|
According to this CNN/Money report, it would appear that Wall Street has a new favorite candidate in 2012 after candidate Barack Obama, back in 2008, raised more money from the financial services industry than any other candidate in history.
New boss, same as the old boss … and the ones before that.
Maybe we’ll get a good third party candidate this year…
The Understory reported that the Rainforest Action Network transformed about 85 Bank of America ATMs in San Francisco into Automated “Truth” Machines the other day using the overlay sticker shown below, one more sign that, though still quite popular in Washington D.C., big banks are increasingly unpopular in the rest of the country.
On a related note, according to this McClatchy report, BofA and other too-big-to-fail banks have settled on their pick for President this fall – Mitt Romney. Employees at the big banks gave the Romney campaign $600,000 through September of last year, dwarfing the $200,000 sent to the bankers’ second choice – President Barack Obama – virtually ensuring that there will be little change to the status quo, big-bank-wise, until 2017 or later.
I’ve been meaning to dig through the European Central Bank’s balance sheet data in order to better understand how it has grown so fast in recent months (as indicated in red below) and why the Germans aren’t up in arms about it.
Someday I surely will, though there doesn’t seem to be any real urgency since the recent spurt of money printing is not likely to end anytime soon. Between now and then, this graphic from The Economist’s Central banks: Crazy aunt on the loose will have to do.
It is fairly remarkable to stop and think how far we’ve come since the world’s central bankers saved us (and, of course, the biggest and most dangerous banks) from sure annihilation three years ago. Who would have ever imagined back in 2005 or 2006 that nearly the entire globe would have “turned Japanese” by now.
Who imagines today that the chart above left might not change for another 10 or 20 years?
According to this item at Occupy Wall Street News, the African-American faith community will join forces with Occupy Wall Street to protest economic injustice on Martin Luther King Day next month and they intend to “Occupy the Federal Reserve” in up to twelve cities across the country where regional central bank offices are located.
There’s more than a little bit of irony in the event also being referred to as “Occupy the Dream”, that is, just two years in advance of the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the Fed, what, to the biggest of the banks back then was a “dream” of a monopoly over the industry at a time when smaller regional banks were rapidly gaining market share.
So far, it’s worked out pretty well for them, if not for the rest of us.
In a CNBC video that, apparently, had such demand earlier in the day that it was impossible to watch (at least I couldn’t), Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital talks about the inevitability of a breakup of the European monetary union.
He’s also not very hopeful about China as he discussed with BNN (see here and here).
BTW – Is it just me, or are those CNBC sound effects when they change charts just silly?
By Tim Iacono, Since 2005
![[Most Recent USD from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/indexes/idx24_usd_en_2.gif)
Recent Comments