity dictate by the (creditor) troika of ECB, the EU Commission and the International Monetary Fund." Last year, thousands in Germany took to the streets in rallies during the worldwide Occupy movement. But as Germany's economy is robust and unemployment at a record-low, those protests have mostly fizzled out. More...

Study: China Corporate Debt At “Alarming levels”

A new study shows that Chinese companies are operating with "alarming levels" of corporate debt that would be hard to repay if the country’s economic growth slows down. "The high level of corporate debt deserves our attention," vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a top state think-tank, Li Yang said on Thursday, Xinhua reported.

After a one-year study on China's government debt, corporate debt and individual borrowing, a research team led by Yang will publish their research results next month and will also submit the results to the International Monetary Fund. Yang warned that China's leverage ratio is increasing, and the pace at which the country’s debt is rising will continue unabated if the current global financial crisis persists.

According to the study findings, China's debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 168.9 percent, which is lower than the global average of more than 200 percent. However, the debt-to-asset ratio of Chinese enterprises has reached 105.4 percent, ranking the highest among 20 countries which were studied by the CASS. More...

We’re All Greeks Now

European Central Bank (Photo credit: kumbarov)

One of the joys of being American is that every new day is a clean slate—no history, no memories, no experiences, a complete blank. This may help explain why our national conversations serve their intended purposes while being entirely content-free. Newsflash to self-described liberal economists: austerity works! If your goal is loot nations while putting their populations into permanent debt servitude, austerity is a real winner. 

The IMF (International Monetary Fund) has been implementing “structural adjustment” programs, AKA austerity, for decades. It has usually “worked” for their bank clients in the sense that wealth extraction from victim nations to international banks took place. And given that victim nations tended to have both culpable leaders and “developing” nation status, the economic outcomes were rarely news in New York or Washington. Needless to say, outcomes were better for bankers than for their structurally adjusted victims.

When the ECB (European Central Bank) began discussing structural adjustment policies for Greece in 2009 there was little pretense that they would benefit the Greeks. European banks had loaded themselves to the gills with peripheral sovereign debt, in some measure to game the regulatory capital requirements in much the same way that Wall Street banks did with “AAA” rated garbage in the lead-up to the most recent financial disaster. More...

The Rich Are Getting Richer And Everyone Else is Going Deeper Into Debt

Growing income inequality has led to ballooning debt loads for the bottom 95% of Americans.

 The bottom 95% of Americans have seen debt levels balloon compared to their earnings over the past 20 years or so, as falling incomes made them more dependent on credit to maintain their lifestyles. In 1983, the bottom 95% had 62 cents of debt for every dollar they earned, according to research by two International Monetary Fund economists. But by 2007, the ratio had soared to $1.48 of debt for every $1 in earnings.

The bottom 95% had incomes of roughly $160,000 or less in 2007, including capital gains. And then there's the top 5%. Their debt-to-income level actually fell during the same period, from 76 cents of debt for every dollar earned in 1983, to just 64 cents in 2007. And experts say the picture hasn't changed much since then. 

The debt divide is a result of the growing income gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else. The top 5% saw their share of total income rise to 34% in 2007, up from 22% in 1983. This excludes capital gains, which pump up the income of the rich even more since they are more likely to invest. More...

Interest among central banks to own Gold increases

IMF Oct gold sales down 40% to 628,000 ounces
commodityonline.com
International Monetary Fund said its gold sale in October dropped 40 percent to 628,000 ounces compared with September.

In a statement, IMF said it has cut down the sales under its pre announced open-market bullion sales plan as interest among central banks to own the metal increased as a hedge against economic uncertainty.

The IMF last year announced planned to sell 403.3 tonnes of gold to boost its lending resources. cumulative on-market sales of IMF gold to the end of October was 4.8 million ounces (148.6 tonnes).

Gold previously sold directly to central banks were 222 tonnes to India, 200 tonnes to Mauritius, 10 tonnes to Sri Lanka and 10 tonnes to Bangladesh.

October's gold sales were sharply below the 1.04 million ounces sold in September, when nearly a third of the sale was going to Bangladesh.

Many analysts expect world central banks as a group could become net buyers this year despite IMF's gold sales, reversing a trend in the last several decades.

Gold prices hit an all-time high of $1,424.10 early this month before retreating. The rally was driven in part by expectations that the Federal Reserve would buy back U.S. Treasuries to stimulate economic growth.

However, gold's rally appeared to stall despite concerns about the fiscal health of euro zone economies after a bailout on debt-stricken Ireland and rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

US declares financial war on world

rt.com/politics
There is no possibility of agreement at the upcoming G20 summit because the U.S. is declaring financial war on other countries, believes American economist Michael Hudson.

The U.S. has been pushing China to revalue its currency – at a time when Washington has been pumping billions of dollars into its economy – a move viewed by other countries as an attempt to deliberately weaken the greenback.

The issue of exchange rates is expected to be one of the toughest discussion points at the G20 summit in South Korea later this week.

Michael Hudson, a renowned economist and Wall Street financial analyst and advisor, says the meeting in Seoul will not bring an end to global currency wars.

“The U.S. is going to China and saying ‘we want you to commit economic suicide just like Japan did. We want you to follow the same way: we want you to re-value your currency, we want you to squeeze your companies, we want you to go bankrupt so we can make our profit at your expense,” says Hudson.

“We want you the Chinese to allow our banks to gamble on your currency and make a huge gain on foreign exchange speculation so that our banks can get out of the problem that we have got them into. Will you please help us by going bankrupt for our benefit? Well, you can imagine what the Chinese are saying – they are laughing,” Hudson adds.

The American plan to devalue the dollar would flood the global economy with money that would be used to buy out everything that values at local markets, he believes.

“Essentially, you’ll have America’s financial system and the banks acting as an army to raid foreign currencies.”

The US will traditionally break any of its promises to other countries because ‘if there are no penalties – there is no agreement’, which has been the way of American diplomacy for the last 50 years, says the economist.

“Deals are for other people to follow, not the U.S. It puts itself over and above the agreements.”

China has been financing the American budget deficit with $US 2.5 trillion while the U.S. has been spending it on military, building bases around the world. It is taking aggressive action toward the creditor, interfering in its waters, believes Hudson.

He says China’s reaction is, “You want us to pay for your military budget? You threaten us to make us do what you want us to do? You must be crazy!”

President Barack Obama does not have any leverage to induce China to do the desired. The favor he will be demanding from G20 members literally means “please accept our paper dollars even though we have no way of paying for it and even though we can never pay off these debts, please accept them and let us buy out your real estate and companies with dollars that will never be repaid,” says Hudson.

At the same time the U.S. refuses to do what its creation, the IMF, requires from all other countries in case of budget deficit: raise interest rates and privatize industries.

“China is treating the U.S. dollar reserves it has like a hot potato,” he says. “They want to do two things: first of all they want to reciprocate and buy the U.S. companies – just as the U.S. wanted to buy China. The U.S. says ‘we will not let you buy filling stations here or refineries’. You can’t buy in America. We can buy in you, you can’t buy in America.”

Naturally, America sees China as a potential enemy and that is why it is on top of the Pentagon’s list of strategic enemies. So China is not apt to finance the American war machine anymore.

“The U.S. debt is other people’s asset.”

“There is no way in the world that America can ever pay the foreign government debt that it owes,” the economist believes. The BRIC countries agreed at the summit in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg, in 2009, to gradually reduce dollar turnover to avoid collecting more of America’s debt that will never be paid.

“The affective quantitative easing by the Fed is to turn the dollar into a pariah currency that everybody is trying to avoid because nobody wants them, you cannot use them to invest in the U.S. because of the nationalism here, other countries do not want dollars – what is the point in accepting more dollars?” questions Hudson.

He believes that the time of the dollar as the reserve currency is over and the question now is how it will end – in a polite slow gradual manner or otherwise.

Greek GOVT threatens to sieze trucks from strikers: "Come and get it" they say

Image by Sotiris Farmakidis via Flickr

The Greek government has used a rare emergency order to force lorry drivers back to work after a three-day strike. The drivers have until later on Thursday to return to the roads or face arrest and the loss of their licenses.

Most petrol stations in Athens are out of fuel and shops and factories are running low on supplies. The drivers oppose government plans to open the industry to more competition as part of austerity measures agreed with the IMF and the EU.

The reform is a key part of the multi-billion dollar EU-IMF package intended to pull Greece out of its debt crisis. Members of the drivers' union said they would not back down and dared the government to seize their lorries.

"Leonidas with his 300 warriors said 'Come and get it'. We say the same: come and get it," said one of the organisers of the strike, Spyros Kapetanios.

Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said the drivers would not be allowed to hold "Greek society hostage". More...

Russia Buys 22 Tons Of Gold In May

Image via Wikipedia

ZeroHedge

Ten days ago we reported the most recent data on gold reserve holdings as presented by the World Gold Council, where we pointed out that Russia had purchased 27.6 tons of gold in the most recent reporting period, bringing its total to 668.6 tons.

It appears Russia is only getting started. According to the latest IMF data, in the period between April and May, Russia added another 22.5 tons, bringing its May total to a fresh record of 703.1 tons. As BusinessWeek reports, Russia "has added gold every month since at least February." At the same time, The International Monetary Fund’s gold holdings fell by 15.25 metric tons (490,286 ounces).

"Reserves of gold at the IMF were 2,951.58 tons at the end of May compared with 2,966.83 tons at the end of April, data on the IMF’s website show." Good thing the world's bailout cop is doing all it can to keep gold prices low by transacting in the open market instead of in prenegotiated transaction. Again, per BusinessWeek, this “is an indication that they will continue to sell the remaining 137.5 tons on-market as opposed to via off-market transactions with other central banks,” said Daniel Major, an analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London.

“Indeed the decline in gold sales from European central banks and purchases from India, Russia and China in recent years demonstrates gold’s growing popularity with central banks.” Well, all Central Banks except those that are printer happy of course, and are now loaded to the gills with toxic debt that will continue to impair their currencies until the bitter Keynesian end.

Central banks have been adding to reserves and gold-backed exchange-traded fund assets have advanced to a record as investors sought an alternative to currencies and a protection of wealth from Europe’s debt crisis. Gold traded at $1,243.45 an ounce at 4:16 p.m. in London and reached a record $1,265.30 on June 21.

While the paradoxical IMF's agenda is all too clear (sell gold, get cash, but help the CB's by keeping price low), that of Russia is even clearer- never mind all time record gold prices. Buy. In that, Putin's country is a spitting image of the GLD, which has added almost a hundred tons of gold in recent weeks, price considerations be damned.

Violent riots in Athens; police clash with masked youths

Dozens of masked youths have been clashing with police at a union protest in Athens during a general strike against the cash-strapped government's planned pension and labor reforms. Riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse troublemakers who threw chunks of marble smashed off a metro station entrance and set rubbish bins on fire. Bus and ferry services have been disrupted, leaving some tourists stranded, in protests against planned pension and labour reforms. The industrial action is another in a series of mass-demonstrations against a swathe of severe austerity measures.

guardian.co.uk
Greek anger over austerity measures spills on to Athens streets
Popular anger over economic austerity measures in Greece exploded on to the streets as striking workers brought the debt-stricken country to a halt and militant seamen stopped holidaymakers from boarding island ferries.

The stand-off, which saw thousands of bewildered tourists being stranded at the port of Piraeus, follows mounting tension between unions and George Papandreou's socialist government. In an electric atmosphere, about 20,000 protesters marched through the capital to denounce the IMF-sponsored fiscal programme Papandreou has vowed to enact in exchange for €110bn (£89bn) of emergency loans, the biggest bailout in history. Athens' debt exceeds €310bn, by far the largest in the European Union.

"Capitalists, not workers, should pay for the crisis," the demonstrators chanted as riot police clashed with a minority of self-styled anarchists also attending the rally. "IMF – get out of Greece."

The protests, which despite a lower than usual turnout attributed by unionists to the summer heat, came as parliament prepared to debate legislation outlining radical reforms to the pension system. The shake-up, which also overhauls labour laws long blamed for the country's lack of competitiveness, will cut pensions, raise the retirement age and enable companies to dismiss employees with greater ease.

Lavish pensions, more than anything else, are thought to have contributed to the drain on public finances. Greek pensioners on average retire on 96% of the salary earned while they were employed, more than twice that enjoyed by Germans now bankrolling the rescue package, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). "Greece," said Miranda Xafa, a former director at the IMF, "is a classic case of entitlements granted by short-sighted governments that didn't bother to secure financing sources."

Without radical redress, experts believe the country's pension system will collapse in under 15 years. But the reforms, which follow drastic cuts to public sector wages, tax rises and an increase in VAT from 19 to 23%, have also ignited controversy and the fiercest opposition yet. Greeks contend the legislation will dismantle the social welfare system.

Anger is such that senior members of the ruling Pasok party have signalled that they may reject the legislation when it is put to vote in Athens' parliament next week. Papandreou, who was forced to expel three MPs when they refused to endorse the IMF-EU austerity measures, now commands 157 seats out of 300 in the house.

Greeks try to kill Police Minister; kill aid instead

ATHENS (Reuters) The Greek cabinet minister in charge of the police force escaped unhurt on Thursday after a bomb in a booby-trapped package exploded next to his office, killing one of his closest aides, officials said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, on the seventh floor of the ministry that caused serious damage to the office of Civil Protection Minister Mihalis Chrysohoidis.

"I lost a valuable and dear colleague," Chrysohoidis, visibly moved, told reporters outside the ministry. He had been in the building at the time of the explosion at 8.15 p.m.

The victim, George Vassilakis, adjutant to the minister, was father to two children.

"It was a wrapped package that exploded in the aide's hands after he apparently picked it up and tried to open it," police spokesman Thanassis Kokkalakis told Reuters. "We heard a big bang, there was a lot of smoke and damage."

There was no warning and no reports of other injuries.

Greece has been rocked by a series of bomb attacks claimed by leftist militants since its worst riots in decades in 2008. Earlier this year, Greece arrested six suspected members of the country's most militant group, Revolutionary Struggle.

When he took office in 2009, Chrysohoidis said that he would crack down on militants. In a previous spell in the job in 2002, he dismantled November 17, Greece's most lethal guerrilla group.

Greece is also facing a deep economic crisis and last month won a 110 billion euro ($147.6 billion) bailout package from the European Union and the IMF.

Three people died in a petrol bomb attack on a Greek bank during an anti-austerity demonstration in May. In March, a 15-year old boy was killed and his mother and sister injured after a bomb exploded outside a building in central Athens.

130 Point Move In Dow In 15 Minutes On No Volume

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Zerohedge comment of the day
by John McCloy
What do you do when those who are meant to protect you simply no longer care? Who is left to make money from? Only themselves. There are not many short squeezes left in their pocket. Do you think retail wants any part of this? What is the point of marking up prices when there is nobody to sell to but one another?

They shot themselves in the foot with the flash crash. It was a blatant maneuver as we all know to move influence political legislation. There is a reason we have supposedly autonomous branches. When Central bankers are using the markets to influence legislation we have a coup d'etat ladies in gentleman. This is nothing short of a financial coup perpetrated against the American public.

• Pres. Obama announced Volcker Rule: Market shakedown and the newstream begins that Prop trading cannot be banned.
• Llyod Blankfein goes on the stand: Market collapse into the close to assure he is not badgered.
• Financial Regulation begins to make headway as Senators finally attempt to bring amendments to the floor and the day a Full Fed Audit is considered: The markets begin crashing and only reverse when Sanders is taken into a backroom. A deal is made to turn this into a false bill because they knew Senators could not vote against a Fed audit so they diluted it to solve the problem.
• Greece & PIGS bondholders need cash as liquidity seizes, the Euro begins the walk to the river Styx and LIBOR skies: President Obama gets on the phone to Merkel to coerce a bailout (Look how well it worked for us), Bernanke begins making the rounds, and the IMF courageously volunteers 57 Billion in American taxpayer money for a bailout to buy FUCKING BONDS so that banks again take no haircut in restructuring.
• Derivatives spin off/naked derivatives & Mccantwell/McCain (Glass-Steagall) are attempting to come to a vote: Markets are crashed, phone calls are made, Rahm & The President make phone calls to take the pressure off and a vote to cloture is rushed. The vote fails the first time..markets crash THE NEXT DAY they bring the vote to the floor again to prevent the amendments from being voted on and it passes. Banks sell off into the close to pretend they do not like the bill.

In the meantime Oil continues to hemorrhage in the Gulf, unemployment claims continue to rise, 99er's begin to fall off benefits, Credit cards & Foreclosures continue to climb, Mark to Market vanishes into the land of the Unicorns,Food stamps reach record levels (Modern day Soup Lines), Manufacturing jobs contract and are never to be seen again, Incumbents are being tossed, Savers see a continuous wealth transfer, small business ceases to exists, home prices continue to fall, QE ends, Fannie & Freddie is ignored and costing billions a month and our money supply has gone parabolic. How all this data equates to record bank bonuses, perfect trading quarters for all of the big banks, skying gold and a Dow at 10,000? This is 2010 America in name only. Close to 1500 people now have created a shared fascist government.