Saturday, May 21, 2011

A Banking Model That Works In The Badlands

North Dakota Badlands

Guest post by Wil Martindale of Let Them Fail

What's The Big Deal About State Banks? North Dakota Has The Answers

The only State in the Union chartered to be the primary depositor and guarantor of the deposits of its own bank is North Dakota. All state funds are deposited into this bank (by law) and its deposit base becomes the capital reserve from which to create credit.

Our system of hopelessly insolvent mega banks across the nation has leveraged, gambled and lost it all in the insane derivatives casino. Despite more than six months of massive taxpayer bailouts, credit markets are still frozen, the economy continues to collapse and 2.3 million more Americans have lost their jobs since Obama took office.

But North Dakota’s GNP has grown 56%, personal income has grown 43%, and wages have grown 34%. The state not only has no funding issues, but this year it actually has a budget surplus of $1.2 billion, the largest it has ever had.

Why? Because of sound fiduciary oversight and proper management.

You see, the Bank of North Dakota does not employ 20,000 people at an average wage of $90,000 per year. Employees do not receive $60,000 annual bonuses and executives do not take home $40,000,000 in compensation, bonuses and options. The State Bank of North Dakota does not wager 1000 times it’s deposit base (as Goldman Sachs does with a credit exposure risk of 1056% to capital ratio) on the speculative derivatives casino in order to grossly reward the risk that brought down the world’s economies.

In point of fact:

The Bank of North Dakota (BND) was established by the state legislature in 1919 specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad Barons. By law, the State deposits all its funds in the bank, which pays a competitive interest rate to the State treasurer. The State, rather than the FDIC, guarantees the bank’s deposits, which are re-invested back into the State in the form of loans. The bank’s return on equity is about 25%, and it pays a hefty dividend to the State, which is expected to exceed $60 million this year. In the last decade, the BND has turned back a third of a billion dollars to the State’s general fund, offsetting taxes. The former president of the BND is now the State’s governor.

The BND avoids rivalry with private banks by partnering with them. Most private sector lending is originated by a local bank. The BND then comes in to participate in the loan, share risk, and buy down the interest rate. The BND provides a secondary market for real estate loans, which it buys from local banks. Its residential loan portfolio is now $500 billion to $600 billion. Guarantees are also provided for entrepreneurial startups, and the BND has ample money to lend to students (over 184,000 outstanding loans). It purchases municipal bonds from public institutions, and it backs loans at 1% interest. The BND also has a well-funded disaster loan program, which helps explain how Fargo, when struck by a disastrous flood recently, managed to avoid the devastation suffered by New Orleans in hurricane Katrina.

North Dakota has also managed to avoid the credit freeze, through the simple expedient of creating its own credit. It has led the nation in establishing state economic sovereignty.

That is the key — establishing economic sovereignty at the level of the States -that is the last vestige of hope for this country. TAKE ACTION in your state to be part of the solution.

It truly must be obvious to anyone in America able to read and think for themselves that this federal government, bought and paid for by the economic Imperialists, with its ranks completely infiltrated by former Wall Street executives, simply DOES NOT HAVE the best interests of the average taxpayer in mind.

Not when we are being sucked dry by the continuing bailouts, which do nothing but place the middle class backbone of this country into a debtor’s prison of taxation, reduced social services, pay cuts, lost jobs, tighter credit, and with no end in sight to the greed and excess of the profit-obsessed, predatory money changers they serve.

This is why it’s so important to TAKE ACTION now. Let the rest of the world deal with the White House. Trust me, they will. We the People must collectively take action at the level of the States, where politicians are still accessible and many still remember what it’s like to be true public servants.

If the pressure comes from the American taxpayer at the level of the States and the international pressure comes from the developed nation’s foreign governments, together, the real, hard - working people of the world can correct the problems on Capitol Hill, where neither body alone could.

TAKE ACTION in your state to be part of the solution now.

All photos are North Dakota Badlands

The End Of The Eurozone? - Stiglitz At European Zeitgeist 2011: "We Are Out Of Money, But We Can Pay You In Fish"

Excellent discussion. Pretty humorous responses, with anecdotes from Iceland's response to the crisis.

  • "We are out of money, but we can pay you in fish."
  • "The only people I saw in Iceland who were concerned about the banking crisis were foreign bankers holed up in the local Hilton."

David Stockman Says: 'Shut The Government Down,' Geithner Says New Financial Crisis Coming,Vikram Pandit Gets Huge Pay Package,Mailman Needs A Bailout

Hedge Farm! The Doomsday Food Price Scenario Turning Hedgies into Survivalists

On the rare occasion that New Yorkers talk about farming, it's usually something along the lines of what sort of organic kale to plant in the vanity garden at the second house in the Adirondacks. But on a recent afternoon, The Observer had a conversation of a different sort about agricultural pursuits with a hedge fund manager he'd met at one of the many dark-paneled private clubs in midtown a few weeks prior. "A friend of mine is actually the largest owner of agricultural land in Uruguay," said the hedge fund manager. "He's a year older than I am. We're somewhere [around] the 15th-largest farmers in America right now."

"We," as in, his hedge fund.

It may seem a little odd that in 2011 anyone's thinking of putting money into assets that would have seemed attractive in 1911, but there's something in the air-namely, fear. The hedge fund manager and others like him envision a doomsday scenario catalyzed by a weak dollar, higher-than-you-think inflation and an uncertain political climate here and abroad.

The pattern began to emerge sometime in 2008. "The Hedge Fund Manager Who Bought a Farm," read the headline on one February 2008 Times of London piece detailing a British hedge fund manager's attempt to play off the rising prices of grains in order to usurp local farmland. A Financial Times piece two months later began: "Hedge funds and investment banks are swapping their Gucci for gumboots." It detailed BlackRock's then-relatively new $420 million Agriculture Fund, which had already swept up 2,800 acres of land.

[More from The Apocolype Issue: Hipster Prophet Preaches Rapture and The Great Adderall Shortage of 2011!]

Even Michael Burry, the now-defunct Scion Capital founder and star protagonist of Michael Lewis' The Big Short-who bet against the housing bubble in 2008 with credit default swaps to enormous profit-gave a rare interview on Bloomberg TV last year, explaining that he's thrown his hat into "productive agriculture land with water on site" as it's going to be "very valuable in the future." (Like most of those asked to comment for this story to The Observer, Burry declined to discuss his investments in farmland.)

Three years later, the purchase of farmland both in America and abroad by outside investors has increased-so much so that in February, Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, warned against the violent possibilities of a farmland bubble, telling the Senate Agriculture Committee that "distortions in financial markets" will catch the U.S. by surprise again. He would know, because he's seeing it in his backyard: Kansas and Nebraska reported farmland prices 20 percent above the previous year's levels and are on pace to double values in four years. A study commissioned by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and released in January estimated the amount of private capital currently committed to farmland and agricultural infrastructure at $14 billion. It also estimated that future investments will "dwarf" what's currently being thrown into land, by two to three times. Further down, the study makes a conservative projection that the amount of capital potentially entering the sector over the next decade will fly past $150 billion.

When asked if this is an end of the world scenario, the hedge-fund manager replied, “It really is. I tell my fiancée this from time to time, and I’ve stopped telling her this, because it’s not the most pleasant thought.’

This is happening in part because investors see their play as a hedge against hyperinflation. While the rest of the world uses the current calculation of the Consumer Price Index as a proxy for the cost of goods, some farmland investors are using a different equation, one from 1980. These investors assert inflation should be calculated the way it was before the Boskin Commission's 1996 reworking of the CPI formula-in which case, it would be much, much higher.

"The CPI supposedly today is something like 1.5 percent," says the hedge fund manager. "We think the actual rate of inflation is something closer to 6 or 7 percent on an annual basis. It's also not about what it's been over the last 10 years; it's about what it's going to be over the next 10 years."

PAGE 2 >>> http://www.observer.com/hedge-funds-running-farms-05172011?page=1

The Strauss-Kahn Affair: It’s Now Make or Break Time for the IMF

In the wake of the Strauss-Kahn affair, real economic events are fast conspiring to reshape the global financial playing field. What the big player governments on the IMF Executive Board want- and want fast, is action to stave off international financial meltdown. They also need continuing multi-billion dollar action to prevent a return to near-bankruptcy for their big name high-street banks.

Following pre-trial hearings, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was bundled out of the IMF and into a heavily guarded residence surveyed by cameras in every room. For plot theory lovers, these cameras can be contrasted with the alleged claimed cameras in the corridor of the Manhattan Sofitel hotel, able to capture and record images of the panicked and distressed 32-year-old Guniean hotel room cleaner fleeing from the room where Strauss-Kahn had sexually assaulted her, before himself fleeing under the same cameras.

TIME TO FACE THE MUSIC: In the wake of the DSK Affair, the IMF are facing some big strategic decisions.

By 19 May, these hotel cameras simply did not exist, and in the corridor of the room in question had never existed. But never mind! Plenty of other evidence was under preparation or already in the possession of prosecutors and their investigators. Much more serious and real charges had existed against Strauss-Kahn, whose $75,000-a-year entertainment and personal expenses allowance at the IMF rather comfortably covers any paid sex he might have wanted.

Strauss-Kahn’s nice talk for pseudo-socialists about greater accountability and more controls on the global finance industry most surely sounded a little too much like Elliot Spitzer talking, circa 2007, about how he was going to clean up Wall Street. By early 2008 Spitzer fell in a sex scandal where the bit players were staffed from the same high price prostitution rackets Spitzer had been investigating as New York Attorney General. More important, Strauss-Kahn was likely failing in the real key mission of the IMF, but his sudden disappearance creates huge risks of the game plan becoming known.

SUPPRESS GOLD AND SAVE THE SYSTEM

The IMF and its close-related international financial partner institution, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) operate with the sort of ironclad secrecy only dreamed of by the bankrupted, downsized and repackaged (that is restructured) Wall Street financial players which Spitzer brushed too hard against.

IMF financial support and bailout operations in 2010 reached about $ 91 billion, compared with about $ 1 billion in 2006. Proposals agreed by the G20 and by the IMF Executive Board since April 2009 target an increase of its total resources by as much as $ 750 billion within one or two years.

No DSK = no EURO? Speculation persists in the wake of DSK’s resignation.

Doing this is the key challenge for the IMF and whatever director it has. Vastly increasing the IMF’s firefighting role in bailing out governments unable to borrow on global capital markets, like Greece at present, and re-financing weakened private banks by financing national governments which in turn bail out banks in their national territories, is however and in no way sure and certain. The Strauss-Kahn crisis can or might be the opening salvo in an IMF crisis for reasons which are not so complex.

The processes or mechanisms the IMF can draw on to vastly expand its bailouts and financing are few and easy to define. They all feature SDRs on one hand, and gold sales and swaps, on the other. Both are full of risks for the global financial system and economy at this highly weakened moment.

The IMF can encourage national central banks to sell their gold nearly always in secret, or the IMF can print and swap SDRs against gold from the central bank of a country needing emergency help and then secretly sell this gold, often through the BIS. Other financial magic operated by the IMF, with or without the BIS extends into realms as surprising, to some, as real estate and international trade financing on a strictly-for-profit basis. Even less publicized, and just as profitably it likely operates in tandem with the ultra-secret BIS- for recycling hot capital from low income countries and tax haven island states, in a constant IMF self-financing process.

Despite all this, the bottom line since the global financial crisis went critical in December 2008 is these activities are vastly smaller than the size of the problem: national debt financing and saving bankrupt private banks.

SDRs are the special trump card of the IMF because this institution with a highly special and only partly defined role relative to both governments and the global financial system has one rare privilege it shares with governments: printing money, that is SDRs. Inside its 24-member Executive Board the trading of these SDRs is permanent – and usually secret. The plan to establish these “special drawing rights”, the SDRs, was devised on September 29, 1967 by the Governors of the IMF, only a few weeks before the collapse of the London gold pool. At the time it was clear to many observers the intention was to put SDR’s into play in time to overlap the pool’s closure, for the constant key mission of the IMF: protect the value of world currencies, starting with the dollar by preventing gold prices growing further, if they are rising, and pushing them further down, if they are falling.

PREVENTING MELTDOWN

This dawn of SDRs may be little known to most, but for bullion traders and central bankers is a key period and a sombre flashback – in miniature – to the gold and money crises of today. By 1965 the London gold pool was consistently supplying more gold to cap prices than it was able to buy back. The end for the pool started with the devaluation of the UK pound sterling in November 1967, yet again spurring gold purchases. By early December, the gold pool was selling around 20 times its usual amount of gold, and with its Zurich partners was forced to cease forward sales of gold, further intensifying gold demand. Over a few weeks, the pool had laid out more than 1000 tons, and the newly invented SDRs had done little or nothing to stem the panic.

This 1000-ton figure, we can note is close to 40 percent of world total gold mine output in 2010.

In those days, 1000 tons of gold was worth around $1 billion. Today it would fetch about $ 50 billion underlining the general failure of the IMF’s key mission to “protect currencies”, of course spurring ever more desperate attempts to finally succeed. Since the action engaged by the IMF to raise its financing capabilities and maintain confidence in world moneys is always secret the stage of negotiations reached by Strauss-Kahn before his rapid fall is hard to know. To be sure, the subject attracts almost as much comment as what happened at the Manhattan Sofitel hotel, last weekend, but global markets do not have the time to dwell too long on juicy sex scandals.

In recent weeks, heroic behind-the-scenes action has been poured into talking down gold, oil and other commodity prices, and talking up the failing dollar. The blatantly overvalued euro continues to be defended by the European members of the IMF Executive Board, showing rare and total solidarity in their quest to ensure a European takes over from Strauss-Kahn. This could or might however be a lost cause for the de facto US-European bloc, still holding a massive majority of votes inside the IMF, and the power to decide how many SDRs are printed and what central bank gold reserves will be sold or swapped – but kept on the books as still belonging to national central banks.

Current events could now radically speed decisions.

The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) group, showing a lack of solidarity in jostling to get leadership of the IMF as open as Europe’s solidarity and American neutrality playacting, have very different agenda items in this global quest to prevent an epic financial meltdown. Running trade surpluses, they can finance their national budget deficits and borrow to save their fragile banking systems, as overstretched as those of the USA, Europe and Japan.

The bottom line is that the IMF, as a gold laundering entity using central bank gold may be close to its first double-or-quits crisis point in its 67 year history, and its 44 years of SDR printing.

THE SCENARIOS

It is possible Strauss-Kahn was close to some major breakthrough in recycling government gold, printing SDRs and protecting the paper moneys printed by governments, but whatever his heroic quest, and why he fell, the numbers are stacked against this quest. Taking the approximate current market value of all the gold that has ever been produced, few estimates place this at above $ 5000 billion. US Federal debt growth from December 2008 to April 2011 was about $ 3600 billion. Global “hot capital” flows, grotesquely underestimated by the IMF in its publication, are likely running at no more than $ 250 billion-a-year.

The only solution for Strauss-Kahn, and whoever succeeds him is to invent a new global money. This was the real mission of “DSK” and will be the real mission of whoever steps into his shoes, and does not stay in Sofitel mid-range hotels with low level security on room intruders. The action to produce a new global money – called a reserve currency – will also have to be very fast, due to the debt clock, or time bomb ruthlessly ticking forward.

For a short while the gold bullion market will stay quiet, but daily change of the gold price will increase, and then rise further. Few rational analyses of the right price for gold place it under $ 2000 per troy ounce, and plenty of experts will say this is only the starting gate for a hyper inflation spiral in which national currencies are ground to dust like a black hole swallows and smashes stars. All and any real asset, that is food, energy and minerals can only spiral in price for as long as the global economy struggles forward. After that, the recession implosion will operate, restoring the value of money in a vastly downsized global economy morphing into semi-autonomous national or regional economies.

Preventive action by the world’s few capital surplus countries could start in the very near-term future. The BRIC group could break away from the IMF system by inventing its own BRIC reserve money backed by key commodities, gold, and manufacturing power, but this would need a vast increase of their current low-level coordination of financial and monetary policies.

Not impossibly, the USA facing hyper debt could take its own unilateral action, with well-described and possibly planned actions to erect tariff barriers and heavily limit overseas holdings and use of the US dollar – that is siege economy action in a new era of isolationism marked in the geopolitical domain by abandoning the Afghan war, total disengagement from Iraq and leaving Israel to solve its long and festering problems with the Palestinians all on its own.

In the same way, Europe’s neo-colonial turf war with China and India for control over Africa’s natural resources and growing consumer markets could morph into a war for saving European moneys.

Under any scenario the Strauss-Kahn affair comes at a key moment. Attempts at saving the global economy and world moneys, since the end of 2008, have all failed, raising the stakes and risk each time. What we may now witness is historic change as the IMF’s real situation seeps and leaks out, under the tinsel wraps of just another sex scandal.

THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION: Big Business Pushing for a Single Unified North American Regulatory Regime

It was surprising that bilateral relations with the U.S. did not play a more prominent role during the recent Canadian election considering that both countries are pursuing a trade and security agreement. In fact, the issue did not really surface until the dying days of the campaign. After winning a much coveted majority government, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are moving ahead quickly with perimeter security and regulatory harmonization negotiations. NAFTA and the defunct Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) both addressed issues such as regulatory cooperation. The goal of creating a single unified business-friendly regulatory regime for North America now continues on different fronts.

In the final week of the Canadian election campaign, consumer advocate and four-time candidate for President of the United States, Ralph Nader warned about Canada-U.S. deep integration. In an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he raised concerns over the lack of transparency regarding talks between the two countries on a trade and border security deal. Nader cautioned that a, “North American Security Perimeter Agreement will wrap many Canadian concerns — your Arctic, water, energy, anti-monopoly and foreign investment reviews — in a bi-national security blanket.” He added, “The corporatist lobbies and what President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his farewell address 50 years ago — ‘the military-industrial complex’ — will favour this lucrative and anti-democratic initiative.” Nader also explained in his letter to Harper, that, “Canada’s prudent bank regulation prevented a Wall Street style collapse of your economy.” North American deep integration is a corporate led agenda designed to foster privatization and deregulation.

With just days left before the election on May 2, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that a re-elected Conservative government would move forward on the Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness signed with U.S. President Barack Obama back in February of this year. The deal would help promote trade while strengthening security and regulatory cooperation between both countries. Harper vowed that the agreement is critical for Canadian jobs and economic growth. He reaffirmed plans to cut regulatory barriers to cross-border trade through the United States-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) which is a component of the Beyond the Border declaration. Following Harper’s election victory, President Obama phoned to congratulate him and at the same time renewed his commitment to the proposed perimeter security deal, as well as the RCC. Both leaders appear eager to complete an agreement before the 2012 U.S. election cycle gets fully underway.

On February 4, 2011, President Obama and Prime Minister Harper addressed ways to coordinate and harmonize regulations in order to ease red tape for businesses that do trade on both sides of the border. They announced the creation of the U.S.-Canada RCC which will, “promote economic growth, job creation, and benefits to our consumers and businesses through increased regulatory transparency and coordination.” According to a joint statement, the leaders, “are committed to working through the RCC to provide early notice of regulations with potential effects across our shared border, to strengthen the analytic basis of regulations, and to help make regulations more compatible.” Both countries will also, “work through the RCC to determine sectors on which to focus its work that are characterized by high levels of integration, significant growth potential, and rapidly evolving technologies.” There are fears that the RCC could erode any independent Canadian regulatory capacity and weaken existing regulations. This would lead to a race to the bottom with respect to regulatory standards

In May of 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon directed the creation of the High-Level Regulatory Cooperation Council (HLRCC). In March of this year, the leaders laid out specific goals for the HLRCC. This included linking regulatory cooperation to improve border-crossing and customs procedures, increasing regulatory transparency, as well as making regulations more compatible and simple. The U.S. and Mexico will also focus on increasing technical cooperation and improving the analysis of regulations. The HLRCC has similar goals to the U.S.-Canada RCC. At some point, these dual-bilateral initiatives could come together to form a single continental regulatory model.

This year’s NAFTA Free Trade Commission meeting identified regulatory cooperation as a top priority. Part of the SPP prosperity agenda also called for improving regulatory cooperation. In 2007, Canada, Mexico and the U. S. announced regulatory cooperation in the area of chemicals.This later resulted in Canada raising pesticide limits on fruits and vegetables as part of efforts to harmonize rules with those of the United States. Regulatory integration threatens Canadian sovereignty and democracy. Further harmonization with the U.S. could result in Canada losing control over its ability to regulate food safety.

With the Canadian election now over, the Conservative government has resumed public consultation on the perimeter security deal with the U.S. and has extended the comment period until June 3, 2011. While the measure is open to all Canadians, it will be the input from the business community that will be given the most attention. A report summarizing the findings will be published at a later date and will help shape an action plan that is expected to be released at some point this summer. Last month, the U.S. Department of Commerce extended its request for public comments concerning regulatory cooperation activities. The submissions collected from business groups in the U.S. will serve as a basis for bilateral and trilateral talks with Canada and Mexico. This includes discussions with the HLRCC and the RCC. It is not hard to imagine that the U.S. will dominate both of these regulatory councils. Under the guise of improving the flow of travel and trade across the border, big business seeks to further control the rules and regulations that govern us.

The proposed Canada-U.S. trade and security perimeter agreement supports the process of deregulation. This new bilateral undertaking is being sold as vital to the safety and prosperity of both countries. A North American security perimeter goes well beyond keeping the U.S. safe from any perceived threats. It is a means to secure trade, resources and corporate interests. Much like the whole deep integration agenda, regulatory harmonization is taking incremental steps with the goal of achieving a single unified North American regulatory regime.

Dana Gabriel is an activist and independent researcher. He writes about trade, globalization, sovereignty, security, as well as other issues

Barney Frank: Banks Are Winning the War (Video)

In the face of Republican opposition to derivatives reform, Barney Frank of Massachusetts makes his case for increased oversight of derivatives.

Banking Capitalists Who Fear Free Markets

Excerpt - NYT

Capitalism is supposed to produce losses on bad investments. But all too often it has not. In Tokyo this week, corporate executives were outraged when a Japanese government official suggested that banks might have to take losses on loans to the company that produced a nuclear catastrophe.

Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, had the temerity to say “the public will not support” the injection of government money into Tokyo Electric Power, also known as Tepco, unless banks share in the pain. Tepco says it would like to pay compensation to victims, but needs government cash to do so.

The president of Japan’s largest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, was shocked by the very idea that a bank should lose money if it lent to a company that could not meet its obligations. Mr. Edano’s remarks “came out of the blue,” said the executive, Katsunori Nagayasu. “I felt there was something wrong about them.”

To Yasuchika Hasgawa, the chief executive of the Takeda Pharmaceutical Company and chairman of the Japanese Association of Corporate Executives, the idea violated basic tenets of society. Mr. Hasgawa said he “cannot help but question how this country’s democracy can be made to work with free-market-based capitalism.”

His definition of “free-market-based capitalism” seems to assume that lenders should escape without pain, at least if they are lending to major institutions. It is an idea that has become remarkably pervasive.

“We consider banks and Tepco systemically important institutions,” wrote Tetsuya Yamamoto, a Moody’s analyst based in Tokyo. “Debt forgiveness undermines the systemic importance of the bank and utility sectors in the national economy.” These are, he added, “developments we did not anticipate.”

Strauss-Kahn Set To Receive Lifetime $320,000 Annual Pension From IMF, Heavily Funded By U.S. Taxpayers